Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: the title of this episode is from Nose to tail
Speaker 1: colon the colon because yeah, yeah, because this is the
Speaker 1: final episode in our journey. This is the tail portion
Speaker 1: that is referenced in the title. Yeah you said you
Speaker 1: described earlier, From tongue to taint, this is the bitter end,
Speaker 1: my friends, the sphincter. I'm sure there are a lot,
Speaker 1: but they're a lot things, but but those are the
Speaker 1: ones we're sticking to. So I wanted to start this
Speaker 1: one off of just a little bit of a little
Speaker 1: anecdote from history that I found particularly interesting and it
Speaker 1: and it involves a Scottish surgeon, which is also good
Speaker 1: because we've been taking this journey with an imagined haggis,
Speaker 1: which is, of course the Scottish delicacy. Would you call
Speaker 1: it a delicacy or is it just more of a
Speaker 1: Scottish cultural cultural icon of food, Yeah, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a cheep's stomach stuffed with with
Speaker 1: meat and barley and organs and other things in various secrets.
Speaker 1: But but, but this is a particular page from Scottish
Speaker 1: history is a Scottish surgeon, Sir William Arbuth Nutt Lane
Speaker 1: from the early twentieth century. And this guy is notable
Speaker 1: because he was his big idea that we should treat
Speaker 1: constipation uh and auto intoxication, which is the state of
Speaker 1: being poisoned by toxic substances produced by the body by
Speaker 1: shortening the highway by removing a couple of feet of colon.
Speaker 1: And he later moves on to doing full colon and
Speaker 1: he later moves on to doing full colon ectomies, stitching
Speaker 1: the small intestines directly to the rectum, in other words,
Speaker 1: picking up where our last episode left off and just
Speaker 1: deleting this episode into highly so deleting the small intestine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he went on to judge the colon as quote,
Speaker 1: a serious defect in our anatomy, and he was all
Speaker 1: in favor of just just cutting it out. It's just
Speaker 1: let's just cut it out. Let's just connect the small
Speaker 1: intestines directly to the end portion and uh. And as
Speaker 1: we discussed in previous episodes that the body does have
Speaker 1: a remarkable ability to to flow with with some of
Speaker 1: these uh UM replumbing surgeries that take place with our
Speaker 1: digestive system. But and the thing is, I should note that,
Speaker 1: of course of uh colon actonies are occasionally, you know,
Speaker 1: very important that they can be it can be a
Speaker 1: life saving procedure. But in this case, he was using
Speaker 1: it to treat um constipation. Boy was he wrong. He
Speaker 1: was wrong. Now. He was apparently influenced by Russian Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize bacteriologists um Ellie Mecknkoff, who thought that that humans
Speaker 1: were evolving so fast that various parts of our bodies
Speaker 1: were going to quickly become obsolete. So he was influenced
Speaker 1: by this, and this end up kind of tarnishing his
Speaker 1: his views of of human anatomy and human digestion to
Speaker 1: the point where he said the colon and he's the
Speaker 1: colon screw that cut it out, just took it right up.
Speaker 1: And as Mary Roach points out in her book Gulp,
Speaker 1: he was kind of saying, let's let's treat constipation with
Speaker 1: just diarrhea. Diarrhea, I guess it's more preferable, right. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is here is that the colon is hugely important,
Speaker 1: as we are going to discuss it a many different
Speaker 1: aspects of it. In fact, Robert Rosenbluth, a physician that
Speaker 1: Mary Roach interviewed for GULP, said no engineer could design
Speaker 1: something as multifunctional and fine tuned as an anuses to
Speaker 1: call someone an hole is really bragging him up. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh and I and I want to add one
Speaker 1: more note about sir William here. Later on, after his
Speaker 1: reputation took a dive because of this, uh, this this
Speaker 1: opinion of his regarding the colon, because he's trying to
Speaker 1: remove all his friends Colin's Yeah, and the medical establishment
Speaker 1: um pounced on him and said you were nuts and
Speaker 1: this is awful and rightfully so. Um. He later abandons
Speaker 1: it and does a complete turnaround and starts saying that exercise, fruit, vegetables,
Speaker 1: and brand cereal are the keys to fighting constipation. Well,
Speaker 1: there you go, you know. So he had a bit
Speaker 1: of a revelation there. Yeah, and I think maybe he
Speaker 1: realized that, Yes, well, I don't know if he really
Speaker 1: came around to thinking the colon was great, but he
Speaker 1: definitely came around to saying, well, we don't need to
Speaker 1: remove it. There are better ways to deal with colon problems.
Speaker 1: So I wanted just to kind of go ahead and
Speaker 1: dive into the colon if you can, because we've got
Speaker 1: a lot to get to. And I thought that if
Speaker 1: we start talking about the physical description of what it
Speaker 1: looks like inside, it could serve and start contrast to
Speaker 1: the small intestine, which remember, is pretty fancy, right. It's
Speaker 1: got all of micro villa in it, and it's where
Speaker 1: most of the nutrients are absorbed. This is gonna be
Speaker 1: vital with some stuff we're gonna talk about later on.
Speaker 1: I use the example in another podcast that the whole
Speaker 1: digestion system is like bringing in a stolen Chrysler and
Speaker 1: then stripping it down of everything valuable and then spitting
Speaker 1: out an empty shell on center blocks um in an
Speaker 1: abandoned part of town. So most of the car is
Speaker 1: stripped down, all the all the really good stuff, that
Speaker 1: really important stuff is stripped away in the small intestines,
Speaker 1: and it does. It's super fancy in their right. It's
Speaker 1: got those mucoastal folds in it. But in stark contrast,
Speaker 1: we have the interior walls of the colon, which Mary
Speaker 1: Roach says are as smooth and shiny as cling wrap. Okay,
Speaker 1: And the reason for this is because of course that
Speaker 1: is uh constructed in that way so that the feces
Speaker 1: can move through it with ease, yes or its as
Speaker 1: it sometimes referred to at this point, or or maybe
Speaker 1: a little more towards the very end as the fecal bullus,
Speaker 1: in the same way that we were forming this bolus
Speaker 1: in our mouth to transport the matter down the throat.
Speaker 1: At this point, the bolus is on its way out,
Speaker 1: a different bolus entirely, but but still a bolus. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the path of the colon is pretty circuitous. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like an upside down you that surrounds the small
Speaker 1: intestines and as if it's were sort of like a
Speaker 1: frame for for your digestive system, or at least the
Speaker 1: lower part of your digestive system. So the hagus on
Speaker 1: its journey through the colon, this former hag us, right,
Speaker 1: this now bullus that is forming, would have water and
Speaker 1: salt extracted, which would leave more of a solid waste
Speaker 1: product for us. And you begin to see that mucus
Speaker 1: is produced throughout the colon, and that helps again the
Speaker 1: now mostly solid feces to move through the lower portion
Speaker 1: of the colon to the anus. I wanted to point
Speaker 1: this out. This is going to seem pretty obvious, but
Speaker 1: you might as well know what the mechanism and play here.
Speaker 1: When the feces is big enough and it pushes against
Speaker 1: the rectum walls with enough pressure, this pressure is measured
Speaker 1: by stretch receptors and the defecation reflects is triggered. Yes,
Speaker 1: And as Mary Roach points out in her book, she
Speaker 1: has a whole chapter, well really, I think a couple
Speaker 1: of chapters, the one really powerhouse chapter dealing with the
Speaker 1: rectum and the anus and everything going on here. It
Speaker 1: is a very sensitive part of the human anatomy because
Speaker 1: it has to it has to be able to make
Speaker 1: judgment calls, essentially on exactly what's what's knocking at the door.
Speaker 1: Is it liquid? Is it solid? Is it gas? Is
Speaker 1: is it something that is it something that needs to
Speaker 1: come out now or is it something that can maybe
Speaker 1: late wait until the end of the movie that you're watching.
Speaker 1: A note on diarrhea, by the way, the more water
Speaker 1: in the feces, the more pressure in the colon, and
Speaker 1: the more urgent the call of nature. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why there's a certain sort of diarrhea
Speaker 1: look that passes of our eyes, and it's why we
Speaker 1: need to do that. Yeah, it's it's why when when
Speaker 1: diarrhea is coming. Uh, there's there's no waiting until the
Speaker 1: end of the movie. It's it's getting up and running
Speaker 1: to the to the Yeah. Yeah, it's a direct path
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. And the reason for this is because
Speaker 1: the small intestine is actually moving the food through m
Speaker 1: or the time through so quickly that the nutrients are
Speaker 1: an absorbed the food molekills aren't completely absorbed in. This
Speaker 1: again creates a a load, if you will, in the colon.
Speaker 1: The colon, sorry, colon's out there, um that is watery
Speaker 1: and larger and is putting more of that pressure on. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: as we can all attest to you, when there is
Speaker 1: pressure there, generally you can you can hunker down and
Speaker 1: say not now, not now, and the body will back
Speaker 1: off a little bit. You can suppress it. You can
Speaker 1: suppress it. And if you suppress it too much, though,
Speaker 1: you can get into this situation where it's actually a
Speaker 1: little difficult to convince your body. No, seriously, now is
Speaker 1: a great time to poop. We should do this now.
Speaker 1: There may not be a time later. This is the
Speaker 1: designated pooping time. And the bodies like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm really into holding it back these days. I learned
Speaker 1: that from you. Okay, But here's the problem. When you
Speaker 1: hold it back, when you suppress, that reflects that defication
Speaker 1: reflects what happens. Well, the stool hangs out and your
Speaker 1: colon longer and longer, and the longer it hangs out there,
Speaker 1: the more water is absorbed from it, and the harder
Speaker 1: it gets. It basically kind of ears to concrete really
Speaker 1: more like hardened clay, is the description that we kept
Speaker 1: coming across, though there was one mention of actual concrete.
Speaker 1: But that's that's that's a whole other that's a whole
Speaker 1: different So it's sort of more of a vicious cycle
Speaker 1: going on here. The longer you suppress it, the longer
Speaker 1: it sits up there, and the harder is to get
Speaker 1: it out. Yes, and then this can lead to some
Speaker 1: rather serious conditions as well, and and even in some cases,
Speaker 1: I mean, this can be lethal over time. With the
Speaker 1: more with the more ponderous examples of compacted to colon's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about the role of
Speaker 1: constipation um and another aspect of the colon in a bit,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to talk about another very infamous byproduct,
Speaker 1: which is gas. Yes, gas, you knew we were going
Speaker 1: to talk about it. We may even dedicate an entire
Speaker 1: episode two flatulence in the most elegant way possible that
Speaker 1: we can. But for now, um, we should probably talk
Speaker 1: about the role of beans. Yes, because really that they're
Speaker 1: a huge culprit. They contain complex carbohydrates called all the
Speaker 1: Ego Saccard's and the small intestine is unable to absorb
Speaker 1: these complex carbohydrates, so they make their way to the
Speaker 1: colon where bacteria and enzymes get to work on them,
Speaker 1: breaking them down, and in the process a lot of
Speaker 1: hydrogen is created. Now in a third of us, only
Speaker 1: a third of us, there's also methane yes, which, as
Speaker 1: as as Mary Roach pointed out and her previous book
Speaker 1: Packing from Mars, this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: that the screening process for astronauts has has sometimes looked
Speaker 1: for which individuals that past gas are going to create
Speaker 1: flammable methane as well. Those individuals arguably should maybe stay
Speaker 1: on Earth and not go into a compact environment where
Speaker 1: there's going to be uh potential risk for explosion. And
Speaker 1: there's a way to actually test this is through your
Speaker 1: breath because methane is absorbed through your bloodstream, so actually
Speaker 1: is not the thing that's causing any smells. By the way, Princess,
Speaker 1: there are planets um out there that are largely methane
Speaker 1: in composition, and you might think, oh, I get there,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna smell like fart world. But it's not
Speaker 1: gonna smell like fire world. It's just it's not anything.
Speaker 1: If they were filled with soulfur, though, it would be
Speaker 1: fart world. Right, Like Mars apparently smells like rotten eggs
Speaker 1: because of the because because of the chemical components there,
Speaker 1: but it's not because of methane. So okay, what's the
Speaker 1: what's the big deal with hydrogen being created in your colon? Well,
Speaker 1: it builds up your colon begins to balloon with it, right,
Speaker 1: and if you have too much gas, then those stretch
Speaker 1: receptors let the brain now, and the brain then interprets
Speaker 1: the stretching as threat in the form of a pain.
Speaker 1: Okay um. And this is when the body then says, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and release the hounds. And then nobody,
Speaker 1: I'm in yoga class and no, right, you're like I'm
Speaker 1: in I'm in yoga class, or I'm not in yoga class,
Speaker 1: I'm maybe in my car alone, hopefully, and the sphincter
Speaker 1: loosens and a fart is born. It's particularly difficult in
Speaker 1: in yoga classes because you're going through a you're going
Speaker 1: through so many poses, and then so many times you're
Speaker 1: doing the left side and the right side, so you're
Speaker 1: doing the post twice, and so I find myself in
Speaker 1: those situations. I'm first of all, I'm I'm mortified by
Speaker 1: the possibility of being the person who farts in yoga class,
Speaker 1: even though it's perfectly natural, and I don't judge people
Speaker 1: who do it. You know, the yoga teacher is going
Speaker 1: to kind of be like a little bit proud of you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I sometimes they are. Sometimes they're very goung ho like
Speaker 1: they basically like standing, Oh you are in touch with
Speaker 1: your doing it right, and in a sense we should
Speaker 1: feel that way. I mean, it's we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: this later, but I mean, it's the human body. It's
Speaker 1: gonna do what it's gonna do, and yoga is about
Speaker 1: putting your body through the ring or do a certain extent.
Speaker 1: So that kind of thing is gonna happen. But I
Speaker 1: find myself in the in the habit of thinking about
Speaker 1: the body from uh as this dichotomy of left and right.
Speaker 1: We're doing left side and the right side. So I
Speaker 1: find myself fearful. I'm like, oh, well, I suppressed uh
Speaker 1: flash once on my right side, but now I have
Speaker 1: to worry about on my left side, as if there
Speaker 1: are two different valves there, as if you have two
Speaker 1: different in exactly. And then I have to remind myself
Speaker 1: in the midst of the post, Robert, you only have
Speaker 1: one anus. It's fine. These are the thoughts that are
Speaker 1: going through your mind while you practice yuga. Alright, a
Speaker 1: little insight. I like that. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we will
Speaker 1: get even more into the colon. We will discuss oddities
Speaker 1: of the colon, things the colon can do that you
Speaker 1: might not think about on a normal basis. Um so
Speaker 1: this podcast is going to become even more amazing in
Speaker 1: just a few moments. All Right, we're back and we
Speaker 1: are going to start talking about some of the oddities
Speaker 1: of the colon. And uh, I will tell you you all,
Speaker 1: and you probably already know this, that I have a
Speaker 1: strong stomach for the world of schatology. But brace yourselves,
Speaker 1: because we're going to talk about reverse food consumption. Now.
Speaker 1: Probably the the entry point for for discussing reverse of
Speaker 1: food consumption is to talk about things that when we're
Speaker 1: a little more familiar with. Of course, UH, suppositories comes
Speaker 1: to mind. Uh, taking drugs in the rectum and then
Speaker 1: experiencing the effects of said drugs again in the rectum. Uh,
Speaker 1: drugs take up. Drugs take effect faster in the rectum
Speaker 1: because you put them there. You're bypassing the stomach, the liver,
Speaker 1: the body's vomit up, the poison defense mechanism. Uh, You're
Speaker 1: you're getting it in through the back door literally. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and there's this is where it can be a
Speaker 1: little dangerous too, because there's the defense systems are not there.
Speaker 1: It's just absorbing the the narcotic, the medication, what have you.
Speaker 1: And so for for a long time, people have known
Speaker 1: about this. Back in the third century a d. The
Speaker 1: Mayans use suppositories or perhaps quote unquote intoxicating enemas to
Speaker 1: receive various narcotics, and then over years people have used
Speaker 1: everything from opium to alcohol to tobacco, peyote, uh fermented
Speaker 1: agave a sap Um software pioneer and expatriate murder suspect
Speaker 1: John mccafee is a big fan of bass salts in
Speaker 1: the anus so um. He has a whole message board
Speaker 1: where he was apparently saying that this was the correct
Speaker 1: way to do it. So what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: it's it's not a new idea. There is some there
Speaker 1: is some absorption going on there. It's not the it's
Speaker 1: not the the upper intestines, it's not the small intestines
Speaker 1: where most of the nutrients are absorbs. So it's not
Speaker 1: the real money area of the digestion track. But there
Speaker 1: is some absorption going on there. And yes, you can
Speaker 1: take medicine this way. In fact, you can potentially poison
Speaker 1: somebody this way. Some historians think that Emperor Claudius was
Speaker 1: poisoned vias depository at the behest of his wife Agrippa.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing here is that people have been
Speaker 1: have been sticking things up their pituites since time immemorial. Yes,
Speaker 1: in some cases it's for medical purposes. Uh, sometimes it
Speaker 1: is just for recreational purposes, as any your staff member
Speaker 1: can tell you. And we have a humdinger of an
Speaker 1: example of it as an attempt to, as you say,
Speaker 1: absorb nutrients. The example comes by way of gulp Mary
Speaker 1: Rich's book and she details President James gar Fields for
Speaker 1: a into this. We're talking one. We're talking about him
Speaker 1: taking a bullet to the liver. Yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a nutrient enema which has thankfully fallen largely out of
Speaker 1: a favor, especially the type that you're about to discuss. Yeah. Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: when he was his liver was grazed by that bullet.
Speaker 1: His doctor tried to perform surgery on him and actually
Speaker 1: did not wash his hands and infected him. And he
Speaker 1: had a bacterial infection, and so presumably he could not
Speaker 1: eat in the traditional way that we eat. So that
Speaker 1: same doctor then prescribed the nutrient enema to him. And
Speaker 1: I would like to read out the contents of this enema.
Speaker 1: And this is a recipe from Assistant U. S. Surgeon
Speaker 1: General C. H. Crane for rectal beef extract. Infuse a
Speaker 1: third of a pound of fresh beef, finally minced in
Speaker 1: fourteen ounces of cold soft water, to which a few
Speaker 1: drops of muriatic acid and a little salt have been added.
Speaker 1: After digesting for an hour to an hour and a
Speaker 1: quarter strain it through a sieve. The yolk of an
Speaker 1: egg is then added, along with two DRAMs of beef
Speaker 1: peptonoids and five DRAMs of whiskey. Do you know where
Speaker 1: we're going with this, guys? Well, I know exactly where
Speaker 1: it's going up the bump because it actually it sounds
Speaker 1: it's a recipe goes. It doesn't sound bad until you
Speaker 1: realize that where it is going, that it stopped. That
Speaker 1: we're talking about firing this up the anus in an
Speaker 1: attempt to get the nutrients in that food absorbed by
Speaker 1: the body. I mean, it's it's ultimately really it's kind
Speaker 1: of sad and disturbing to think about it because here's
Speaker 1: a man that's dying. His the assassination attempt took place
Speaker 1: in eight one. He died the same year, So this
Speaker 1: is the man who was who was dying, and they're
Speaker 1: trying this thing that doesn't really work because it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how nutrition solve this stuff is you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to shoot it all the way up
Speaker 1: to the small intestines, to the area where where again
Speaker 1: most of the energy, most of the nutrients were absorbed
Speaker 1: by the human body. Yeah, and if you had noted
Speaker 1: the salt in the muriatic acid was not added as
Speaker 1: as some sort of flavoring obviously, but to break it
Speaker 1: down to try to uh, sort of simulate those sort
Speaker 1: of sort of same things that we're having in the
Speaker 1: stomach and the small intestine. The problem here again is
Speaker 1: is that the small intestine is the part of your
Speaker 1: digestive system that takes those nutrients away. The colon is
Speaker 1: not a good place for this, right. You can you
Speaker 1: can put it up there, you can put it in
Speaker 1: the rectum, but there's not much that's going to be absorbed.
Speaker 1: It is actually incapable of absorbing large molecules fats um,
Speaker 1: albumans and according to Mary Roach, salt and glucose, some
Speaker 1: short chain fatty acids, a few vitamins and minerals are
Speaker 1: about it. It's not much ssorption going on. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it just created I mean, she has descriptions in there
Speaker 1: talking about what this was like and how they abandoned
Speaker 1: put using raw eggs in it after a while. It
Speaker 1: was a stink. It was just horrible. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just really I really felt for Garfield the whole
Speaker 1: time I was reading this because I'm like, oh my,
Speaker 1: this is just not a dignified way for a man
Speaker 1: to have to spend his um, you know, his final months.
Speaker 1: But then again, i mean there are a lot of
Speaker 1: undignified ways to spend your your final period unearthed. So yes,
Speaker 1: and it may have prolonged his life a bit, it
Speaker 1: would not you obviously could not be kept alive from
Speaker 1: this method of eating or digesting whatever, reverse digesting or
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a time. I mean, you're you're you're
Speaker 1: in a desperate moment, so you're going to try anything.
Speaker 1: And certainly his his physician was doing something that probably
Speaker 1: at the time was the most cutting edge thing that
Speaker 1: you could do in this situation. Yeah, and there was
Speaker 1: a fair amount of rectal enthusiasm of the time anyway,
Speaker 1: I mean, people were this was you know, age when
Speaker 1: people were a little more interested in and what's going
Speaker 1: on in digestion. And we've we've talked about this before
Speaker 1: and and I keep coming back to memories of the
Speaker 1: movie The Road to Wellville, which featured Anthony hop Gunn,
Speaker 1: says Kellogg. In fact, there's a great scene in that
Speaker 1: where he's prescribing um yogurt to Matthew Broderick's character and
Speaker 1: he says something to the fact of oh, I like yogurt,
Speaker 1: and he tells him, Oh, it's not going in that end,
Speaker 1: so right, Yeah, and he was Kellog was absolutely obsessed
Speaker 1: with feces output, yes, because he felt like this was
Speaker 1: pointing to the healthiest status of a body, that it
Speaker 1: could produce as many feces as possible. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the things that really comes
Speaker 1: out in our study of this. And and Mary Roach
Speaker 1: really touches on a lot too, is that Okay? To
Speaker 1: one extent, was you know, we look at people like Kellogg,
Speaker 1: We we look at some of these scientists who study
Speaker 1: the lower end of digestion and or in proctology and
Speaker 1: in all of these areas, and there's a tendency to
Speaker 1: say all these people are way too into this topic.
Speaker 1: But it's it's really more so many of us are
Speaker 1: not into it at all, Like we don't want to
Speaker 1: think about it. And to to to a large extent,
Speaker 1: it's it's often an under underappreciated area of study and
Speaker 1: and even an understudied area of the human body. Um Mary,
Speaker 1: which points out that like when it comes to various
Speaker 1: like rectal cancers and cancers of the bows like they
Speaker 1: they've they've largely not received as much attention and his
Speaker 1: and that there's it's it's harder to to get across
Speaker 1: the importance of these things to two people. And and
Speaker 1: so it's it's it seems like it's an area that
Speaker 1: we still need to to work on. So many obviously
Speaker 1: just culturally have an aversion to even thinking about what's
Speaker 1: going on down there. Well, it's taboo right to a sense,
Speaker 1: because anytime that you start talking about your digestive system
Speaker 1: and what it produces, there's this idea that we feel
Speaker 1: shameful about what our body produces. It becomes this taboo subject.
Speaker 1: But it is us like that stuff down there is
Speaker 1: not It's like the whole idea of the mind body
Speaker 1: connection that we're not a rider on a horse, we
Speaker 1: are a sent are. We are one creature that is
Speaker 1: mind and body. And you are your your rectum, you
Speaker 1: are your your anus, you are your small and large intestines.
Speaker 1: So that's going to replace you are what you eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you are the you're the whole shebang. And
Speaker 1: uh like, For instance, not that long ago, I was
Speaker 1: in the yoga class and the teacher made reference of
Speaker 1: the anus and and referred to like, you know how
Speaker 1: they're always saying like, oh said in your set bones,
Speaker 1: you know our tra back and referring to various parts
Speaker 1: of the anatomy, and you're just you referred to the anus.
Speaker 1: And it was actually really refreshing because I'm like this,
Speaker 1: this is good that we're in a space where we're
Speaker 1: talking about our bodies. We're trying to improve our bodies.
Speaker 1: Let's treat our bodies with some monichum of respect and
Speaker 1: and and and and don't fall into this trap of
Speaker 1: thinking that that there are parts of us that are
Speaker 1: gross and parts of us that that aren't worthy of
Speaker 1: studying attention. Well, Mary Richard kind of alluded to the
Speaker 1: fact that she thought that there was a sea change
Speaker 1: happening in terms of medicine and um in the digestive system,
Speaker 1: and she was talking about fecal transplants being so completely
Speaker 1: off the wall four years ago but now starting to
Speaker 1: enter a mainstream and the I think some of the
Speaker 1: reason why we're looking at things differently as we're beginning
Speaker 1: to understand bacteria's role in the digestive system. And I
Speaker 1: think that is sort of an opening for people to say, oh,
Speaker 1: what is actually going on here? And wow, did you
Speaker 1: know that small intestine does the following things with the
Speaker 1: stomach is ferreting out good bacteria bad bacteria. So I
Speaker 1: think that helps the interest level to know that it's
Speaker 1: not just our waste um that sort of sins of
Speaker 1: a bad diet moving through us. Yeah, digestion doesn't stop
Speaker 1: at the stomach. It as I mentioned the last episode,
Speaker 1: it in a sense, it really doesn't get started until
Speaker 1: after we're done with the stomach because again, all that
Speaker 1: nutrient absorption that's taken place in the small intestines. Well,
Speaker 1: here's something I want to ask, and this is this
Speaker 1: is a question we can't really answer because we don't
Speaker 1: know anything, but it um. The color of our feces
Speaker 1: is brown. Right, generally speaking, it depends me write right
Speaker 1: sometimes and it just depends on what you eat too, right.
Speaker 1: There can be some some odd things that come out
Speaker 1: on the other end. Generally it's brown. And this is
Speaker 1: because the bile comes from your gall bladder and it
Speaker 1: helps your body digest food and then it's metabolized by
Speaker 1: the bacteria and your leg in testine, leaving behind a
Speaker 1: byproduct called stair colbalin. Uh. And it's that stacobalin that
Speaker 1: gives stool the brown pigment. So without it, your poop
Speaker 1: would actually be sort of a pale gray color, like
Speaker 1: white clay. What if it what if it were just white?
Speaker 1: We had? Is this a psychological thing to brown? Why
Speaker 1: I suppose brown get the association it did because of poop?
Speaker 1: So you know, Uh, it's just one of those little
Speaker 1: mind play questions. Yeah, it seems like I have I
Speaker 1: have heard reference. There's some somebody had had joked about
Speaker 1: having um white poop based on some sort of weird diet,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the episode of thirty Rock
Speaker 1: where Jinn of Morowing has ice cold diarrhea drinking too
Speaker 1: much John bad juice. But but you know, if it
Speaker 1: were rainbow colored, which we then look up in the
Speaker 1: sky and look at the rainbow and be like that
Speaker 1: disgusting rainbow. Yeah, I mean it does color the way
Speaker 1: we think about the world for sure. Yeah. Alright, speaking
Speaker 1: about coloring the world, um, we should probably talk about
Speaker 1: the colon as not just a storage unit for feces,
Speaker 1: but also in some cultural aspects just a storage unit. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we've we've all heard account. We've all probably read
Speaker 1: or seen some sort of like a prison movie where
Speaker 1: there's something smuggled inside somebody's rectum um. You know. So
Speaker 1: there's some great films to deal with this. Uh, Like
Speaker 1: I instantly think of Papillon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
Speaker 1: Dustin Hoffman's character had it was it was of some
Speaker 1: wealth before he ended up in the in the penal
Speaker 1: colony um and he has I think, like a pair
Speaker 1: of spare glasses and some money stowed away up in there.
Speaker 1: And as anyway, you can think of a million different stories,
Speaker 1: a million different books and shows that feature this plot point,
Speaker 1: because ultimately it is a great place to hide something,
Speaker 1: and it's ultimately not that far. It's not like a
Speaker 1: huge deviation from what the colon is there for. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not like you're you know, you know, hacking
Speaker 1: a hole inside your head and storing things in there. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: your colon is a storage facility. It is, and if
Speaker 1: you are in prison then and it's an important way
Speaker 1: to conduct commerce. Right. So this is from very Witch's book.
Speaker 1: She talks about this. She talks about how the rectum
Speaker 1: is actually referred to as a prison wallet cases of
Speaker 1: vault if you're particularly limber and spacious. Indeed, and uh,
Speaker 1: now keep this in mind that the reason why people
Speaker 1: do this uh pound bag of tobacco on the outside
Speaker 1: is worth twenty six dollars on the inside in prison,
Speaker 1: it's contrabands. So the value of it is, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: quite a mark up. You can make quite a pretty
Speaker 1: penny or a lot of really good trades with its material. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the question you quickly becomes to what extent are
Speaker 1: is one willing to limber up down there and uh
Speaker 1: and create a little room and deal with a little
Speaker 1: uh in you know, in patience of the bowels to
Speaker 1: move this material into the prison. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing being too is that for something like tobacco, the
Speaker 1: prison guards and prisoners she was talking to an interviewed
Speaker 1: in this fabulous chapter and goal. They said that the
Speaker 1: consequences are not really that steep. For smuggling and some
Speaker 1: tobacco or a cell phone, lots of cell phones coming
Speaker 1: into you temporarily lose your visiting privileges. Right, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's you know, you weigh the risk versus the reward,
Speaker 1: and it tends to to work out, okay. At least
Speaker 1: with these particular items, but there's a whole list of
Speaker 1: contraband items that make their way into prison facilities, uh,
Speaker 1: through these rectal wallets. Now, there are physical consequences, and
Speaker 1: the physical consequences here are that these stretch receptors in
Speaker 1: your rectum, well, they begin to get worn out of it.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the poop that Cried Wolf, right,
Speaker 1: because they began to say, hey, there's something in my
Speaker 1: rectum which probably empty it. And then you, as the inmates,
Speaker 1: say to your body, no, that's just a smartphone. Shut up.
Speaker 1: And this goes on and on and on until your
Speaker 1: body is able to suppress that stretch receptor. And then
Speaker 1: of course the defecation reflects the consequences that later on
Speaker 1: you're going to have constipation. Yeah, I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing if you get if you're one of these
Speaker 1: people that is always finn an excuse not to poop.
Speaker 1: If you were like, I don't want to use a
Speaker 1: dirty bathroom, I'm getting I don't want to use this
Speaker 1: batom mom in the middle of something. Then over a
Speaker 1: long period of time, that could have its consequences, right,
Speaker 1: because the stretch receptor starts to say, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: you just keep suppressing this never mind, and then of
Speaker 1: course if you have pieces up there, then it's just
Speaker 1: going to sit there. And again, as we've talked about it,
Speaker 1: the water is going to be absorbed more and more
Speaker 1: from it. It's going to be more difficult to get
Speaker 1: it out. But you see this in the prison population,
Speaker 1: is that there's a large complaint of constipation because of
Speaker 1: this um prison wallet. Yeah, it's a fascinating chapter. The
Speaker 1: individual she talks to, the prisoner is really awesome because
Speaker 1: he's just he's very I mean he's a convicted murder,
Speaker 1: a caveat to the awesomeness of the individual, but still
Speaker 1: he's very open about it all, just very like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is how it works. This is uh like his
Speaker 1: account of how the first thing he smuggled in uh
Speaker 1: to the facility happened to be some razor blades I believe,
Speaker 1: or some blades from a work site. This was also
Speaker 1: under pressure, by the way he was thinking, and they
Speaker 1: basically said, look, you can either smuggle these blades in
Speaker 1: or you can wind up with one of these blades,
Speaker 1: you know, stuck in you. So he had to limber
Speaker 1: up really quick. It was not a pleasant experience for him,
Speaker 1: but he wrapped him up, got him in and sort
Speaker 1: of kick started a prison career of of smuggling things in. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I could go on and on. It's a great chap.
Speaker 1: There's really illuminating, uh in as far as it's what
Speaker 1: this kind of culture of smuggling things in consists of.
Speaker 1: Because again we've seen it a million times, We've heard
Speaker 1: about it a million times in various TV shows and
Speaker 1: movies and and whatnot. But Mary Roach doesn't a nice
Speaker 1: clinical analysis and cultural analysis of how it works well.
Speaker 1: And what I like about it too is that it's
Speaker 1: not sensational, is respectful, because she really is interested in
Speaker 1: this idea of this body cavity, what what can be done?
Speaker 1: What do we know from this from from culturally what
Speaker 1: people have been doing? And you know, there's as we say,
Speaker 1: a very long history of people using the rectum for
Speaker 1: for this purpose. I mean, the fact is is that
Speaker 1: as humans, we we kind of, as much as we
Speaker 1: sort of try not to think about the digestive system
Speaker 1: and the colon the anus, we are a bit obsessed
Speaker 1: with it. You can just look at something like colon
Speaker 1: irrigation as an example. Yeah, the idea let's flush it out.
Speaker 1: Let's flush out the works. Let's get some some liquids
Speaker 1: up in there, either just some straight water, some water
Speaker 1: with some chemicals, and then let it all come out.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned before, if you have solid waste up
Speaker 1: in there, then it's a lot easier to control. If
Speaker 1: you have water waste up in there, especially with a
Speaker 1: certain amount of pressure, it's coming out. Yeah, and um.
Speaker 1: Colon cleansing has been around for a long time, also
Speaker 1: called colonic hydrotherapy. I always think about it in that
Speaker 1: movie l A Story. I don't think if you've seen that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's one of the one of the characters
Speaker 1: is introduced to this. You're gonna say that the colon
Speaker 1: cleansing is a character in the film. It is. It's
Speaker 1: got a lot of feelings. Um, it's constantly being purged. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, as you say, some chemicals are sometimes involved.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just herbs. Um. And what we're talking about
Speaker 1: is a tube and sorted into the rectum some water
Speaker 1: switch through. It does have ancient roots, but it was
Speaker 1: discredited by the American Medical Association in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and yet it persists, keeps kind of having its hadi
Speaker 1: and coming into vogue. I guess you could say it's
Speaker 1: hard to dismiss the first of all, the idea of it,
Speaker 1: like the just the basic like moral id of there's
Speaker 1: this part of my body and it's loaded with stuff
Speaker 1: I don't like to think about. But clean water. Let's
Speaker 1: shoot that up in there and just make it sparkly. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you just did a video on cognitive purification
Speaker 1: exactly in a way, it's cognitive purification of of our
Speaker 1: lower intestines, of our colon, and it doesn't really make
Speaker 1: sense when you really get down to the fact that
Speaker 1: the colon does what it does. There's no sense in
Speaker 1: spot cleaning, you know. Um, nobody's gonna stay for a
Speaker 1: week up there. Yeah. And then the other thing too, Um,
Speaker 1: the sensation of of of receiving one of these cleansings.
Speaker 1: I've seen it described as it can be kind of intensive,
Speaker 1: but the line between pleasure and pain is often very
Speaker 1: very slim, very ambiguous, and so there's something to be
Speaker 1: said just for also the physical experience of this occurring,
Speaker 1: where I could see that would be so you're going in,
Speaker 1: you're getting cognitively cleaned, and there is a definite physical
Speaker 1: component to the experience. Throw in some you know, some
Speaker 1: some basic fluff about what's happening to you and why
Speaker 1: it's good for you, and I can see why people
Speaker 1: would come back again and again. Well. In two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: Georgetown University doctor ran It Shorey and her colleagues examined
Speaker 1: twenty studies that were published in medical literature in the
Speaker 1: last decade, and she says that while these reports show
Speaker 1: very little evidence of any kind of benefit, there is
Speaker 1: an abundance of studies that show that the side effects
Speaker 1: following the use of a colon irrigation produces cramping, bloating, nausea, vomiting,
Speaker 1: electrolyte imbalance, and sometimes renal failure. So this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that it's like, oh, well, it seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it does have a benefit, I'll try it.
Speaker 1: It actually has some some very serious side effects to it,
Speaker 1: um that people should consider. Now, are we saying no,
Speaker 1: don't ever put anything up your button. No, we're not
Speaker 1: saying that that's your discretion, you're not yours, And we're
Speaker 1: just saying, like, if you were going to, if you
Speaker 1: have the choice, if you were like I would like
Speaker 1: to get ear candling done and have ear wax removed
Speaker 1: from my ear canal by burning a flame to suck
Speaker 1: it up, right, versus I'm going to have a clonic irrigation,
Speaker 1: go for the ear wax removal. Now. Someone was telling
Speaker 1: me O the day that doesn't work. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: that it's not helpful. I don't know. I think, well,
Speaker 1: it's the idea. Is that idea is great? Well that again,
Speaker 1: it's cognitive purification, right. I don't want to see this
Speaker 1: yuck stuff come out of my body, but yes, you do.
Speaker 1: That's the thing we really do. We want to see
Speaker 1: young stuff come out of our body. I think that's
Speaker 1: the fascination. It's the fascination. We want to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that pus that just came out of my body is discussing,
Speaker 1: but it's not inside me anymore. But that that ear
Speaker 1: wax is the first line of defense. Okay. So, because
Speaker 1: if you've got some sort of bacteria or stuff that's
Speaker 1: entering through your ear canal, it's going to get caught
Speaker 1: in the ear wax, so you don't want to remove it.
Speaker 1: But it's a great bonding experience because you generally have
Speaker 1: to trust somebody a lot to for them to hold
Speaker 1: that candle in place over your head and almost catch
Speaker 1: your head and the sofa on fire. Well, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say it is quite I did it, of course
Speaker 1: crazy in my twenties. Um no, no, with a friend,
Speaker 1: because you've got the paper plate and you've got the
Speaker 1: thing that's on fire over as you say, over your ear,
Speaker 1: and then you've got the crackling going on that you
Speaker 1: can hear from the flame. Um, it's I wouldn't really
Speaker 1: recommend it to anyone one thing we can be sure about.
Speaker 1: Do not use it rectally. If you're going to do it,
Speaker 1: only use it in the ear canal, Like if you
Speaker 1: had to choose between the rector irrigation and uh and
Speaker 1: using the ear candle erectly, I just go for the area.
Speaker 1: Well you know hydrogen, right, hydrogen is up there, it's
Speaker 1: in the rectum. You do not want Uh, it's some
Speaker 1: sort of source like a flame near that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like legally this episode is just no. That's
Speaker 1: the thing we need. We keep stressing it's this is
Speaker 1: all part of our body and how it works. And
Speaker 1: the more we understand how it works, the more the
Speaker 1: more free we are with talking about it and hearing
Speaker 1: discussions about it. Then the morning tune we are with
Speaker 1: the overall mind body connection. All right. So, just for
Speaker 1: the lawyers out there, maybe even our lawyers, we are
Speaker 1: not at all recommending that you do ear candling or
Speaker 1: Anna's candling or colon irrigation at all. Don't do it.
Speaker 1: Oh another thing you should never do um rectully by
Speaker 1: the way, probably avoid um holy water enemus. Uh, this
Speaker 1: actually existed. Mary Roach goes into this as well. In
Speaker 1: the six hundreds in France, one exorcist to use this
Speaker 1: as a means to get holy water into the possessed,
Speaker 1: allegedly possessed person. The idea here being that a lot
Speaker 1: of times salt is added to holy water. And there
Speaker 1: are a few different reasons that this is done apparently,
Speaker 1: but uh, the bottom line is if it's salted holy water,
Speaker 1: you cannot drink a bunch of it. So how's a
Speaker 1: man to get holy water into someone possessed by Bielzebub?
Speaker 1: Well you use an enema apparently. Because so the idea
Speaker 1: is that lab is taking refuge in inside the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: perhaps inside the guts where all this uh you know, unholy,
Speaker 1: unwholesome stuff is going on. Uh. So let's pump some
Speaker 1: water up in and flush them out. It's not not advised.
Speaker 1: It's not a part of the like the official exorcism
Speaker 1: uh documentations. That's good. That's good, the updated one. Huh.
Speaker 1: All right, So that is all. Hopefully that's just a
Speaker 1: nice overall about about the colon, about the rectum, a
Speaker 1: little bit about how the ainus works, and uh and
Speaker 1: again hopefully we can in a way. We've we've had
Speaker 1: some fun with it, but we've be mystified it. I
Speaker 1: recommend picking up Mary Roach's book reading more about it,
Speaker 1: and just in general, I recommend reading more about how
Speaker 1: your digestive system works. So we have an article pretty
Speaker 1: good overview on the website on how stuff works, how
Speaker 1: the digestive system works. It'll take you through everything we've
Speaker 1: discussed in very basic details. And so as we uh,
Speaker 1: as we take it out here, as we call it
Speaker 1: a day in the podcast studio, I'd like to close
Speaker 1: with a little music you're all familiar with, screaming Jay Hawkins,
Speaker 1: who did the classic song I Put a Spell on You.
Speaker 1: He had kind of this voodoo man vibe. Well, he
Speaker 1: also did another little number in nineteen nine called Constipation Blues.
Speaker 1: Not quite as popular, not quite as popular because this
Speaker 1: is sixty nine and uh and especially then, like people
Speaker 1: didn't want to think about people straining on the toilet
Speaker 1: and about the the agonies of of constipation. But screaming
Speaker 1: Jay Hawkins, he's a he's a brutally honest man. So
Speaker 1: let's let's hear a little from this fabulous number, Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen. Most people record songs about love, heartbreak, loneliness,
Speaker 1: being broke. Nobody's actually went out and recorded a song
Speaker 1: about real pain. The band and I have just returned
Speaker 1: from the general hospital. Where are we called a man
Speaker 1: in the right position? We named this song constipation Blues.
Speaker 1: M h Yeah. In the meantime, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You can find us online and step the
Speaker 1: law your mind, Tom Mind, and find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: where our handles blow the mind, and on YouTube. We
Speaker 1: have a video channel Mind Stuff Show, and if you'd
Speaker 1: like to drop us a line, please do so at
Speaker 1: below the Mind at Discovery dot com. H let go.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how Stuff works dot com. Don't clean, I can take
Speaker 1: much more, lit it go