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 Julie Douglas. And Julie,
Speaker 1: let's talk about urine. Let's do it as the as
Speaker 1: the commodity urine, not so much about the I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of the biological processes that are
Speaker 1: involved in the creation if you're into a certain extent,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, urine as this semi magical
Speaker 1: golden liquid that comes out of our bodies. And there
Speaker 1: it is on the ground, in a jar, in the toilet,
Speaker 1: in the urinal, on the side of a bus, wherever.
Speaker 1: We're left to contemplate this liquid and figure out what
Speaker 1: we should do with it, what can we learn from it.
Speaker 1: And indeed, every time you get to the doctor, or
Speaker 1: most times you go to the doctor, what you have
Speaker 1: to do, you have to be in a cup, that's right,
Speaker 1: because that's that liquid goal that will tell you all
Speaker 1: sorts of things about your presence and your future. And
Speaker 1: we've been been divining with urine for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: I mean, the practice goes back, uh literally thousands of years,
Speaker 1: and we're still the thing about is we still haven't
Speaker 1: completely refined the process. We're still finding new ways to
Speaker 1: learn from urine and uh and actually uh discovered the
Speaker 1: the curative properties of urine, but not in the way
Speaker 1: that you might be thinking. We'll get into the whole
Speaker 1: urine drinking as well. Yeah, it actually turns out to
Speaker 1: be far more complex and nuanced beyond some of the
Speaker 1: things that we already know about urina. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that moment, Like what does it mean when my p
Speaker 1: is like electric yellow? Yeah, hold on because we'll get there,
Speaker 1: so piano jar. We'll get to to the color in
Speaker 1: just a minute. But but first let's just rehash the
Speaker 1: basics about urine. Urine, of course, is there for a reason.
Speaker 1: It is a waste product. It's their remove extra water
Speaker 1: and water soluble waste that the kidneys filtered from the blood,
Speaker 1: so it gets rid of toxins and things that would
Speaker 1: otherwise build up in the body. Yeah. I kind of
Speaker 1: think about the kidneys as a brew house. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the waste products as the hops. They're kind
Speaker 1: of like flavoring what your urine is going to look like.
Speaker 1: And it's really important because kidneys do maintain water volume
Speaker 1: and balance as well as regulate blood composition. And if
Speaker 1: you think about it, there are really only four exit
Speaker 1: strategies for substances in your body feces, your breath, sweat,
Speaker 1: and urine. So urine is obviously one of the think
Speaker 1: four here. I remember when I wrote the article about
Speaker 1: saunas for how stuff work, I was looking into the whole,
Speaker 1: uh you know, question of what can you can you
Speaker 1: sweat out impurities, and you can sweat out some impurities,
Speaker 1: but really urine is the go to for for those
Speaker 1: liquid impurities. So you'll get a little with sweat, but
Speaker 1: it's mainly the P. Yeah, and let's talk about that
Speaker 1: P because it is composed primarily of water. We're talking
Speaker 1: about in a well hydrated person. The other five percent,
Speaker 1: we're talking all sorts of organic solute including uria, creatine,
Speaker 1: uric acid, and tracing massive enzymes, carbohydrates, hormones, fatty acids.
Speaker 1: It goes the list goes down and down and down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of I mean the thing again, it's
Speaker 1: a waste product. So you get into that whole situation
Speaker 1: of when you want to learn about an ancient culture,
Speaker 1: what do you end up looking for as an archaeologist.
Speaker 1: You look for their garbage heat, you know, you find
Speaker 1: out what they're eating, what they're they're throwing away, what
Speaker 1: kind of little bits of detritus um give us a
Speaker 1: picture of their lives. And thus we do the same
Speaker 1: with urine. And and we're discovering more and more ways
Speaker 1: to do that with urine because you see what they ate,
Speaker 1: what kind of uh, you know, what they took, part of,
Speaker 1: what kind of environment they lived in. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about here is a a parr more nuanced understanding or
Speaker 1: beginnings of understandings of urine, because you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at compounds right now that are tested in urine,
Speaker 1: you're you're talking about hundred and fifty, not three thousand.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that urine beats out saliva as
Speaker 1: one of the most complex fluids in the human body.
Speaker 1: And it h that has ushered in new urine based
Speaker 1: diagnostic tests for colon and prostate cancer, celiac disease, and pneumonia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was fascinating. We're you know, talking different compounds can
Speaker 1: show up in there that should show you know, what
Speaker 1: kind of drug the drugs the person that happens to
Speaker 1: be taking, what they're drinking, what food's reading, what's cosmetics
Speaker 1: they're wearing. I never thought about cosmetic signatures in urine,
Speaker 1: But there you go. And uh, I mean in the
Speaker 1: course of great thing, and this will come up again again.
Speaker 1: The great thing about urine is that, unlike other ways
Speaker 1: you might test the body, I mean, it just comes
Speaker 1: right out. It's it's you're not having to dig into
Speaker 1: the body, cut into the body. It's it's a pre
Speaker 1: and invasive way of getting at some data about how
Speaker 1: the organism is working. And it's I mean it's as
Speaker 1: far as gross things that come out of the body,
Speaker 1: it's generally not that gross. Now, if you want to
Speaker 1: read the tea leaves as it were of your own
Speaker 1: p at home, without going through a highly diagnostic test,
Speaker 1: you can do so just by looking at the color, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, in urine comes in a rainbow of colors.
Speaker 1: Like on one hand, you can have like the extremely
Speaker 1: dark urine. You can have the crystal clear urine. That's
Speaker 1: what I tend to try and go for on a
Speaker 1: good day, drink enough water tour it's just straight up clear.
Speaker 1: I'm being all day long. And then you have you
Speaker 1: have various other shades in between. So, uh, the big one.
Speaker 1: If you have colorless water urine, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Just straight up, you've been drinking a lot of water
Speaker 1: all right, which I tend to see. It's like a
Speaker 1: badge of It's like it's like an achievement award that
Speaker 1: you get. It's like, there we go, I'm doing it. Now.
Speaker 1: Let's let's get really specific here. Have you ever peed
Speaker 1: into the boilet, looked and then saw that day glow
Speaker 1: yellow and you're just a little bit taken back? Yes? Um,
Speaker 1: so certainly when I've taken like a lot of vitamins,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll see that really yellow, or or if I
Speaker 1: take those when I had a U T I recently
Speaker 1: I took those pills that help kidneys have flesh of
Speaker 1: kidneys and decrease of paint, and that's like bright orange.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things you take it in an
Speaker 1: hour previously and then you forget that you took it,
Speaker 1: and then whoa, you know, it's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a muppet in there. It's alarming, it can be. And
Speaker 1: if you have tea colored urine, well that means that
Speaker 1: you're probably dehydrated. Now a lot of these more concentrated urine. Right,
Speaker 1: this tends to be the kind of urine you see
Speaker 1: in abandoned soda bottles. I notice, you know, you never
Speaker 1: see like really clear, healthy urine in an old sun
Speaker 1: drop container. It's always like dark brown urine that you're
Speaker 1: not sure if it's if it's p R motor oil
Speaker 1: at first glance. Yeah, But if you're urinating into a bottle,
Speaker 1: you're probably there's probably some sort of thing going on
Speaker 1: there that means that your entire circumstances and you're just
Speaker 1: reaching for the the nearest vessel. Now, the thing that
Speaker 1: you want to strive for is straw colored urine. Really,
Speaker 1: so am I overreaching with my crystal? It's possible. It's
Speaker 1: possible that you might have to dilute of urine, in
Speaker 1: which case you might want to back off a little
Speaker 1: bit because that's raw color kind of shows that there's
Speaker 1: a balance going on in terms of the salts in
Speaker 1: your body and everything else. Okay, Now, of course the
Speaker 1: big one, of course, if there's any blood, and that's
Speaker 1: generally that's generally I mean, that is a sign that
Speaker 1: you need to get it checked out. It could be
Speaker 1: something simple, could be a U T I. But it
Speaker 1: can also be something far more serious, I mean, bladder cancer,
Speaker 1: you name it. So it comes down to again the
Speaker 1: fact that that you can tell so much about how
Speaker 1: the organs is functioning by looking at the year, and
Speaker 1: even something as simple as just visually what's going on
Speaker 1: there now? Since and we won't put too much into
Speaker 1: this because we could probably spend an entire podcast about peace,
Speaker 1: but a sugary smell might indicate the presence of blood
Speaker 1: sugar that's been excreted into the urine and could be
Speaker 1: caused by diabetes or pregnancy. And of course, as we know,
Speaker 1: certain foods produced a sulfur containing amino acid. Looking at
Speaker 1: usparagus v. S asparagus for the first time following this podcast,
Speaker 1: be prepared possibly for something a little a little funky.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about some myths of p because
Speaker 1: there are ideas of P use out there in the world,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking specifically about drinking your own P Is
Speaker 1: this a good idea? Yes? Or now? Um no, it's
Speaker 1: not a good idea? And uh what, I I know
Speaker 1: it sounds amazing. I mean a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that you know we're talking about
Speaker 1: it earlier. What's it made off water. Okay, that's great,
Speaker 1: we need water, but that remaining five is garbage and toxic,
Speaker 1: toxic garbage that you're better better off not drinking. Now,
Speaker 1: it's an idea that has that keeps coming down. I
Speaker 1: guess you're something, you know, cyclical and sort of magical
Speaker 1: sounding about drinking urine. As pointed out by Ryan Bradling
Speaker 1: in Popular Science article Classic f y, I is it
Speaker 1: ever okay to drinking on urine? Points out that that
Speaker 1: that the Celts and Iberian Peninsula gargle it to whiten
Speaker 1: their keith, that in air vetic medicine you had the
Speaker 1: practice of ama roli, which is the Sanskrit word that
Speaker 1: refers to urine therapy. And there's even the argument that
Speaker 1: the problem that Proverbs five supports the act saying drink
Speaker 1: waters from thy own cistern, flowing water from thy own self. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some readers who took issue with that proverb,
Speaker 1: so we won't spend a lot of time with that
Speaker 1: parsing that up. But yeah, this idea of drinking your
Speaker 1: own urine has been around for a long time, and
Speaker 1: you really see it in survivalist situations. So you have
Speaker 1: someone like Aaron Rawlson. He's the rock climber who was
Speaker 1: pinned under a boulder and he drank his own urine
Speaker 1: during a five day or deal in which he ended
Speaker 1: up amputating his own arm. And you have people like
Speaker 1: Bear Grills. He's a survivalist who say, yeah, it could work.
Speaker 1: But the idea there is it might work to drink
Speaker 1: your own urine in um this dire situation only if
Speaker 1: you have that correct level of dilute water in your pea.
Speaker 1: So if you are dehydrated to the point that you
Speaker 1: drink your pea, it's not a good idea because it
Speaker 1: becomes more and more concentrated with all of those um
Speaker 1: excess electrolytes. We're talking about chloride, sodium, and potassium. You
Speaker 1: do not want to fill up on this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the reasons why the Army
Speaker 1: Field Manual for Survival, Evasion and Recovery listed on the
Speaker 1: do not Drink list along with seawater and blood. So
Speaker 1: really it's it's to think about that it's basically on
Speaker 1: the same level as drinking seawater blood in a survival situation.
Speaker 1: To your point, if you had you know, somebody around
Speaker 1: with really crystal clear urine. You could maybe make the
Speaker 1: case for it, but in a survival situation, it's going
Speaker 1: to be that orange stuff in the sun drop container. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because most likely in that situation, you maybe you get
Speaker 1: that first batch and it's fine, but as you continue
Speaker 1: to not replenish your system with fresh, clean water and
Speaker 1: your kidneys don't get fleshed out, well, then again, the
Speaker 1: more concentrated toxic substances accumulate. And what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here is sodium drawing water out of yourselves, dehydrating you.
Speaker 1: And of course too much catasium can lead to heart attacks.
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll hold on to that jar of urine
Speaker 1: because we're gonna take a quick breaking. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into yet another popular myth about
Speaker 1: the use of urine in do it yourself medicine. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're on the beach, friend is has just emerged
Speaker 1: from the ocean screaming. It appears that they have been
Speaker 1: stung by jellyfish. Now, some people might decide that at
Speaker 1: that very moment that they are going to break protocol
Speaker 1: and friendship, assuming they don't have this level of intimacy,
Speaker 1: and urinate on their friend because they think that will
Speaker 1: alleviate the pain. Well, I'm pretty sure you should never
Speaker 1: urinate on your friends. First rule, first rule. So if
Speaker 1: you find yourself breaking that rule, you need to ask
Speaker 1: yourself some serious, hard questions about what's going on. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is something we see a lot. It's
Speaker 1: this is it's just a common trope. It shows up
Speaker 1: in TV shows and uh, just sort of part of
Speaker 1: our popular consciousness, the idea that, oh, the jellyfish sting
Speaker 1: is awful, but we have the cure right in our
Speaker 1: own body. All we have to do is is muster
Speaker 1: up some urine and splash that on there, and that
Speaker 1: will relieve the symptoms. Right. And I think, oh, it's sterile. Well,
Speaker 1: sure it's sterile while it's inside of you, but when
Speaker 1: it goes down the track, it's picking up bacteriaus. So
Speaker 1: when it exits your body, it is not errol any longer.
Speaker 1: But that's not even really the problem. Um. And to
Speaker 1: discuss the problem of why this actually may worsen the sting,
Speaker 1: we have to look at the jellyfish's skin cells, these
Speaker 1: stinging cells or nita sites. Now, these cells hold a
Speaker 1: barbed thread like tube called a neumoticist and this is
Speaker 1: filled with venom, and Matt Sonicic writing from Mental Fault,
Speaker 1: describes it further. He says, on the outside of each
Speaker 1: cell that tiny hair called a nita cell, and when
Speaker 1: this hair trigger is to serve the cell's toxic harpoon
Speaker 1: explodes from its capsule and into the skin of the
Speaker 1: jellyfish's prey or an unlucky swimmer. Yeah. This one thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind about the jellyfish thing is that
Speaker 1: it's not just this magical touch that you know, dark
Speaker 1: magical touch that that burns you. It's not like being
Speaker 1: burned by something where the source of the burn is
Speaker 1: taken away and therefore all you have is the injury.
Speaker 1: You have those uh, those little nemetosis still present and
Speaker 1: they're clinging on, so they're still there. There's still some
Speaker 1: weaponry on the skin that can be activated, for instance,
Speaker 1: by scratching. If you start scratching the jellyfish sting, you're
Speaker 1: going you're gonna aggravate those nemetosis that are still clinging there,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get more sting. Yeah, that's right, because
Speaker 1: there are a couple of things that really spring those
Speaker 1: harpoons of venom into action. And whe is pressure so right,
Speaker 1: if you use your own fingers to squeeze at it
Speaker 1: or try to pinch it off, you're gonna get stung.
Speaker 1: And it also senses changes in its environment, like chemical composition.
Speaker 1: So what would happen if you peet on this, Well,
Speaker 1: what would happen is that those cells would say, hmmmm,
Speaker 1: this is odd. There's more water in this composition than seawater,
Speaker 1: and we see this as an attack, and it would
Speaker 1: actually release more venom as your urine trickled over the wound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any change to the balance of solids is going to
Speaker 1: set off more stinging. So I mean because the thing
Speaker 1: about this, The thing is, though um amusing and perplexing
Speaker 1: about the urine of situation, is that what we're saying
Speaker 1: here is that the liquid you need to use to
Speaker 1: wash off that sting and get rid of any clinging
Speaker 1: neumatsis that are still there is saltwater. And and and
Speaker 1: since there's an extremely high probability that you were stung
Speaker 1: by that saltwater jellyfish in saltwater, then it stands the
Speaker 1: reason you need to just walk three feet and get
Speaker 1: some more saltwater and wash it off. And if for
Speaker 1: some reason you're stunt like somebody males a jellyfish to
Speaker 1: you and then you're stung. Well, then you need to
Speaker 1: get something like vinegar. But but you're just using urine.
Speaker 1: I mean, you would like we said, you have that
Speaker 1: water five percent impurity, but then there are all these
Speaker 1: varying degrees of of uncertainty as to what its actual
Speaker 1: content is going to be. So it's possible that you
Speaker 1: could have like magic uh urine. You can have just
Speaker 1: the right level in your urine super dehydrated, just super
Speaker 1: dehydrated I guess, just the just the right salt nous
Speaker 1: to where it would be effective. But that would the
Speaker 1: chances of that being the case are are pretty rare.
Speaker 1: And if your urine is that concentrated with salt, then
Speaker 1: you haven't entirely different problems right right, Like you put
Speaker 1: the jellyfish thing now is sort of on the sidelines, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but again it comes back to the saltwater.
Speaker 1: Saltwater is what you need to watch that staying with.
Speaker 1: And there's an ocean of it there in front of you,
Speaker 1: so use it all right, So there we go. Now
Speaker 1: you know about jellyfish things, please don't pee and your
Speaker 1: friends and should we even talk about the asparagus problem.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is such a chicken and egg problem. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, back when the podcast was Step in
Speaker 1: the Science Libe, I feel like we did an episode
Speaker 1: on it about like something, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: it's legitimately interesting research into the genetics of this. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea that some people have the gene that that
Speaker 1: lets them makes their peace smell like asparagus when they
Speaker 1: eat it, others don't. And then the reverse of that,
Speaker 1: some people have the gene that allows them to smell
Speaker 1: the the the asparagus smell and others don't. So which
Speaker 1: way is it? Yeah? And as as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, in all the literature that is built up
Speaker 1: on this, and there's a ton of it, by the way,
Speaker 1: the consensus seems to be it could be a little
Speaker 1: from column A M B right, a little bit that
Speaker 1: you could smell it or you can't smell it, you
Speaker 1: can produce, you can produce it, or you can't produce it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is we'll put this in
Speaker 1: the area of consciousness. We don't know asparagus. We don't
Speaker 1: know exactly why pie smells like asparagus or doesn't. And
Speaker 1: we don't know the center of consciousness. Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: the two big ones that science. Science has on the
Speaker 1: blackboard if you have to cross them off. But you know,
Speaker 1: while people are worrying over the genetics of asparagus p
Speaker 1: there's a lot of precious euro kinees's going straight down
Speaker 1: the toilet and that stuff is gold. I love. This
Speaker 1: story to me is about innovation, It's about imagination, creativity.
Speaker 1: And one guy by the name of Earl Braxon. Now
Speaker 1: this is a portable toilets businessman who also has a
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals firm pharmacuticles dot org. And he figured out that
Speaker 1: if you could ease out this enzyme euro kinds, and
Speaker 1: you could figure out the sort of volume that you
Speaker 1: need to to really make enough of it, well then
Speaker 1: maybe you could turn a profit in a medical world.
Speaker 1: But how how to collect all of this urine? But first,
Speaker 1: let's talk about why euro kindness is important. I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: it's it's gold because it is used to dissolve blood
Speaker 1: clots and heart patients. So it has an an enormous
Speaker 1: potential out there as a as as a as a medicine.
Speaker 1: So even even though this idea that you can just
Speaker 1: drink your urine for health is complete bunk. Here we
Speaker 1: see someone who has who has said, yes, there is
Speaker 1: this a fabulous medicine hidden in our urine. All we
Speaker 1: have to do is find a way to extract. And
Speaker 1: of course that becomes the problem, especially if your businesses
Speaker 1: is poor to bodies. Because we've we've all seen a
Speaker 1: portable toilet before. We know there's not there's not always
Speaker 1: a lot of technology going on there. Generally it consists
Speaker 1: of a of a dark hole into which we cast
Speaker 1: things and then we we just assume that somebody else
Speaker 1: is going to suck it out with a with a
Speaker 1: giant tank on the back of the truck. Well, and
Speaker 1: they do right, and then they deliver it over to
Speaker 1: Braxton's business. And that's where it becomes really important that
Speaker 1: those participants that Coachella with full bladders are are really
Speaker 1: depositing this, because it turns up that he, along with
Speaker 1: biochemists Dr. E. Kendall Pie, they created a system that
Speaker 1: could separate the enzyme from the urine and come up
Speaker 1: with a viable product that could be used in a
Speaker 1: life threatening situation where you you know, you have the
Speaker 1: blood clot and a lung and you just get this
Speaker 1: injection and poof this enzyme actually dissolves it. It's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing stuff. And in the process of of seeing this
Speaker 1: this stuff out of the urine and to u the
Speaker 1: medical industry, that millions and millions of dollars are made.
Speaker 1: That's the bottom line. Well, yeah, that there we go. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's always profit at the bottom of the toilet there,
Speaker 1: but again there's a there's there's a pretty nickel process
Speaker 1: involved in extracting neuro kinny. There's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: volume of urine that is required, so you're probably not
Speaker 1: gonna really benefit from starting to do it yourself with
Speaker 1: your own golden leavings. That's a really good point. By
Speaker 1: the way, just in case you guys are there are like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is something I could get into a little niche business.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I think that Braxton has cornered
Speaker 1: the market on that. I mean he's got he's got
Speaker 1: quite a little business of porta potties. He's been doing
Speaker 1: it for a while too, so this is not something
Speaker 1: that's spread up in the last even few years. Here's
Speaker 1: a little factoid for you. For one of his porta
Speaker 1: potty lines, he tried to use um the phrase here's Johnny. Oh,
Speaker 1: I like the well I was thinking of the shining
Speaker 1: Well you're thinking of Johnny Carson. Yeah, And the Tonight
Speaker 1: Show sued him and said, you cannot use our famous
Speaker 1: term here's Johnny for our porta potties. Wow. See, I
Speaker 1: would think it would be bad because I'm picturing Jack
Speaker 1: Nicholson hacking through the side of the portagon one and
Speaker 1: to do my business. Maybe that's the other part of it.
Speaker 1: They're like and subconsciously people think that they're gonna get
Speaker 1: hacked to death while they're popping a squat um. But
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy is the essence of just persistence.
Speaker 1: Because even after Carson died, he tried again, well you
Speaker 1: know name and again This Night Show said well, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: what else could we get from urine? I mean something groundbreaking? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is amazing because I know what some of
Speaker 1: your thinking. You're thinking, all right, well you can you
Speaker 1: can get your knees out of urine through this complex process.
Speaker 1: But that's not really the same as saying, you know,
Speaker 1: urine has curative properties, so there's magic in the urine
Speaker 1: that can be used to to to heal um a
Speaker 1: wounded or aging or disease human body. But this really
Speaker 1: I think settles the argument. According to a two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen paper published in the journal stem Cells, Wake Forest
Speaker 1: Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenitive Medicine and colleagues identified
Speaker 1: stem cells in urine. So stem cells. Again, stem cells
Speaker 1: are important because they're the of the children of the future, right.
Speaker 1: They are cells that can become various different types of
Speaker 1: cell types. There there are blank slate so in the
Speaker 1: you can you can use and we talked about this
Speaker 1: before in the especially when we're talking about the tissue
Speaker 1: growing and the potential to grow new organs. These are
Speaker 1: the blank slates that can be used to create tissues
Speaker 1: of varying types and then create new replacement flesh, replacement organs,
Speaker 1: you name it. I mean, it's key and cord to
Speaker 1: the future of medicine, and how to get those stem
Speaker 1: cells has been the problem so far. So to know
Speaker 1: that this is a viable resource, we don't know exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, to what extent, but to know that this
Speaker 1: the resource is pretty huge and the team successfully directed
Speaker 1: stem cells from year and to become the ladder type
Speaker 1: cells we're talking about smooth muscle and uh, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the cells in line the bladder, but the yurine
Speaker 1: derived cells could also form bone, cartilage, fat skeletal muscle,
Speaker 1: nerve and endough flial cells which line blood vessels. In fact,
Speaker 1: and the bone thing here, researchers at the Chinese Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences at the Kwandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stem
Speaker 1: Cell Biology and regenera IF Medicine have created a potential
Speaker 1: method for growing teeth from stem cells obtained in urine.
Speaker 1: And when I mentioned this to our video producer, Tyler Klang,
Speaker 1: do you know what he said? What did he say?
Speaker 1: He said, Well, that would make you a real potty mouth. Ah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing to keep in mind about this study is
Speaker 1: that what they were able to achieve here is they
Speaker 1: grew tooth like structures on mice, so soft, tooth like structure,
Speaker 1: so um. And so it's not like that the mouse had, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a big mouthful of human teeth. Think more like,
Speaker 1: you know, you threw a mouse and some teeth into
Speaker 1: into two different teleporters and combine them into one horrific
Speaker 1: thing on the other end. That this is the very
Speaker 1: beginning of the ability to grow teeth. But but it
Speaker 1: sheds some light on the future where you can imagine
Speaker 1: a day when when we can look to urine, this
Speaker 1: thing that for ages we have just you know, washed away,
Speaker 1: we can go to that and uh and then use
Speaker 1: the stem cells in the urine to heal the body.
Speaker 1: So we have in a a one episode called I
Speaker 1: think it was called Doctor in Your Toilet, But we
Speaker 1: talked about how important it is that you know, what
Speaker 1: comes out of our body can really help direct us
Speaker 1: in terms of curing ourselves, and how in future senses
Speaker 1: we might be able to do more of a d
Speaker 1: I Y set up. But can you imagine, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred years from now, sort of taking some of
Speaker 1: the stem cells out and being like loss of tooth,
Speaker 1: better put it in the little stem cell incubator and uh,
Speaker 1: you know maybe in a couple of hours I have
Speaker 1: a new tooth to put in there. Yeah, you would
Speaker 1: go into the dentist and the first thing you do
Speaker 1: is you just pean a cup and then they we
Speaker 1: take it from there. Um. You know, I like what
Speaker 1: you're You're talking about the doctor and the toilet. You know,
Speaker 1: I often think of that when I I think about
Speaker 1: the human need to look at the things that come
Speaker 1: out of our bodies. You know. Uh, and you know
Speaker 1: because because again it's something is simple with seeing blood
Speaker 1: in the urine is a is a sign that something's wrong.
Speaker 1: If if there's something weird about our stool, that's another
Speaker 1: sign that something's wrong. There's something weird coming out of
Speaker 1: our nose, out of our mouth. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: at it's very basics. It's it's the organism evaluating itself
Speaker 1: looking to the urine for answers, and our techniques of
Speaker 1: looking at the urine have only improved, and again we're
Speaker 1: still finding things. That's That's just it blows my mind
Speaker 1: to think of that. Yeah, and I also started thinking
Speaker 1: about Freud. We said that was like one of the
Speaker 1: phases of children is creating, Yeah, creating the thing that
Speaker 1: came out of their body. And they're so excited because
Speaker 1: they're like, I created that, I did that. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: let's not bring for it into it. Instead, let's talk
Speaker 1: about urine and courtship in the animal kingdom, because you
Speaker 1: know that's happening there. Oh yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty huge. Um. You know, we've talked about especially when
Speaker 1: we we've we've talked about parasites in the past. We
Speaker 1: often talk about mouse urine, and of course mice live
Speaker 1: in this world of senses, a world of smells, so
Speaker 1: they live in a world of pheromones, and that's where
Speaker 1: the pheromones are coming out in the form of urine.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, my mouse urine is a form
Speaker 1: of communication, and you see that in other examples. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about crayfish and I'm essentially thinking about this as
Speaker 1: the urine fight club because the reason is is that
Speaker 1: males male crayfish will respond to urinary signals of female crayfish,
Speaker 1: but the females will exhibit aggressive behavior at the same time.
Speaker 1: So it's thought that by stimulating aggressive behavior and males,
Speaker 1: that females are gauging the male size and their strength
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out who is going to be
Speaker 1: the fittest male to fertilize their eggs. And this was
Speaker 1: actually information that was found by Fiona Barry and Thomas
Speaker 1: Brighthapped from the University of Whole UK. I kind of
Speaker 1: love to peek into that lab and see these crayfish
Speaker 1: fighting it out. Now. Another animal of note is of
Speaker 1: course the giraffe, and I've been reading a lot about
Speaker 1: giraffes recently, m probably more so than most people for
Speaker 1: fun um sort of. Um, so, my son has a
Speaker 1: book on giraffes. It's only five pages long and it
Speaker 1: stuff called the Baby Giraffe, and it only has limited
Speaker 1: information about their life cycle. But I'm I'm asked to
Speaker 1: read this book over and over again, and oddly enough,
Speaker 1: it does not get into what we're about to talk
Speaker 1: about here, and that is the fact that male giraffes
Speaker 1: assess female fertility by testing the females urine to detect
Speaker 1: their reproductive status. Yeah. I thought that's just pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: They act as a kind of piece at fertility test.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, I'm not suggesting that in the
Speaker 1: human species, but in some ways it might be more convenient, right,
Speaker 1: because you just assess that the quality of the p
Speaker 1: and say, ah, yes, okay, you're an asteris. But the
Speaker 1: thing is is that the female draffe is in heat
Speaker 1: and asters only one day out of every two weeks.
Speaker 1: So it would makes sense that they would have such
Speaker 1: a refined system to pinpoint when that is, and they
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time to waste. I mean,
Speaker 1: the giraffes are prey animals. They have to be on
Speaker 1: the run. And I remember correctly, they're only sleeping thirty
Speaker 1: minutes a day in in small chunks. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a life on the run. It's a life
Speaker 1: of always keeping your head up and noticing what's going on.
Speaker 1: So you don't have a lot of time for extra
Speaker 1: fooling around. You need to get right down to business.
Speaker 1: You need and know that this is going to benefit
Speaker 1: your jeans. And if you're curious about how this urine
Speaker 1: tasting is going down, just to let you know, the
Speaker 1: female can choose who to give her data to by
Speaker 1: choosing to urinate or not when the male lowers his
Speaker 1: head to her rump. So it's not just that the
Speaker 1: males are going up to females all day long and
Speaker 1: having a taste. But you know, there's certain times that
Speaker 1: the female says, okay, fine, it's a little more refined
Speaker 1: than that. So in a sense, there's a little more romance. Sure, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: and you know, so you know there's a little bit
Speaker 1: more selectivity going on. She's not just giving her data
Speaker 1: out willy nilly, Okay. Well, I think that's fascinating. I
Speaker 1: think that the book on the baby Drafte could have
Speaker 1: been six pages long, and we could have we could
Speaker 1: have gotten that info in there. I think that you're
Speaker 1: going to write that book on the drafte, but I'm sensing, yeah,
Speaker 1: six pages of scientific wonder. So there you have it,
Speaker 1: a little insight into the salty leavings that we all
Speaker 1: face every day, and hopefully we'll all leave here with
Speaker 1: a little better understanding about the possibilities contained there in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a poop poop clatter of your information
Speaker 1: for you. You knew, didn't you. All right? Uh, if
Speaker 1: you guys want to check us out a bit more,
Speaker 1: you can do so. Yeah, I just head on over
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