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Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.

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Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Welcome The Mother Knows Death. On this week's

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Speaker 1: External Exam, I will be interviewing author and podcaster Caroline Crampton.

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Speaker 1: Caroline just wrote a new book called A Body Made

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Speaker 1: of Glass, A History of Hypochondria, which came out last week.

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Speaker 1: She also has a podcast called She'd Done It, a

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Speaker 1: storytelling podcast that unravels the mysteries behind classic detective stories.

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Speaker 1: Hi Caroline, Welcome The Mother Knows Death.

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Speaker 2: Hi, thanks very much for having me.

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Speaker 1: When I first learned of your book, I was immediately

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Speaker 1: intrigued by the title, mainly because I feel like I

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Speaker 1: suffer from hypochondria a tad as well. Can you please

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Speaker 1: explain to everyone what a hypochondriac is. So.

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Speaker 2: Hypochondriac is someone who has an unwarranted and persistent fear

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Speaker 2: that they have a serious illness, often in the face

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Speaker 2: of a lack of evidence of any organic cause of

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Speaker 2: a disease. So it's someone who has been to the

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Speaker 2: doctor to have a loaded symptoms checked out and the

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Speaker 2: doctor's saying I can't find anything. All your tests are

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Speaker 2: coming back fine, but the person is saying, well, I'm

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Speaker 2: still experiencing this thing. It's more commonly today known as

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Speaker 2: health anxiety. That's the kind of modern medicine's preferred term.

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Speaker 1: In the beginning of your book, you speak a lot

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Speaker 1: about a little bit about your life and how you

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Speaker 1: came into this particular subject. And one of the things

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Speaker 1: that you stated, which makes total sense to me as

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Speaker 1: to why you're interested in this subject, is that you

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Speaker 1: are diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma when you were a teenager,

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Speaker 1: which has a pretty good success rate of survival if

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Speaker 1: it's caught early, and then it tends to go down

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Speaker 1: a little bit more as the disease progress. And when

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Speaker 1: you were seventeen, you were diagnosed with this and had

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Speaker 1: you receive treatment, and they kind of told you, oh,

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Speaker 1: you're good, everything's fine, and then you went away to

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Speaker 1: college and then a lump pop popped up in your

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Speaker 1: neck and then they told you, oh, it came back,

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Speaker 1: and then you had to get more aggressive treatment after that.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that that's the reason that you started

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Speaker 1: to become a hypochondriac yourself, because you lost trust in

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Speaker 1: the system.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely the reason I became a hypochondriac. Partly

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Speaker 2: that incident that you're describing where I was given the

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Speaker 2: all clear to head off to college and then dragged

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Speaker 2: straight back again to the hospital. And then also partly

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Speaker 2: just the fact that as part of their recovery from that,

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Speaker 2: you know, good doctors always say things like, you know,

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Speaker 2: you should come and see us whenever you have any concerns,

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Speaker 2: or you should always keep an eye on this, and

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Speaker 2: if you feel anything that doesn't feel right, come straight in.

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Speaker 2: And that habit of checking and hyper vigilance and always

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Speaker 2: being on high alert that something could be wrong. That's

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Speaker 2: really the core of the anxiety for me. That's where

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Speaker 2: it began. The issue of losing trust in doctors is

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Speaker 2: an interesting one though, because I actually didn't really find

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Speaker 2: that that was the case, partly because my doctor was

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Speaker 2: very upfront about this could happen. He didn't try and

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Speaker 2: pretend that this wasn't a likely outcome, but he just

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Speaker 2: and I did my own research to double check that

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Speaker 2: this was true. He laid it out, as you know,

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Speaker 2: this treatment I'm doing for the first round has a

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Speaker 2: ninety five percent chance of affecting a total cure, so

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Speaker 2: absolutely overwhelmingly on your side, but there is a five

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Speaker 2: percent chance that it won't work, but the scandal seemed

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Speaker 2: to show that it had worked, and so off I go.

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Speaker 2: But then once I found the lump again, I was like, oh,

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Speaker 2: so I'm just in the five percent. It wasn't like

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Speaker 2: I'd been promised something that was then withdrawn. It was

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Speaker 2: it was presented to me as a possible outcome, just

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Speaker 2: not a likely one.

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Speaker 1: That's good because I hear a lot of stories of

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Speaker 1: people getting diagnosed with some nasty like nasty cancers, including

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Speaker 1: my grandmom, and the oncologists kind of giving them a

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Speaker 1: lot more hope than what the actual numbers show.

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Speaker 3: So it's good that you were you at least.

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Speaker 1: Had it laid out for you, that you know this

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Speaker 1: was a possibility, and you just so happened to fall

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Speaker 1: in that rare percent of it coming back unfortunately. It

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Speaker 1: so now, just to get this out there, like you've

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Speaker 1: been all clear for a while since you've gotten diagnosed

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Speaker 1: with that, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's fifteen coming up, fifteen years now.

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Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's awesome. Congrats on that.

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Speaker 1: In the book, you talk about the history of hypochondria,

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Speaker 1: which is really it's really interesting to me actually, and

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Speaker 1: you start with Hippocrates and then you go to modern day,

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Speaker 1: which would be like people google doctor Google, they say,

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Speaker 1: googling your diagnosis. Through your research, what are some of

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Speaker 1: the common themes that you've seen throughout history as it

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Speaker 1: relates to being a human with health anxieties.

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Speaker 2: One of the really big ones is people seeking alternative

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Speaker 2: treatments to whatever the medical authority is in their particular

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Speaker 2: decade or century. So I had a lot of fun

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Speaker 2: actually with this aspect of the research in the book

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Speaker 2: is diving back into what was once upon a time

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Speaker 2: called quackery. So you know, there's ancient Egyptian accounts of

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Speaker 2: people being prescribed mixtures of dung and honey for a

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Speaker 2: whole variety of conditions. And then you get into the

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Speaker 2: Middle Ages when people are carrying parts of animals around

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Speaker 2: with them because they've been told it will ward off

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Speaker 2: a particular type of sickness, or taking some really incredibly

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Speaker 2: noxious remedies including mercury and things like that, because they've

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Speaker 2: been told by some medical pseudoscientifical salesman that this will

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Speaker 2: solve all of their problems. And then I really do

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Speaker 2: think it connects right up to the present day with

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Speaker 2: our modern wellness industry. An awful lot of that is

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Speaker 2: uh designed to tempt people who feel like conventional scientific

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Speaker 2: medicine is not satisfying them, it's not giving them the

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Speaker 2: answers that they want. So why don't you try these

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Speaker 2: supplements and on regulated industry, why don't you try these habits,

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Speaker 2: these things, all of which you conveniently have to pay for.

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Speaker 2: So that was a really really big theme. Another one

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Speaker 2: is just how sad and tragic this can all be.

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Speaker 2: I found accounts of people from second third centuries who

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Speaker 2: have such advanced anxiety that they believe that they're made

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Speaker 2: of pottery. It was called the earthenware delusion. That they're

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Speaker 2: so concerned about the fragility of their bodies that they

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Speaker 2: think that they're actually made of pottery. And then right

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Speaker 2: up to the present day. I think it's a really

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Speaker 2: tragic and sad thing when someone isn't able to enjoy

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Speaker 2: that the body that they're in, they're not able to

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Speaker 2: enjoy the health that they've got, whatever state that is,

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Speaker 2: because they're always so anxious about what could be about

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Speaker 2: to happen. And I say that from personal experience, it's

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Speaker 2: this concert did a cycle of guilt in my head

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Speaker 2: that well, I seem fine. Why can't I just enjoy

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Speaker 2: being fine instead of living constantly in the space of fear.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a terrible I've gone through it sometimes,

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Speaker 1: so it is definitely a terrible way of living. And

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Speaker 1: it is interesting though that you say that about the treatments,

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Speaker 1: because I just wrote about Steve Jobs last week. He

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Speaker 1: was the creator of Apple and mac and stuff, and

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Speaker 1: he had gotten diagnosed with a cancer that was seemingly

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Speaker 1: pretty treatable, and he decided to go the alternative route

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Speaker 1: as well, and then he ended up having it come

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Speaker 1: back a little bit worse, and by the time he

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Speaker 1: actually decided to go with traditional medicine. So I've definitely

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Speaker 1: heard about that. It's just interesting that you've been seeing

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Speaker 1: that hundreds of years ago. It's really interesting in your research,

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Speaker 1: did you find that health anxieties followed trends like, for example,

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Speaker 1: right now, the hu to in the news the past

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Speaker 1: couple of months has been that there's an increase in

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Speaker 1: cancer in younger people. So now all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: people that maybe never had calling cancer on the mind

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Speaker 1: when they were thirty, or like, oh my god, I

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Speaker 1: might have calling cancer. Is that something you've seen with

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Speaker 1: trends throughout history.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, very very markedly. I think I wrote a

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Speaker 2: lot about actually how medicine and hypochondria to me seem

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Speaker 2: to go hand in hand, that whatever the state of

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Speaker 2: medical progress is, that's where hypochondria will be. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: today it's people young people fearing that they've got kinds

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Speaker 2: of cancer that are traditionally associated with people a bit

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Speaker 2: further on or I don't know, in the mid twentieth century,

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Speaker 2: people are fearing that they've got AIDS because that's just

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Speaker 2: kind of come onto the news that they've just heard about. It.

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Speaker 2: Go back one hundred years before to the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 2: people are afraid that they've got tuberculosis. You can do that.

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Speaker 2: Whenever the condition du jour is any century, that's what

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Speaker 2: the hypochondriacs will be afraid that they've got. And there's

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Speaker 2: something about it that is just this hunger for new

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Speaker 2: information and incorporating new information into your anxieties. And yet

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Speaker 2: you see that absolutely throughout history.

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Speaker 1: Throughout the years, there has definitely been obviously you're talking

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Speaker 1: about all this documentation of health anxiety, has there ever

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Speaker 1: been any kind of suggestions for treatments and ones that

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Speaker 1: actually work? Is it a combination of therapy and maybe

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Speaker 1: just like taking some kind of SSRIs to like chill

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Speaker 1: you out, or like what seems to be something that

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Speaker 1: helps it.

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Speaker 2: So historically there have been some very bad treatments. So

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Speaker 2: in the sort of eighteenth nineteenth century, you've got these

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Speaker 2: really entrepreneurial quack medicine salesmen who are saying, oh, nothing

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Speaker 2: cures hypochondria apart from my potion, which contain I don't know,

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Speaker 2: mercury and phosphates and all kinds of other things you

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Speaker 2: definitely don't want to ingest. In the twentieth century and

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Speaker 2: into the twenty first we have a much better grasp

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Speaker 2: on it. There was some really good research done in

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Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies and more recently about Yeah, the

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Speaker 2: effectiveness of SSRIs and antidepressants generally have really shown to

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Speaker 2: be effective for people with health anxiety. And the biggest

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Speaker 2: thing there is cognitive behavial therapy, and that's I know

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Speaker 2: in the UK where I live, that's what you will

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Speaker 2: be referred for if you are diagnosed with health anxiety,

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Speaker 2: and I think it's the same in other places as well.

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Speaker 2: Often a combination of those two things, antidepressants and CBT.

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Speaker 2: I personally, also did a course of what's called EMDR therapy,

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Speaker 2: which is this eye movement and desensori desensitization, which is

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Speaker 2: often used for people with PTSD. I think the quite

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Speaker 2: big book The Body Keeps the Score is all about

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Speaker 2: this and its use on military veterans, but it can

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Speaker 2: be used on other kinds of trauma too, and medical

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Speaker 2: trauma is one of the kinds. So I found that

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Speaker 2: really helpful personally.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that too because my older daughter, actually,

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Speaker 1: she when she was younger, she had I mean, she

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Speaker 1: didn't have something as terrible as you were going through,

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Speaker 1: but she had asthma and she was in the hospital

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Speaker 1: a lot as a child getting IVS. It's a lot

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Speaker 1: for a little kid to have to go through that.

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Speaker 1: And now as an adult, she wants to faint when

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Speaker 1: she has to get her blood taken. And I could

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Speaker 1: directly just relate it back to her going through all

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Speaker 1: that as a little kid, that just the thought of

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Speaker 1: any of that stuff just makes her want to pass out,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's nuts.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a really common reaction, especially people

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Speaker 2: who've had childhood medical experiences, medical trauma, and what EMDR does,

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Speaker 2: which I think is really interesting, and it's still it's

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Speaker 2: a difficult thing to produce evidence about, so it's a

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Speaker 2: slightly contested therapy. People who've done it and find it

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Speaker 2: works are very positive about it. Other people are skeptical.

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Speaker 2: What it purports to do is move memories from one

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Speaker 2: part of your brain to another, So memories that are

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Speaker 2: from the past, but you're still experiencing them, and you

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Speaker 2: every time you say go to get an IV, you're

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Speaker 2: connecting it back to that experience in the past, and

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Speaker 2: you're re experiencing your kind of retraumatizing yourself. What EMDR

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Speaker 2: proposes to do is move that memory from that part

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Speaker 2: of the brain that's very much in the present and

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Speaker 2: move it into the part where memories are stored from

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Speaker 2: the past, so you can still think about it, you

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Speaker 2: still know that it happened, but it's not reaffecting you

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Speaker 2: every time you find yourself in a similar situation. That's

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Speaker 2: the theory, at least. I think we'll have to wait

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Speaker 2: for some clever neuroscientists to finally produce the proof or

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Speaker 2: whether that's possible.

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Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you had it done and you said

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Speaker 1: that you feel like it worked for you, right.

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Speaker 2: I did, I really did, But even while I was

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Speaker 2: doing it, I had my doubts about whether itlt a

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Speaker 2: bit like hypnotism in a way because the eye movement

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Speaker 2: part of the acronym. What it refers to is the

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Speaker 2: moving of those memories. The way they do it is

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Speaker 2: you have to do what they call bilateral stimulations, either

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Speaker 2: by moving your eyes from side to side in a rhythm,

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Speaker 2: or some therapists I think, like to do sort of

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Speaker 2: tapping on alternate sides of your body, either you doing

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Speaker 2: it or someone doing it to you. And you combine

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Speaker 2: that bilateral stimulation with talking therapy about the incident and

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Speaker 2: ideas that are connected to it for you. So you

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Speaker 2: start with that incident and then you talk about, well,

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Speaker 2: then it happened this time, then it happened that time,

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Speaker 2: and you keep connecting back and they keep checking in

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Speaker 2: with you the whole time you're doing this and saying like,

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Speaker 2: how upsetting are you finding this memory? On a scale

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Speaker 2: of one to ten, they keep doing it until you

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Speaker 2: basically till you get down to one. So even as

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Speaker 2: I was doing it, I was like, is this hypnotism.

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Speaker 2: I'm kind of moving my eyes in a rhythm. I'm

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Speaker 2: being It's very after a while, you really get into

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Speaker 2: the rhythm of it and feels very mesmeric. So I

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Speaker 2: did have my doubts even while it was going on,

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Speaker 2: but I experienced very positive results from it, and you know,

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Speaker 2: I'm very grateful for that. Whatever happened.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's almost like who cares? It worked, right,

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Speaker 1: And you really, having health anxiety is so disabling because

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Speaker 1: it's only going to get worse as you get older,

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Speaker 1: because the more you're you get older, the more your

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Speaker 1: body starts falling apart, and then you need blood work

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Speaker 1: every couple months for certain medication you're on, and all

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Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. Like you just got to get

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Speaker 1: over it somehow.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, And people with health anxiety as well, they with

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Speaker 2: the diagnostic manual categorizes them into two different types. They're

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Speaker 2: either care seeking or care avoiding. That doesn't seem to

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Speaker 2: be any in between. Care Seeking are the people who are,

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Speaker 2: you know, at the doctors every other day, always wanting

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Speaker 2: more tests, always wanting reassurance in that way. Care avoidant,

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Speaker 2: I think, are the people who struggle even harder as

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Speaker 2: they age because they're the people who would rather never

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Speaker 2: go near a doctor in case they get bad news.

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Speaker 2: And I think you're right as you age, there's more

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Speaker 2: good reasons why you should be getting stuff checked out.

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Speaker 2: You should be receiving regular care, and if you're not

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Speaker 2: willing to cross the threshold of the doctor's surgery, you

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Speaker 2: could end up in some serious trouble because of it.

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Speaker 1: We had this story once in one of the hospitals

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Speaker 1: that I worked at. One of the doctors told us

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Speaker 1: that there was this doctor that she used to work

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Speaker 1: with that had this chronic cough and just stop didn't

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Speaker 1: want to go get it checked out because this doctor

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Speaker 1: swore that he had lung cancer and he never got

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Speaker 1: it checked out, and then he ended up dying. And

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Speaker 1: when they checked him and it did his autopsy, he

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Speaker 1: ended up having TB, which was something that could have

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Speaker 1: totally been treated for the amount of time he let

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Speaker 1: it go on. And just working in surgical pathology and autopsy,

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Speaker 1: I've seen lots of cases like that that you're just like, Man,

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Speaker 1: if this person just got this checked out when it

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Speaker 1: presented the they wouldn't be dead or have this massive

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Speaker 1: surgery right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it can feel a bit like you're

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Speaker 2: in a catch twenty two though, because absolutely you feel

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Speaker 2: like all the good advices. You should always get something checked.

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Speaker 2: Like I was saying my cancer doctors being like, if

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Speaker 2: you have any concerns, always come back and get checked.

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Speaker 2: And then if you go too much, then they start

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Speaker 2: to go. You're always hear what's really going on, what's

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Speaker 2: really lying behind this? So in your mind, as the

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Speaker 2: anxious person, you're like, well, where's what's the perfect number

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Speaker 2: of visits? What's the perfect number of times I should

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Speaker 2: go to the doctor. And of course that all feeds

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Speaker 2: into the overthinking.

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Speaker 1: That's what's so scary though, because you always read these

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Speaker 1: news stories that are titled like she had a headache,

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Speaker 1: it turned out to be so much worse and it

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Speaker 1: was like stage four brain cancer or something like.

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Speaker 3: And then you say, well.

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Speaker 1: I have a headache, could that be why I'm having headaches?

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Speaker 1: And it's hard to just because you hear a lot

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Speaker 1: of times of these stories where people had these super

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Speaker 1: mild symptoms and it ended up being something really bad.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and even in real life, I feel like when

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Speaker 2: you've had a health condition or you're known to have

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Speaker 2: had it, people love to share their stories with you,

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Speaker 2: and mostly they do that from very positive motives and

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Speaker 2: they're trying to be kind, but they will say something like, oh,

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Speaker 2: so you've got a blood cancer. My cousin had a

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Speaker 2: blood cancer and she's dead now, or you're like thanks,

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Speaker 2: or went she went through five years of treatment and

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Speaker 2: she's mostly okay now. But you know, everyone's always got

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Speaker 2: a treatment, they've always got a story to tell. So yes, absolutely,

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Speaker 2: I think what the CBT around health anxiety tries to

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Speaker 2: do is just try and persuade you hard as it is,

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Speaker 2: to only trust yourself in that regard. If you feel

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Speaker 2: like something's wrong, take the appropriate action, but don't allow

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Speaker 2: yourself to be kind of externally persuaded that as you say,

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Speaker 2: you've got a headache, so you've got a brain tumor.

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Speaker 2: If you've a headache felt normal and fine before, it's

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Speaker 2: probably still normal and fine.

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Speaker 3: Exactly.

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Speaker 1: It's just like I feel like that's the key to

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Speaker 1: life though, right, is to just like think for yourself

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Speaker 1: and not listen to the outside noise, like if we can.

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Speaker 3: It's just like a lot easier said than done, you know.

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Speaker 2: It really really is. And I also think that some

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Speaker 2: of the tools that we have available to us today

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Speaker 2: make that even harder. I think I included this in

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Speaker 2: the book about how if you do a Google search,

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Speaker 2: because the search results or the suggested search is tailored

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Speaker 2: to what you've searched before and what it thinks you

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Speaker 2: might want to see. If you type in does headache mean,

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Speaker 2: it'll say things like brain cancer, miscarriage, death, rather than

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Speaker 2: like dehydration, needs fresh air, should take a nap exactly,

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Speaker 2: all of which I'm much more likely outcomes, but the

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Speaker 2: scarier ones or what will get you to click what

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Speaker 2: you keep you online longer. And that's what the company

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Speaker 2: providing the search engine wants for you.

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Speaker 3: I know that it really is.

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Speaker 1: And that's I was going to ask you that, like,

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Speaker 1: just through your research, have you found that health anxiety

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Speaker 1: is worse now because we do have so much information

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Speaker 1: than we had before.

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Speaker 2: I mean, anecdotally, I feel like worse and also more prevalent,

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Speaker 2: more people have it, and the people who have it

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Speaker 2: have it worse. It's really hard to get hard data

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Speaker 2: on the number of people out there with health anxiety.

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Speaker 2: It's something that I really struggled with in the research actually,

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Speaker 2: because a lot of it is reported differently in different

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Speaker 2: countries and over different times, and it's all done on

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Speaker 2: self reporting as well, on these different questionnaires and they

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Speaker 2: change the questionnaires, so it's quite hard to compare and

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Speaker 2: look at percentages, but it does seem very reasonable that

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Speaker 2: there would be more people with health anxiety now, and

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Speaker 2: also that just the constant availability of information about medical

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Speaker 2: conditions would cause those same people to have it worse.

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Speaker 2: It was interesting researching and looking back, though, I found

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Speaker 2: some quite interesting references to similar anxieties as we might

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Speaker 2: have now about the relationship this has with the Internet,

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Speaker 2: with the wide availability of books and them being cheap

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Speaker 2: and easy to consult in libraries and so on. And

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Speaker 2: there's even a really funny satire of this in a

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Speaker 2: comic novel from the late nineteenth century called Three Men

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Speaker 2: in a Boat, in which one of the men, who

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Speaker 2: is a hypochondriac, writes about how he went into a

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Speaker 2: library worried about some symptoms. He had to look in

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Speaker 2: a medical dictionary, and he left with an alphabetical list

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Speaker 2: of ailments because the book convinced him that he had

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Speaker 2: all of the things that it listed, which is not

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Speaker 2: dissimilar to how you might feel after a long googling

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Speaker 2: session or falling down a few Internet rabbits.

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Speaker 1: It's a It's really interesting because we just went through

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Speaker 1: this having lived whatever forty years of my life before

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Speaker 1: the pandemic happened and then going through that, and you know,

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Speaker 1: in my personal life as well as my professional life,

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Speaker 1: I just know people that from all spectrums of like

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Speaker 1: being a germaphobe, so to speak, like I'm absolutely not.

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Speaker 1: I just like really don't care if I get blood

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Speaker 1: on my hand, I just wash it off whatever. Whereas

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Speaker 1: other people that are doing like a little biopsy in

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Speaker 1: the lab put on like a biohazard level three suit

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Speaker 1: just to.

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Speaker 3: Like touch it.

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Speaker 1: Or people that just work in pathology, I've seen they

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Speaker 1: use tissues to open the door knobs and things like that.

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Speaker 1: And I feel like those people already kind of had

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Speaker 1: their thing, and I think that the pandemic like threw

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Speaker 1: them over the edge big time. And I was wondering

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Speaker 1: if you think that it's at this like all time

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Speaker 1: time high because of things like the twenty four hour

401
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Speaker 1: news cycle and there was like a ticker that was

402
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Speaker 1: telling you every time a dead body showed up, and

403
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Speaker 1: then social media talking people back and forth and stuff

404
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Speaker 1: like that, Like is that impacting our mental health.

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Speaker 3: As far as health anxiety anyway?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the fact that for months and months

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Speaker 2: governments were encouraging or in some cases requiring, behavior that

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Speaker 2: had previously only been the realm of you, as you say,

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Speaker 2: extreme germophobes, so obviously mask wearing. But then people were

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Speaker 2: doing things like cleaning all of their groceries when they

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Speaker 2: got them back from the store, or I did that

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Speaker 2: one myself, or cleaning obsessively cleaning surfaces. And there was

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Speaker 2: a lot of very sensible chat about this is just

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Speaker 2: hygiene theater. This doesn't actually have anything to do with COVID.

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Speaker 2: This is just done to make you feel like something

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Speaker 2: is being done. It doesn't actually have any on your

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Speaker 2: chance of getting the condition, all this kind of stuff,

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Speaker 2: and yet I think it did make people feel better

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Speaker 2: in some ways. It gave them a sense of control, which,

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Speaker 2: you know, who's to argue with that if it helps

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Speaker 2: you in a difficult time. But yes, I do think

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Speaker 2: the fact that all of these behaviors, previously fringe niche

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Speaker 2: things suddenly became widespread, even required in some areas, and

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Speaker 2: therefore people kind of incorporated it into their previous beliefs

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Speaker 2: in a way that I don't think is necessarily going

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Speaker 2: to be helpful in the long term.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I definitely felt victim to it at first,

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Speaker 1: like the first week, you know, just oh, you should

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Speaker 1: really wipe down your phone with alcohol after you go

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Speaker 1: into the store and just this. And then I did

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Speaker 1: it one day and I was like, why am I

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Speaker 1: doing this right now? Like I just worked in a

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Speaker 1: lab with blood and a hepatitis C in HIV like

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Speaker 1: all the time all around me, and I would pick

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Speaker 1: up a pen that had blood on it and not

436
00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: even like and just like carry on right, So I'm like,

437
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 1: what this Hell's us any different kind of But I

438
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: think just when you hear it all the time, it

439
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,639
Speaker 1: starts you start thinking like, well, is this just like

440
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 1: totally different than anything else I've ever experienced kind of thing.

441
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:18,120
Speaker 1: And so don't beat yourself up for cleaning your groceries,

442
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:21,000
Speaker 1: because we've all been we were told to do it,

443
00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:22,720
Speaker 1: like it's just that's that's how it was.

444
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,640
Speaker 2: We were told to do it. And I also think

445
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:30,479
Speaker 2: that there's this element of the CBT that they do

446
00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 2: for hypochondria where it's about doing something that you're afraid

447
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 2: of and then waiting to see what the consequences are

448
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 2: so as to prove to yourself essentially that actually it's

449
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 2: not that bad. That the fear was much worse than

450
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:49,360
Speaker 2: the actual thing. And one of the CBT therapists that

451
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 2: I interviewed for the book described this protocol that she

452
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:56,359
Speaker 2: does for people with OCD or extreme gemaphobia connected to

453
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:01,399
Speaker 2: their health anxiety, where if they're of say public transport,

454
00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:05,679
Speaker 2: she'll have them take the bus, touch the handle, and

455
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 2: then lick their hand, which is for someone with that

456
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 2: problem just unthinkable, could not possibly do it. And then

457
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 2: they do it, and then they wait a week like, actually,

458
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:20,439
Speaker 2: I didn't get sick, nothing happened, And then it's easier

459
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 2: the next time to get on the bus and touch

460
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 2: the handle because they know that that time. So I

461
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:27,919
Speaker 2: did feel a bit like that myself with COVID, that

462
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:33,439
Speaker 2: you can't possibly be the perfect kind of surgical, sweet

463
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 2: scrub down of every single thing that's touched the outside world,

464
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:40,720
Speaker 2: and every time you don't die of that, it becomes

465
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 2: a bit easier to maybe not clean the groceries every

466
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 2: single time.

467
00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:47,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's I always would vision like if you've

468
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:51,160
Speaker 1: ever seen these videos sometimes they show with like ultraviolet

469
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,719
Speaker 1: light on surfaces to show you where all the germs

470
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: are and stuff. You're just like, no matter how much

471
00:25:56,800 --> 00:25:59,199
Speaker 1: I wear gloves. How perfect I am at this? How

472
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:01,520
Speaker 1: may ask what I There's no way to avoid it.

473
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: There's just not it's it's just it's just them. It's

474
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: just not possible. So I think, even though you think like, Okay,

475
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 1: I wipe this stuff down and I did this, and

476
00:26:11,359 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 1: you live like it's it's just like it's because you

477
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 1: were exposed to it. That's how life works, right, you

478
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:22,120
Speaker 1: really have not. No.

479
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 2: I also thought a lot about My great uncle was

480
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 2: a doctor. He was one of the first gps in

481
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 2: the NHS. So he started practicing in nineteen forty five

482
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 2: in a very rural area, and I remember going to

483
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,400
Speaker 2: visit him with my little sister when he was retired,

484
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:39,960
Speaker 2: and my sister had impetigo on her hand and it

485
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 2: was getting worse and worse, and my mum asked him

486
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 2: if he could recommend anything, and he said, yeah, you know,

487
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 2: this is what you should go to the chemists and

488
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,360
Speaker 2: ask for. But also in the longer term, you need

489
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 2: to just she needs to be eating dirt more. She

490
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 2: needs to like sit under the table and just eat dirt.

491
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 2: Because this is a condition that is helped, this propensity

492
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 2: is by greater exposure to more bacteria, more viruses, more things,

493
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 2: And I just I still remember all the time him

494
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:12,119
Speaker 2: just saying that she needs to eat dirt and talking

495
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 2: about how that was a positive thing. So I tried

496
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 2: to keep that in mind when the sort of worst

497
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 2: of the gemophobia hygiene stuff was really getting to me

498
00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 2: during the pandemic.

499
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm kind of the same way.

500
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 1: Like I have friends that they make their kids like

501
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: wash their hands before they eat and stuff, and I'm like, no,

502
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:32,199
Speaker 1: don't wash your hands, just get it all in, like

503
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: whatever you've been touching all day, wash them when they're

504
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 1: soiled kind of thing.

505
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 3: Like I'm not.

506
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,399
Speaker 1: I'm like a really big proponent of that, just because

507
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: of everything I've learned in school. That just completely makes sense.

508
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: Do you think that people are who have health anxiety, Like,

509
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: is there is the reason for all different things? They're

510
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:55,720
Speaker 1: just scared they're going to get sick, or is it

511
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: they're scared they're going to die or the two just

512
00:27:58,480 --> 00:27:59,680
Speaker 1: kind of go hand in hand.

513
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 2: I think the two go hand in hand. I do

514
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 2: think hypochondria is a form of fearing mortality. I think

515
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 2: ultimately that's what it's about. But I think it's a

516
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 2: bit of a variant on that because you're afraid that

517
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 2: you're going to die, and then you're afraid that before

518
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 2: you're going to die, you're going to go through a

519
00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:23,959
Speaker 2: really horrible, prolonged period of illness, hospitalization, all this other stuff.

520
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:27,120
Speaker 2: I think for people like me who have a serious

521
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:29,520
Speaker 2: pre existing condition in their past, that's part of it.

522
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 2: You're quite specific about your fear, like I don't want

523
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 2: to go back into a hospital and be in an

524
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 2: isolation room for a month and have you know, noxious

525
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 2: chemotherapy given to me. I'm very very specific about the

526
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 2: things that I'm afraid of, really because I've experienced them

527
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 2: and I don't want to have to experience them again.

528
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 2: And so I do think that it's kind of fear

529
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 2: of illness and then fear of death in that order.

530
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 2: But something that writing the book I feel like allowed

531
00:28:58,520 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 2: me to see a bit more clearly that I had

532
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 2: really understood before, is that the fear of death part

533
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 2: is not without cause, because we will all die. So

534
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 2: actually being able to separate that and sort of see

535
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 2: it from a different perspective and just say, well, I

536
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 2: will die one day. Is this all this anxiety, all

537
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 2: this fear, all this concern and preparation about illness. Is

538
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 2: this how I want to have spent that time? It

539
00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 2: could happen anytime. So I did find that writing about

540
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 2: health anxiety gave me a renewed appreciation for my mortality

541
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:34,240
Speaker 2: as it were, and it did help to lessen the

542
00:29:34,280 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 2: anxiety some.

543
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:37,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like that too.

544
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: Like I used to have a lot of anxiety about

545
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: death when I was younger, and once I went to

546
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 1: school for it and started writing about it and just

547
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 1: really just trying to figure out why things happen and

548
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 1: learn about it, it makes it a little bit easier

549
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 1: to figure out that this is just going to happen

550
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 1: to lots of people just because your anatomy and your

551
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: physiology is not going to work perfectly all the time.

552
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 3: And even with one of.

553
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: My kids had a little bit of death anxiety a

554
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 1: few years ago, and I guess my approach worked because

555
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: it kind of went away. I just was like she

556
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: would just be like, I'm just scared I'm going to die,

557
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:16,360
Speaker 1: And I was like, you are going to die. You're

558
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:18,239
Speaker 1: going to die one day, like and so am I,

559
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 1: and so is everybody around you. Every single person you

560
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: know right now is going to die. And this is

561
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 1: when she was like six or seven years old, you know.

562
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: And but I said, but it won't be if you

563
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 1: just live healthy and stuff, it won't be for a

564
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: very long time. So you don't need to worry about

565
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 1: that right now. And I think a lot of people,

566
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:39,680
Speaker 1: and I even saw this during the pandemic especially, It's

567
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: just like there was like this weird thing that like

568
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: nobody should die ever, and everybody just needs to know that,

569
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: like that's going to happen for people all the time.

570
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 1: And really, when you think back to like back in

571
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: the day where the average life span was like thirty

572
00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: seven years old, people living to eighty and stuff is remarkable,

573
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 1: you know, and certainly things are going to take them

574
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 1: out just because they're basically pumped alive with drugs as

575
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: it is.

576
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, I had my own experience like you and

577
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 2: your daughter, where my grandmother died when I was five,

578
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 2: and my mother and I flew out. She lived in

579
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 2: South Africa. We flew out for her funeral, and my

580
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 2: mom had done a really good way, she'd done a

581
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 2: really good job of like preparing me for everything that

582
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 2: was going to happen. But the one thing she'd forgotten

583
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 2: about was that my grandmother was going to be cremated

584
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 2: after her funeral, which was her wish. And so after

585
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 2: the funeral of them family go with to the crematorium,

586
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 2: and you know, everyone knows what that's like. I was five,

587
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:46,920
Speaker 2: and I was like, what are they doing? What are

588
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 2: they doing to grandma? No one had explained the concept

589
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 2: of cremation to me, and that was the particular part

590
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 2: of it that I was absolutely horrified by. But then

591
00:31:56,760 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 2: afterwards she gave me the same talk that you did.

592
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 2: She was like, you know, this was her choice, this

593
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 2: is what she wanted. She knew she was going to die,

594
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 2: and she chose this option, and we're just carrying out

595
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:08,000
Speaker 2: her wishes and so on, and so I really went

596
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 2: through the whole sort of cycle with that thinking it

597
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 2: was awful, thinking how could you do that to someone?

598
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 2: How could that possibly happen to me? Could that happen

599
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 2: to other people? And then coming out the other side

600
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 2: of oh, I see how actually this is. We're just

601
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 2: we're fulfilling her wishes. And she had a finite number

602
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 2: of options at this stage and she chose this one.

603
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 2: So yeah, I do think that being upfront with people,

604
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 2: even children and quite young children, they can handle it,

605
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 2: and it's actually better than lying to them. It's better

606
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 2: than pretending. I saw some stuff when I was in

607
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 2: hospital because I was seventeen when I was diagnosed, I

608
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 2: was classified as a child, even though because I was

609
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 2: under eighteen, even though I was two months away from

610
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 2: being eighteen, and you know, to all extents and purposes,

611
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 2: had the same cognitive abilities I would have after my birthday.

612
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 2: But so I was kind of on some children's wards

613
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 2: and stuff, and I I saw the different approaches people took.

614
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 2: You know, some parents visiting their children in the wood

615
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 2: were very like, it's all sunshine and rainbows, and others

616
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:11,840
Speaker 2: were very like, you're going to have surgery tomorrow. Here

617
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 2: are the risks. We hope they won't happen, but these

618
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 2: are the risks. And those are the parents that had

619
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 2: chosen to be fully transparent with their children. And those

620
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 2: kids didn't cry, they didn't feel like they'd been lied to,

621
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 2: they didn't feel like they'd been let into something that

622
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 2: they weren't prepared for. So it's a difficult choice to

623
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 2: have to make, but I don't think you can never

624
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 2: go wrong by being completely honest.

625
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially because I mean the chances of your kid.

626
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 3: I don't know.

627
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: In my life, it was really weird that I only

628
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: had a couple of family members die before I was

629
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: twenty years old. But sometimes kids have to deal with

630
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 1: like you did, like a grandparent dying very young or

631
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: something like that, and you don't wanted to kind catch

632
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:58,719
Speaker 1: them off guard because I feel like they can go

633
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole like real fast if they're not

634
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 1: preparing for that, and then all of a sudden someone

635
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: that's really close with them is gone one day.

636
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I think the kind of healthier attitude you

637
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 2: can cultivate towards mortality the younger you are, I think

638
00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 2: the easier you will find those hard things, and probably

639
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 2: the more you'll get out of life, because you'll understand

640
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 2: very early on that you only are going to get

641
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 2: so much of it, and therefore you need to choose

642
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 2: what you're going to do, don't put things off, and

643
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 2: so on. So yeah, I do think it's best if

644
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 2: people know the deal.

645
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: If you love this podcast, you are going to love

646
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: the gross Room. There are thousands of videos, posts, photos

647
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: of all different things that have to do with pathology.

648
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:56,640
Speaker 1: Plus there is no censorship, so we could talk about

649
00:34:57,040 --> 00:34:59,319
Speaker 1: anything that we want to without having to have the

650
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:02,799
Speaker 1: limitation with social media. You can join now for only

651
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: five ninety nine a month, and this gives you access

652
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653
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: Join the grossroom dot com today. Have you found hypercontraction

654
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:19,720
Speaker 1: more common in certain demographics like certain age groups, male, female,

655
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 1: certain races, or certain geographic locations like I'm sure that

656
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: it's probably higher in people that work in the medical field.

657
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: That would just be That would be my theory, But

658
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:32,760
Speaker 1: do you have you seen trends in other areas.

659
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,520
Speaker 2: So the only objective data that I've seen about this

660
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 2: is from the World Health Organization, and it's to do

661
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 2: with access to healthcare, and they're saying that there's a

662
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:47,359
Speaker 2: there seems to be a strong association between people who

663
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 2: don't have access to healthcare have a higher level of

664
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 2: health anxiety, which makes total logical sense to me that

665
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 2: if you're not able to get things checked out by

666
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 2: a medical professional, if you're not able to be sure

667
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,760
Speaker 2: that you're getting good advice and get that advice whenever

668
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,720
Speaker 2: you want it, your level of anxiety would be higher.

669
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 2: Then anecdotally, I think, yeah, there's this thing called medical

670
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 2: student syndrome, which is this idea that everyone, or a

671
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,760
Speaker 2: high proportion of people, at some point during medical studies

672
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 2: will develop anxiety that they have one of the things

673
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:25,279
Speaker 2: that they've been studying that just seems to be a

674
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:29,439
Speaker 2: product of the extreme and rapid exposure to so many

675
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 2: different possibilities in the way that the human body can

676
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 2: malfunction that your brain just starts to take them on

677
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:39,799
Speaker 2: in that way. Then there's also some stuff which is

678
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 2: a bit harder to define, but groups where there has

679
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:51,240
Speaker 2: been historically medical bias or a lack of seriousness given

680
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:54,799
Speaker 2: to their reporting of symptoms and pain, So women, non

681
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 2: white people, indigenous folks, basically anyone from a traditionally marginalized group,

682
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,839
Speaker 2: it seems to be that there are higher levels of

683
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 2: health anxiety there. But it's really hard to untangle from

684
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 2: what is health anxiety, what is hypochondria, and what is

685
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 2: people just not taking their illnesses seriously when they present

686
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 2: with them. So you get in the gender area, you

687
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 2: get into all this stuff about women just being quote

688
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 2: hysterical about their health or having hysterics or having the

689
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 2: vapors rather than maybe having a serious health condition that

690
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:32,400
Speaker 2: just isn't being tested for or treated or considered seriously.

691
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:38,360
Speaker 2: I found that the condition endometriosis is a really interesting

692
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 2: case study for this. It's a condition that only affects women,

693
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 2: and it's been historically very under researched. It just hasn't

694
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 2: been something that a lot of money has been poured

695
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 2: into understanding. And so people who do successfully get a

696
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 2: diagnosis of endometriosis, I think the average is something like

697
00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 2: five years it takes people to get a diagnosis. So

698
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 2: that's a lot of going to the doctor and saying

699
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 2: I'm having these problems, I'm having these symptoms, what do

700
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 2: you think it can be? And being told to just

701
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:10,320
Speaker 2: go away and come back if it's still a problem

702
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 2: in six months, and that kind of thing. So again,

703
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 2: it feels reasonable to me that in that situation you

704
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 2: would experience anxiety about your health.

705
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:21,800
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I've had one of my best friends

706
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: had this happen, that she was having all of this

707
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: like pelvic pain and crazy bloating and everything, and you know,

708
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:31,279
Speaker 1: she was going to her regular gynecologists who just kept

709
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:33,720
Speaker 1: blowing her off and basically telling her to take motrin.

710
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: And she finally went to because I was telling her, like,

711
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 1: it sounds like you might have endometriosis.

712
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 3: I don't know.

713
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: I would say that it is kind of hard to

714
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: diagnose because you can't really see it great on imaging

715
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:49,839
Speaker 1: and you have to go in and do a laparoscopy

716
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: basically to go in and look around to see if

717
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: a person has it. But she went to a specialist

718
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: doctor who did that for her, and she had it

719
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 1: all over the place and got surgery to remove certain patches,

720
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: which isn't always the great the greatest, but it did.

721
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 1: It worked for her for years. And I hear this

722
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:14,120
Speaker 1: all the time, especially with that particular condition, and it's

723
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: almost upsetting to think that a person goes into the

724
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 1: field of gynecology to specialize in female genital health and

725
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: then like just tells you to take tile and all

726
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: or something, right, It's kind of messed up.

727
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:30,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And I think there are lots of examples.

728
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 2: I mean, I heard one recently from a friend. We

729
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 2: were just talking about something else and she brought this

730
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 2: up with when she was a teenager, she was having

731
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 2: serious pelvic pain around her period. Mother took her to

732
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 2: the doctor. Doctor was like, oh, that's just period, Paine,

733
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 2: She's just having pelvic pain. She's having period. Pain, and

734
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't think she should be passing

735
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,880
Speaker 2: out and throwing up, you know, every time this happens,

736
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 2: just doesn't feel normal. A lot of persistence and seeing

737
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 2: a different doctor later, it turns out she had a

738
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 2: really big cyst, benign cyst that was pressing on things

739
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 2: and that was what was causing the really extreme pain,

740
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:10,400
Speaker 2: and she had it for months longer than she needed

741
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 2: to have. If only when they'd first gone to report this,

742
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:16,759
Speaker 2: it had not been dismissed as oh, that's just what

743
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:21,760
Speaker 2: periods involve. So yes, I think there is a very

744
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:26,880
Speaker 2: difficult area of health anxiety that is not really hypochondria

745
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 2: in the sense that a person does actually have a genuine,

746
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 2: identifiable illness, but for a variety of reasons, including bias

747
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 2: and incompetence, it's not being investigated and discovered, and they're

748
00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:41,080
Speaker 2: being told that there's nothing there when actually there is.

749
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 2: And I can imagine that being so distressing and cognitively

750
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 2: difficult to just rationalize for yourself.

751
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: In my book, I have over one hundred cases, and

752
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:55,279
Speaker 1: if you read, the genuine theme for all of these

753
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: cases is this, it's the same kind of thing like

754
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:03,399
Speaker 1: they had this, they got blown off. It's really kind

755
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: of amazing, honestly.

756
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And I think that's something else I took

757
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 2: away from this project was that you just you have

758
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 2: in the same way that you have to try and

759
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:22,239
Speaker 2: cut yourself off from external anxiety, from catching conditions from

760
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:24,600
Speaker 2: hearing about them on the news, you also have to

761
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 2: really believe your own feelings and sensations. And you know,

762
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:32,520
Speaker 2: if you go to the doctor and they say, oh,

763
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:35,440
Speaker 2: that sounds like that, that's nothing, and you don't agree,

764
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 2: you have to say, I disagree, Please look again, or

765
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 2: is there someone else I can speak to? And of

766
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 2: course that's much easier to do if you're able to

767
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 2: pay for her second opinion and all these other things,

768
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 2: but you have to have the confidence in yourself to

769
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 2: do it.

770
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: So you were saying earlier that there definitely seems to

771
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:56,319
Speaker 1: be an association with people that don't have access to

772
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: healthcare having higher health anxiety.

773
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:01,800
Speaker 3: Do you I think things like modern day.

774
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:04,360
Speaker 1: Things that have been happening, like screening tests for like

775
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:09,439
Speaker 1: colonoscopies and now even like Kardashians paid to get full

776
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,360
Speaker 1: body MRIs just to kind of see if anything's wrong.

777
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:16,239
Speaker 1: That's definitely not like a normal screening test. That's something

778
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 1: you'd have to pay for at this point. But do

779
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:21,440
Speaker 1: you think things like that ease people's anxiety?

780
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 2: I screamed when I saw that on the Kardashians, when

781
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,120
Speaker 2: I saw Chris Jenna paying to have like a full

782
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 2: body MRI scan just because and then being so happy

783
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 2: when it didn't find anything. I think there's Yeah, there's

784
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:38,399
Speaker 2: two different things here. The first is what you might

785
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 2: call public health programs, where healthcare providers mandate that you

786
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,800
Speaker 2: all strongly recommend that you have things like colonoscopies and

787
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 2: perhaps smears and prostate exams at certain ages and at

788
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 2: certain intervals because that's what the research suggests will help

789
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:59,839
Speaker 2: catch possible instances of disease early. And then there's elective

790
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,879
Speaker 2: extra scanning like the full body scans and so on.

791
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 2: What was interesting to me when I looked into the

792
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 2: public health angle of it is that there's really been

793
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:13,840
Speaker 2: a change in consensus about that that when it first

794
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 2: became possible to really test for these things at scale

795
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 2: without it costing vast amounts of money, governments and healthcare

796
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:23,279
Speaker 2: authorities were like, this is amazing. You know, we can

797
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,839
Speaker 2: just test everybody all the time for everything. And then

798
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 2: no one will ever have to have a serious illness.

799
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 2: And so they really went strongly for it, and more

800
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 2: recently there's been a bit of a pullback from that,

801
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 2: some recognition that actually you need to be sure that

802
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:42,279
Speaker 2: you're testing people kind of at the right times and

803
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 2: at the right frequency, because testing too much can result

804
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:49,759
Speaker 2: in a lot of just stress and potentially mental health

805
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 2: problems from people who get serious anxiety about contact with

806
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 2: medical tests. Also, unnecessary biopsies of things that you know

807
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 2: look a bit strange on imaging then actually are totally fine,

808
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 2: and if you'd never seen them on the image, they

809
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 2: would have just resolved themselves without anyone ever knowing. And

810
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 2: just the general kind of looking at the population level outcome,

811
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 2: like how much colon cancer are we preventing versus how

812
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:20,200
Speaker 2: much trauma are we causing with unnecessary colonoscopies. So there

813
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 2: has been I think a bit of fine tuning of

814
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 2: that kind of thing to try and make sure that

815
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,839
Speaker 2: the balance of that is always right. With the elective

816
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 2: full body scans and stuff. I think that obviously, if

817
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 2: you've got the money, you can do what you want.

818
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,759
Speaker 2: But I think from a purely from a health anxiety perspective,

819
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 2: I don't think they do anybody any good because I

820
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:46,319
Speaker 2: don't think that in a very rare incidence, maybe it'll

821
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:50,239
Speaker 2: come back saying you're perfect, you're brilliant. Nothing. We didn't

822
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:52,400
Speaker 2: see anything at all like you are like the title

823
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 2: of my book, you're a body made of glass. We

824
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 2: saw perfectly through you. We didn't see anything that's caused

825
00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 2: for concern. But I think in reality, in most cases

826
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 2: they will see something. It won't necessarily be something you

827
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:07,920
Speaker 2: were even aware of. It might not be something that

828
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 2: was causing you any trouble or is ever going to

829
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 2: cause you any trouble, but it did show up on it,

830
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 2: you might end up getting further tests, you might end

831
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 2: up spending more money, you might end up going through

832
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:22,320
Speaker 2: unnecessary procedures, all because you elected to do that that scan.

833
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 2: So I'd say my personal view is not really something

834
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 2: we have access to in the UK. And anyway, I

835
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 2: think my personal view is that unless a doctor I

836
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 2: trust is telling me it's a good idea, I don't

837
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 2: think I would go anywhere near it.

838
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: You're right, actually, because like for example, right now, I

839
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 1: don't have any concerns about my KARATEID arteries in my opinion,

840
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:44,880
Speaker 1: they're fine. Right. If I go get one of this

841
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: scan and it's like, oh, you're starting to get karateid

842
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: stenosis and like you're at risk for a stroke in

843
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 1: a few years, then I would be like, oh, great,

844
00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:56,040
Speaker 1: now I learned about this, and you know, I would

845
00:45:56,040 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 1: be like worried about it all the time, even though

846
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 1: it's not something that maybe has to be addressed right away.

847
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: Just knowing that that could be a problem in like

848
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: five years from now or something would just give me anxiety.

849
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 2: So I get that, Yeah, yeah, I think that is

850
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:14,839
Speaker 2: the overwhelming product of them, is extra anxiety. And I've

851
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,799
Speaker 2: also heard of people getting results from them and then

852
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 2: making connections that aren't necessarily sound. So you know, they

853
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 2: get told that, oh, we see some like something with

854
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,799
Speaker 2: the blood vessels in your brain, and then the person's like, oh, well,

855
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 2: I do have terrible migraines. Could this be related? And

856
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:35,720
Speaker 2: they start building this whole story that isn't necessarily true

857
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 2: and isn't easily verifiable without serious surgery of the kind

858
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 2: that no one's going to want to do, and it

859
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 2: all becomes further material for the health anxiety to feed on,

860
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,239
Speaker 2: which had they never gone and got the scan would

861
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 2: they never would have known about.

862
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: Have you heard about these apps that they're coming out

863
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: with that are diagnosing people Like I just read about

864
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:00,680
Speaker 1: one a couple weeks ago that someone is making one

865
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 1: for sexually transmitted infections in men, so they could take

866
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 1: a picture of their penis and they could It just

867
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: gives them like a thumbs up or a thumbs down,

868
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:11,239
Speaker 1: like thumbs up, you're safe to have sex. Thumbs down

869
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: is like you better go get that checked out. They

870
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:16,240
Speaker 1: don't really specify what it is, but they're like, something

871
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:19,759
Speaker 1: doesn't look right. I feel like they're trying to make

872
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. I heard Google was making one

873
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 1: for skin lesions, so people that find a bump and

874
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 1: it's a Saturday night, they don't want to have to

875
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: wait until Monday to go to the doctor and find out,

876
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: like they could learn right away if they take a

877
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: picture and upload it to this AI technology. Do you

878
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:39,359
Speaker 1: think that that's gonna again? I just feel like it's

879
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: like the same thing. There's like nothing that's going to

880
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: make it get better.

881
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I feel the same about it. I hadn't

882
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 2: heard of the STI one, but it doesn't surprise me.

883
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 2: I think There's been a few different attempts with this

884
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 2: over the last few years. The most recent is the

885
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 2: kind of machine learning AI aspect of it, where they

886
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 2: claim that, oh, you know, we can train a product

887
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 2: to recognize the difference between a cancerous lesion and a

888
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 2: benign one or whatever. But if you think back to

889
00:48:06,520 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 2: something like Elizabeth Holmes and Theronos, that's kind of what

890
00:48:10,040 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 2: she always claiming she could do, is you know, a

891
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 2: pinprick of blood, she could diagnose a vast array of

892
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 2: different conditions that you've never been able to diagnose with

893
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 2: that little material before. And then now you can also

894
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 2: get these home vitamin and hormone tests that again with

895
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 2: like a relatively small blood sample, they claim to be

896
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 2: able to find all these underlying problems for you. And

897
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:35,760
Speaker 2: I don't think it's ever it's ever gonna do anything

898
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,920
Speaker 2: apart from you know, it's either going to say you're

899
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 2: you're fine, you're great, in which case what was the

900
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 2: point in the first place, Or it's gonna say you

901
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:46,960
Speaker 2: should go to the doctor. The app is never going

902
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 2: to actually give you, give you a prescription, or make

903
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:54,759
Speaker 2: you a surgery appointment or anything. So maybe you should

904
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 2: have just gone to the doctor in the first place.

905
00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: I know, right, and imagine, like like my family, doctors

906
00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 1: closed on Fridays. So it's like, imagine something happens on

907
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 1: Thursday night and then you have to wait four days.

908
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:10,320
Speaker 1: And on top of that, this app has now told

909
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 1: you like something's not right. It would just make it

910
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:13,800
Speaker 1: even worse.

911
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 2: I think, do you absolutely? I do? I do feel

912
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,879
Speaker 2: that thing about the doctor's office being closed. I mean

913
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 2: I once had a very ridiculous situation where it was

914
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 2: a long holiday weekend in the UK and on the

915
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 2: on Friday night, I'd started noticing my hair was falling

916
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:36,040
Speaker 2: out at what felt like a much higher rate than

917
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 2: was normal, Like you shouldn't be able to just like

918
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:40,839
Speaker 2: pull handfuls of it out by the Sunday night, and

919
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:43,320
Speaker 2: everything's closed on Monday as well because it's a holiday.

920
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 2: By Sunday night, I'm like, I've got to talk to

921
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:48,880
Speaker 2: someone about this. So I called the sort of official

922
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 2: non emergency helpline for the NHS in the UK, and

923
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 2: I end up with this call operator, this guy, and

924
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,959
Speaker 2: he's just reading out responses that the computer is feed

925
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:02,759
Speaker 2: him and it doesn't have an option for one if

926
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:06,000
Speaker 2: pulling out handfuls of hair. So it just keeps taking

927
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:09,239
Speaker 2: us round and round in a circle until he eventually

928
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:13,400
Speaker 2: asks me the question are you currently bleeding? And I

929
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 2: think this was meant to be a triarge question, because

930
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 2: if someone calls that number with an actual, you know,

931
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:22,719
Speaker 2: blood spilling emergency, they're going to dispatch an ambulance. I

932
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 2: was on my period, so I was like, yes, I

933
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:27,919
Speaker 2: am currently bleeding. Oh my god. The co operator went

934
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 2: completely mad, started trying to call paramedics, and it actually

935
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:33,000
Speaker 2: took me quite It was quite difficult to like talk

936
00:50:33,080 --> 00:50:36,480
Speaker 2: him down and persuade him, by which time by the

937
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:38,759
Speaker 2: time I'd calmed him down and called off the paramedics

938
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 2: and stuff, I was like, I think this can wait

939
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:43,399
Speaker 2: till Tuesday morning. To be honest, I think the hair thing,

940
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:49,160
Speaker 2: I'm good. Never mind the whole chaos that doing that

941
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 2: tried to cause really gave me some perspective on it.

942
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 2: And I was like, I know, this felt unbearable and

943
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:55,640
Speaker 2: like I couldn't wait till Tuesday. I think it can now.

944
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Like and what I mean, what are they

945
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 1: really going to do anyway for that? It's not I mean,

946
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:04,840
Speaker 1: it is an emergency when you're losing your hair just

947
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 1: because cosmetically it bothers you, right, but like you'll survive.

948
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah.

949
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: Have you come across cases where people are the opposite

950
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:23,479
Speaker 1: of hypochondriacs, so they just they just completely don't get

951
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:27,239
Speaker 1: treatment ever, I mean usually in the hospital. It would

952
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: either be like people that don't have insurance, which you

953
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,760
Speaker 1: could understand because they like, at least in the US,

954
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,359
Speaker 1: it could cost you a lot of money if you

955
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:37,880
Speaker 1: can go to the hospital and get treatment, but it'll

956
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: cost you if you don't have coverage. But then there's

957
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:45,759
Speaker 1: just like this whole other subset of people that came

958
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:49,359
Speaker 1: in with completely like this. I'll never forget this one

959
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 1: messtectomy that we got one time double mestectomy and the

960
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: tumor of.

961
00:51:56,719 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 3: On the one.

962
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: Breast was so large it was like bigger than her bob,

963
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:02,919
Speaker 1: Like I can't I don't even know how she could

964
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 1: have worn a bra.

965
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:05,320
Speaker 3: It wouldn't even a fit.

966
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:08,120
Speaker 1: Like it just was like having two boobs on one

967
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: boob and just thinking like, how how did this get

968
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: to this point? How did you finally decide to come

969
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:17,280
Speaker 1: in here right now when this thing is like growing

970
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,479
Speaker 1: through your skin and smells and so have you seen

971
00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: stuff like.

972
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 2: That, I'm not aware of a sort of official condition

973
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 2: that is the opposite of hypochondria in that sense. I

974
00:52:29,040 --> 00:52:31,240
Speaker 2: don't know what you might call it, kind of medical

975
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:36,319
Speaker 2: blindness or just a total refusal to experience what's going

976
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:38,719
Speaker 2: on in your body. It might you might think of

977
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:41,120
Speaker 2: it perhaps as a subset of body dysmorphia. You know,

978
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:44,759
Speaker 2: someone's so completely dissociated from their body that they just

979
00:52:44,800 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 2: don't experience what's happening in it. I did have an

980
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 2: incident personally that is a bit similar to what you're

981
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 2: describing with that misectomy patient, where the initial consultations that

982
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 2: led to my diagnosis with Hudkin's nymphoma. I had this

983
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 2: one with the oncologist after he'd sort of given the

984
00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 2: diagnosis of the original biopsy. He was trying to get

985
00:53:07,680 --> 00:53:10,319
Speaker 2: more information so he could start creating a treatment plant,

986
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 2: and he said something like, apart from that mass in

987
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:17,720
Speaker 2: your neck, have you noticed anything else like that around

988
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:22,080
Speaker 2: your body? And I went completely horrified because I'd not

989
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:24,280
Speaker 2: noticed the mass in my neck that he was talking about,

990
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 2: and with hindsight, I should have done. It was nearly

991
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:30,719
Speaker 2: as big as a tennis ball. It was like by

992
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:33,120
Speaker 2: my collar bone and like him. You can see it

993
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:37,839
Speaker 2: in photographs of me. In the months preceding this diagnosis,

994
00:53:38,040 --> 00:53:40,200
Speaker 2: I'd not noticed it at all. It had grown so

995
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,839
Speaker 2: slowly and so gradually that I guess my mind had

996
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 2: just accepted the changes in my body as being that's

997
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:50,360
Speaker 2: just my body, that's just what it does. It It

998
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 2: didn't register as an intruder or something out of the ordinary.

999
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:57,440
Speaker 2: So bizarre as it might seem, I can kind of

1000
00:53:57,520 --> 00:54:01,239
Speaker 2: maybe understand how that could happen, although that doesn't sound

1001
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 2: like a much more extreme version of it, but.

1002
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: The same exact thing just happened to my father in law,

1003
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,160
Speaker 1: Like he had throw cancer, and when I went to

1004
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,759
Speaker 1: visit him right after he got diagnosed, I was like

1005
00:54:12,840 --> 00:54:15,400
Speaker 1: palpating his neck and it was I could feel it.

1006
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 1: Like as soon as I went like that, I was like, whoa,

1007
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you didn't feel he's like he's like,

1008
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:24,439
Speaker 1: I mean, were solid there.

1009
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 3: But I didn't really think anything of it.

1010
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: And I was like, you didn't think a giant mass

1011
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 1: growing in your neck? Was that?

1012
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 3: It was just like funny, like messing with them.

1013
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 1: But I could see especially in your case though, because

1014
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: you're saying when you had the recurrence of the Hodgkins.

1015
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:39,719
Speaker 3: This is when you didn't see it.

1016
00:54:41,560 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 2: No, the first time, it originally okay, so with the

1017
00:54:45,120 --> 00:54:48,400
Speaker 2: original diagnosis, and I think if I was trying to

1018
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 2: find an explanation for it, i'd say it's because the

1019
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 2: idea of having cancer was like just so far from

1020
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 2: my mind it didn't even register as a possibility. So

1021
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 2: I guess therefore the lump just didn't register. And I

1022
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I guess this is just like the

1023
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 2: thing bodies do sometimes they become a bit squishy in

1024
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 2: places where they weren't squishy. I don't know. Of course.

1025
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:11,760
Speaker 2: Then the second time, when I was sent off to college,

1026
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 2: and then I was obsessively checking because it was very

1027
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:19,400
Speaker 2: distressing to realize that you kind of had visible cancer

1028
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:23,200
Speaker 2: for weeks, if not months, and just not noticed. So

1029
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:25,879
Speaker 2: after that, I was like, well, that's never happening again.

1030
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:28,320
Speaker 2: I'm going to be very sure that I know exactly

1031
00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 2: what's going on. And that's how I found the recurrence

1032
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:33,320
Speaker 2: of it quite early, because I was checking.

1033
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:37,480
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, I mean, that's good that you were like that,

1034
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 1: because that's why you have such a good prognosis.

1035
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:42,520
Speaker 3: I think, because you found that right away, and.

1036
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 1: I wouldn't beat yourself up over that though, maybe because

1037
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: I feel like you were seventeen, like who thinks about

1038
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: You're just like thinking about like having a good time

1039
00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: in high school and this and that, Like you're not

1040
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 1: really checked into your body that much at that point, I.

1041
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:05,080
Speaker 2: Think, definitely not. I think I was also especially not

1042
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:08,760
Speaker 2: in tune with my body because I was not someone

1043
00:56:08,800 --> 00:56:11,880
Speaker 2: who was athletic. I didn't do like dance or anything

1044
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:15,440
Speaker 2: else where you are like training your awareness of your

1045
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:19,960
Speaker 2: body or anything like that. So I say, in contrast

1046
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 2: with my younger sister, who was like a gymnast and stuff,

1047
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 2: she definitely would have noticed just because she worked so

1048
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 2: much with her body. She would have noticed any difference immediately.

1049
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 2: That was just not how I lived. What was very

1050
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 2: interesting in the diagnostic process was that when my mum

1051
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:40,000
Speaker 2: first took me to the doctor was not because she'd

1052
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 2: noticed a lump or anything. It was because I had

1053
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:45,080
Speaker 2: really bad fatigue and some other stuff that she just

1054
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:46,880
Speaker 2: thought it would be a good idea to talk to

1055
00:56:46,920 --> 00:56:51,120
Speaker 2: a doctor about. The doctor was initially, and I think

1056
00:56:51,120 --> 00:56:53,279
Speaker 2: this is totally reasonable given the age I was, he

1057
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:56,879
Speaker 2: was pretty sure I had glandula fever, which I think

1058
00:56:56,960 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 2: is quite common in girls that age and the most

1059
00:56:59,719 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 2: likely explanation for the set of symptoms we'd given him.

1060
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,080
Speaker 2: So he did the blood test for that sent it off.

1061
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 2: When that came back negative, you should have seen how

1062
00:57:08,080 --> 00:57:11,040
Speaker 2: fast that man moved like he was like, oh, this

1063
00:57:11,239 --> 00:57:13,720
Speaker 2: is not and suddenly I was the same day getting

1064
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:16,440
Speaker 2: x rays all this other stuff, and there was a

1065
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 2: real even though I didn't know it was like cancer yet,

1066
00:57:19,160 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is all stepped up like

1067
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 2: five years, which that was. That was very interesting, actually,

1068
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 2: how how fast the tone of the whole thing changed.

1069
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:30,040
Speaker 3: It is interesting.

1070
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:34,919
Speaker 1: My my little one, who's now nine, has a an

1071
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:38,880
Speaker 1: autoimmune disease of her bones. And when we first got diagnosed,

1072
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: because you know here too in America, wherever you're at,

1073
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: it's like it takes weeks to get doctor's appointments and

1074
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:50,400
Speaker 1: it's always I couldn't believe what happened when like she

1075
00:57:50,560 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: went for knee pain and then it was like she

1076
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: got I brought her to the local place to get

1077
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 1: the X ray. Within twenty four hours, I got a

1078
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:01,760
Speaker 1: phone call for them. They said, come back, we want

1079
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 1: to do our other leg And then I got a

1080
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:06,000
Speaker 1: phone call from my pediatrician and they were like, we

1081
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:07,840
Speaker 1: made an appointment for you at eight o'clock in the

1082
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:11,600
Speaker 1: morning to see the children's hospital specialist. Like, and it's

1083
00:58:11,720 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 1: kind of funny when there's like really emergencies, how fast

1084
00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: it can move.

1085
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:18,120
Speaker 3: I've never experienced that.

1086
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:23,720
Speaker 2: Besides that, no, it sounds very similar, absolutely. And what

1087
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 2: was funny as well is that after the diagnosis is

1088
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 2: all complete and I'd started treatment, and I was copied

1089
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 2: in on all of the letters that the different doctors

1090
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:35,560
Speaker 2: were exchanging, and I got this c seed version of

1091
00:58:35,560 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 2: a letter that the cancer specialist had sent to the GP,

1092
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:43,360
Speaker 2: and it was congratulating him on how quickly he'd like

1093
00:58:43,520 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 2: escalated everything because he'd done it like way ahead of

1094
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:50,120
Speaker 2: the sort of NHS benchmark for this and all this

1095
00:58:50,200 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 2: kind of thing, and you're saying like this is all

1096
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:53,919
Speaker 2: like testament to your good judgment and like well done,

1097
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:56,600
Speaker 2: everyone involved work really well. And I remember reading this

1098
00:58:56,640 --> 00:58:58,880
Speaker 2: At the time, I was very like teenage and zelkey

1099
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 2: about the whole cancer thing, and I was like, why

1100
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:04,160
Speaker 2: is he getting like special praise for ruining my life?

1101
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:08,919
Speaker 2: But obviously that's not quite how it was. And now

1102
00:59:08,920 --> 00:59:11,400
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful that that doctor did that, But at

1103
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 2: the time that was my reaction.

1104
00:59:13,080 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 3: Oh man, I totally get that.

1105
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:17,320
Speaker 1: So but aside from this book that you have that,

1106
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:19,760
Speaker 1: it's just it's awesome by the way I think it's

1107
00:59:19,840 --> 00:59:22,600
Speaker 1: it's I think it could like so many people could

1108
00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:25,520
Speaker 1: relate to it, and I think that a lot of

1109
00:59:25,520 --> 00:59:28,480
Speaker 1: people don't talk about it as much. But everybody you

1110
00:59:28,560 --> 00:59:31,560
Speaker 1: know is always freaking out about something, and the Google

1111
00:59:31,600 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: thing is real, right, But aside from that, you have

1112
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:36,480
Speaker 1: this podcast that's called She Done It?

1113
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:39,680
Speaker 3: How did you? What made you decide to start that?

1114
00:59:41,920 --> 00:59:44,919
Speaker 2: So? She Done It is about what's called Golden Age

1115
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 2: detective fiction, which is detective fiction published roughly between the

1116
00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 2: end of the First World War and the start of

1117
00:59:50,200 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 2: the second, where there was this golden age, this incredible

1118
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:57,200
Speaker 2: proliferation and popularity for what we now call like the

1119
00:59:57,240 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 2: classic crime novel, the traditional Who Done It? The Agatha Christie,

1120
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:03,880
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And I just always loved those books.

1121
01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 2: But the more I sort of learned about them, and

1122
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:11,600
Speaker 2: the more I read beyond the famous popular Agatha Christie ones,

1123
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 2: the more I realized that there were dozens, if not

1124
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 2: hundreds of authors writing this stuff at this time, and

1125
01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 2: they were doing things like incorporating real life cases from

1126
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:27,000
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and a few decades earlier into their fiction.

1127
01:00:27,120 --> 01:00:29,000
Speaker 2: And then this fiction was being read by hundreds of

1128
01:00:29,040 --> 01:00:32,560
Speaker 2: thousands of people, the majority of them women, and it

1129
01:00:32,680 --> 01:00:34,919
Speaker 2: started to seem to me like this was a really

1130
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:39,080
Speaker 2: interesting piece of social history, This was really interesting force

1131
01:00:39,120 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 2: of popular culture that ended up in a lot of

1132
01:00:41,040 --> 01:00:42,760
Speaker 2: people's lives. And of course we still read a lot

1133
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 2: of those books today, they still get made into films

1134
01:00:44,800 --> 01:00:48,080
Speaker 2: and TV shows. So I really just wanted an excuse

1135
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 2: to find out more about this and learn, I suppose,

1136
01:00:52,520 --> 01:00:54,720
Speaker 2: And so yeah, that's why I started it. And I've

1137
01:00:54,800 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 2: been going five years in counting now, and people say

1138
01:00:57,800 --> 01:01:02,080
Speaker 2: to me, like, isn't this just incredible niche? You talk

1139
01:01:02,120 --> 01:01:05,280
Speaker 2: about these books mostly from Britain, although there are some

1140
01:01:05,560 --> 01:01:08,640
Speaker 2: writers from other countries as well. Write you talk about

1141
01:01:08,680 --> 01:01:10,760
Speaker 2: these writers that wrote in this very specific niche and

1142
01:01:10,800 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 2: this very specific little piece of time, And it's true.

1143
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 2: But I've been doing an episode every other week for

1144
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 2: five years and I still feel like I have only

1145
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:22,160
Speaker 2: just scratched the surface of all it has to tell me.

1146
01:01:23,080 --> 01:01:26,600
Speaker 2: And also one of those writers is one of the

1147
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 2: best selling novelists of all time, who's ever lived, Agatha Christie.

1148
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:34,960
Speaker 2: So I don't feel like it's that limited as a

1149
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:36,600
Speaker 2: scope of a project, really.

1150
01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:41,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's the whole point of podcast because otherwise

1151
01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:44,160
Speaker 1: you could just listen. I mean, before a podcast, it

1152
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:46,880
Speaker 1: was like there's radio shows or TV shows and they're

1153
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:50,760
Speaker 1: more general usually, And that's what's cool because really, if

1154
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:52,800
Speaker 1: you're interested in anything in the world and you just

1155
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: go on the podcast app and search for it, like

1156
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:57,520
Speaker 1: some podcasts is going to pop up that you would

1157
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:00,040
Speaker 1: whether it's taking care of plants or looking at.

1158
01:02:00,360 --> 01:02:01,440
Speaker 3: True crime or whatever.

1159
01:02:01,600 --> 01:02:05,040
Speaker 1: Like there's there's something for everyone, and I think that's

1160
01:02:05,080 --> 01:02:09,040
Speaker 1: cool that you have your own thing, you know, and

1161
01:02:09,080 --> 01:02:11,480
Speaker 1: there's stuff an interest.

1162
01:02:12,480 --> 01:02:14,760
Speaker 2: Well, that's what's been really interesting about it is that

1163
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 2: I didn't start it with any prospect of it being

1164
01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:20,600
Speaker 2: like a work project. Really, it was very much just

1165
01:02:20,640 --> 01:02:26,280
Speaker 2: a hobby thing. I was making podcasts professionally for other companies,

1166
01:02:26,320 --> 01:02:28,400
Speaker 2: mostly about current affairs and politics because that was my

1167
01:02:28,480 --> 01:02:32,520
Speaker 2: journalistic background. So this was like my fun side project,

1168
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:36,480
Speaker 2: and thousands of people started turning up and listening to it,

1169
01:02:37,680 --> 01:02:39,360
Speaker 2: to the point where I was like, oh, maybe this

1170
01:02:39,520 --> 01:02:43,440
Speaker 2: is actually something that people other than me just care about.

1171
01:02:43,840 --> 01:02:46,880
Speaker 2: And now the podcast is distributed by the BBC, Like

1172
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:49,760
Speaker 2: it's it's really kind of found an audience in a

1173
01:02:49,800 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 2: way that I did not predict.

1174
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:55,439
Speaker 1: See, I would predict that because I think my mom

1175
01:02:55,520 --> 01:02:58,560
Speaker 1: actually just wrote an article on my website about this

1176
01:02:58,720 --> 01:03:02,160
Speaker 1: fascination with like the true crime mystery thing with women.

1177
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:06,200
Speaker 1: It's like very strong and the true Crime podcast and all.

1178
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:09,400
Speaker 1: There's like a certain age group of women that are

1179
01:03:09,440 --> 01:03:13,080
Speaker 1: into it, and my mom is in her she's in

1180
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 1: her mid sixties, and she was talking about like reading

1181
01:03:16,200 --> 01:03:18,080
Speaker 1: all those types of books when she was younger and

1182
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:22,200
Speaker 1: how it kind of transformed into, you know, being obsessed

1183
01:03:22,240 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 1: with murders today and stuff like that, because it's just

1184
01:03:24,520 --> 01:03:28,240
Speaker 1: like a thing women like whether it's like maybe they're

1185
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:31,600
Speaker 1: just it's the same. It's it's almost kind of same

1186
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:35,040
Speaker 1: as health anxiety in a way that there's this there's

1187
01:03:35,080 --> 01:03:37,880
Speaker 1: this anxiety of like something really bad happening and you

1188
01:03:37,960 --> 01:03:41,200
Speaker 1: hear it happen to other people and that gives you

1189
01:03:41,280 --> 01:03:44,440
Speaker 1: some kind of interest and also just like maybe not

1190
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:47,280
Speaker 1: having just like a more normal life and it being

1191
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 1: a little boring and like wanting to read stuff that's

1192
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:53,480
Speaker 1: a little bit more dramatic and exciting. So I think

1193
01:03:53,480 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 1: it's I think it's awesome what you're doing.

1194
01:03:56,600 --> 01:03:58,919
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. Yeah, I really enjoy it, and it's

1195
01:03:59,040 --> 01:04:02,560
Speaker 2: it's really it's really interesting and endlessly fascinating to be

1196
01:04:02,600 --> 01:04:04,200
Speaker 2: how many other people enjoy it as well.

1197
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:08,560
Speaker 1: Besides your book and your podcast and you have another

1198
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:10,200
Speaker 1: book to what's your other book called.

1199
01:04:11,600 --> 01:04:13,480
Speaker 2: My first book was called The Way to the Sea

1200
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:16,680
Speaker 2: that came out in twenty nineteen, and that is the

1201
01:04:16,760 --> 01:04:19,440
Speaker 2: subtitle of it is The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary.

1202
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 2: So it's a very different kind of book, same nonfiction

1203
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:28,440
Speaker 2: type genre, but it's a memoir about sailing and growing

1204
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 2: up in this particular part of the UK around the Thames,

1205
01:04:31,520 --> 01:04:36,040
Speaker 2: because I had this somewhat unusual situation where my parents

1206
01:04:36,040 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 2: are from South Africa and they came to the UK

1207
01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 2: in the early eighties on a boat that they built themselves.

1208
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:45,000
Speaker 2: They sailed from South from Cape Town to England and

1209
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:48,480
Speaker 2: that's kind of how our family exists in the way

1210
01:04:48,480 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 2: that it does.

1211
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 3: So that's so cool.

1212
01:04:53,120 --> 01:04:56,640
Speaker 1: It's like such a unique experience to grow up and

1213
01:04:57,000 --> 01:04:59,520
Speaker 1: having done that and your parents do and that stuff

1214
01:04:59,640 --> 01:05:00,240
Speaker 1: was really or.

1215
01:05:01,960 --> 01:05:05,720
Speaker 2: And it's very strange. I mean, my sister and I've

1216
01:05:05,720 --> 01:05:07,600
Speaker 2: talked about this a lot that when we were growing up,

1217
01:05:08,040 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 2: we just thought that everybody's parents had a boat and

1218
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 2: just like went places in it whenever they felt like it,

1219
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 2: and in the way that you do when you're a child,

1220
01:05:15,800 --> 01:05:18,320
Speaker 2: whatever you're used to is what's normal. And it was

1221
01:05:18,400 --> 01:05:19,880
Speaker 2: quite a lot later and we're like, oh, this is

1222
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 2: not normal. This is not normal that. I mean, my

1223
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 2: retired parents are still like scooting about the world in

1224
01:05:25,680 --> 01:05:28,840
Speaker 2: their boat. They've you know, recently just come back from Canada.

1225
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:31,960
Speaker 2: All this kind of stuff, you know, crossing the Atlantic

1226
01:05:32,160 --> 01:05:33,720
Speaker 2: is not something they're afraid of.

1227
01:05:34,440 --> 01:05:36,760
Speaker 3: That's that's so cool. It's like really cool.

1228
01:05:36,920 --> 01:05:39,320
Speaker 1: It's just so much different than how I grew up with,

1229
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 1: like in my suburbs of New Jersey.

1230
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:43,840
Speaker 3: It's just it's it's really cool.

1231
01:05:44,280 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 1: I love that everything, like your two different books are

1232
01:05:47,280 --> 01:05:50,560
Speaker 1: completely opposite subjects, and then your podcast too. I just

1233
01:05:50,600 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: love that you're into all these different things. It's really neat.

1234
01:05:55,680 --> 01:05:57,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I try and see it as a

1235
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 2: as a virtue rather than a limitation. But yes, it

1236
01:06:00,560 --> 01:06:04,000
Speaker 2: is true that I tend to have these very discreet

1237
01:06:04,720 --> 01:06:08,760
Speaker 2: and obsessive interests in something, and then once I've produced

1238
01:06:08,760 --> 01:06:10,560
Speaker 2: the thing that I want to produce about it, whether

1239
01:06:10,600 --> 01:06:12,800
Speaker 2: it's a book or whatever, then I'm done with it.

1240
01:06:12,840 --> 01:06:14,840
Speaker 2: That's everything I have to say on that subject. Move

1241
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:18,000
Speaker 2: on to a new thing. I don't understand people who

1242
01:06:18,040 --> 01:06:20,160
Speaker 2: like keep revisiting the same thing.

1243
01:06:21,040 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 1: And so what is next for you? Like, are you

1244
01:06:24,080 --> 01:06:25,240
Speaker 1: working on anything new?

1245
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:30,600
Speaker 2: I am working on a possible idea for a new book, which,

1246
01:06:30,640 --> 01:06:33,800
Speaker 2: in a great departure from me, is actually hopefully going

1247
01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 2: to be related to the same kind of stuff I

1248
01:06:36,400 --> 01:06:39,360
Speaker 2: discuss on my podcast, So rather than being a completely

1249
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:41,640
Speaker 2: new subject, hopefully it's going to draw on some of

1250
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:44,320
Speaker 2: the research I've done for that, so it'll be about

1251
01:06:44,480 --> 01:06:47,640
Speaker 2: women and crime and the detective fiction from the early

1252
01:06:47,680 --> 01:06:48,560
Speaker 2: twentieth century.

1253
01:06:49,080 --> 01:06:50,000
Speaker 3: I love it.

1254
01:06:50,040 --> 01:06:52,360
Speaker 1: Is there anywhere you want to say that people could

1255
01:06:52,520 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 1: reach you?

1256
01:06:53,120 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 3: Or obviously they.

1257
01:06:54,120 --> 01:06:58,280
Speaker 1: Could find your podcast just on wherever you can get podcasts, right.

1258
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, or if you go to my website is Caroline

1259
01:07:02,280 --> 01:07:04,240
Speaker 2: Crampton dot com and that has links out to the

1260
01:07:04,280 --> 01:07:05,440
Speaker 2: various different things.

1261
01:07:05,880 --> 01:07:06,920
Speaker 3: All right, awesome, Well.

1262
01:07:06,760 --> 01:07:08,680
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here. It was really great.

1263
01:07:10,000 --> 01:07:11,160
Speaker 2: It was great to talk to you. Thank you so

1264
01:07:11,240 --> 01:07:11,840
Speaker 2: much for having me.

1265
01:07:15,880 --> 01:07:19,760
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mother Nos Death. As a reminder,

1266
01:07:19,920 --> 01:07:23,720
Speaker 1: my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a

1267
01:07:23,760 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 1: master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.

1268
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:31,400
Speaker 1: I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed

1269
01:07:31,480 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 1: or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of

1270
01:07:35,160 --> 01:07:40,360
Speaker 1: a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social

1271
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:43,920
Speaker 1: media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based

1272
01:07:43,960 --> 01:07:47,880
Speaker 1: on my experience working in pathology, so they can make

1273
01:07:48,080 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 1: healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember

1274
01:07:52,800 --> 01:07:55,880
Speaker 1: that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed

1275
01:07:55,920 --> 01:07:58,560
Speaker 1: in this episode are based on my knowledge of those

1276
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:02,360
Speaker 1: subjects at the time of public. If you are having

1277
01:08:02,440 --> 01:08:06,400
Speaker 1: a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a

1278
01:08:06,440 --> 01:08:10,800
Speaker 1: medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent

1279
01:08:10,840 --> 01:08:15,560
Speaker 1: care center, emergency room or hospital. Please rate, review, and

1280
01:08:15,640 --> 01:08:20,200
Speaker 1: subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or

1281
01:08:20,240 --> 01:08:32,360
Speaker 1: anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks