Speaker 1: Perry.
Speaker 2: Preparing for this week's episode, I was thinking about the
Speaker 2: kinds of foods that I love, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you.
Speaker 1: A specific question about food.
Speaker 2: If there was one food you would be sad to lose,
Speaker 2: like and not alcohol or coffee, like not a not
Speaker 2: a like fun food, but like a real regular food.
Speaker 2: What is like the one thing that you would cry
Speaker 2: if you lost?
Speaker 3: Pez are cherry flavored pests?
Speaker 1: Do you eat aboutez frequently?
Speaker 3: Sorry? That is a deep cut. That is one of
Speaker 3: my favorite quotes from stand by Me from the.
Speaker 2: Star Trek about the like replication, Okay, what do you got?
Speaker 3: I'm here for you. No, my my real like a
Speaker 3: food that if it was like, no, you can't eat
Speaker 3: this anymore, this will now kill you. Probably like I
Speaker 3: don't know, like pasta bolognes that probably like pasta with
Speaker 3: meat sauces my happy place.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking about this because mine is definitely bagels,
Speaker 2: but then like my second one is bread and my
Speaker 2: third one is pastave. Like I every single thing on
Speaker 2: my list has gluten.
Speaker 1: Everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if if you had Celiac disease, I.
Speaker 2: Would be so sad. I would be I would just
Speaker 2: be eating rice all the time. And I think that
Speaker 2: would make me sad. So I'm I'm glad I am
Speaker 2: not sensitive to gluten.
Speaker 3: Well, there are a lot of people out there unfortunately
Speaker 3: who are. There are a lot of people out there
Speaker 3: maybe who think they are and might not be, which
Speaker 3: we're going to dig into a lot in today's episode
Speaker 3: on one of our favorite proteins, which is gluten.
Speaker 1: We love it, Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I'm Emily Astro, I'm an economist and a data expert.
Speaker 3: And I'm Perry Wilson, I'm a medical doctor.
Speaker 2: It's Thursday, August sixth, twenty twenty six, and this is wellness.
Speaker 3: Actually, because you're getting a staggering amount of health and
Speaker 3: wellness information nowadays from every source imaginable, and some of
Speaker 3: it is awesome and some.
Speaker 1: Of it is well actually bullshit.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, we are both people who know how to read studies,
Speaker 2: how to parse the data, and can tell you what's
Speaker 2: worth thinking about and what you can safely ignore.
Speaker 3: But before we dig in, a note that this podcast
Speaker 3: is for educational purposes and should not be construed as
Speaker 3: medical advice. We don't know your unique situation, so talk
Speaker 3: to your doctor for personal health decisions.
Speaker 1: This week, we're asking what's the deal with gluten?
Speaker 2: Harry and I will give the official smasher pass, and
Speaker 2: then we'll get to your question of the week.
Speaker 1: But first let's do the health news round us after.
Speaker 3: The break and we're back with our health news of
Speaker 3: the week. Emily, I want to start with the great
Speaker 3: protein backlash. If listeners go back to or What's deal
Speaker 3: with Protein? Episode, we talked a lot about protein having
Speaker 3: a moment. This was the macronutrient that everyone was into.
Speaker 3: Entire aisles at Costco dedicated to protein containing foods. And
Speaker 3: now we start to see some articles that are saying, hey, wait,
Speaker 3: if you eat a lot of protein, you're actually gonna
Speaker 3: die sooner? Is it over? Is the protein party over?
Speaker 2: I don't think the protein party's over, because let's just
Speaker 2: emphasize if you donate any protein.
Speaker 1: You will actually die.
Speaker 3: That this is true a.
Speaker 2: Reason you will die. But I find this. I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you about the science, but I also think
Speaker 2: there's something just so interesting about the psychology of how
Speaker 2: the news works here that this gets covered, because it's surprising.
Speaker 2: If people don't think protein is great, then you're really
Speaker 2: interested in publishing articles that say, oh, protein is great,
Speaker 2: Protein is great surprise.
Speaker 1: Protein is great.
Speaker 2: Now everyone's like, I gotta have protein popcorn at Costco.
Speaker 2: It's not interesting to publish an article that says protein
Speaker 2: is great, and so now the thing the media wants
Speaker 2: to cover is like, maybe protein isn't that great?
Speaker 1: Do you think of that?
Speaker 3: It's the engaging contrarianism of engaging science communication.
Speaker 1: Totally okay.
Speaker 2: But this is the reporting that I saw on this
Speaker 2: week is based on a study. It's like a review
Speaker 2: study about data primarily on yeast although they do have
Speaker 2: some mouse data, there's very little if no data on
Speaker 2: humans here, and they have an argument about protein restriction.
Speaker 2: This is actually a set of people who are very
Speaker 2: interested in calorie restriction for lifespan extension, which is an
Speaker 2: interesting space where most of the evidence is also in mice.
Speaker 1: And I want to read you just.
Speaker 2: One sentence because for me this sort of summarizes like
Speaker 2: why I think you shouldn't probably learn much from this,
Speaker 2: which is a quote from the paper like calorie restriction,
Speaker 2: protein restriction improved health span and increases the lifespan of
Speaker 2: yeast flies and rodents. It does not mention people, and
Speaker 2: I think we should not port this to people just yet.
Speaker 3: Mice aren't people. Although you know, I want nothing but
Speaker 3: the best for at least yeast who you know, for
Speaker 3: the gluten episode in particular, where you know we need
Speaker 3: our good friend Sarkam seravc for many of our yeasty
Speaker 3: bread products. Yeah, it's true that severe calorie restriction does
Speaker 3: extend the lifespan of a variety of animals, ranging from
Speaker 3: single celled organisms up through mice. And we don't know
Speaker 3: if it happens in people, because you really need people
Speaker 3: live a long time anyway, and so you need and
Speaker 3: we're talking calorie restriction on the order for like the
Speaker 3: equivalent of like twelve hundred calories a day forever. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's really you're in a starvation state. And my thought
Speaker 3: about these kind of studies is like, even if true,
Speaker 3: this is not a life worth living. So, you know,
Speaker 3: if we can find the mechanisms downstream of the calorie restriction,
Speaker 3: like if it oh, it upregulates some hormone that like,
Speaker 3: and we can just give the hormone, great, do that research.
Speaker 3: But you know I'm not I don't I if eating
Speaker 3: twelve hundred callies a day gets me to be one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty, I don't want to be one hundred.
Speaker 1: And twenty right totally. I could not agree more. Okay,
Speaker 1: next up, can we talk about Ebola.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the
Speaker 2: Congo has gotten worse.
Speaker 1: It's not the worst ever.
Speaker 2: What is going on and is this something people should
Speaker 2: be worried about outside the DRC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad that you brought this up. You know,
Speaker 3: we talked about the Bola outbreak a few times when
Speaker 3: it was first emerging, and then these things do have
Speaker 3: a way of falling out of the news and you
Speaker 3: might think, like, oh, I guess that's not an issue anymore,
Speaker 3: but it very much is. As of the thirtieth of July,
Speaker 3: there were three thy six hundred and five confirmed cases,
Speaker 3: including one thy five hundred and eighty seven deaths. That's
Speaker 3: a case fatality rate of forty four percent. That's obviously
Speaker 3: very bad, and the WHO says the outbreak is actually intensifying.
Speaker 3: They've documented sustain chains of transmission across multiple parts of
Speaker 3: the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in cross
Speaker 3: border movement. There were cases in Uganda, which has done
Speaker 3: a little bit better with containment than the DRC. There
Speaker 3: were a couple of cases that were treated in France
Speaker 3: didn't get acquired in France. One of the really concerning
Speaker 3: things I found was a recent study which showed that
Speaker 3: maternal mortality was increasing in the DRC, not directly because
Speaker 3: of a bola, but because pregnant women are avoiding hospitals
Speaker 3: when they're giving birth and so because of the risk
Speaker 3: of a bola, and so you see young mothers dying.
Speaker 3: You know, this is concerning on a humanitarian level, because
Speaker 3: it's a humanitarian crisis, and it's a place where the
Speaker 3: proper provisioning of some standard public health measures could do
Speaker 3: a lot of good. Is it concerning in terms of
Speaker 3: if you live in Connecticut or Rhode Island. No, You know,
Speaker 3: ebola is certainly transmissible by body fluids, but we haven't
Speaker 3: seen really sustained transmission out of the DRC, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of monitoring and whatnot. So I'm not worried
Speaker 3: about that. There are some vaccines in the pipeline which
Speaker 3: might make a dent. But most important just to remind
Speaker 3: people like this is still happening, and happening more than
Speaker 3: it was before. Actually, even though you're not hearing about
Speaker 3: it too much.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Okay, in better news, it seems like viagra might
Speaker 2: help prevent cancer in addition to being super super fun.
Speaker 2: So the result in at least in this article, is
Speaker 2: it mean taking viagara before their cancer diagnosis had an
Speaker 2: overall can't hire cancer survival. And I think there are
Speaker 2: some you know, like always in these articles, or some
Speaker 2: made up suggested mechanism which could or could I mean
Speaker 2: a little bit of a just so story. You know,
Speaker 2: this is not a randomized study. What do we think
Speaker 2: is driving the results here?
Speaker 3: This is one of those things where you have one
Speaker 3: paper this is uh. This came out in cancer, the
Speaker 3: journal Cancer Research, and they were looking actually most of
Speaker 3: the papers in cell culture and stuff looking at the
Speaker 3: effect of viagra and statins, so cholesterol luring medications on
Speaker 3: cancer cells. And you know what sometimes we'll do in
Speaker 3: science when we have a very sort of wet lab
Speaker 3: technical paper, like we did some cell work and blah
Speaker 3: blah blah, and you sort of are looking at the
Speaker 3: resulting like, Okay, this is interesting to us in our
Speaker 3: little field, but maybe it's not super compelling to the
Speaker 3: rest of the world. So what we're gonna do is
Speaker 3: we're going to tack on some kind of epidemiology study,
Speaker 3: and so they have all this kind of rather elegant
Speaker 3: work in cell culture looking at class straw synthesis, which
Speaker 3: if that's what you're interested in, please check it out.
Speaker 3: And then they're like, and by the way, we looked
Speaker 3: in this huge data set, and men who take viagra
Speaker 3: before they got cancer had a better overall survival. And
Speaker 3: that's that's literally it like, it's really a paper about
Speaker 3: cell culture. But of course that is what's generating dozens
Speaker 3: and dozens of news articles. Their proposed mechanism is that
Speaker 3: viagra has some effect of limiting cancer cells access to cholesterol,
Speaker 3: and cells need cholesterol to do a lot of work,
Speaker 3: and if they don't get the cholesterol, maybe they don't
Speaker 3: live as long. You're right, this is a adjust so story.
Speaker 3: There are plenty of reasons to think that men who
Speaker 3: have access to viagra might have better contact with the
Speaker 3: healthcare system, maybe even more health literacy, might be in
Speaker 3: different socioeconomic status, all sorts of things that might improve
Speaker 3: outcomes after a cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Might have better social support.
Speaker 2: I mean, if maybe the case that their access to
Speaker 2: viagra is so they can use it to have sex
Speaker 2: with a partner and that having a partner to support
Speaker 2: you in a cancer diagnosis may improve your survival.
Speaker 3: Another excellent point, but just to underscore how headlines can
Speaker 3: be misleading. I actually read the article, you know, which
Speaker 3: is like I sometimes wonder if the science reporters actually
Speaker 3: look at it, and it actually only shows a significant
Speaker 3: effect among men taking statins. So they looked both at
Speaker 3: as I said, Statin's and viagrant, and the significant effect
Speaker 3: was in men who take statins prior to their cancer
Speaker 3: diagnosis live longer. And then they looked at men who
Speaker 3: take statins and viagra and saw a similar benefit, but
Speaker 3: like the statins were still there, and then when they
Speaker 3: looked at viagra alone, there was no significant benefit. So
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, so it's the statins conclusion.
Speaker 1: Together something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know anyway, Viagra's a great and useful
Speaker 3: drug for many things. I'm not sure that it's it's
Speaker 3: carrying cancer though, Sorryfizer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, folks. Great cell work, poor rapidy theology. All right,
Speaker 2: that's it for the help news of the week. Now,
Speaker 2: what's the deal with gluten?
Speaker 3: All right, Emily, there's as soon as this episode was
Speaker 3: added to our list of upcoming episodes, I knew exactly
Speaker 3: what clip I wanted to play for you, so please
Speaker 3: listen to this. Look, man, if you stopped eating gluten,
Speaker 3: you'd feel way better all day. Whenever you feel that's
Speaker 3: because of gluten. That's not true. Who told you not
Speaker 3: to eat gluten? It's just true. You don't even know
Speaker 3: what gluten is. You have no ideal. Gluten's a vague term.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's something that's used to categorize things that
Speaker 3: are bad. You know, calories, that's a gluten fat. That's
Speaker 3: a gluten gluten me badge. Man, And I'm not needing it. HM,
Speaker 3: all right. That's seth Rogen and Jay Barroschel from Great movie.
Speaker 3: This is the end And for those of you, they're
Speaker 3: driving in a car in California and at the end
Speaker 3: they end up at a Carls Junior and are eating
Speaker 3: like delicious looking cheeseburgers, obviously with bread containing gluten. I
Speaker 3: just thought this was the most emblematic thing we could
Speaker 3: start the episode with.
Speaker 2: I love it, and I think I particularly love it
Speaker 2: because this is how many people talk about gluten as
Speaker 2: sort of this like nefarious, like, well, you're bloating diarrhea
Speaker 2: too much. Poop, not enough poop, not feeling good, tiredness.
Speaker 2: It must be gluten. It's I guess like gluten. It
Speaker 2: just means feeling badness. But gluten is actually a specific thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so we need to talk about what is gluten,
Speaker 3: So let's start there. Gluten is a protein. In fact,
Speaker 3: it's two proteins, gleiodin and glutenin, and it's the primary
Speaker 3: protein in wheat. It's also fa in barley and rye.
Speaker 3: And it is the sticky stuff that polymerizes when you
Speaker 3: make dough that makes your dough all stretchy and amazing.
Speaker 3: You know, when you are rolling out pizza dough and
Speaker 3: it springs back, that's a gluten. When you are baking
Speaker 3: your bread and those air bubbles get trapped, the air
Speaker 3: bubbles or the carbon dioxide bubbles that the yeast are
Speaker 3: generating get trapped in the sticky bread dough, that's a gluten.
Speaker 3: There really is no other grains that have that, and
Speaker 3: because of that, it's really hard to make chewy, stretchy
Speaker 3: delicious does out of things like rice flour unless you
Speaker 3: put in an additive like wargum or xantheon gum or
Speaker 3: some other binder. But Gluten is a natural binder in wheat,
Speaker 3: and without it, life would be a little bit more sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the higher stretchier like kind of more stretchy
Speaker 2: bread flour. When people say the high protein flower, it
Speaker 2: is because it has more gluten.
Speaker 1: That is the protein that we are discussing.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right. And yeah, if you're if you're not
Speaker 3: baking your bread with bread flour, switch right away. It's
Speaker 3: it's more unctuous.
Speaker 1: Okay, cooking with Perry, that's our next episode. That's our
Speaker 1: new podcast.
Speaker 3: I make a lot of bread, I too.
Speaker 1: Perry makes up that's could you have a sour dough
Speaker 1: starter person?
Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to talk. Can we table sour dough?
Speaker 3: I have thoughts. I have many thoughts on side. We
Speaker 3: will get to sour dough folks. We'll get there.
Speaker 2: But some other things before that, let's say, before we
Speaker 2: get into this, some other things do have gluten in them,
Speaker 2: soy sauce, often salad dressings, malt, vinegar, so actually a
Speaker 2: lot of if you are a person who is gluten sensitive,
Speaker 2: there are many things that have gluten. Although bread and
Speaker 2: bread products are the primary, the primary ones.
Speaker 1: So when we are thinking about this episode, The setup.
Speaker 2: For me here is there is a real set of
Speaker 2: issues associated with how people process gluten. Like many food sensitivities,
Speaker 2: this is something that some people have a sensitivity to,
Speaker 2: and I want to start talking about that. But in
Speaker 2: the influencer wellness space, there is a much.
Speaker 1: Wider discussion about gluten sensitivity.
Speaker 2: And if you look at some numbers, you know, the
Speaker 2: Enhynes says there's like two percent of people who you
Speaker 2: know don't eat gluten at all, But in other surveys,
Speaker 2: like thirty percent of the people in the USA they
Speaker 2: limit their gluten intake, and about ten percent of people
Speaker 2: worldwide identify as gluten sensitive, but something like fifteen to
Speaker 2: thirty percent of those have symptoms that are triggered. So
Speaker 2: there's a disconnect here, I think between how people talk
Speaker 2: about gluten and the sort of scientific diseases that are
Speaker 2: actually gluten sensitive. And I think that's that's like the
Speaker 2: interesting thing to unpack is what is real? And then
Speaker 2: how much do you want to extend the existence of
Speaker 2: Celiac disease into everybody should stop eating so much bread?
Speaker 3: Right? An analogy might be, you know, there are people
Speaker 3: with peanut allergy. They truly could die if they get
Speaker 3: any peanut product. And then if we had people who
Speaker 3: are like, oh, I don't have a full blown penat allergy,
Speaker 3: but I'm peanuts sensitive. You know, peanuts make me feel bad.
Speaker 3: And we need to explore that aspect because that's actually
Speaker 3: what the vast majority of people who are avoiding gluten
Speaker 3: are avoiding gluten for. And we can start by, like
Speaker 3: we can kind of buzz through the easy diagnose not easy,
Speaker 3: but like the confirmed gluten diseases, and I think obviously
Speaker 3: we have to start with Celiac disease.
Speaker 2: Celiac disease broadly is a disease that in which people
Speaker 2: cannot tolerate gluten.
Speaker 1: Tell me how we know about it?
Speaker 3: Uh, fascinating. We've known about it for centuries. The oldest
Speaker 3: reference I found was three hundred a d. And what
Speaker 3: coeliac disease presents as is a chronic disease of the bowels.
Speaker 3: Celiac literally means belly in like ancient Greek or something,
Speaker 3: so Celiac disease just like belly disease. Not very descriptive,
Speaker 3: but it's not just that. You know, in kids, it
Speaker 3: typically presents as GI symptoms malnutrition, failure to thrive, like
Speaker 3: so growth limitation and stuff, And for a long time
Speaker 3: it was really thought to be a disease of children.
Speaker 3: We now recognize that Celiac disease can present in later
Speaker 3: life and it's actually quite easy to diagnose, but you
Speaker 3: have to think of it first. And Celiac is one
Speaker 3: of those great imitator diseases. So you know, yes, it
Speaker 3: gives you gi upset, diarrhea, you know, excessive gas and
Speaker 3: things like that, but so do a lot of things right.
Speaker 3: It can also cause joint pain. It has a very
Speaker 3: characteristic rash called dermatitis her petiformis sort of a sicular
Speaker 3: intensely itchy rash on the extensor service surfaces of the
Speaker 3: arms and legs and stuff. A lot of fatigue, anemia, osteoporosis,
Speaker 3: and so these are.
Speaker 2: Like, so, I mean this isn't there's an issue with
Speaker 2: a disease like this where these are such generic symptoms.
Speaker 1: People come in they say, I'm not feeling good.
Speaker 2: I've got floating in diarrhea, i have a weird rash,
Speaker 2: I've got some monemia totally.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are anemic, a lot of people
Speaker 1: are tired.
Speaker 3: Ra Yeah, yeah, so your doctor actually has to think
Speaker 3: about it. But the good news if you think about
Speaker 3: Celiac disease, it's a blood test. There's a screening blood
Speaker 3: test anti tissue transclutamina's antibody. It's ninety five percent sensitive
Speaker 3: and specific. That's not perfect. You do need a confirmatory
Speaker 3: biopsy test which is done by Endosco. People like broadly speaking,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, you test for it, and
Speaker 3: you're well on your way. Historically, it's really interesting that
Speaker 3: although the disease has been known about for two millennia,
Speaker 3: it was only in World War Two that they figured
Speaker 3: out what the cause was. So Celiac disease is a
Speaker 3: classic autoimmune disease that is due to a genetic susceptibility,
Speaker 3: so it's largely genetically mediated, but it has an environmental trigger.
Speaker 3: And for all this until World War Two, it wasn't
Speaker 3: clear what the environmental trigger actually was. And it was
Speaker 3: a Dutch pediatrician, William Carrol Dickey, who found that his
Speaker 3: patients his kids with this disease got better during the
Speaker 3: Dutch hunger winter of nineteen forty four to nineteen forty
Speaker 3: five when they ran out of bread and then the
Speaker 3: Allies air dropped bread into Holland, I guess, and the
Speaker 3: kids developed the symptoms again once they were eating bread again.
Speaker 3: So it was actually that long before we knew at
Speaker 3: least that it was a wheat product. I think it
Speaker 3: took a little longer to figure out exactly that it
Speaker 3: was the gluten and the wheat what the cause was.
Speaker 2: So the incidence of this has gone up over timeing
Speaker 2: this is quite interesting. So if you think of this
Speaker 2: as a as a genetic disease within an environmental interaction
Speaker 2: over the past, it's gone of a lot in the
Speaker 2: past few decades. Some of that's going to be diagnosis
Speaker 2: and awareness, but some of that is aligned with a
Speaker 2: general rise in autoimmune diseases. Almost certainly, this is not
Speaker 2: genetic drift. It's just not enough time for their debe
Speaker 2: genetic dript So there is something going on in the
Speaker 2: environment or the food that we are eating that means
Speaker 2: that more people are having this big moon that we're providing.
Speaker 2: The foods that we're providing are more likely to trigger
Speaker 2: this in people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we actually know that it's a true increase
Speaker 3: again because that blood test is pretty good to detect
Speaker 3: celiac disease. There's a study in the Journal Gastroentrology in
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine which looked at banked blood samples
Speaker 3: from Warren Air Force Base, where like the privates had
Speaker 3: gotten their blood sampled in nineteen forty eight and nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty four, and they went back to those old samples
Speaker 3: and tested them for this anti tissue tense glutaminy sandibody,
Speaker 3: this diagnostic test for Celiac disease, and some of them
Speaker 3: had it. You know, they probably weren't even diagnosed at
Speaker 3: that point in time, but they are based on their
Speaker 3: blood they had it, and that rate has increased over time,
Speaker 3: So we do know something's going on. And here's where
Speaker 3: we should talk about.
Speaker 1: Sourdough is never a bad time, is it?
Speaker 3: The lack of sery?
Speaker 1: Why we should just got sourdough.
Speaker 3: So some people are hypothesizing that our modern industrial bread
Speaker 3: making process is a problem here, and the reason is
Speaker 3: that in the old times when we made bread and
Speaker 3: sort of with a slow fermentation. So think sourdough where
Speaker 3: it's like it takes twenty four hour and I've made sourdough,
Speaker 3: I actually don't love it because it's so labor intensive
Speaker 3: and I just like getting yased from the store and
Speaker 3: it's easy, but you know you've got twenty four to
Speaker 3: thirty six hours. Over that slow fermentation process, the gleodin
Speaker 3: and glutenin proteins are broken down somewhat more by the yeast,
Speaker 3: and so they're potentially in a less immunogenic form. Modern
Speaker 3: industrial bread is made with a process called the Chorleywood process,
Speaker 3: which is crazy and incredibly fast. You can make one
Speaker 3: of those whole loafs of bread based start to finish
Speaker 3: takes about two hours. Now I do that, so I
Speaker 3: did read about it. They use a lot more yeast,
Speaker 3: they like mix the dough really fast, and it actually
Speaker 3: gets hot as they're mixing, and they have to inject
Speaker 3: like cold water to keep it from getting too hot.
Speaker 3: I think they inject some maybe some gas or CO
Speaker 3: two in it themselves. But the bottom line is the
Speaker 3: yeast don't have much time to like do their breaking
Speaker 3: down of proteins things. So some people are saying that
Speaker 3: like it's the old fashioned bread that that might.
Speaker 2: People say things though like speculative sourdough bread could be
Speaker 2: something you would enjoy, but.
Speaker 1: That feels speculative today.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of evidence that autoimmune disease, other
Speaker 2: autoimmune disease, they've gone up over time.
Speaker 3: This is also true, and we can't blame bread for everything,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Worth noting is that people often take quite a long
Speaker 2: time to be diagnosed, because this is not clear, an
Speaker 2: average of eleven years between first symptoms and diagnosis. And
Speaker 2: so you know, if some of what we've described here
Speaker 2: seems like it's you, there is a test, and a
Speaker 2: gluten free diet is truly curative, although you have to
Speaker 2: keep up with it over time.
Speaker 3: Right, and for real celiac disease, I mean, a tiny
Speaker 3: amount of gluten will set it off. So this is
Speaker 3: like the real deal gluten free diet. And one thing
Speaker 3: we're going to say here is that for all of
Speaker 3: the conditions we talk about, jumping straight to the gluten
Speaker 3: free diet is generally not the recommendation because it's hard
Speaker 3: and not easy. And you know, with Celiac disease, at
Speaker 3: least we can test and make sure you have celiac
Speaker 3: disease and then put you on a gluten free diet.
Speaker 3: But you don't want to do that. You don't want
Speaker 3: to pull that trigger if you don't have to.
Speaker 2: Okay, you can also be allergic to wheat to have
Speaker 2: a just a regular person wheat allergy, just like you
Speaker 2: can be allergic to other foods. This is separate from
Speaker 2: a gluten allergy and would present with normal allergy symptoms,
Speaker 2: difficulty breathing in principle anaphylaxis. So separate gluten celiac disease
Speaker 2: and wheat allergy.
Speaker 1: You are not the same thing.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of wheat dependent allergy? Exercise induced anaphylaxis?
Speaker 3: Have you heard is you're an exercise person, Emily, I have?
Speaker 1: I have not, So it's this.
Speaker 3: Weird phenomenon, which I like to say, like like we
Speaker 3: don't fully understand, but it might be one of those
Speaker 3: weird phenomenon that I don't fully understand and other people do,
Speaker 3: so allergists let me know. But but basically it's people
Speaker 3: who have a wheat allergy, but it only presents during exercise.
Speaker 3: And so it's like this weird combination where it they
Speaker 3: just eat wheat or they just exercise. It's fine, but
Speaker 3: if they do both in proximity, in time, they develop
Speaker 3: anaphylaxis like.
Speaker 1: It did not like while you're running.
Speaker 2: It's not like if you run and eat a bagel,
Speaker 2: you're no.
Speaker 3: I think, I think it can be in your system,
Speaker 3: but that's sort of a weird one. And then there
Speaker 3: was a bizarre Japanese facial soap wheat allergy incident that
Speaker 3: occurred with the cha no Hizuku soap, which was documented
Speaker 3: in Epidemiology Circles. The short version is this was a
Speaker 3: soap that contained wheat. I don't know why, I guess whatever.
Speaker 3: People put a lot of things in wheat, and but
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, it was wheat in some kind of
Speaker 3: digestive form that was pretty allergenic, and when people were
Speaker 3: putting on their faces they were getting it like they
Speaker 3: were inhaling it and doing stuff like that. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of evidence in the allergy literature that when you
Speaker 3: eat something it's protective in terms of allergies, right like
Speaker 3: giving kids peanut butter when they're extremely young is protective.
Speaker 3: But when you get it in a different way, like
Speaker 3: if you inhale it or if it gets like under
Speaker 3: your skin or something like that, then you can generate allergy.
Speaker 3: So this happened in a like several thousand women in
Speaker 3: Japan developed wheat based anaphleaxes based on a soap. Very strange.
Speaker 2: That's extremely odd, don't buy weird soaps. Don't wash your
Speaker 2: face of flour. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm sure people do.
Speaker 1: You probably do.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's like a tiktac influencer whose whole thing
Speaker 2: is like flower face.
Speaker 1: I feel like, puts flowers on your face, covers it
Speaker 1: with one of.
Speaker 2: These masks, and then like stays on the airplane for
Speaker 2: like nine hours and at the end she's like, look
Speaker 2: at this and then her face is just like a
Speaker 2: crumbled mass of dough. Oh.
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to find this person, and if not,
Speaker 3: I'll have Ai make it.
Speaker 1: Yes, Ai needs to make that. Okay, there, do we
Speaker 1: really need to talk about gluten a taxia.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna get people freaked out that they're going
Speaker 2: to have neural loss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's okay. There's there's another rare condition that
Speaker 3: is gluten a taxia, which is another automune condition kind
Speaker 3: of related to Celiac disease, but it attacks your brain
Speaker 3: instead of your small intestine and that's not great. But
Speaker 3: this is this is pretty rare. All of this is
Speaker 3: just to say that, yes, of course, like like any
Speaker 3: protein that's out there, including peptides, that you might be
Speaker 3: getting from China or other places. Anything like that can
Speaker 3: be a potential allergen. Can you know, your body's a
Speaker 3: complicated place and can induce strange symptoms and disease states.
Speaker 3: But the vast majority of people don't have Celiac disease,
Speaker 3: don't have weed allergy, and certainly don't have gluten a
Speaker 3: taxia thankfully. What most people have, or are concerned they have,
Speaker 3: is non celiac gluten sensitivity. And I guess that's what
Speaker 3: we need to get to after the break.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back, and we're going to talk about non
Speaker 2: celiac gluten sensitivity, which is what many people seem to
Speaker 2: think that they have.
Speaker 1: And I will say this conversation a little tricky because
Speaker 1: there is no defined characteristic of sensitivity.
Speaker 2: So people often say that they're sensitive to foods, by
Speaker 2: which they mean some combination of I don't like that food,
Speaker 2: and you know, I don't feel great after I eat
Speaker 2: that food. And it can be hard to think about
Speaker 2: outcomes in this case if what you are saying as
Speaker 2: the sensitivity, of the outcome of the sensitivity is just
Speaker 2: like I don't I don't feel great, like I don't
Speaker 2: eat spicy food, I don't eat spicy food because the
Speaker 2: next day I feel really bad and I have a
Speaker 2: lot of problems in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: We don't need to go into it.
Speaker 2: But I would say I have a sensitivity, but it's
Speaker 2: not like a like a documented sensitivity.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I think this is what people mean.
Speaker 2: Here is something different, something fundamentally different than I don't
Speaker 2: like to eat that food or that food doesn't agree
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 1: They mean something.
Speaker 2: Like I am having a version of a Celiac reaction
Speaker 2: to this food and therefore need to avoid it for.
Speaker 1: Medical reasons, as opposed to almost preferences. Does that make sense.
Speaker 1: It's such a hard distinction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tough. We do not have a diagnostic test
Speaker 3: or a clear biomarker for non Celiac gluten sensitivity, so
Speaker 3: in contrast Celiac disease, where it's like yep, blood test,
Speaker 3: biopsy shows it. You know, these characteristic symptoms people who
Speaker 3: are like, look, I feel bad, and by the way
Speaker 3: we say feeling bad generally is in the GI system.
Speaker 3: People complain of bloating, diarrhea, sometimes constipation, but also brain fog, fatigue, depression,
Speaker 3: other symptoms that can be hard to pin down. There's
Speaker 3: no case definition for non celiac gluten sensitivity. And more importantly,
Speaker 3: there's no blood test. There's no signal of immune activation
Speaker 3: like we can see in celiac disease, seic disease, you
Speaker 3: can find the immunoglobulins that are directed against the proteins
Speaker 3: and things like that. We don't have that in this.
Speaker 3: This is not to say that this is not a
Speaker 3: real thing and we can go I think that you know,
Speaker 3: there are always people who are going to be skeptical
Speaker 3: of this because it's like, wait, okay, you don't have
Speaker 3: a blood test. This is just someone kind of complaining
Speaker 3: that they get gassy sometimes, and we all get gassy sometimes,
Speaker 3: and who cares whether it's the gluten or not. So
Speaker 3: the thing I think to take home or an important
Speaker 3: set of studies that looks at non celiac gluten sensitivity
Speaker 3: are blinded challenges. So the way this works is you
Speaker 3: take people who you know believe they have gluten sensitivity
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, and instead of just saying, okay, go
Speaker 3: on a gluten free diet and see how you feel,
Speaker 3: in which case there's going to be a lot of
Speaker 3: placebo effect there, right, Like you're doing something, you're being proactive,
Speaker 3: you're eating different foods in general. You give them a
Speaker 3: blinded challenge where you you know, at random, you give
Speaker 3: them either food containing gluten or food containing non gluten.
Speaker 3: And basically, when you do this, you find that, let's see,
Speaker 3: sixteen to thirty percent of those who believe they have
Speaker 3: gluten sensitivity get the symptoms reliably reproduced in blinded challenges.
Speaker 3: Now there's two ways to look at this. One is
Speaker 3: to be like, oh, that's like glucas, no one has
Speaker 3: non sea like gluten sensitivity. But that's clearly not true.
Speaker 3: I mean some people obviously. Do you know up to
Speaker 3: thirty percent of people who believe they have some noncilia
Speaker 3: gluten sensitivity can re produce it in a blinded challenge,
Speaker 3: which means something is happening even if we can't see
Speaker 3: it in the blood. But it's also really important to
Speaker 3: realize that there's seventy percent of people out there that
Speaker 3: don't have a non celiac gluten sensitivity. And I think
Speaker 3: it's important to realize that there's a heck of a
Speaker 3: lot more in bread products than just gluten, And it's
Speaker 3: so critical to determine if you're sensitive to something what
Speaker 3: you might be sensitive for, because, as we pointed out
Speaker 3: at the beginning, cutting out gluten means cutting out a
Speaker 3: lot of really great a lot of really great things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me just double down on this point about
Speaker 2: how we do these blinded challenges, because there's also some
Speaker 2: I think very nice, what people would call no sebo evidence.
Speaker 2: So in these kind of trials, they give people in
Speaker 2: this case who are potentially gluten sensitive, they either tell
Speaker 2: them that they're getting gluten or tell them that they are,
Speaker 2: So there's a difference in your expectations, and then they
Speaker 2: either give them gluten or not. So the people who so,
Speaker 2: what they find here is that, you know, there's significantly
Speaker 2: more gastrointestinal symptoms if you tell someone that they're getting
Speaker 2: gluten and they get it, then if you tell them
Speaker 2: they're not getting gluten but they do get it. So
Speaker 2: there's a sort of like the expectation is driving it.
Speaker 2: And moreover, the people who think that they're getting the
Speaker 2: gluten and are not getting it look like the people
Speaker 2: who think that they're getting it and get it. So
Speaker 2: in this particular study, the expectations about whether you were
Speaker 2: going to get gluten were much more important than whether
Speaker 2: you actually got it in driving the symptoms. Now, again
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that there aren't mean this is like
Speaker 2: one study and there's a variation across people.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that there aren't people for whom.
Speaker 2: The symptoms deliver based on getting the gluten and not
Speaker 2: on the expectations. But there is clearly in some of
Speaker 2: this either some thing about another product that people are
Speaker 2: consuming or something that is effectively a placebo expectation.
Speaker 3: Remember that your brain talks to your gut like, this
Speaker 3: is not just it's all on your head. In fact,
Speaker 3: your brain can make your small intestine in colon do things.
Speaker 3: You've actually all experienced this, like when you finally get
Speaker 3: close to a bathroom that you like and then you
Speaker 3: have to poop. That is your brain telling you, like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's like something is going on here. So the fact
Speaker 3: that expectation can induce gisymptoms is totally reasonable and it's
Speaker 3: not like a psychology problem. It's how the brain works.
Speaker 3: But it's really critical to remind people that gluten travels
Speaker 3: in the company of several other molecules that can give
Speaker 3: you some gut distress, and I think the big one,
Speaker 3: and there are a lot but under the sort of
Speaker 3: it might not be the gluten that you're sensitive to,
Speaker 3: are the fructo oligosaccharides, or so called fruit tans. These
Speaker 3: are essentially chains of sugar molecules that you can't digest
Speaker 3: like you, humans lack the enzymes to digest these things,
Speaker 3: but the bacteria in your colon are more than happy
Speaker 3: to digest them. And when they do, they those bacteria
Speaker 3: produce gas and a feeling of bloating, which you know
Speaker 3: certainly mimics a lot of the symptoms that people not see,
Speaker 3: like gluten sensitivity, say they have. And the main source
Speaker 3: of fruit tans in the Western diet is wheat, So
Speaker 3: if you cut out gluten, you're biproxy cutting out wheat,
Speaker 3: and therefore you're biproxy cutting out fruit tans. But so
Speaker 3: you might feel better, But it actually wasn't the gluten
Speaker 3: all along, And if you knew that it was the
Speaker 3: fruit tans, you might do something different than cut out gluten.
Speaker 3: That is true, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: What you might try is what's called a fod map diet,
Speaker 2: which is a specific kind of diet that eliminates these
Speaker 2: oglio saccharides, but it does.
Speaker 1: Not require an elimination of all gluten.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just to hit on the theme again, like
Speaker 3: jumping to the conclusion I should stop eating gluten, like
Speaker 3: seth rogen in the beginning is often incorrect. Like the
Speaker 3: way you should do this is potentially discussing with your doctor,
Speaker 3: but more importantly in the situation like this, talking with
Speaker 3: a dietitian, because there's actually a really defined pathway of
Speaker 3: trying different foods and recording your symptoms to sort of
Speaker 3: isolate what the sensitivity is. And that's such an important
Speaker 3: piece of knowledge if you can actually dial it in.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's gluten, but if it's something else, it's so
Speaker 3: important to know that.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a sort of step back on this,
Speaker 2: which is to say, some of what's going on here
Speaker 2: almost a lot of what's going on if people are saying,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not feeling great.
Speaker 1: I'm eating food and I'm not feeling great.
Speaker 2: I feel bloated, I feel nauseous, I feel fatigued, I
Speaker 2: have a brain fog, And one of the possibilities is
Speaker 2: that is related to what I'm eating, which in the
Speaker 2: case of gastrointestinal symptoms, is like a totally reasonable assumption.
Speaker 1: And then the question should be what is it?
Speaker 2: And yes, gluten is one of the things that you
Speaker 2: would put on the list of possibilities, but actually, for
Speaker 2: most people, there's a lot of other things that you
Speaker 2: would want to have on that list.
Speaker 1: Maybe you'd want to have these saccharides, but also.
Speaker 2: You might want to say, like, maybe you're not having
Speaker 2: enough fiber, maybe you're not having enough hydration, maybe you're
Speaker 2: drinking too much, maybe you're not drinking enough like what,
Speaker 2: There's various other possibilities.
Speaker 1: And so one of the sort.
Speaker 2: Of insidious things about this gluten business for me is
Speaker 2: that I think some people are having these symptoms and
Speaker 2: just saying, oh, it's probably gluten sensitivity. Let me just
Speaker 2: cut it all this gluten which is both making their
Speaker 2: life worse because bread is delicious, but is also actually
Speaker 2: probably not fixing the problem as much as if they
Speaker 2: took a more holistic view around the symptom pattern and
Speaker 2: ask the question, what could I do to improve my symptoms?
Speaker 2: And this a little bit what happens in this influencer space,
Speaker 2: which is people see, you know, oh I don't feel good,
Speaker 2: and then this influencer says, you probably have a gluten allergy.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody, or you probably have a gluten sensitivity,
Speaker 2: and you know, make your tortilla out of cottage cheese
Speaker 2: instead of bread, and everything will get better.
Speaker 1: And that could be delicious, but it might not fix
Speaker 1: your problem.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I think you know, there's obviously an entire industry,
Speaker 3: a gluten free industry out there. You can buy gluten
Speaker 3: free tortillas and gluten free bread and gluten free pasta
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. It's worth noting that in general,
Speaker 3: these gluten free foods are more processed, they're they're more
Speaker 3: in the ultra processed food spectrum. They tend to be
Speaker 3: lower in fiber, lower in folate, generally higher in fat
Speaker 3: and sugar, and two to three times the price. So
Speaker 3: there is like a cost to be paid for switching
Speaker 3: into a non gluten framework. There have been some studies
Speaker 3: in of rice flour. I'm pulling something from the journal
Speaker 3: Epidemiology from twenty seventeen looking at the unintended consequences of
Speaker 3: a glut and free diet. And one of the things
Speaker 3: they found where us higher arsenic and mercury levels in
Speaker 3: the urine. Because rice flour tends to be slightly more
Speaker 3: contaminated with arsenic and mercury. So yeah, don't don't jump
Speaker 3: to conclusions here, you might regret it.
Speaker 2: And I think also we sort of see one of
Speaker 2: these people are constantly reporting is that their gluten sensitivities
Speaker 2: are better when they are in Europe.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I've had friends say that. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: like in.
Speaker 2: The flowers different, the croissants are different. Well, French croissants
Speaker 2: definitely have gluten in them. Now they maybe cooked differently,
Speaker 2: the wheat is different, but there's no question that they have.
Speaker 2: Like if you are a person with Celiac disease and
Speaker 2: you eat a French bisont, you will feel like crap
Speaker 2: the same way that you will if you are an
Speaker 2: American American cuissont, Like, no difference. And so this suggests
Speaker 2: either for some fraction of these people there's something else
Speaker 2: in the food environment that is different. Maybe there's something
Speaker 2: about the interactions with stress, maybe there's like, maybe there
Speaker 2: is something else going on, and maybe there's something that
Speaker 2: the difference in the way the flower is processed. But
Speaker 2: my strong.
Speaker 1: Instinct is it's actually some other things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the epidemiology of both Celiac disease and non celiac
Speaker 3: gluten and gluten sensitivity is the same in Europe and
Speaker 3: the US, so like there's just as many. It's not like,
Speaker 3: oh that no one has Celia act disease over there.
Speaker 3: They do in the same rate as we do. So yes,
Speaker 3: everything tastes better in France one hundred percent, and we
Speaker 3: should we all feel better when we're in France. I
Speaker 3: can speak from personal experience there, but it's probably not
Speaker 3: anything magic that they're doing with their with their weat.
Speaker 2: I just feel like if people are not I have
Speaker 2: a hard time expressing this, but I feel like this
Speaker 2: has gotten in the way of people improving how they
Speaker 2: feel because it has given people an easy answer that
Speaker 2: companies are obviously delighted to take advantage of by saying, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, you can buy our gluten free crackers, and
Speaker 2: you know you can buy our gluten free bread and
Speaker 2: gluten free this, that and the other thing, And that
Speaker 2: it has gotten people into a space where they're not
Speaker 2: actually trying to figure out what's wrong. They're just defaulting
Speaker 2: to something which may or may not really be the solution.
Speaker 1: And that feels bad to me.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, And these symptoms because they're amenable to both
Speaker 3: the placebo and no cibo effect. You might feel better
Speaker 3: by switching, even if it has nothing to do with
Speaker 3: wheat at all, even if your symptoms are due to
Speaker 3: like you aren't getting enough fiber. The very act of
Speaker 3: taking initiative and switching all your bread to gluten free
Speaker 3: bread that has an expectation to it that can have
Speaker 3: placebo effects as well. They tend to not last forever.
Speaker 3: And I've had plenty of friends and patients and stuff
Speaker 3: who have been gluten free for a period of time
Speaker 3: and then things start creeping back, like symptoms start creeping back,
Speaker 3: and people start to realize, you know what, like maybe
Speaker 3: it wasn't the gluten, and at that point in time
Speaker 3: they actually do what is what's real work is to
Speaker 3: figure out what you're sensitive to. It's not something that
Speaker 3: you're going to do overnight. It takes like kind of
Speaker 3: documentation of symptoms and very specific dietary changes over time.
Speaker 3: But once people do that work, they're generally happy that
Speaker 3: they did ye, but it is work. I, as per tradition,
Speaker 3: tried to find a study that would show that avoiding
Speaker 3: gluten would improve your athletic performance, so that I could
Speaker 3: get Emily to be gluten free for the next ten
Speaker 3: years and I failed. All I found was a study
Speaker 3: appearing in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and
Speaker 3: Exercise in twenty fifteen which took thirteen endurance cyclist and
Speaker 3: randomized them in a crossover fashion. So they went like
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks having gluten in a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks not having gluten, and then did time trials and Nope,
Speaker 3: they were just as fast and just as endurance as
Speaker 3: they regardless of what their gluten intake was.
Speaker 2: I'm actually shocked that this did not go in the
Speaker 2: other direction. Oh even that, I would think it would
Speaker 2: be hard to maintain the kind of carbohydrates that you
Speaker 2: need without gluten containing products.
Speaker 1: So they guess these guys probably just said a lot
Speaker 1: of rice.
Speaker 3: I think they had a dietitian. I think they were
Speaker 3: calorically equivalent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know very few endurance athletes who
Speaker 2: don't contour who avoid gluten because it's just hard to
Speaker 2: get enough you know, carbohydrates and sugars.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also checked because people ask like, is there
Speaker 3: a difference between organic we and non organic wheat, and
Speaker 3: the answer is not in terms of gluten. They both
Speaker 3: have gluten.
Speaker 2: But it could be something else. And that's like, there
Speaker 2: could be something else between these things.
Speaker 1: That are bothering that are bothering you. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, talk to you a dietitian and work it through.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you are having these here's my takeaway here, then
Speaker 2: we can smash. Our pass is if you are having
Speaker 2: symptoms like this, you should be tested for celiac. And
Speaker 2: if you don't have Celiac, you should do something broader
Speaker 2: to try to figure out what's bothering you, rather than
Speaker 2: just some Mary's crackers, even though they're it's a very
Speaker 2: good kind of cracker.
Speaker 3: Not nad, but send us some Mary's crackers.
Speaker 2: All right, Perry. Are you a smash or pass on gluten?
Speaker 3: I'm a smash. I'm a lover of pasta, a lover
Speaker 3: of bread. I feel for all of you who have
Speaker 3: any form of gluten intolerance, whether it's Celiac disease or otherwise,
Speaker 3: and I implore those of you who might just be
Speaker 3: assuming that they have gluten intolerance to try to figure
Speaker 3: it out for one certain because a life without gluten
Speaker 3: is just a smidge less happy than a life with gluten.
Speaker 3: Emily Smash pass.
Speaker 2: I'm a smash all my favorite foods contained gluten, and
Speaker 2: I will dittow you that. I think I love people
Speaker 2: to just make sure that this is what's going on with.
Speaker 1: You, and maybe you'll be able to have gluten. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it for gluten.
Speaker 2: Mail back question in the week after the break.
Speaker 1: Hi, Emily and Perry.
Speaker 4: This is Ellie and Josh and we're calling from Toronto.
Speaker 4: Our question is is coffee really bad for kids? Does
Speaker 4: it really stunt kids growth?
Speaker 3: Like would it hurt if I love it to drink
Speaker 3: a bit? That's our question, Emily, do your kids drink coffee?
Speaker 2: My kids don't drink coffee because they tell me that
Speaker 2: they see how dependent I am on coffee and they
Speaker 2: don't want that for themselves, which I think shows a
Speaker 2: level of maturity I have not achieved.
Speaker 1: What about you.
Speaker 3: My sixteen year old will occasionally, but but not too often.
Speaker 1: Coffee does not stunt kids growth. This is a myth.
Speaker 3: It's I have one hundred percent told my kids this.
Speaker 3: By the way, on knowing it's not true.
Speaker 1: Turn this off for your children. It's a myth.
Speaker 2: I think there are reasons to not give your child coffee,
Speaker 2: which are that you could develop a tolerance for a
Speaker 2: caffeine and then you will need it. And that's not
Speaker 2: a terrible that's not a terrible thing, but it may
Speaker 2: not be something you want to develop in a child.
Speaker 1: And particularly since many of.
Speaker 2: Us use caffeine to address our lack of sleep, I
Speaker 2: would urge you to make sure your children are sleeping
Speaker 2: enough so they don't need coffee. And definitely they should
Speaker 2: not have coffee at the end of the day because
Speaker 2: it does interfere with sleep, even if it doesn't interfere
Speaker 2: with growth.
Speaker 3: So well said one note that teenagers and kids are
Speaker 3: getting most of their caffeine not from coffee these days.
Speaker 3: They're getting them from energy drinks and sodas, and those
Speaker 3: are also not good for kids.
Speaker 2: And actually those and like the Celsiest energy drink that
Speaker 2: has a lot of caffeine in it, arguably more than coffee.
Speaker 2: So people do want to be pretty careful, pretty careful
Speaker 2: about those.
Speaker 1: Do you did you?
Speaker 2: I know you probably this is not going to be
Speaker 2: for you. Did you watch if you're watch Saved by
Speaker 2: the Bell?
Speaker 3: I mean I remember you, sure, I remember Saved by
Speaker 3: the Bell?
Speaker 1: And do you remember the episode?
Speaker 2: Do you remember the Jesse episod where Jesse Spano gets
Speaker 2: addicted to the caffeine pills.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were like, we can't do real drugs, but.
Speaker 2: Burned this image of Jesse Spano like dancing around her
Speaker 2: room because she's had too many caffeine fills.
Speaker 1: It's like burned into my mind forever, and I have
Speaker 1: in high school.
Speaker 2: Even though I was tempted because I was not sleeping
Speaker 2: anywhere near enough, I would never have ever taken caffeine
Speaker 2: pills because of that Saved by the Bell episodes of
Speaker 2: Drugs Kids.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it worked. It worked on a very
Speaker 3: special episode of Saved by the Bell.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my god, that was so great.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, well Josh, it's probably not a good
Speaker 2: idea for you to have too much coffee, but it's
Speaker 2: not going to make you short.
Speaker 3: All right. That's it for us today. With us next
Speaker 3: week when we'll ask what's the deal with fluoride? Oh,
Speaker 3: we're gonna get some emails about that. People get upset about.
Speaker 2: Flora I Wellness actually is produced in association with iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Tamar Avishaid.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer at iHeart is Jennifer Bassett. Our theme
Speaker 2: music is by Eric Deutsch and Our content is for
Speaker 2: educational purposes.
Speaker 3: Owner If you like the show, help other people find us.
Speaker 3: Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your
Speaker 3: podcatcher of choice and help us spread the word about
Speaker 3: the show. You can follow us on Instagram at Wellness
Speaker 3: Actually pod and don't forget. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Head over to Wellness Actually dot fm and leave us
Speaker 3: a question for our mailbag or suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: a future show.
Speaker 1: We'll let the influencers have the last word. No time,
Speaker 1: there's never any time. I don't have time to study.
Speaker 1: I'll never get into Stanford. I'll let everyone down.
Speaker 2: I'm so confused.
Speaker 3: Jay, just calm down.
Speaker 1: It's okay, right, you think will be okay. I just
Speaker 1: need one of these hills.
Speaker 3: You mean you really are taking drugs?
Speaker 1: You need them? Just say, jes See, you can't sing
Speaker 1: the night you can't. I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: I'm so.
Speaker 3: Scared.
Speaker 4: Jesse