Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison I don't know, the science editor at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science rider at how stuff works dot com. And today's
Speaker 1: podcast we're talking about maggots. All right, Maybe you listen
Speaker 1: to our last podcast. We're kind of on a role
Speaker 1: with perhaps animals that people consider not so attractive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: would be grossed out by. Yeah, we were going to
Speaker 1: do one podcast about both maggots and leeches, but each bloodsucker. Um,
Speaker 1: and they're not both blood suckers, but be each creature
Speaker 1: turned out to be interesting enough in its own right
Speaker 1: to deserve its own podcast, right, And and maggots, I
Speaker 1: have to say I've I've softened a little bit towards
Speaker 1: towards maggots just because they are so vital. You know
Speaker 1: what it was. It was the podcast we did on composting,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite ones that we've done
Speaker 1: so far, And it's just a realization that they're necessary.
Speaker 1: And Okay, so I can prove to you that my
Speaker 1: attitude has changed towards maggots because in fact, we had
Speaker 1: a trash incident. Oh yeah, you had some maggots at
Speaker 1: the house. We keep our trash outside. There was a
Speaker 1: period where unfortunately the trash did not get to go out,
Speaker 1: and you know, some stuff was was born in that
Speaker 1: in that short time span, and I unfortunately opened the
Speaker 1: lid to the trash can, and of course I saw
Speaker 1: all the all the maggots. It was a little bit traumatic,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't as traumatic had it been, you know,
Speaker 1: before the composting podcast. I think I don't know if
Speaker 1: I was ever really grossed out, but like you know,
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, I kind of lived in
Speaker 1: the country and we would keen into maggots. No, but
Speaker 1: there would be like dead animals and you'd see some
Speaker 1: something crawling around in it, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: just it was yeah, and I know and and I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess having watched a fair amount of horror, like
Speaker 1: occasionally maggots will show up. But the most amusing thing
Speaker 1: is like sometimes like really cheap productions, they couldn't actually
Speaker 1: get maggots, I guess, which seems like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seems like, yeah, I just think ahead and put
Speaker 1: some meat out, you know, and then pick them out
Speaker 1: with tweezers, right, but I don't know. It's like they
Speaker 1: will get some other type of worm to pretend to
Speaker 1: be maggots. So like if you've ever seen maggots, you're like,
Speaker 1: those aren't baggots, sort of like there's some sort of
Speaker 1: earthworm or something, you know, and then they'll use like
Speaker 1: a sound effect for the worm to make it sound
Speaker 1: sound like they're yelling or something. I don't know any rate. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about maggot therapy, maggot therapy to
Speaker 1: get on track, and you know, in a world where
Speaker 1: public image counts a lot, maggot therapy is one therapy
Speaker 1: that really suffered a fall, but it's starting to come
Speaker 1: back in Triumph. Yeah, though it does still doesn't sound good,
Speaker 1: Like I think they need out like a snazzier name
Speaker 1: for it. Well there are. I think some people call
Speaker 1: it um larval therapy. That sounds a lot better. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a more technical name. I think maggot debridemant therapy,
Speaker 1: debriding just meaning the removal of dead tissue. I still
Speaker 1: don't think that's a you good seller. Yeah, right right,
Speaker 1: you gotta get rid of the maggot in the title
Speaker 1: if you want to do an elevator pitch and sell
Speaker 1: your therapy to a million dollar venture capitalists. So anyway,
Speaker 1: back in the nineties, when antibatics first came onto the
Speaker 1: medicinal scene, maggots, you know, that's really when they fell
Speaker 1: out of favor. I mean, who's gonna want, you know,
Speaker 1: a little grub, a larval fly to be you know,
Speaker 1: investigating your wounds when you can just popping anti batic.
Speaker 1: And so they're back now and they're hungry. So okay,
Speaker 1: what's a maggot again? You guys know this, but for
Speaker 1: the sake of it, we'll just go over it real fast. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, a soft bodied, legless grub. It's a larva
Speaker 1: of a dip terrorist insect. In other words, it's a
Speaker 1: fly larva. It's an immature fly. Okay, here's something that
Speaker 1: I came across. And there's all some sorts of good
Speaker 1: stuff that we come across while we're researching this podcast,
Speaker 1: and we give as much of that research as we
Speaker 1: can to you guys. But the second definition of maggot
Speaker 1: is a fantastic or eccentric idea. I've never heard of
Speaker 1: that either, but I like the idea of you have
Speaker 1: you using it more like, you know, like we'll come
Speaker 1: up to um, you know, your editor in chief. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be like, hey, con I got aa roll maggot
Speaker 1: here for you. But what do you say we do
Speaker 1: an entire article about, you know, something about um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think you would totally roll with it. So what
Speaker 1: are you used? What are maggots used for in maggot therapy? Well,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, we have a pretty good article
Speaker 1: on that's written by freelancer Tom Chef, and mainly it's
Speaker 1: it's cleaning wounds. It's kind of like they like to
Speaker 1: eat really gross flesh stuff, and so if you're in
Speaker 1: a situation we're like, hey, what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: with this gross fleshy stuff we need removed? Hey you
Speaker 1: guys want to eat it? Hop on? You know. Well,
Speaker 1: in particularly, they have a predilection for for dead tissue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really good at removing dead tissue and unless things
Speaker 1: get out of hand, like they're pretty good about like
Speaker 1: just eat the dead sticking to the dead tissue. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, So what kind of wouldn't trust
Speaker 1: like a like a buzzard with that? You know? Heck, now,
Speaker 1: like hey, guys just pick it the the rotten stuff,
Speaker 1: but leave the rest of the leg alone, and they'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh yeah sure. So. Um. In particular, they
Speaker 1: come in handy. Magot therapy comes in handy for traumatic
Speaker 1: or post surgical wounds that just won't heal. Um. But
Speaker 1: important note to doctors here considering this UM, I was
Speaker 1: reading that wounds with tunnels are kind of hiding spots
Speaker 1: for the maggots aren't necessarily good candidates for this particular
Speaker 1: kind of therapy. Also important note to doctors if you're
Speaker 1: listening to our podcast and using that to decide how
Speaker 1: are you going to treat your patients, just really reconsider
Speaker 1: how you're going about things. Also interesting was I found
Speaker 1: that there's a very small steady uh participants were number
Speaker 1: thirteen in all, and I found that people with mrs
Speaker 1: A contaminated wounds were cured using nothing but maggots. Okay,
Speaker 1: and m r s A. Of course, Um, that's the
Speaker 1: type of infection that's resistant to certain antibiotics. So that
Speaker 1: would be you know, a big deal, especially when this
Speaker 1: is like when somebody gets like an antibiotic resistant staff
Speaker 1: infection type of thing, going yes, yes, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: exactly what m R. S A is. So, so it
Speaker 1: would prove handy in that case, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times that megat therapy is going to come in handy
Speaker 1: when you have stuff like ulcers. And oddly enough, these
Speaker 1: ulcers mainly are are located on your lower extremities. So
Speaker 1: there's one called a venus stasis ulcer. Now this one
Speaker 1: is that this is the one correct move if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: But it's kind of like if I'm standing in one
Speaker 1: place for a while and I feel like I need
Speaker 1: to shift to move around. It might be because I
Speaker 1: had too much coffee, but it could be because, like
Speaker 1: my body is telling the neuropathic foot ulcer and we
Speaker 1: will get to that in a second. That's nerve damage.
Speaker 1: Uh No, So the venus stasis ulcer is. You're gonna
Speaker 1: find these below in the knee, especially in the niche,
Speaker 1: that tiny little cute niche just above the ankle. And
Speaker 1: and they're common in patients who have medical charts filled
Speaker 1: with stuff like leg smelling and vericous veins or you
Speaker 1: know a history of blood clots in the in the
Speaker 1: leg veins. You were jumping the gun. But yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: the neuropathic foot ulcer is also a candidate for maggot therapy.
Speaker 1: And for the love of God, I know you will,
Speaker 1: but don't link these up in Google images. It is. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's tough. When it's stuck with me, it's steared in
Speaker 1: my brain. The neuropathic foot ulcer that if you, if
Speaker 1: you have one of these, by all means, take a
Speaker 1: picture of it and send it to it. Like somebody
Speaker 1: didn't their feet with the hood feline hookworms. The person
Speaker 1: sent us a photo canine hookwar canine hookworms in human feet.
Speaker 1: I can still picture that was a cool picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can still see it too. It's burned into my mind.
Speaker 1: So these neuropathic foot ulcers, like you can probably guess
Speaker 1: these occurred to Jude to nerve damage and um. Like
Speaker 1: Robert was getting at, having intec nerves is a pretty
Speaker 1: handy thing. We like. We all like having intec nerves.
Speaker 1: You know, it helps us tell you when to shift
Speaker 1: position if you're standing on your feet, the nerves and
Speaker 1: your your lower extremities. And if you lose that information,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna lose awareness as to what's going on
Speaker 1: down there, right, and you can have some crazy things
Speaker 1: start happening to your feet. Maybe you get some cuts,
Speaker 1: they appear and you don't notice, maybe get a blister
Speaker 1: you don't notice, and it just gets you know, it
Speaker 1: starts festering, and they progress and they progress, and then
Speaker 1: you have serious infection on your hands, which leads us
Speaker 1: to the next kind of ulcer that Maggot therapy is
Speaker 1: is being used for. And these are called pressure ulcers
Speaker 1: ak a bed soyces. Yeah, these are the ones you
Speaker 1: get if you your laid up for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And pressure ulcers also affect another population that's not bedridden,
Speaker 1: and that would be diabetics. So a little little known
Speaker 1: to me, diabetics and ulcers are have a pretty significant history.
Speaker 1: Well I I was familiar with, you know, like some
Speaker 1: a lot of times diabetics and up having to go
Speaker 1: in for amputation. Right. Well, so chronic conditions like diabetes
Speaker 1: are different vascular diseases. They mess up your circulation, they
Speaker 1: mess up your blood flow, and um, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: to the maggot diabetic thing in a sec. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about this pressure ulcer just so we can get
Speaker 1: into the maggot therapy. What's happening. We're gonna walk you
Speaker 1: through the steps involved in a pressure ulcer starts off.
Speaker 1: It's a red spot on your skin. Press on it,
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't turn white, so maybe you know some
Speaker 1: things up, but you probably don't notice it. This is
Speaker 1: stage one of the pressure ulcer. Next up, you get
Speaker 1: your open sore going on and the areas around the store.
Speaker 1: They start to start to get a little angry, you know,
Speaker 1: the ulcer starts to spread its madness. And next comes
Speaker 1: the crater. And this is pretty much um. You know,
Speaker 1: you can kind of see a crater in your skin
Speaker 1: where the tissue has started to to break down and
Speaker 1: go to heck basically, and this is when you need
Speaker 1: to spend in the maggots. Well, eventually, pressure ulcers escalate
Speaker 1: to the point that they become so deep that of
Speaker 1: course they damage surrounding muscle and bone, and they can
Speaker 1: even spread to tendons and joints. And yes, this is
Speaker 1: this is when the magot therapy might be called in.
Speaker 1: And before that, a lot of people only have the
Speaker 1: option of amputation. You know, the infection got so bad
Speaker 1: that you're faced with, well, we have to amputate that
Speaker 1: that leg, the toe, the foot. Yeah, because what you
Speaker 1: all you have are these big surgical devices and what
Speaker 1: you need is a little bitty surgeon or a team
Speaker 1: of little bitty surgeons right to go in maggots. Indeed, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a pretty it is a pretty significant problem
Speaker 1: for diabetics once you consider that there are twenty three
Speaker 1: million in the United States according to the American Diabetes Association,
Speaker 1: and you're looking about seventy thousand amputations uh diet for
Speaker 1: diabetics occurring every year according to the Centers for Disease
Speaker 1: Control and Prevention. A lot do you like your face?
Speaker 1: Do you like having all your body parts right? As
Speaker 1: we discussed in the Prosthetics podcast, I do like my
Speaker 1: limbs and right right. So a lot of us, I
Speaker 1: would imagine, would be interested in avoiding amputation. Apart from
Speaker 1: that one special group of people. Do you remember that
Speaker 1: the actively stick in ahead though, well, there there, there,
Speaker 1: they have problems. Yes, yes, they do have problems. Um.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we get these people who are faced with
Speaker 1: amputation or or what well, as it turns out, or
Speaker 1: maggot therapy and really important note that I think we
Speaker 1: should emphasize here it's not a is to replace existing therapies,
Speaker 1: like You're not gonna maggots are never going to take
Speaker 1: the place of surgery. They're never going to take the
Speaker 1: place of antibiotics. Yeah, this isn't like some sort of
Speaker 1: quack technique where it's like like we really wish that,
Speaker 1: you know, Mary would go to an actual doctor, but
Speaker 1: she's going to that maggot physician. No, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not a first line defense. And another thing is that
Speaker 1: when we were researching this podcast, I happen to find
Speaker 1: out that there's a substance called hydrogels and they're capable
Speaker 1: of performing a lot of the functions that maggots can
Speaker 1: do in maggot therapy. So and some of the research
Speaker 1: seemed to indicate that hydrogels and maggot therapy had about
Speaker 1: equally effective utility. And and you know, so hydrogels are
Speaker 1: without the maggots, so people very well might opt for those.
Speaker 1: But let's get into the process. Let's let's release the maggots,
Speaker 1: shall we. Okay, So, yeah, so we've got this putrid
Speaker 1: area that needs a clean up. We've got some some
Speaker 1: some dead tissue that needs to be cleared away from
Speaker 1: the live tissue. Yeah, so first that you gotta get
Speaker 1: the maggots. But don't don't go gathering up the maggots yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want some farm rates, right, don't slather them, you know,
Speaker 1: willy nilly all over the wound. Although I did read
Speaker 1: one one article that said patients could be taught to
Speaker 1: administer this treatment themselves and then when they were done
Speaker 1: with the magaziners, just toss them in the garbage and
Speaker 1: be done with it. Yeah, they probably would would like that, right, Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I imagine the danger is that you probably need to
Speaker 1: have a strong stomach. And then of course you could
Speaker 1: get the ratio wrong, because, like we said, there is
Speaker 1: a particular ratio you're looking for, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: general rules thumb is that you're gonna want about eight
Speaker 1: maggots per square centimeter of flesh that you want them
Speaker 1: to consume, otherwise they go a little crazy. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get hungry, right, So you don't want to overpopulate.
Speaker 1: Don't overpopulate. But let's let's get back to the process.
Speaker 1: You gotta have the maggots. Yeah, yeah, So you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to have the maggots, and you want to have again,
Speaker 1: the right maggots because there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: flies in the world and uh, and all of them
Speaker 1: have larva, but you're generally the most favored of variety
Speaker 1: is the green blow fot fly, which is, uh, do
Speaker 1: you want to take a shot at the I was
Speaker 1: gonna give it Phoenicia Sarah Cotta. Sounds actually kind of tasty,
Speaker 1: sounds like an Italian dessert. Yeah. And these are growing
Speaker 1: to get in a lab, in a lab and a
Speaker 1: disease free environment, and they're shipped in a sterile containers,
Speaker 1: probably overnight. Yeah. Alright, so the maggot show up, they're
Speaker 1: ready for business. Well, you've got to have an open
Speaker 1: wound of some sort, and preferably that wound is clean,
Speaker 1: so open water and wash it out, et cetera. Okay,
Speaker 1: so keep part of the process here, because a lot
Speaker 1: of us are not at all cool with maggots just
Speaker 1: you know, wandering around. Our open source is a sedative.
Speaker 1: Often patients who choose to undergo maggot therapy will be
Speaker 1: administered a sedative, a heavy one. Yeah. And when you
Speaker 1: first mentioned this, I was thinking like, oh, these guys
Speaker 1: are kind of WIMPs. They just don't want it, to
Speaker 1: want to feel like they're you know, a little larva
Speaker 1: calling on them. But then the whole thing is that
Speaker 1: they're they're crawling on air and very sensitive areas like inflamed,
Speaker 1: you know, gross areas that you know, So it's like
Speaker 1: pressure on a wound. So of course you don't want
Speaker 1: to feel that, right, They're getting fat off of, you know,
Speaker 1: eating your necrotic tissue, and it's putting pressure on the wound.
Speaker 1: And in fact, patients have reported that maggot therapy can
Speaker 1: be more painful than other kinds of therapy. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean you really want to not be aware
Speaker 1: of it, I would think. So the fact that it's hurting,
Speaker 1: you know, and you're you know that there are maggots
Speaker 1: in there, that would that would sort of add But again,
Speaker 1: if you were using vultures, the sedation would have to
Speaker 1: be a lot heavier, right, So so no vultures. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're gonna add these live maggots to the wound,
Speaker 1: and like with leeches, um, you're gonna gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: steal them off. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta. You don't
Speaker 1: want the running all over the place. You gotta direct
Speaker 1: them to the task. And so you're gonna steal it
Speaker 1: off and then you're going to cover the wound with
Speaker 1: a bandage. To keep it in place. And you can
Speaker 1: also um as opposed, if you're a posed to having
Speaker 1: them kind of crawling freely, you can put them in
Speaker 1: a bio bag or this sealed nylon bag. And of
Speaker 1: course um necessity is the mother of all inventions. So
Speaker 1: there's a company now, Monarch Labs, that's come out with
Speaker 1: a special maggot dressing. It has a nice name too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think there was some of that in
Speaker 1: the fridge here at work until the name threw it away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Paul Newman variety too, so I'm sure it was healthy.
Speaker 1: But you know O right. So this was not salad dressing,
Speaker 1: but rather wound dressing, and it's called love Flap Flap Flap.
Speaker 1: It's a nice French name. Brings an element of class
Speaker 1: to magot therapy which needs a little bit of that. So,
Speaker 1: according to the company, the first pre manufactured cage dressing
Speaker 1: available for the US market. That's what it is. The
Speaker 1: single piece of flap Maggot confinement dressing is intended to
Speaker 1: prevent medicinal maggots from leading the wound before the treatment
Speaker 1: of scheduled to enter and of course reduce the time
Speaker 1: and cost necessary to confine them to the wound. So
Speaker 1: you can look that up over Monarch Labs if you yea,
Speaker 1: are you saying a picture of this, right? I did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like a sticker with a part
Speaker 1: that peels off, and in the part that peels off,
Speaker 1: you'd see the wound. Yeah. It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you're painting a design on something, you need like a stencil, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a maggot stencil. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: in a few days time, you change from place the
Speaker 1: bandage in the maggots, uh, and then you flush them
Speaker 1: out with probably like a saline solution or something. But wait, wait,
Speaker 1: do you miss the most important part? You miss what's
Speaker 1: happening in the mouth. Yes, what they're doing, well, they're yeah,
Speaker 1: they're eating up that decaying flesh, and they're clearing the
Speaker 1: place of bacteria. At least they're capable of clearing the
Speaker 1: place of a lot of different species of bacteria again,
Speaker 1: because they get these tiny little mouths, you know, going
Speaker 1: after the little bits there. And in the whole time
Speaker 1: they're using fluids too, right, they're turning to some enzymes
Speaker 1: for help with breaking down the dead tissue further and
Speaker 1: their stimulating cell growth there. This is pretty cool. They're
Speaker 1: also excreting an antibacterial agent. Yeah, I imagine we excrete
Speaker 1: an antibacterial agent. Just imagine possibilities. But but yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this kind of boils down to what I've read before,
Speaker 1: like people talking about how maggots are are really like
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of clean. They're pretty clean organisms. You know,
Speaker 1: they they're in the pig. Yeah, yeah, they may be
Speaker 1: in gross situations, but you know, there's there's nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: This is also why the maggot I believe. I read
Speaker 1: something a while back talking about if we were ever
Speaker 1: to send astronauts to Mars, you know, a long space flight,
Speaker 1: but if you could get get them to eat maggots,
Speaker 1: astronauts astronauts the eat maggots, and that would be awesome
Speaker 1: because maggots, I mean, they're they're they're larva, and they're
Speaker 1: all they do is fatten up and get ready for
Speaker 1: the next stage of their life. So they have a
Speaker 1: lot of like protein in them, and they're like very nutritious.
Speaker 1: That's why like chickens, chickens will eat the heck out
Speaker 1: of maggots, you know, their whole like their whole like
Speaker 1: farming operations that depend on like like making sure that
Speaker 1: like the chickens eat the maggots. Or I think there's
Speaker 1: some like tapia farming um processes out there where like
Speaker 1: the Seriously, it's like I remember hearing about this words
Speaker 1: like the telapia, You harvest the telapia made, then you
Speaker 1: let flies land on the leftovers, maggots grow and you
Speaker 1: get the maggots, and you fee the maggots the telapia,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So that's nice, it's very efficient. So yeah,
Speaker 1: maggots basically they just need a little bit of a
Speaker 1: new campaign, a new new pr campaign to revise their image,
Speaker 1: don't you think. Yeah, because like the treatments are really
Speaker 1: pretty cheap, right, it's like a hundred bucks. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: can be a hundred bucks, and so that's a lot
Speaker 1: less than surgery and probably your insurance company would be
Speaker 1: more psyched to, you know, to shout a hundred bucks
Speaker 1: than the cost involved in surgery. Yeah, put that in
Speaker 1: the ad campaign. I can like see like the the
Speaker 1: the TV ad with like you know, people walking through
Speaker 1: a field and they start having a heart to heart
Speaker 1: about the maggots. So the treatment can last as long
Speaker 1: as ten days, and it's important to note that patients
Speaker 1: may also be taking antibotics while the magot therapy is going.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. You guys may think we're
Speaker 1: a little crazy. You might not have heard this before.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, no, I don't buy it, Robert Allison, they're
Speaker 1: sort of out there. Yeah, because we've talked. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like the whole thing with the hookworm treatment. The
Speaker 1: hookworm treatment was is still considered out there, but well
Speaker 1: we only mentioned that in passing. Yeah, but it's gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of but it's gotten a lot of coverage
Speaker 1: elsewhere therapy. You just did a blog post on it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so there are some pretty major supporters or at
Speaker 1: least people who don't object to mega therapy, one of
Speaker 1: them being the US Food and Drug Administration. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: came around to it in two thousand and four, the
Speaker 1: same year that they were decided to be okay with
Speaker 1: the leeches. It was a whole banner year. The Legion
Speaker 1: Maggot Council really made some some some progress that here,
Speaker 1: and more recently, November two thousand nine, you had the
Speaker 1: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the US revising
Speaker 1: their billing Code guidelines UH in an effort to help
Speaker 1: patients get reimbursed for megat therapy. Health Canada, the Canadian
Speaker 1: Public Health Agency has gone so far is to classify
Speaker 1: medical maggots as drugs. So, of course downsides of therapy,
Speaker 1: there's side effects, there are you know, other things that
Speaker 1: you need to consider when you're considering your overall health.
Speaker 1: So maga therapy limited research out there. So I was
Speaker 1: reading an article in the Journal of the Canadian Medical
Speaker 1: Association c m A J I believe, and the articles
Speaker 1: mentioned mentioning that there are only two randomized clinical trials
Speaker 1: on maga therapy that have ever been published. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of kind of a small amount of information out there,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these studies, um that I was encountering,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty small little studies done here and there.
Speaker 1: There's also, of course the you factor of magot therapy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we touched on it's like it's hard to get
Speaker 1: past the fact that it does involve letting little tiny
Speaker 1: larva's much on your flesh. And you also mentioned like
Speaker 1: some people were also like concerned, like, oh, what if
Speaker 1: the maggots escape their enclosure and someone sees one on
Speaker 1: the or But what if you're going to your doctor's
Speaker 1: office and he's going to give you your magatherapy, you know,
Speaker 1: some escape You're you're in the waiting room, you're, you know,
Speaker 1: scanning your copy of People. All of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 1: maggot crawls across your foot. Maybe a maggot crawls across
Speaker 1: Katie Holmes's I while you're looking at the cover of People.
Speaker 1: I mean, but I think I don't think that would
Speaker 1: be good. It would not be good, but it comes
Speaker 1: it's i mean, cleanliness goes hand in hand with with
Speaker 1: proper medicine. So it's kind of like you also wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to go in to get your check up and
Speaker 1: be like, oh my god, somebody lants to boil on
Speaker 1: this table and it's still yucky there, No, because if
Speaker 1: they would clean it up, you know. So this is true. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: a maggot unlike boil, plus we can actually conceivably crawl
Speaker 1: out of a room or something, but still it's a
Speaker 1: you know, you know, but it's still they can do
Speaker 1: things to keep it clean. And in fact, doctors do things,
Speaker 1: do do things to to keep their offices clean. And
Speaker 1: we thank them for that. Okay, So another downside, mag
Speaker 1: they die easily. Oh yeah, yeah, theah they're they're not
Speaker 1: particularly long lived, so you gotta have a good stock
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, and you can't just again, you can't
Speaker 1: just go up on the roof and like throw down
Speaker 1: a Hamburger patty and come back in a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like you need to get them again
Speaker 1: through through actual um medicinal maggot providers. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And lastly, some bacteria, some species of bacteria may thwart
Speaker 1: maggots and leave them dead um if you send them
Speaker 1: into cleaner infected wound. And one of the species in
Speaker 1: question is called Pseudomonas arruginosa. I believe also sounds kind
Speaker 1: of taste all. They all sound like something I would
Speaker 1: get an Italian restaurant. I'll have the Pseudomonis of organosa please. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the caesar salad. I think that one is more
Speaker 1: of a red sauce, and the one we named earlier
Speaker 1: was white. And then, of course maggots painful, can be
Speaker 1: painful when you're having this treatment. So I feel like
Speaker 1: we should end this podcast on the question of whether
Speaker 1: you do it. Would you do it, Would you undergo
Speaker 1: magat therapy? Yeah, I mean definitely. If it was a
Speaker 1: situation where people are like, hey, we may have to
Speaker 1: amputate and you know, but we want to try maggots first,
Speaker 1: I would be like, by all means, let's try maggots.
Speaker 1: You know. I would not necessarily be opposed to the
Speaker 1: vultures if that were. Okay, vulture is no place maggot therapy. Legit.
Speaker 1: Vultures just is just me talking about it. But no,
Speaker 1: it's I would definitely give the maggot option ago if
Speaker 1: it were something, you know, if it were recommended to
Speaker 1: me by my doctor. Yeah, I think I would too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would like to ask producer Matt. He's not allowed
Speaker 1: to talk, it's not we can't see him either. I
Speaker 1: wonder if producer Matt would do it, would you? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would do it. Yeah, yeah, Matt has answered in
Speaker 1: the affirmative. So all three of us would do it
Speaker 1: if if we were presented with the right situation, would
Speaker 1: you though, so right in and tell us. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. We we'd love to hear what
Speaker 1: you think about maggot therapy or just maggots in general.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, those impressions of maggots one of the
Speaker 1: things for me, Like we've we talked about leeches in
Speaker 1: another podcast we recorded day and we talked about maggots
Speaker 1: and neither of these are really like gross me out
Speaker 1: because they seemed very task based. There's there are definite
Speaker 1: things they're out there achieving, like that that maggot he's
Speaker 1: gonna eat until he turns into a fly, and more
Speaker 1: power to him that leech, that leach wants to drink blood,
Speaker 1: and you know, carry on. But I've always been really
Speaker 1: sickened out by garden slugs because I'm like, what the
Speaker 1: what is this for? What is it doing? Unless it's
Speaker 1: like feeding off of just my utter revulsion at it's
Speaker 1: like fat sliminess. I think that's an unfair characterization of
Speaker 1: the garden slugs. Yeah, well, I challenge you or anybody
Speaker 1: to tell me what good they're doing, all right, So
Speaker 1: challenges out. Send us an email Science Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff first dot com, maggots slugs. We'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. And uh, we got a little listener Ley'd
Speaker 1: like to share with you. Today we have we have
Speaker 1: Brian and he ran in to talk to us about
Speaker 1: um the podcast. He said, Hey, fourteen and just got
Speaker 1: back from a one year trip to Japan. I really
Speaker 1: like the podcast and it helped a lot in plane
Speaker 1: right back. I bet it did. That's one long uh
Speaker 1: one long podcast. That's one long plane ride. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: wonder how many episodes of stuff from the Science lo
Speaker 1: have you listened to? So, Ryan said, I listened to
Speaker 1: your smelling podcast, and the Smell a Vision reminded me
Speaker 1: of something I saw in the Japanese Museum. There was
Speaker 1: a computer that allows you to play a bunch of videos,
Speaker 1: mostly cooking related, and smells would come out of the
Speaker 1: computer related to what you're watching. Have you guys heard
Speaker 1: of this? I think, yeah, I think I have heard
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I wonder what kind
Speaker 1: of smells. Well, you're very limited in what you can watch, like, like,
Speaker 1: you know, even there are some great things up there,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily want to watch, say The Seven Samurai,
Speaker 1: you know, within Smell a Vision or you know, or
Speaker 1: pretty much any film that I like. I can't think
Speaker 1: of one that would smell really good. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Emily might smell good. Oh, Emily, that would definitely smell good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's so cute, mean, not just her, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're in a cafe. It's Paris. I don't know. Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: There's French perfume, there's flowers buffing through the air. There's
Speaker 1: the smell of a nice you know, French roast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good smell. Speaking of perfume, I don't know
Speaker 1: about the movie perfume. Like same for the actual perfume.
Speaker 1: Probably smell really awesome, but not so much the Paris gutters,
Speaker 1: you know. No. Hey, And on a more serious note,
Speaker 1: we also heard from Joshua and Joshua is a PhD
Speaker 1: candidate UM, and he read in to talk to us
Speaker 1: about our recent Evolution and Action podcast, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to us about something that I said. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was talking a little bit about antibiotics and um,
Speaker 1: just my parental fear and Joshua and Allison mentioned that
Speaker 1: as a parent, was troubling to give her child antibatics
Speaker 1: because she feared that her child might evolve resistance to
Speaker 1: the antabatic And actually that was in a statement, So
Speaker 1: thank you josh for correcting me. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: point out that her child wouldn't evolve resistance to the
Speaker 1: antabatic because first, the target of the animotic is, of course,
Speaker 1: the bacterial population living inside the child, not the child itself. Second,
Speaker 1: and more important, evolution can't happen within a single individual,
Speaker 1: the idea that individual can change its attributes over its
Speaker 1: lifetime to suit a set up environmental circumstances with champ
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So a lot to say, interesting stuff
Speaker 1: to say. Um and I really appreciate that correction because
Speaker 1: it's an important distinction to make. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: my my daughter evolving resistance. It's you know, the bacteria
Speaker 1: population in her, which you know decided it didn't like
Speaker 1: particularly antibiotic, and it's scared the heck out of me
Speaker 1: as a parent. But there are options out there, and
Speaker 1: it's pritty. It's a it's important distinction to make. I think,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Yeah, totally. Yeah, let us know
Speaker 1: when we slip up and we'll read the corrections in
Speaker 1: the air. Don't just talk about it's an alley or
Speaker 1: it worn't and be like that Allison and Robert. You
Speaker 1: should hear what they said the other day. You know,
Speaker 1: it'll clear the air. Yeah, we're happy to do so.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, I think that about wraps it up.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us, and if you want to
Speaker 1: hang out on Facebook, Twitter, we're there too. Yeah. On
Speaker 1: Facebook we're stuff in the Science Lab and on Twitter
Speaker 1: we are lab stuff alright, rock on. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com home page