Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry is with us
Speaker 1: as we journey into the heart of the magnetic darkness
Speaker 1: known as an m r I machine, the Wonder Machine.
Speaker 1: After all these years of talking about this thing, I
Speaker 1: finally get it. I know it. It's crazy. We've been
Speaker 1: kind of amazed by it and then a little bit
Speaker 1: turned off by it. But then we realized it's not
Speaker 1: the machine itself, it's the way it's being applied. And
Speaker 1: so we kind of came back to it again and
Speaker 1: it nuzzled us and it's bore and it got kind
Speaker 1: of sexy. Yeah, and we're also guilty of the f
Speaker 1: m r I crime that now I kind of feel
Speaker 1: bad about. What is that? Is that a Queen's Right album? Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll just talk about that later when it's appropriate.
Speaker 1: What the Queen's Right album? No, the fm R I
Speaker 1: blunder that we've been making for thirteen years. Sure, I
Speaker 1: feel like, okay, all right, we'll go over that. Fine, Fine, Fine,
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss anything. But instead we're gonna
Speaker 1: mostly talk about the m R I the Wonder Machine
Speaker 1: as it is, because Chuck, we were always just amazed
Speaker 1: by it to begin with, but now that I understand it,
Speaker 1: I feel even more amazed by it. I'm I'm proud
Speaker 1: of humanity for having come up with this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty amazing that. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the history of it and everything in a sect, but
Speaker 1: it's amazing that human beings uh got together with their
Speaker 1: cohorts and said, you know what we can do. The
Speaker 1: human body is made up of sixty six water, So
Speaker 1: let's figure out how to use magnetic fields and radio
Speaker 1: waves to measure that water, uh and the tissues of
Speaker 1: our body, and then we can map it and then
Speaker 1: we can image it. Right. And so those initial people
Speaker 1: who said that were burned at the steak because it
Speaker 1: was like the sixteenth century still. But when a few
Speaker 1: more hundred years passed, a few new people came onto
Speaker 1: the scene, and they encountered a completely different environment um,
Speaker 1: one that was kind of nurturing of science and advancement
Speaker 1: in the idea that you could see inside the human
Speaker 1: body without cutting it open. And the person who won
Speaker 1: what actually kind of interestingly turned out to be a
Speaker 1: race among researchers who were um all trying to sell
Speaker 1: solve the same problem at the same time. Independently was
Speaker 1: a guy named Dr Raymond Domadian or damedian Um, and
Speaker 1: he is credited as the first person to invent the
Speaker 1: fully functional human sized m R. But he's one of
Speaker 1: typically at least three people who are credited with with
Speaker 1: inventing the m R I, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when he got in there in July of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven and nothing really happened, and I think
Speaker 1: one of his colleagues said, hey, maybe you're too big
Speaker 1: for this thing. They put in a smaller person and
Speaker 1: it worked for the first time. It took about five
Speaker 1: hours to get an image. Uh. They named the thing Indomitable,
Speaker 1: and if you look up pictures, it's in the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: now of Indomitable. You know. It's it's one of these
Speaker 1: things that looks like a bare bones version of what
Speaker 1: it ended up looking like. It's like the the MRI
Speaker 1: I version of a wicker wheelchair. All be sort of
Speaker 1: did you you didn't see a picture? No, because I
Speaker 1: suspected as much. I didn't want it to haunt my dreams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it looks sort of like this big donut.
Speaker 1: I think the difference in this one is that it
Speaker 1: shows and it may I'm not sure if it's doctor
Speaker 1: Demadian in the photo or not, but they're actually wearing
Speaker 1: some coils around their body. Um, but there is a
Speaker 1: larger donut as well. Do they look like they're on
Speaker 1: craft work tour? Sort of? Sort of? So they were
Speaker 1: to other people. Demandian was the first one. I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we settled on a pronunciation, by the way, um,
Speaker 1: and he was the first one to cross the finish line.
Speaker 1: But there were the two others who were working on
Speaker 1: that same problem, Paul Lauderbergh and Sir Peter Mansfield. And
Speaker 1: like I was saying, they were all working independently on
Speaker 1: this problem. This thing that had been demonstrated in called
Speaker 1: nuclear magnetic residence, which which is that you can make
Speaker 1: Adams do really peculiar things when you put them in
Speaker 1: the presence of um, a magnetic field. If it's strong enough,
Speaker 1: it kind of snaps them all into attention. Uh. They
Speaker 1: click their heels and they say, yes, sir, I'll get
Speaker 1: that pette for you immediately. And um, that's not how
Speaker 1: they normally behave. And so these guys Demardian, Lauderboro, and
Speaker 1: Mansfield all were like, somehow, some way, there's a way
Speaker 1: to use this, to to use this nuclear magnetic residence
Speaker 1: to look inside of the body. And that's what they
Speaker 1: said about try to do. Yeah, and pretty early on
Speaker 1: they cut the word nuclear out of it and went
Speaker 1: with imaging. So m R. I was born. I think
Speaker 1: it wasn't probably a great time, and maybe it's never
Speaker 1: a great time to throw the word nuclear into anything. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, every everything from nuclear power to nuclear bombs
Speaker 1: have a bad rap quite frankly. Yeah, it gets even
Speaker 1: worse if you pronounce any nu oh man. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there was someone else we do need to shout out,
Speaker 1: a physicist by the name of uh cig Ogawa or Ogawa.
Speaker 1: How would you pronounce that it's any value? See in
Speaker 1: Japan just screams to be pronounced independently. Oh really they
Speaker 1: love so C C G E SAG. That's what I
Speaker 1: would go with. Okay, I'm serious, I really think you know,
Speaker 1: I believe it just sounded funny. Um. And so what happened,
Speaker 1: Uh So while we're shouting this person out is because
Speaker 1: they discovered the if you have oxygen poor hemoglobin, it's
Speaker 1: gonna react differently by this magnetic field that's created in
Speaker 1: the m r I machine than really good oxygen rich hemoglobin,
Speaker 1: and that that contrast, you could basically eventually end up
Speaker 1: seeing blood flow, like imaging blood flow. Yeah, because with
Speaker 1: Demai and his cohort were doing, we're imaging tissues inside
Speaker 1: of the body. Um Ogawa said, well, actually you can
Speaker 1: track the flow of blood in those tissues as well.
Speaker 1: Laid the groundwork for what became f m r I
Speaker 1: functional MRI I, and then also more importantly magnetic resonance
Speaker 1: and geography, which is basically tracking blood flow in blood
Speaker 1: vessels in real time. Basically, Yeah, and all this stuff
Speaker 1: was revolutionary because a, um, you really nail it on
Speaker 1: the head earlier, like you don't have to cut people
Speaker 1: open anymore to see this stuff. Um. We we've had
Speaker 1: X rays for a long time and they're great if
Speaker 1: you want to look at certain things like your your
Speaker 1: bones and see if you've got a cracked rib or something.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to soft tissue, X rays were useless.
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about CT can CT
Speaker 1: scans and why they're awesome in their own way. But
Speaker 1: not still not as I guess functional as an m
Speaker 1: r I. Well plus CT scans. I didn't realize this.
Speaker 1: Ct s computed tomography. They use X rays as well,
Speaker 1: so you're still getting that dose of radiation from a
Speaker 1: CT scan too, all right. So all that is just
Speaker 1: to lead up to say that the m R I
Speaker 1: just beats them all those other machines stink. It truly
Speaker 1: earns his nickname the Wonder Machine. Um boy, I feel
Speaker 1: like like we should take a break before diving into
Speaker 1: this thing, should we? I'm thinking, hold on, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this is a good spot for a break. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, so we're back and uh, a
Speaker 1: bit of an early break, but that's because we're about
Speaker 1: to get in the weeds with the actual nuts and bolts. Ironically,
Speaker 1: probably doesn't have any nuts and bolts. Oh that's a
Speaker 1: good point. It's probably probably what heavy duty plastic ribbons.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It might just be like large solid
Speaker 1: injection molded pieces. That's a good question. We should have
Speaker 1: learned that. But anyway, the metaphorical nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: this thing, Uh, if you've ever seen when they look
Speaker 1: like a big doughnut, you sit on a a little
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like a mortuary tray and you
Speaker 1: get slid in through this hole in this tube. It's
Speaker 1: only about is in diameter. So they're not great if
Speaker 1: you are claustrophobic. But they do make machines that aren't
Speaker 1: quite They don't give you quite what you want with
Speaker 1: a closed system, but they're a little more opened up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I got the impression that they're starting to really
Speaker 1: kind of revisit those because you can't produce quite as
Speaker 1: as great a magnetic field is powerful a magnetic field
Speaker 1: with an open system, But I think they're starting to
Speaker 1: figure out you don't necessarily need the most powerful magnetic field,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned for that in ten years. But um,
Speaker 1: the most important part of the whole m r I
Speaker 1: machine obviously is the magnet. That's what produces the magic.
Speaker 1: Is this magnetic field that so that doughnut, that elongated
Speaker 1: doughnut that you're slid into in the tube, that is
Speaker 1: the magnet basically, And it's not like a magnet like
Speaker 1: you'd put on your fridge. It would suck your fridge
Speaker 1: into what amounts to a black hole basically, if you
Speaker 1: got your fridge anywhere near this thing. It's a different
Speaker 1: kind of magnet. It's a super conducting magnet made up
Speaker 1: of coils, probably copper coils that an electrical current is
Speaker 1: run through. And when you run an electrical current through
Speaker 1: a coiled um set of metal, you can produce a
Speaker 1: magnetic field that's great, like fantastic. But to produce the
Speaker 1: kinds of like the powerful magnetic fields that they're producing
Speaker 1: in an m r I, you actually need a super
Speaker 1: conducting magnet, and that's just a whole another level. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to create a very large
Speaker 1: and stable field, and we're talking, I think they measure
Speaker 1: magnets and is it or gauze. I think goss g
Speaker 1: A U S S so goss is the measurement. One
Speaker 1: tesla is ten thousand goths. So if you're looking at
Speaker 1: just a regular fly by night MRI I wonder machine,
Speaker 1: you're looking at about one point five roughly one point
Speaker 1: five tesla, or about fifteen thousand goths as far as
Speaker 1: the magnetic field goes. And that's um compared to a
Speaker 1: point five for the magnetic field of planet Earth. You're
Speaker 1: not point five tesla point five goths thousands, it's like
Speaker 1: fifty sixty thousand times more if you're an average machine.
Speaker 1: But they even make him go all the way up
Speaker 1: to ten tesla, Yeah, which is what a hundred thousand goths. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the more goss, the more uh, the prettier machine
Speaker 1: is just getting the prettier pictures are. Yeah. Another thing
Speaker 1: that I saw though, is that they're figuring out that
Speaker 1: when you get past a certain tesla of magnetic field,
Speaker 1: it does matter, and that it actually gets worse because
Speaker 1: you're picking up so much detail that you can't tell
Speaker 1: a bit from a bob basically, and if you're a
Speaker 1: radiologist using terms like bits and bobs, you need to
Speaker 1: get out of the field and make room for somebody
Speaker 1: who takes the job a little more seriously. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that also goes hand in hand with
Speaker 1: the open machines and them saying like, we don't need
Speaker 1: as much goss as we thought we did. I think
Speaker 1: it does. I think they're figuring out ways to get
Speaker 1: better resolution off lower power, because not only is it
Speaker 1: really expensive, I think it's a new machine costs about
Speaker 1: a million dollars per tesla it produces. So if you've
Speaker 1: got a ten ten tesla machine, which really at this point,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, is just showing off as a
Speaker 1: medical center. Um, you just spent ten million dollars on
Speaker 1: this one m r I machine in your medical center. Um.
Speaker 1: But that also it costs a lot of money to
Speaker 1: run one of these things because to keep this stable
Speaker 1: magnetic field going, you gotta run a lot of electricity
Speaker 1: through it. And that's where the super conductivity comes in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you want two rids. I mean you've got
Speaker 1: to have like zero resistance running through those wires. And
Speaker 1: they do this and I remember we talked about this
Speaker 1: in our Are we running out of Helium? I can't
Speaker 1: abo what it was called about. We did an episode
Speaker 1: on the fact that helium um was in short supply.
Speaker 1: And one of the downsides of this, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: birthday balloons, was the fact that they use helium liquid
Speaker 1: helium to uh to make these copper coils super conductive
Speaker 1: and I think at the order of about four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two degrees below zero. So without that helium,
Speaker 1: they don't know if they're looking at alternatives or if
Speaker 1: there's a Plan B or not, but they need helium. Well,
Speaker 1: remember in our Macy's Thanksgiving day preative. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if it made it in there or not, but
Speaker 1: they they found like a helium supply that basically like
Speaker 1: and Macy's bought it that basically like expanded our supply
Speaker 1: of helium by some infinite amounts. So we're like flush
Speaker 1: with helium. That's true. I remember that. So so I
Speaker 1: think we're okay. So we can just the cam was
Speaker 1: kicked down the road, Chuck. We don't need to worry
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, we don't need a plan for the future,
Speaker 1: like Y two K right, it's exactly right. Nice, nice
Speaker 1: call out. All right, So you've got your big magnet um.
Speaker 1: You you also have gradient magnets. You have three gradient magnets,
Speaker 1: and those are not nearly as on the magnitude of
Speaker 1: that the big daddy. These are about one eighty to
Speaker 1: two seventy GAUSS. And your main magnet is what's creating
Speaker 1: that main magnetic field that we're gonna go over in
Speaker 1: detail in the second, the real stable one. But the
Speaker 1: other magnets create the variable field, which you know, that's
Speaker 1: what you need to run it um against the other
Speaker 1: one to make those images happen. Yeah, that's the that's
Speaker 1: basically what you use, like to direct the UM beam
Speaker 1: essentially as it were like if you need a shoulder
Speaker 1: looked at, it would be then a different location than
Speaker 1: your knee. Yeah yeah, And you would say, well, actually
Speaker 1: I needed a little to the left, and you would
Speaker 1: use these gradient magnets to move the magnetic field. And
Speaker 1: what you're really moving from what I understand with the
Speaker 1: gradient magnets is a radio free quency pulse. And this
Speaker 1: is this is where things this is where it all
Speaker 1: comes together. You're you're using three different things. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got the magnet and when you when you put um hydrogen,
Speaker 1: when you put a body, well, we're not quite there yet,
Speaker 1: I'll oh you want me to do it now? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it certainly was anticipation on my part. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I won't let you down, Chuck. So when
Speaker 1: you go into the m R I bore and you
Speaker 1: enter this magnetic field the tube, I don't think we've
Speaker 1: mentioned that true. Um, When you go in the tube
Speaker 1: and you enter the magnetic field, the atoms in your
Speaker 1: body UM have what's called the magnetic moment, which means
Speaker 1: that they respond to very strong magnetic fields by abandoning
Speaker 1: their kind of random spin along their access their procession
Speaker 1: and snapping in line along the polar ends of the
Speaker 1: magnetic field. And in the m r I that that's
Speaker 1: running lengthwise down the middle. So if you're laying on
Speaker 1: your back in an m R I tube, the magnetic
Speaker 1: field is going from your feet to your head, and
Speaker 1: that magnetic field causes the atoms in your body or
Speaker 1: the particles in your body that make up atoms, to
Speaker 1: snap into line with that polarity. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have protons in this case, as far as the
Speaker 1: m R is concerned, hydrogen protons um suddenly going from
Speaker 1: random spins to all facing your feet are all spinning
Speaker 1: towards your head, one or the other, but technically along
Speaker 1: the same line. Yeah, So some of those are and
Speaker 1: I think in the biz they call it aligning parallel
Speaker 1: or anti parallel, and they sort of cancel each other out,
Speaker 1: but there's always going to be more parallel aligned hydrogen atoms,
Speaker 1: and those are the ones that uh, we're using to
Speaker 1: measure the m R I basically, like everything else, just
Speaker 1: sort of can't as each other out, and those leftover
Speaker 1: ones and it sounds, you know, there's there's so many
Speaker 1: that you can have the cancelation of many and it
Speaker 1: still works. So I only saw this in the House
Speaker 1: to Works article. Everywhere else I saw basically made no
Speaker 1: mention of the fact that, like whether they were aligned
Speaker 1: towards your feet or towards your head, like that that mattered,
Speaker 1: and that you were focusing on the ones that hadn't aligned,
Speaker 1: like I only saw it in this article. Oh you did, okay?
Speaker 1: So then kids Science, what is what? They were all
Speaker 1: based off this House of Works article? No? No, you
Speaker 1: could tell they were original? What is I was just teasing,
Speaker 1: you know, I love kids science websites. Chuck which when
Speaker 1: this one was? But it was a good one. Um, okay.
Speaker 1: So regardless of what which adams you're focusing on, either
Speaker 1: the ones that are polarized from along the magnetic field
Speaker 1: are the ones that haven't been polarized. That's that polarity
Speaker 1: is being created by the main magnet, the superconducting magnet
Speaker 1: that has basically zero resistance because it's bathed in liquid
Speaker 1: helium and cool to just astounding temperatures. Right now, when
Speaker 1: you bring in the radio frequency pulse, which is oscillating,
Speaker 1: it's turning on and off very very quickly. What what
Speaker 1: was discovered over the last century or so before m
Speaker 1: RIS wherever even developed. But what forms the basis of
Speaker 1: the principle that mrs operate on is that if you
Speaker 1: apply a radio frequency to a bunch of um of
Speaker 1: hydrogen protons undergoing their magnetic moment, you can actually adjust
Speaker 1: the way that they're aligned. You're kind of like pushing
Speaker 1: or pulling them out of alignment, and they're kind of
Speaker 1: struggling against it, but you can you can overcome that
Speaker 1: with the radio frequency pulse. And so that's basically step
Speaker 1: one of the m R I is getting them knocked
Speaker 1: out of that polarity so that you can turn that
Speaker 1: off and basically gauge and measure them as they snap
Speaker 1: back into that polarity. Yeah, and that radio frequency pulse
Speaker 1: it has to be the same frequency of those spinning protons,
Speaker 1: so if not, they're not going to be in resonance.
Speaker 1: That's where the word resonance comes from. If they have
Speaker 1: that same frequency, they can exchange energy with one another
Speaker 1: and they're on resonance with one another, and when they
Speaker 1: turn it on and off, like you said, there's a
Speaker 1: moment where they snap back into snap back to attention essentially,
Speaker 1: and it takes a little bit of time and a
Speaker 1: little bit of energy, and that energy is what they're
Speaker 1: basically trying to measure, like that, that movement. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: because the protons, the hydrogen protons. The reason they selected
Speaker 1: hydrogen protons is because it's so abundant throughout the body. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's far and away the most abundant atom in the
Speaker 1: body is hydrogen. Um. That that you're going to find
Speaker 1: in every bit, every every nook and cranny of your body.
Speaker 1: That's another term radiologist should stay away from, but we
Speaker 1: can use it. The nooks and crannies of your body
Speaker 1: all are filled with hydrogen protons. So um, they know
Speaker 1: that a hydrogen proton and like fat, tissue is going
Speaker 1: to snap back into place and then release energy at
Speaker 1: a slightly different frequency and at a slightly different rate
Speaker 1: than the hydrogen protons making up water in the body
Speaker 1: or bone in the body or you know, your hair
Speaker 1: on your shoulders or whatever. All all of this stuff
Speaker 1: is going to just be just slightly different. And they
Speaker 1: basically know what the data that comes back, what it's
Speaker 1: telling them is, Oh, hey, i'm a I'm a fat
Speaker 1: I'm in a bunch of fat over here. I'm into
Speaker 1: water over here, I'm shoulder hair over here. And this
Speaker 1: is the data that gets transmitted to the computer that's
Speaker 1: measured by the computer that's running the MR. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that energy burst that it emits, it's at a very
Speaker 1: specific frequency named the lar More frequency after an Irish
Speaker 1: physicist named Sir Joseph Larmore. He discovered this all the
Speaker 1: way back in and you will never need to know
Speaker 1: this information, but just in case you want to know,
Speaker 1: the lar More frequency for hydrogen in this case is
Speaker 1: forty two point five eight mega hurts per tesla of
Speaker 1: magnetic force. That's a I don't even know if that's
Speaker 1: like a cocktail that that's not even a Jeopardy question.
Speaker 1: That's a dark little pet you keep in your pocket
Speaker 1: that you pull out and like stroke every once in
Speaker 1: a while. Just reassure yourself that you're very smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like LaVar Burton should be. LaVar Burton would ask that
Speaker 1: question on Jeopardy and Ken Jennings would say, you gotta
Speaker 1: be kidding me. Nobody cares love, so you're you're pulling
Speaker 1: for LaVar. He's not gonna make it. I mean the
Speaker 1: other guy that somehow the executive producer of the show
Speaker 1: is of naming himself. Yeah, I mean he said that
Speaker 1: he didn't make the call, but us, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: he I thought LaVar Burton was great and would be
Speaker 1: great for that show. I'm part of team George Stefanopolis.
Speaker 1: Did he guess yeah? Or Aaron Rodgers. He did a
Speaker 1: good job. I didn't see that one, but he still
Speaker 1: got more football to play. I'm with you, though, I
Speaker 1: think LaVar Burton would be wonderful, and from what I read,
Speaker 1: he really wants it too. So I just don't get it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people are mad already, so I'm
Speaker 1: not so so the decision has been made. It's the
Speaker 1: executive producer. Now. They said that they're in the final negotiations.
Speaker 1: And you know, now there are some people pointing to
Speaker 1: his past, because this guy's a experienced game show executive producer,
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, when you were on the Prices, right,
Speaker 1: you did some not so great things, and so we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens. I don't know, what a dusty old crotch. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We'll see what happens. Let's bring humility back, everybody.
Speaker 1: Just this and the small doses is fine. That's right.
Speaker 1: And this has been game show, so Chuck and Josh
Speaker 1: and speaking of go listen to our live game shows
Speaker 1: episode I think from Denver. That was really good. Uh
Speaker 1: do we do one on game shows? Oh? My, yes
Speaker 1: we did. That's a good one. All right. So where
Speaker 1: are we? We are at the lar more frequency. I
Speaker 1: guess the one thing we need to mention to you
Speaker 1: talked earlier about the gradient magnets UM being applied to
Speaker 1: very specific parts of the body. In the biz, they
Speaker 1: call those areas slices. So you can just get us
Speaker 1: if they if you hear someone and if you're going
Speaker 1: to get an m R and you're nervous and they
Speaker 1: say get a slice of the shoulder. There, you're not
Speaker 1: getting a slice. The whole point is that of an
Speaker 1: m R is that you don't get sliced. Yes. And
Speaker 1: one of the other advantages is that because you can
Speaker 1: move these gradient magnets all over the place at all
Speaker 1: different planes UM, you can get all sorts of different
Speaker 1: views of the same area top, bottom, side, underside, all
Speaker 1: the sides. And that's a huge, huge advantage that m
Speaker 1: R I offers again without spilling a single drop of blood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess. The final piece of the puzzle here
Speaker 1: is this is all well and good that this little
Speaker 1: magic machine works like this, but you still have to
Speaker 1: be able to have a doctor look at a picture
Speaker 1: of this stuff. The imaging part of m R I
Speaker 1: is just as important as the rest, because that's what
Speaker 1: they need to assess your situation. And they do this
Speaker 1: through the magic of computers and math. And I think
Speaker 1: that's it. That's that right. We don't have to go
Speaker 1: anymore into it than that. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't fully understand it to you. It makes it the
Speaker 1: image and turns it to a mathematical formula. Fifty people
Speaker 1: on the planet who fully understand how happens. All I
Speaker 1: know is there's a really expensive computer attached, and it's
Speaker 1: the one that converts all that data into a two
Speaker 1: D or three D image. That's all you need to know, really, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And then it ends up in the hands of a
Speaker 1: radiologist who basically says, oh, it's this, Oh it's a
Speaker 1: donkey that kind of thing, or increasingly in the hands
Speaker 1: of AI, which has gotten really really good at reading
Speaker 1: radiological charts, including m R I, is to look for
Speaker 1: weird anomalies because one of the great advantages of an
Speaker 1: m r I is those images that produces um really
Speaker 1: can resolve water in the body. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that's important is because when you start to suffer disease,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the almost universal symptoms of
Speaker 1: any kind of disease, malady, or disorder in the human
Speaker 1: body is an increase in the amount of water. The
Speaker 1: thing is is like, the m r I is going
Speaker 1: to show you that, but you or I can't see that.
Speaker 1: You got to go to school for many, many years
Speaker 1: and become a radiologists say that's that's just a little
Speaker 1: fluid build up, or oh that's a tumor. It's tough
Speaker 1: to distinguish. It needs a human or again an AI
Speaker 1: to make that distinction. But the m r I is
Speaker 1: going to give you the picture that will show you
Speaker 1: that thing that a radiologist could look at and say
Speaker 1: that's water, that's a tumor. That's right, pretty neat stuff.
Speaker 1: Like we said all along the Wonder Machine, that's right.
Speaker 1: And that feels like a great time for break number two.
Speaker 1: And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about our fm r I. Shame that I feel that
Speaker 1: you're not even aware of Oh gosh, right after that,
Speaker 1: prepare for our shame, all right, Chuck? Why should we
Speaker 1: be ashamed? Because I think I I remember things differently
Speaker 1: than you do. That's what I think it is. So
Speaker 1: here's the deal with f m R I functioning m
Speaker 1: r I s. They track blood flow and what they've
Speaker 1: long done in UH psychiatry and neurology since this has
Speaker 1: been invented, and we've talked about this a lot on
Speaker 1: the podcast. It they will do an f m R
Speaker 1: I of your brain and they will show you pictures
Speaker 1: of certain things or have you react to certain stimuli,
Speaker 1: can be an object or a word that they say
Speaker 1: out loud or whatever, and they see where that blood
Speaker 1: flow is going in the brain with the idea of like, well, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're getting that fresh blood right here in this
Speaker 1: part of the brain, that means that that's the part
Speaker 1: of your brain that is reacting to the stimulus. And
Speaker 1: and the more I read about it, the more it
Speaker 1: seemed like that's a pretty good guess. And we don't
Speaker 1: really know what's going on with the neurons. This is
Speaker 1: just seeing what's lighting up. And I think where I
Speaker 1: feel bad as many many times over the years we've said,
Speaker 1: you know, and then they showed him a picture of
Speaker 1: this and about a being about a boom. This part
Speaker 1: starts lighting up, so case closed, and it's not as
Speaker 1: like kind of bulletproof as that I see. This is
Speaker 1: where I remember differently. We've trashed that idea multiple times
Speaker 1: over there. Did yeah, okay, totally. I remember specifically talking
Speaker 1: about one study where a guy put like a dead
Speaker 1: salmon in an m r I and then wrote a
Speaker 1: paper about what it must have been experiencing because some
Speaker 1: vauxells showed lit up. Really, so we made good as
Speaker 1: we went along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, okay, totally. We
Speaker 1: sniffed that stuff out. We've been sniffing that stuff off
Speaker 1: the case since oh eight, oh man, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I don't feel bad anymore, No, don't, don't. We definitely
Speaker 1: trashed that over the years, and and it's it's worth
Speaker 1: being trashed in that somebody figured out, like, you can
Speaker 1: use this to a certain degree and yes, you can see,
Speaker 1: oh this region's lighting up. But what they quickly found
Speaker 1: is that a region of the brain has hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands or countless numbers of neurons involved in that area,
Speaker 1: and they're not all just doing the same thing, they're
Speaker 1: all performing different functions, they're all connected in different ways.
Speaker 1: And until we can get our resolution down on basically
Speaker 1: the individual neural level, the point, there's zero point almost
Speaker 1: in putting someone in an fMRI I um and and
Speaker 1: showing them pictures of of whatever and seeing how they're
Speaker 1: stimulated it, because it's all just guesswork somebody. Compared to
Speaker 1: to phrenology modern phrenology, you're just extrapolating huge things from
Speaker 1: very limited findings. And so we've figured that out very
Speaker 1: early on. Like that's been a long standing criticism, and
Speaker 1: we we definitely dialed into that better than everything about
Speaker 1: our efforts. I'm I'm so glad, thank you for correcting that.
Speaker 1: Although one good thing about f m r I is
Speaker 1: is that and giography where you can track blood flow
Speaker 1: outside of the brain and extrapolated beyond you know, social
Speaker 1: psychology studies. Yeah, if if a social psychology study could
Speaker 1: even get enough funding to pay for an m r
Speaker 1: I rental. We we had some social psychologists and husbands
Speaker 1: and wives of social psychologists the right end, and they
Speaker 1: were kind of mad at it at you. I think
Speaker 1: they're mad again. Uh, you know you should not be
Speaker 1: mad at are the inventors of the m r I
Speaker 1: because these things are really pretty safe. Um, you are
Speaker 1: not being exposed to radiation, and that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: You There have been not many incidences of mishaps with
Speaker 1: an m r I machine. One of the dangers of
Speaker 1: an m r I is, obviously, you know with the
Speaker 1: super magnet is going to be metal. If you've ever
Speaker 1: had one, they're gonna ask you and ask you several
Speaker 1: more times. If you have any metal on your body.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna go in there with the ear rings.
Speaker 1: You're not going to go in there with even certain
Speaker 1: kinds of makeup has metal in it. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: have a pacemaker or aneurism clips in your brain, or
Speaker 1: if you're like me, dental implants, you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: talk to them about that. And uh, because some of
Speaker 1: that stuff is still okay. It's not like it will
Speaker 1: rip a pacemaker out of your chest, because they're smarter
Speaker 1: than that now. But if you have an old pacemaker,
Speaker 1: that might be a problem, right Yeah, And even a
Speaker 1: new pacemaker can malfunction in the presence of a really
Speaker 1: strong madnake field. It won't be ripped from your chest
Speaker 1: but it's it might stop working, and that's not good.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want that to happen. But there
Speaker 1: are like things like if you have like metal anywhere
Speaker 1: on you, it will be pulled out of your pocket.
Speaker 1: Your pocket might be pulled right off of your pants basically,
Speaker 1: um depending on whether it's one of those externally sewed
Speaker 1: pock gets or an internal probably have a gown on anyway, sure,
Speaker 1: but you could just be some schmo who likes the
Speaker 1: stand around mr I rooms and gained entry. One of
Speaker 1: the big problems is the actual medical equipment themselves. There's
Speaker 1: medical equipment that is that is has been developed to
Speaker 1: be used in an mri I room, and then there's
Speaker 1: medical equipment that accidentally finds its way into an m
Speaker 1: r I room and ends up getting sucked violently into
Speaker 1: the bore, and that is really dangerous. There's there's actually
Speaker 1: some astounding pictures on the internet. If you search mri
Speaker 1: I catastrophe of there's there's one, and I can't tell
Speaker 1: if it's real or not. There's a wheelchair that's sucked
Speaker 1: into the boar with feet sticking out from under it.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a corroborating story, but people have died
Speaker 1: from being hit by objects or pinned to the boar
Speaker 1: between a metal object and the boar. UM. And it's
Speaker 1: very very rare. It's very infrequent because people running MORI
Speaker 1: ees tend to know what to look for and what
Speaker 1: questions to ask and what to look out for. But
Speaker 1: it has happened, and when it happens, it's got to
Speaker 1: be one of the most violent things you could ever Yeah,
Speaker 1: about twenty years ago there was a boy who was
Speaker 1: killed when an oxygen tank was pulled into the bore.
Speaker 1: But like you said, that's that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that makes the news of the world over because it's
Speaker 1: so rare. I think every year there are millions and
Speaker 1: millions of m r I scans in the United States alone,
Speaker 1: and the FDA gets about three hundred adverse event reports annually,
Speaker 1: and most of these are like my skin burned, some
Speaker 1: because it got really hot. Um. Because I don't think
Speaker 1: we mentioned like the m r I s I've had
Speaker 1: have been very brief, just a few minutes. Um. You
Speaker 1: can be in there for like an hour or an
Speaker 1: hour and a half and you have to lay completely still.
Speaker 1: And this the sound that they make is just it's unnerving.
Speaker 1: It's this it's like this digital clanging and there are
Speaker 1: clacksons and buzzers and it's just not I remember I
Speaker 1: talked about it years ago on the show when I
Speaker 1: had my first one. Um, it's it's not a relaxing
Speaker 1: scene at all. It's a little unnerving, even though you
Speaker 1: know it's safe just because of the noise. So um
Speaker 1: but but it's it is safe, like accidents usually don't happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that noise, I forgot you had one before. From what
Speaker 1: I understand, that noise is relative to the the tesla's
Speaker 1: that the made magnet puts out because when you put
Speaker 1: the UM I guess maybe the gradient magnets in there,
Speaker 1: they respond to that made magnet and that's what produces
Speaker 1: that hammering or clacking sound or whatever. And it can
Speaker 1: it can get really loud and give you tonitis or
Speaker 1: hearing loss, even if they don't give you. Um, you
Speaker 1: know your mouffs. Have you still never had one? No?
Speaker 1: Let me just drack on wood there? How did yours
Speaker 1: turn out? Pretty great? Yeah? I can't even remember what
Speaker 1: the first one was for, to be honest, it was
Speaker 1: so many years ago. Uh, And then I had one
Speaker 1: more recently, Uh, for my for my gut. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for my g I. They were looking at my g
Speaker 1: I flow, not flow for stuff you're colon blow. They
Speaker 1: were looking for diverticula specifically, And so I was in
Speaker 1: an m r A machine and that didn't take very long.
Speaker 1: And I think they used die for that one. That's
Speaker 1: another thing that we didn't mention is I don't think
Speaker 1: they always used die as a contrast, but sometimes they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about a third of them they used die. And the
Speaker 1: dye seems to be from what I can tell, the
Speaker 1: the the only truly questionable part about the m R
Speaker 1: I experience, because when you come out of that magnetic field,
Speaker 1: your adams all go back to normal the way they were,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's no long term effects. But apparently
Speaker 1: the die they use is um made of gandolinium gatolinium,
Speaker 1: which is a metallic element, and they collate it so
Speaker 1: that your body doesn't like it doesn't stick around your
Speaker 1: body actually pee it out, gets processed through your kidneys.
Speaker 1: In very rare instances, some people hang onto it and
Speaker 1: it can cause a little bit of kidney damage, but
Speaker 1: far and away almost everybody passes it. It seems to be.
Speaker 1: The question is using die when you give an m
Speaker 1: r I to a woman who's pregnant, because the woman
Speaker 1: will pee it out, but the little baby in uterus
Speaker 1: or in utero um recycles the stuff that comes in there,
Speaker 1: so it will just be ingesting and peeing and ingesting
Speaker 1: and peeing that gatollinium until it's born. Um, and then
Speaker 1: that's not really good for the old kidneys. So apparently, um,
Speaker 1: they FDA recommends that you air on the side of
Speaker 1: the mother's health, like like it's a if it's a UM,
Speaker 1: like a medical emergency, and the that the that requires
Speaker 1: an mr for the mom, including die. That the FDA
Speaker 1: and apparently the a m A would say just go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it, uh and roll the dice. But
Speaker 1: if it's not a medical emergency and the woman has
Speaker 1: to get an m r I, they would probably avoid
Speaker 1: using the diet. Yeah. The die was Yeah, the die was. Um.
Speaker 1: That was kind of one of the more interesting parts
Speaker 1: because you can feel it cold running through your body. Wow,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. And I got a taste in
Speaker 1: my mouth, like this kind of funky taste. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: really amazing. Yeah, which is always a little weird. Um,
Speaker 1: you mentioned pregnant women though, but kids is another thing.
Speaker 1: Uh m R eyes. I think in nine of m
Speaker 1: R eyes go to fully grown adults, and kids present
Speaker 1: a problem because kids are fidgety obviously, and they're hard
Speaker 1: to keep still, and you've got to start over if
Speaker 1: you want to get a good picture. So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of been tough, and a lot of times they
Speaker 1: have to um aneste size a child to put them
Speaker 1: in an MRI machine, which you know, anytime you're going
Speaker 1: into anesthesia there's a risk there and people don't like
Speaker 1: doing that in general if you don't have to. So
Speaker 1: there are some really smart people working on that. I
Speaker 1: think a few years ago there was an article about
Speaker 1: a Stanford pediatric radiologist name Schreus Vasa na Vasana Walla,
Speaker 1: and he was working on basically kind of making Taylor
Speaker 1: made m R I machines for kids that are smaller
Speaker 1: and a little more open and don't have these huge
Speaker 1: bulky coils for their little bodies. That's amazing. What a
Speaker 1: great thing to do with your time, you know, I agreed.
Speaker 1: I mean, or you could just get on the podcast
Speaker 1: and run your mouth. You're right, I think that's a
Speaker 1: less good thing. To do with your time. But regardless,
Speaker 1: I think the m R I machine is still maybe
Speaker 1: even more than ever the wonder machine. Chuck, I agree,
Speaker 1: And it's cool to know how it works. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you heard this and go in to
Speaker 1: get an m R I, it might arm you with
Speaker 1: a little knowledge. You can go in there and talk
Speaker 1: about what's the what was that number again? The frequency
Speaker 1: forty two point five eight meg It hurts per tesla
Speaker 1: yea of magnetic field applied. Just go in there start
Speaker 1: throwing that around while you have your smartphone in your pocket.
Speaker 1: That's right. Hopefully the least if you're about to get
Speaker 1: an m R I, this may do you a little
Speaker 1: less nervous about it, agreed. Uh. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about m R EYES, just do a
Speaker 1: little research or maybe go get one done. Go hit
Speaker 1: up your doctor and say how about an m R I.
Speaker 1: Let's check it out, and they'll say okay, hop in
Speaker 1: I could use the money. Uh. And since I said
Speaker 1: I could use the money, obviously it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. Before I read this one, I do want
Speaker 1: to shout out. We've got quite a few emails on
Speaker 1: people who have the weird compulsion to equal out the
Speaker 1: crack stepping defeat. Like, I was kind of surprised at
Speaker 1: how many people have that same thing going on. And uh,
Speaker 1: other people I think I read one of them. Uh
Speaker 1: that said he also like to chew and equal on
Speaker 1: both sides of his mouth. Quite a few people also
Speaker 1: had that, which I don't have. But it's nice to
Speaker 1: know that US crack steppers are. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: feel united. Yeah, there's a there's a whole cadre of
Speaker 1: you guys out there. It turns out, Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take over the world one day. I know. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this one from Rodney about reverse osmosis. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you get did a really nice job on reverse osmosis. Uh.
Speaker 1: It can indeed solve the drinking water problem worldwide, as
Speaker 1: well as help solve some of the environmental problems in
Speaker 1: our industrial processes. You should also do a program on electrolytics.
Speaker 1: This technology can take salt and convert it to disinfectants
Speaker 1: that are used to treat water and kill microorganisms that
Speaker 1: make people sick. Nine thousand people die every day from
Speaker 1: water borne disease worldwide. Uh. And this this guy, Rodney
Speaker 1: has a couple of companies that deal with this, so
Speaker 1: offered us up some technical assistance if we wanted to
Speaker 1: do something on that nice, very nice, Thanks a lot, Rodney.
Speaker 1: Appreciate that UM offer, and congratulations to you for saving
Speaker 1: the world. Agreed. UM. If you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us like Rodney did, because you're saving the
Speaker 1: world or because you UM just want to say hi,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. We were fine either way. You can
Speaker 1: get in touch with us by sending an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.