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Speaker 1: Emily, I have a very important and very difficult challenge

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Speaker 1: for you today.

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Speaker 2: I'm ready.

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Speaker 1: I am going to give you a word and you

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Speaker 1: have to tell me. You have to distinguish whether this

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Speaker 1: is a type of plastic or a spell from the

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Speaker 1: Harry Potter universe. Okay, are you ready?

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Speaker 3: I'm actually I know a lot about Harry Potter, so

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Speaker 3: I think I'm going to be really good at this.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but do you know a lot about plastics. Let's

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Speaker 1: find out.

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Speaker 2: Less that I know about Harry Potter. But I'm optimistic.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's try it first. One Avi Foor's plastic incorrect.

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Speaker 1: That is a Harry Potter spell that transforms objects into birds.

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Speaker 1: What let's try on evalka spell? Sorry. That is a

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Speaker 1: type of plastic ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymers that's used in

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Speaker 1: food and medical packaging. How about loupital That is a

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Speaker 1: spell that is a plastic thermoplastic. It's used in automotive, electronic,

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Speaker 1: and medical devices. You're not doing too well, but you're

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Speaker 1: gonna pull it out here. Langlock spell. That is a spell?

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Speaker 4: Yes, nice, it is a jinx that makes you unable

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Speaker 4: to speak langlock okay, grillamid plastic very good, a high

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Speaker 4: performance nylon used in sporting goods.

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Speaker 1: Two more Vectra plastic awesome liquid crystal polymer for thin

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Speaker 1: walled electronics and aerospace applications. And lastly Ferula plastic. That

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Speaker 1: is a spell. It is a bandaging charm if you

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Speaker 1: are wounded. Point being there's a lot of plastics out there.

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Speaker 3: I thought your point was going to be I'm terrible

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Speaker 3: at this, but thank you for making a point more neutral.

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Speaker 1: You know you might need a bandaging charm after that performance.

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Speaker 1: But yes, I wanted to bring this up because plastics

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Speaker 1: are everywhere. They are ubiquitous, they are in all the

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Speaker 1: products we use, and of course, according to recent research,

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Speaker 1: they are also inside of us.

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Speaker 3: And we're going to find out whether that's actually a

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Speaker 3: problem when we do our deep dive later today.

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Speaker 1: Microplastics stick with us.

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Speaker 2: I'm Emily Oster, I'm an economist and a data expert.

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Speaker 1: And I'm Perry Wilson, I'm a medical doctor.

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Speaker 3: It's Thursday, March nineteenth, twenty twenty six. And this is

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Speaker 3: wellness actually.

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Speaker 1: Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness

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Speaker 1: information nowadays from every source imaginable, and some of it

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Speaker 1: is awesome and.

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Speaker 2: Some of it is well actually both.

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Speaker 3: Fortunately we're both people who know how to read studies,

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Speaker 3: how to parse the data, and can tell you what's

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Speaker 3: worth thinking.

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Speaker 2: About and what you can safely ignore.

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Speaker 1: But before we dig in, a note that this podcast

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Speaker 1: is for educational purposes and should not be construed as

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Speaker 1: medical advice. We don't know your unique situ, so talk

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Speaker 1: to your doctor for personal health decisions.

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Speaker 3: This week, we'll ask life in plastic is it fantastic?

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Speaker 3: As we explore what's the deal with microplastics? Perry and

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Speaker 3: I will give the official smasher pass, and then we'll

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Speaker 3: get to your question of the week. But first, let's

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Speaker 3: do the health news roundup after the break.

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Speaker 1: Okay, welcome back. This week in health news, Emily, I

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Speaker 1: want to start with the FDA. You may remember back

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Speaker 1: to that infamous press conference on autism where President Trump

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Speaker 1: appeared and said that pregnant women should avoid taking seenomnifin

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Speaker 1: or tail and all because it causes autism. At that

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Speaker 1: same conference, FDA Director Marty McCarry said that a therapy

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Speaker 1: might exist called lucovorren, which, according to him quote could

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Speaker 1: benefit twenty forty fifty percent of kids with autism. You know,

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Speaker 1: that's a huge number and a huge statement to make

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Speaker 1: for a therapy that's already FDA approved for other indications.

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Speaker 1: It's available, it can be bought today. Well as of

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Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, the FDA did indeed approve

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Speaker 1: Luca worn, but for an incredibly rare genetic condition that

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Speaker 1: limits the delivery of folate to the brain. Fully it's

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Speaker 1: a form of B vitamin. This condition affects less than

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Speaker 1: one in a million people in the United States, so

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Speaker 1: maybe a couple hundred, and they do indeed have an

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Speaker 1: autism like syndrome. But this is a far cry from

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Speaker 1: fifty percent of people with autism. So what do you

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Speaker 1: make of this disconnect between what gets said in the

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Speaker 1: press and what gets passed by the FDA.

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Speaker 3: So I think this is a good example of where

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Speaker 3: an early stage finding was translated to mean more than

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Speaker 3: it did, partly for political reasons and partly because the

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Speaker 3: fact that people would like there to be a better

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Speaker 3: treatment for autism. So Luke of Wren did show some

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Speaker 3: has shown some initial promise in some kids with autism,

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Speaker 3: particularly around speech issues, and so there was sort of

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Speaker 3: some like early stage, very small scale, not really randomized

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Speaker 3: evidence that suggested that this could be something to explore,

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Speaker 3: but I think the bulk of the very good evidence,

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Speaker 3: as the FDA pointed out, is not consistent with that,

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Speaker 3: and it isn't really clear what the mechanism would be.

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Speaker 3: So in terms of treating the particular folate condition in

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Speaker 3: this very small number of people, it's clear what the

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Speaker 3: mechanism is, but in general, there's not a lot of

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Speaker 3: reason to think that this would this would be helpful. So,

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Speaker 3: you know, I think it's a good example of where

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Speaker 3: there's kind of an unfortunate interaction between people really wanting

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Speaker 3: there to be.

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Speaker 2: A simple answer to something and a politically expedient set

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Speaker 2: of claims.

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Speaker 3: I mean, they had promised a cure and an answer

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Speaker 3: to ausism by September, and it was getting to be

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Speaker 3: the end of September, and this was.

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Speaker 2: What was on the table. It's kind of how I

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Speaker 2: read it.

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Speaker 3: I'm curious if people will continue to experiment with this

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Speaker 3: on their own. I mean, there's not much to keep

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Speaker 3: parents from asking for this for their children because it

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Speaker 3: is approved, even if they don't have this condition. My

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Speaker 3: guess is we will still see a fair.

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Speaker 2: Amount of that.

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Speaker 1: I think, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, I mean, Luca worn I

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Speaker 1: mean it is. It's not that dangerous a drug. It

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Speaker 1: is a sort of modified form of foll late basically,

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Speaker 1: and as you said, it's already have to approve for

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Speaker 1: other indications, so you can get it off label. And

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Speaker 1: I think people people are desperate, and desperate people will

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Speaker 1: try what is available. Can't really blame them for that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.

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Speaker 3: Next up, I want to ask you about chat GPT

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Speaker 3: and whether it's replaced you yet. In particular, Nature this

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Speaker 3: week has suggested that Chatgypt is actually not great at

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Speaker 3: triaging actual medical emergencies, and so I'm curious what you

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Speaker 3: made of these findings and whether I mean, I think

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Speaker 3: there's a much more interesting question, broader interesting question about

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Speaker 3: what is the role of AI in medicine, But let's

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Speaker 3: keep to the narrower question of Chatgypt as a triage maganism.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a medicine is a little bit big.

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Speaker 1: First of all, let me just say, Emily, that is

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Speaker 1: such a deep and insightful question. I'm sorry, I was

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Speaker 1: trying to be chat GPT.

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Speaker 2: That's not how chat Gypt would say. I was like, wow,

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Speaker 2: that's a great question.

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Speaker 1: You've cut to the center of this challenging issue. Don't

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Speaker 1: use chat GPT to tell you whether it go to

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Speaker 1: the emergency room or not. That's that's what this study says.

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Speaker 1: And you know, to some extent like yes, probably everyone

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Speaker 1: kind of knows this deep down in their heart. But

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Speaker 1: my actual concern is that there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: sort of edge medical conditions that really are an emergency

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Speaker 1: but that people might not think are an emergency. And

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Speaker 1: those are the times where you might go to AI

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Speaker 1: right like, if you have crushing substernal chest pain, you're

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Speaker 1: probably not going to chat GPT and being like should

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Speaker 1: I go to the er, right, like someone's going to

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Speaker 1: get you to the emergency room. And in this study,

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Speaker 1: things like that got triaged appropriately by chat GPT. The

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Speaker 1: stuff that didn't were the cases and these were all

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Speaker 1: cases made by clinicians, like they were designed to be

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Speaker 1: things that if a clinician heard, they would send you

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Speaker 1: to the emergency room. And the cases where it really failed,

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Speaker 1: which were emergencies, should have gone to the emergency room

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Speaker 1: and got under triage. In about half of cases or

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Speaker 1: conditions for example, like diabetic keto acidosis, where the symptoms

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Speaker 1: are things like you know, fatigue, vomiting, excessive urination, where

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Speaker 1: you know, a non medical person might convince themselves that okay,

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Speaker 1: like that's you know, I've got the flu or something

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Speaker 1: like that, And indeed chat GPT was sayingle let's see

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Speaker 1: how goes in twenty four to forty eight hours. A

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Speaker 1: similar case was a case with impending respiratory failure, where

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Speaker 1: it's like, you've got to get to the emergency room

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Speaker 1: and chat EPT about fifty percent of the time said

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Speaker 1: let's give it some time. What's really interesting is that

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Speaker 1: it could be gas lit a little bit. So if

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Speaker 1: in the prompt they use the same symptoms, but they

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Speaker 1: added a sentence that was like my family says I'm overreacting,

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Speaker 1: or like my family says everything's fine and I look good,

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Speaker 1: it would actually be less likely to say that you

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Speaker 1: should go to the emergency room. So it's sort of

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Speaker 1: it'll be like, okay, Well, as long as people around

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Speaker 1: you think that things are okay, it's okay, okay.

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Speaker 3: So here is the issue with this that I have,

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Speaker 3: And not to say that I think we should be

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Speaker 3: using AI for our triage, but when I talk to

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Speaker 3: pediatricians about the question of whether you should bring your

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Speaker 3: kid to the doctor, one of the core questions people

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Speaker 3: ask is how does your kids seem? That is the

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Speaker 3: most important pediatrician question. If you say my kids had

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Speaker 3: a fever for two days, a fever is one hundred

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Speaker 3: and four, the question they ask is does a fever

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Speaker 3: come down with treatment? And how does your kids seem?

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Speaker 3: Do they seem very sick? And so if you said you, actually,

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Speaker 3: they don't really seem that's sick, that's like a really

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Speaker 3: important piece of information. So I'm sort of wondering here

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Speaker 3: whether there's something in the construction that's almost like a

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Speaker 3: little too negative on the AI.

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Speaker 1: I see what you're saying, But the fact is that

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Speaker 1: these cases are designed that like no rational actor would

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Speaker 1: tell you to wait it out right, no matter what

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Speaker 1: the people around you are saying. Like, the kids are

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Speaker 1: a little bit different, for one, because their symptoms can

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Speaker 1: often seem quite a bit more extreme than adults are

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Speaker 1: used to. So like a fever of one hundred and

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Speaker 1: four in an adult is like what is crazy and

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Speaker 1: something really bad is happening a fever and a one

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Speaker 1: hundred four in a kid is like Sunday night, right,

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Speaker 1: Like that's nothing. So, So there is that issue the

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Speaker 1: thing that like I kept coming back to with this

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Speaker 1: is that I actually hate the you should probably go

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Speaker 1: to the doctor right now like default of the world,

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Speaker 1: Like any time anything gets posted online or like any

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Speaker 1: question gets asked, there's this very kind of I think

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Speaker 1: medico legal thing, which is like even when the person's

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Speaker 1: clearly okay to be like, uh, it's fine, but why.

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Speaker 2: Don't you get check check with your doctor, check.

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Speaker 1: With the doctor, go get checked out, Like there's that

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Speaker 1: default because God forbid you miss something. And I was

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Speaker 1: actually surprised that chat GPT didn't just like jump to

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Speaker 1: the like, oh yeah, go to the R, Go to

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Speaker 1: the R, go to the our conclusion. So I think

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Speaker 1: there is a spot here. It's got to be better

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Speaker 1: than this. But you know, given how overburdened our healthcare

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Speaker 1: system is, the truth is there are plenty of people

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Speaker 1: in the emergency room right now who could be managed

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Speaker 1: just fine at home or could wait it out twenty

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Speaker 1: four hours, and that's a tough triage decision to make.

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Speaker 1: We're not ready to have AI do it yet, but

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe we'll get there. Maybe maybe.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 3: Last thing that we want to talk about was a

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Speaker 3: new study about pain during sexual activity.

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Speaker 2: Do you want to you want to tee this one up.

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Speaker 1: I This study came across my desk, and I'm like,

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Speaker 1: I had that experience looking at the data that I

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Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, am I thing in a

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Speaker 1: parallel universe? Like this is so bonkers out there that

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Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of it? And then

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Speaker 1: I had the second thought that this is me being

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Speaker 1: a man, being the problem. And so so Emily, I

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Speaker 1: need you to weigh in on this. Let me give

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Speaker 1: you the details here. So, this is a survey study

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Speaker 1: of college students who is just published in the International

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Speaker 1: Journal of Sexual Health two hundred and sixty three college

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Speaker 1: students who are reporting on their sexual activities, specifically asking

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Speaker 1: about pain with various types of sexual activity, so non

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Speaker 1: penetrative sex, penetrative sex, et cetera. And the key table

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Speaker 1: from this is kind of crazy. To give you a

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Speaker 1: sense of the numbers here, looking at the key table

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Speaker 1: of the individuals who reported being engaging in penile vaginal intercourse,

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Speaker 1: ninety one percent of women reported pain, forty nine point

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Speaker 1: one percent of men reported pain, and those numbers are

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Speaker 1: pretty similar across the board. Fifty one percent of college

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Speaker 1: men reported pain from non penetrative sexual activity, forty five

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Speaker 1: percent of women reported pain from non penetrative sexual activity,

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Speaker 1: and so I saw this. The theme of this paper was, actually,

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Speaker 1: they're trying to not stigmatize discussion of pain in the space,

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Speaker 1: particularly for men, because men were much less likely to

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Speaker 1: report to their partner that they were experiencing pain than

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Speaker 1: women were. And sure, that's important. Communication is important. But

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Speaker 1: just like on the surface, these numbers seem really high, Emily,

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Speaker 1: or am I a man that doesn't you know, isn't

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Speaker 1: thinking about this the right way?

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Speaker 2: So yes, I agree with you. I think these numbers

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Speaker 2: are very surprising.

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Speaker 3: I find the numbers for men actually particularly surprising. Maybe

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Speaker 3: I am biased by the fact that I mostly talk

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Speaker 3: to women who have recently had children, but pain during

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Speaker 3: sex is like quite common postpartum and sort of somewhat

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Speaker 3: more common for women, I think, quite a lot more

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Speaker 3: common than for men. The fact that half of men

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Speaker 3: are reporting pain during sexual intercourse, even for non penetrative

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Speaker 3: sexual activity, I'm not really sure. I don't I'm not

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Speaker 3: a man. I don't really know what this is. So

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Speaker 3: I find that part confusing. I will say that this

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Speaker 3: is a pretty small sample, and I am wondering about

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Speaker 3: the recruitment strategy. So you know, if you did this

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Speaker 3: on a nationally representative sample of college students, I would

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Speaker 3: be really surprised if you told me I went to

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Speaker 3: a college and I told people I'm doing a study

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Speaker 3: about pain during sex and or about you know, discomfort

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Speaker 3: during sex, and here are some questions. Maybe I'm not

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Speaker 3: as surprised that you've pulled in a set of people

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Speaker 3: who have a particular who are coming to you because

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Speaker 3: they have something to say.

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Speaker 2: So for me, this is maybe a little bit more

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Speaker 2: of a of a kind.

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Speaker 3: Of well, what's your sample question, rather than you know,

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Speaker 3: I have totally misunderstood people's sexual behavior.

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Speaker 1: But well, I mean their point is, of course that

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Speaker 1: men don't talk about it as much, that there's like

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Speaker 1: a stigma associated with this. I also should point out

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Speaker 1: this isn't pain every time you have sex. The question

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Speaker 1: was worded like, you know, do you ever have pain

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Speaker 1: when you have sex? Which will tend to inflate numbers

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Speaker 1: a little bit. But this is good to talk about, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you have a sexual partner, this is

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Speaker 1: not something you should not be suffering in silence. I

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Speaker 1: promise sex will be better with better.

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Speaker 2: Communication, totally could not agree with that more.

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Speaker 1: And that's it for the health news of the week.

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Speaker 1: After the break, we'll ask what's the deal with microplastics?

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Speaker 1: All right, we are back and today we are trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out what the deal is with microplastics. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we hear about this everywhere. Plastics probably not a good thing.

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Speaker 1: It's certainly not good for the environment. What effect does

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Speaker 1: it have on us? But Emily, before we like get

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Speaker 1: into it, got to define our terms. What is a microplastic?

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Speaker 1: What does that even mean?

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Speaker 3: So a microplastic is just a small plastic, as the

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Speaker 3: name would suggest, I.

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Speaker 1: Mean, a Latin scholar, I see exactly.

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Speaker 3: These are tiny plastic particles that happen when you decay

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Speaker 3: larger plastic particles. So think you know a water bottle

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Speaker 3: or carpeting or any of the enormous number of things

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Speaker 3: in our world that.

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Speaker 2: Are created by plastics. Those things are whether they decay,

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Speaker 2: they they give off little teeny pieces of plastic.

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Speaker 3: And so a microplastic is a plastic particle that's less

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Speaker 3: than five millimeters in diameter. People will sometimes also talk

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Speaker 3: about nanoplastics, which are less than one micrometer, and you

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Speaker 3: want to think about it, like there's a macroplastic, which

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Speaker 3: is what you know, and then eventually the microplastics come

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Speaker 3: off and then they turn into nanoplastics, and that is

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Speaker 3: kind of happens over time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like little flakes. I've seen people, you know, is

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Speaker 1: this started as an environmental concern, like before it got

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Speaker 1: into people. You know, scientists were looking at like the

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Speaker 1: ocean and lakes and filtering water and pulling out all

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Speaker 1: these tiny pieces of plastic out of the water. I've

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Speaker 1: seen those videos which are sort of disturbing.

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Speaker 3: And fish eat them. They're all over fish. So there's

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Speaker 3: like a lot of evidence. I mean, I think it's

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Speaker 3: an important place to start in this discussion, which is

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Speaker 3: sometimes when we talk about this health stuff, you sort

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Speaker 3: of come to the end and be like, man, it's

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Speaker 3: really not actually a big deal at all. This is

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Speaker 3: a place where it's definitely true that relative to fifty

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Speaker 3: years ago, there's way more plastic in the world, and

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Speaker 3: because it decays over time, this is way more microplastics.

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Speaker 2: It's also particularly true that's not good.

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Speaker 3: You know, no one's going to go out there and

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Speaker 3: be like, hey, it's great that the fish are full

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Speaker 3: of tiny pieces of plastic, Like, that's awesome. I think

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Speaker 3: the question for us today is really going to be

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Speaker 3: like how problematic is this and how how should people

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Speaker 3: think about it in their lives?

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Speaker 2: Not like is it awesome? But fish are full of plastic?

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Speaker 1: Because no, yes, clearly not. But like everything, right, are

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Speaker 1: we going to worry about this? Would you rather have

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Speaker 1: a fish that has a bunch of plastic in it

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Speaker 1: or a fish that has a bunch of mercury in it?

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Speaker 4: Like?

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Speaker 1: There are environmental toxins all over the place, and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, some of them get sort of more attention

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Speaker 1: than others.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And we should also say plastic has brought a

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Speaker 3: lot of important things to people in the world, so

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Speaker 3: it's not an all bad activity. It is part of

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Speaker 3: why we are not dead most of the time.

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Speaker 1: That's a that's a great point. We probably can't completely

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Speaker 1: do without plastics exactly.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So one question people will have when they when

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Speaker 3: they start with this, which is why would these plastics

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Speaker 3: be a problem. So if we accept that they're you know,

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Speaker 3: they're in fish, maybe they're in people, we'll talk about

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Speaker 3: didy to.

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Speaker 2: What extent, But isn't this just like an inert substance.

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Speaker 2: Isn't this just kind of not important? Why why am

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Speaker 2: I worried? Am I basically? Am I just pooping it out?

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Speaker 2: Why am I not just pooping this out?

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Speaker 1: Perry? Yeah, it's a good point because we think of

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Speaker 1: plastic really it's kind of the fundamental thing that doesn't

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Speaker 1: react with anything else. Right, It's like why we store

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Speaker 1: our food and plastic. I mean, it's also light and

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Speaker 1: it doesn't break like glass and stuff like that, but

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Speaker 1: you know, we do. We have lab tests that are

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Speaker 1: in plastic and things like that. It's just supposed to be.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the reason we have microplastics is because the

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Speaker 1: plastic doesn't break down into its constitutive molecules very readily.

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Speaker 1: That being said, the human body is more than willing

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Speaker 1: to interact in bad ways with things that are chemically inert.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't just have to be a chemical reaction, and I

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Speaker 1: think maybe the prototypical example of this is asbestos, which

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Speaker 1: is an inert fiber. Your body doesn't it doesn't cause

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Speaker 1: a chemical reaction in your body, but it is quite irritating,

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Speaker 1: and your white blood cells will see those things and

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Speaker 1: ingest them, and of course that can lead to cancer. Mesotheliomas,

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Speaker 1: the cancer associated with asbestos exposure, so we know the

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Speaker 1: body doesn't like is not a chemistry lab. It's much

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Speaker 1: more sophisticated than that, and there's you know, quite clear

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Speaker 1: evidence in the lab that exposing cells and tissues two

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Speaker 1: microplastics can cause them to do bad things, particularly on

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Speaker 1: the inflammatory side. So if you take a bunch of

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Speaker 1: white blood cells in a petri dish and you sprinkle

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Speaker 1: some microplastics on there, the white blood cells will see

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Speaker 1: them and start releasing you know, what are called cytokines

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Speaker 1: and chemokinds, which are these inflammatory molecules that basically say, like,

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Speaker 1: there's a problem here.

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Speaker 2: Listen.

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Speaker 3: I got to stop you for this because one of

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Speaker 3: the wellness influencer terms this is slightly off topic. One

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Speaker 3: of the things you hear about all the time is inflammation, right, like,

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Speaker 3: I'm so afraid of being inflamed.

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Speaker 2: Why is this a problem? Why am I so concerned

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Speaker 2: about being inflamed?

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Speaker 1: So there's good inflammation and bad inflammation. When you have

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Speaker 1: an injury or an infection, your immune system targets cells

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Speaker 1: and antibodies and stuff to that area and does inflammation.

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Speaker 1: And what inflammation is is an offensive set of chemicals

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Speaker 1: to destroy the thing that is there. Now, if that

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Speaker 1: is a bunch of bacteria or something like that, then great,

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Speaker 1: and your body releases those chemicals to destroy the bacteria.

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Speaker 1: Does do some damage to your own cells as well,

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Speaker 1: but that's sort of a risk you're willing to take.

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Speaker 1: These substances when they're nicely targeted to an injury or

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Speaker 1: an infection work quite well. When they are flowing throughout

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Speaker 1: your body. We do know that they can cause significant

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Speaker 1: problems in the long term. Certain markers of inflammation like

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Speaker 1: sea reactive protein, if they are higher in your blood,

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Speaker 1: you have a higher risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. There

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Speaker 1: is this sense that there's good inflammation and then inflammation

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Speaker 1: run amok, and there's stuff that we do to ourselves

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Speaker 1: that promote inflammation that aren't giving ourselves infections.

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Speaker 3: So, just to like dramatically simplify, if there are a

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Speaker 3: lot of tiny plastic particles around, it is possible that

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Speaker 3: our body will be like, ah, that's like a thing

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Speaker 3: I need to go fight, and that will cause there

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Speaker 3: to be a lot of these inflammatory markers rooting around

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Speaker 3: in our blood, and that might be bad for our

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Speaker 3: heart because our body's kind of like overreacting to this

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Speaker 3: plastic situation.

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Speaker 1: And inflammation is supposed to be transient, right, It's supposed

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Speaker 1: to be like while you heal your wound, while you

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Speaker 1: cure your infection, and then you're supposed to go back

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Speaker 1: to baseline. But if you're sitting kind of above baseline

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Speaker 1: for a long period of time, it really can have

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Speaker 1: adverse effects. But the problem with the microplastic literature, as

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Speaker 1: I dug into it, is there's a lot of these

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Speaker 1: studies in a Petrie dish, and then there's very few

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Speaker 1: poor quality studies translating this into a human body, And like,

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Speaker 1: the difference is really really big between those two things.

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Speaker 1: You can mess with cells a lot in a Petrie dish.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, for me, this is also where I landed in

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Speaker 3: the microplastics debate, And I think it's sort of important

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Speaker 3: to help people kind of separate two things.

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Speaker 2: So one is maybe maybe a three things.

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Speaker 3: So one is the question of like how much microplastics

438
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:54,920
Speaker 3: are in people's bodies?

439
00:22:55,560 --> 00:22:58,400
Speaker 2: Could that be bad based on what we know from

440
00:22:58,480 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 2: the lab?

441
00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:02,400
Speaker 3: And the third is like is it bad given those

442
00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 3: two things together? And I feel like in the the

443
00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:08,679
Speaker 3: what's been complicated for people in this literature, and I

444
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:11,199
Speaker 3: think we should separate those three things. Is that we

445
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:13,919
Speaker 3: talk a lot about the first thing, how much microplastics

446
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:15,440
Speaker 3: are there. We take a lot about the second thing.

447
00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:18,920
Speaker 3: You know, what happens if you feed a mouse exclusively

448
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:21,320
Speaker 3: a diet of microplastics for its whole life, Like, how's

449
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:24,360
Speaker 3: that going? And then and then we sort of assume

450
00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:27,400
Speaker 3: things about the third thing. And so let's like talk

451
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:29,000
Speaker 3: about the first two and then talk about the.

452
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:32,000
Speaker 1: Third, right, Yeah, I mean, just to echo that, I

453
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:34,400
Speaker 1: was like laughing out loud when I was digging into

454
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,159
Speaker 1: the literature at how many when you are searching for

455
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,560
Speaker 1: like human effects of my microplastics. The ratio of review

456
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:47,960
Speaker 1: articles and perspective pieces versus like hard data articles was obscene.

457
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:50,439
Speaker 1: And there are all these review articles like oh, you know,

458
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:52,400
Speaker 1: it probably causes cancer and you're like, oh it does.

459
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:54,440
Speaker 1: Let me like read what you say, and it's like, well,

460
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 1: if you put it in a Petri diiss, it causes inflammation,

461
00:23:57,240 --> 00:23:59,639
Speaker 1: and we know that inflammation might cause cancer, and therefore

462
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,800
Speaker 1: maybe humans it causes cancer. It's like, Okay, that's not evidence.

463
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: That's you know, connecting dots that you haven't proven are connected.

464
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:08,400
Speaker 1: Yet it's quite frustrated.

465
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 3: I like in review articles when it's like this might

466
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 3: cause cancer and you're like, and then it's like citation.

467
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:15,399
Speaker 2: You're like, ooh good, I'd like to read the citation.

468
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 3: Then you click, and then it's another review article in

469
00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 3: which they say that it's like, come.

470
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,640
Speaker 1: On, man, yeah, give us something to work with here.

471
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:23,639
Speaker 2: This is like, now we're in the weeds of like

472
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:25,600
Speaker 2: stuff I don't like about lecture. But let's talk about

473
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 2: that first question, which is, you know, how like we're

474
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 2: going to put these three things together and get to

475
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:34,720
Speaker 2: the last thing that people care about. But let's unpack

476
00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 2: are their microplastics everywhere?

477
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: Plastic is everywhere. We've talked about that, it's an ubiquitous

478
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:43,400
Speaker 1: part of our lives. But microplastics come from a bunch

479
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: of different sources, right Emily, So, like, what are the

480
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,960
Speaker 1: major ways that microplastics get into us, into humans?

481
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 3: So basically, to get the microplastics into us, we have

482
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 3: to actually come in. You don't tend to absorb stuff

483
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:57,440
Speaker 3: like that through your skin very much, so it's really

484
00:24:57,520 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 3: kind of stuff you eat and stuff you.

485
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:00,680
Speaker 2: Breathe or or inhale.

486
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 3: So the major sources for people are stuff in your

487
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:09,119
Speaker 3: diet and then like dust, so in your diet, you know,

488
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 3: we can find microplastics everywhere. There's this one study, and

489
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 3: I honestly think this is an over I'm not totally

490
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 3: sure I believe this, but there's one study of tea

491
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:21,440
Speaker 3: bags in Canada which has like these tea bags are

492
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:25,360
Speaker 3: just like basically exclusively made of microplastics, right.

493
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: They forgot to put the tea in. They just filled

494
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 1: the bag with microplass and they.

495
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 3: Just literally put microplastics. But that's not like all tea. Yeah,

496
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 3: it's just this particular I think, Yeah, I.

497
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,159
Speaker 1: Saw this too. This was a study that had the

498
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: amount of microplastics and a cup of tea like one

499
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: hundredfold higher than in any other source, which is but if.

500
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 3: You put aside this particular terrible tea situation, generally most

501
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 3: of people's microplastic disposure is this through indoor dust. So

502
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:54,119
Speaker 3: there's just a lot of plastics in indoor dust, with

503
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 3: a lot of plastics in your house, and they kind

504
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:58,480
Speaker 3: of were indoor spaces and they sort of decay and

505
00:25:58,600 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 3: you and you.

506
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 2: Inhale them and then you know of the.

507
00:26:02,119 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 3: Diet stuff, plastic bottles, drinking out of plastic bottles is

508
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 3: kind of the biggest thing, and then tapwater, so it's

509
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 3: it's sort of stuff you drink and stuff you breathe

510
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:12,640
Speaker 3: is the biggest set of issues.

511
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 2: You can generally find.

512
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 3: Microplastics in a lot of foods, and people store microplastics

513
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:21,000
Speaker 3: and they're fat. So human fat has a lot of microplastics.

514
00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:23,240
Speaker 3: But we're not eating human fat, so that's not like

515
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 3: a dietary source.

516
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:25,479
Speaker 2: Not usually.

517
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:27,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should hope not, But it sounds like you're

518
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 1: I mean, these are hard things to kind of get.

519
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:32,720
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm going to be concerned about microplastics, like,

520
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: don't breed dust is going to be a tricky one

521
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:35,679
Speaker 1: for me, right.

522
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that's actually an important point from

523
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:41,439
Speaker 2: the practical practical standpoint Here is, even if we get

524
00:26:41,480 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 2: to the end of this conversation and we say this

525
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 2: is something you should be worried about, it's actually not

526
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 2: entirely clear how people could really change their behavior to

527
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 2: affect this, And such a large share of your exposure

528
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:55,320
Speaker 2: is just going to be through through breathing. But in general, yeah,

529
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 2: microplastics are around you.

530
00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:00,040
Speaker 3: You're getting them in which leads to the question of

531
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 3: whether they stay, which I will ask you, which is,

532
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,160
Speaker 3: to what extent do we actually know that people are

533
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 3: retaining these microplastics in their bodily tissues?

534
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 2: Why don't they just poop it out? As I've asked

535
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 2: you several times that I don't feel like I've gotten

536
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:15,879
Speaker 2: a straight answer.

537
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: Uh, here, I'll give you a straight answer. They do

538
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: poop it out. In fact, when you measure microplastics in people,

539
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: one of the highest concentrations of microplastics is in FECs, stool,

540
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: is in poop, and that's likely because you are getting

541
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: it in the stuff you eat and it is just

542
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:38,160
Speaker 1: passing through you. This is a bit of a problem

543
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 1: of size. So you mentioned earlier that microplastics are anything

544
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: that's five millimeters or less, and to give people a sense,

545
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 1: like five millimeters is like like a pencil eraser size.

546
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: This is it's like micro kind of but not really.

547
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,400
Speaker 1: You know, like if I swallowed a pencil eraser, which

548
00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: might be made a plastic, like it's passing right through me. Right,

549
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: You're gonna that that's going to be okay. You get

550
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,639
Speaker 1: down to the nanoplastic scale, where these things are so

551
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 1: tiny that they can, you know, go between cells and

552
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: stuff like that, there's going to be a lot higher absorption.

553
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: And clearly there is absorption because there have been plenty

554
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:19,400
Speaker 1: of studies looking at human tissues and measuring microplastics in them.

555
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: You can, you know, depending on the measurement method, you

556
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: get numbers that are a little bit all over the map.

557
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:30,199
Speaker 1: But just to give just to give a sense of

558
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: where things kind of stand, there have been quite a

559
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 1: few studies now that show a reasonable accumulation of microplastics

560
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: in the placenta. There's been a number of studies looking

561
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: at microplastics in the kidney, which kind of makes sense

562
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: because the kidney's the major filtering ordering in of the blood,

563
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: and so if anything's going to kind of pick up

564
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: those little tiny micro or nanoplastics, the kidney would make sense.

565
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: You can find microplastics in the lungs. There's a study

566
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 1: showing microplastics in small concentrations, but in breast milk, some

567
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: in testicles, some in the intestines. So it's really kind

568
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: of everywhere you look, and perhaps most concerningly but also

569
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: most controversially, microplastics in the brain.

570
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 3: Let me ask you before we on the way to

571
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 3: get into microplastics in the brain.

572
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 2: I want to ask you. So you said there's microplastics

573
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 2: in the kidney. Now you're a kidney doctor, I'm curious

574
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 2: how we know that, Like if you see you must

575
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 2: see people's kidneys, like after they're dead, presumably sometimes.

576
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 1: I mean there are slides prepared from them.

577
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 2: Sure, can you like see the microplastics? How do you

578
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 2: know that there's microplastics in people's kidneys?

579
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 1: There are multiple ways to measure, but yes, you can

580
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:49,479
Speaker 1: see them. So under a microscope you can see little

581
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: irregularly shaped things that don't belong there, and essentially those

582
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: are microplastics. And in certain tissues you can see even

583
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: an inflammatory reaction around or you can find them inside

584
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: white blood cells, like the cells have kind of eaten

585
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 1: them or something like that in an attempt to break

586
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: them down as a foreign body. But some are even

587
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 1: too small to see under a typical light microscope. And

588
00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: then there are other methods like mass spectroscopy, where you

589
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: literally you burn the tissue and the gas that comes

590
00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 1: out with like you burn it with a laser, and

591
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,880
Speaker 1: then the gas that comes out you sample and measure

592
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: the chemicals in the gas that comes out, and you

593
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: can kind of say oh look, there's like polyethylene there,

594
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,719
Speaker 1: which it must have come from plastic. And but this

595
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: is a problem with the literature is it's like it's

596
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: it's really hard to quantify. Most of the data is

597
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 1: in units of like pieces per milligram, Like how many

598
00:30:42,960 --> 00:30:45,680
Speaker 1: pieces did we count in this miligram of tissue, which

599
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 1: is such a sort of random thing to me, Like

600
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: I want like I want uh grams per million. I

601
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: don't know milodgram's permilgram.

602
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it's it's interesting because those numbers

603
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 3: don't have any meaning. But the thing, a thing that

604
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 3: I think has really stuck with a lot of people

605
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 3: in this literature is this paper that said that there's

606
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 3: a spoon worth of plastic in your brain.

607
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

608
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 3: This is because it's like one thing to be like

609
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 3: there's pieces, I saw them, the mass spishocks, blah blah blah.

610
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 3: But this is like, now in my mind there is

611
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 3: an actual spoon. And in my head, of course, it's

612
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 3: shaped like a spoon. You know, it's like somewhere in here.

613
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, like someone like shoved it right up

614
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: your ead.

615
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 2: Someone shoved it right up it's like right in there.

616
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 2: You know, I could be eating with it.

617
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 3: But that feels I think to a lot of people

618
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 3: like both very tangible. It is a lot and my

619
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 3: understanding is it's probably not true.

620
00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: Let's talk about to get a second.

621
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we got to do the brain because

622
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 3: this is like, yeah, we got to do the brain.

623
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 1: This is the paper. So so this is a paper

624
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: that appeared in Nature Medicine obviously got a lot of press.

625
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: I think the like plastic spoon's worth of plastic in

626
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: your brain. Just yeah, it's very hard for health reporters,

627
00:31:59,040 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 1: including myself because I wrote about this when it came

628
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: out to resist totally.

629
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 2: The headline rights itself. I mean obviously.

630
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: Headline rights itself. Let me give you just the data

631
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: that was in the paper, and then Emily, you tell

632
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: me why you're skeptical. Here. So, the way the study

633
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,640
Speaker 1: worked was it was an autopsy based study. So University

634
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: of Arizona, I think they have like a brain repository

635
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: that where people have donated their brains after they died

636
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 1: over a period of time. And the authors sampled brain

637
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: tissue from the frontal lobe, the sort of important frontal

638
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: part of the brain, and they measured nanoplastics here. So

639
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:41,479
Speaker 1: incredibly small pieces using mass spectroscopy. So that's that shooting

640
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 1: a laser and vaporizing the thing and measuring what comes

641
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: out of the vaporizer. And they compared this to the

642
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 1: microplastics and other tissues. And to give you some numbers here,

643
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to say the units but because

644
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: they don't make much sense, but I'll give you the numbers. So,

645
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: like in the kidney of these patients or in the

646
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: kidneys they examined, they was like five hundred units of

647
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 1: microplastics per gram, and in the brain there was about

648
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 1: five thousand units of microplastics. Program So not only is

649
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: it in the brain, but they were like, it's in

650
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: the brain a lot, like more than everywhere else. They

651
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: also showed that that concentration increased over time, So between

652
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen and twenty twenty four, like the amount of

653
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: microplastics in the brains that they had had increased. And

654
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: they also showed that brains with dementia had higher levels

655
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: of microplastics than brains without dementia. And you sort of

656
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: put that all together and then you start to get

657
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: like the real ick that I'm hurting myself by, you know,

658
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: drinking a plastic water bottle.

659
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that the thing that was maybe

660
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 3: on a technical level, more surprising here was people had

661
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:53,480
Speaker 3: thought that the microplastics would not be so prevalent in

662
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 3: the brain because we have a blood brain barrier which

663
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 3: is supposed to protect your brain. Your brain is more

664
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 3: important than your kid is no offense, not to you

665
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 3: as a kidney doctor, but okay, I agree, were like,

666
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 3: your body's like more interested in protecting your brain, And

667
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:11,280
Speaker 3: it was sort of the idea that these probably nanoplastics

668
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 3: were able to kind of get through the blood brain

669
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,800
Speaker 3: barrier and populate the brain at these incredibly high levels

670
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 3: was disturbing, I think, is mat of point.

671
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's pushback, right, So what's the push.

672
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pushback.

673
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 3: So I think that the pushback here is really related

674
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 3: to how hard this is to measure. So again you're

675
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 3: you're like vaporizing this with a laser and seeing what

676
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 3: comes out. But the two criticisms that have come up

677
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 3: when people have talked about this are one, is it

678
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 3: actually microplastics as opposed to something else that you are

679
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:50,320
Speaker 3: misinterpreting the chemical signal of for example, fat maybe more

680
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:54,799
Speaker 3: similar to plastics. Than other things, and because there's a

681
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 3: lot of that kind of tissue in the brain that

682
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,480
Speaker 3: could lead you to think that it's microplastics when actually

683
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:00,719
Speaker 3: it's fat.

684
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 2: And when we think about trends over time, since.

685
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 3: Fat like obesity has gone up over time, that actually

686
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 3: could relate to some of the trends.

687
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 2: I think that's one thing people.

688
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 3: Have raised, and a second is just that it's really

689
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 3: really hard to control this carefully in the laboratory, and

690
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 3: people have raised some questions about this particular study and

691
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 3: whether they did a good job. This is an example

692
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 3: of something where it's so surprising, like it was so

693
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:27,439
Speaker 3: surprising to so many people that you really probably would

694
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 3: want to do it again, and if it were easier

695
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:32,720
Speaker 3: to do, someone would have done it again right away.

696
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 2: The issue is now it's both hard to do. You

697
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 2: need a lot of brains from dead people who have

698
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 2: agreed to let you vaporize their brains for plastic or whatever,

699
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 2: and it's just so I think it's a bunch of

700
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 2: reasons why this is why it's been hard to replicate,

701
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 2: even though there are a lot of people who think

702
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 2: is probably not right.

703
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's such an important thing. I always

704
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:54,279
Speaker 1: teach my students. I'll say this a million times. No

705
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 1: one study is definitive, right, Like replication is so important

706
00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: because of these issues, Like you don't get all the

707
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,840
Speaker 1: data in a paper, right, you get the sort of

708
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,560
Speaker 1: filtered data that the scientists are putting in their paper,

709
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: and there's ethics about this and stuff, but you don't

710
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: get to see inside their lab. You don't get to

711
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 1: see what's happening. So it really is important to get replication.

712
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: To put another spin on this, the total amount of

713
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: microplastics that they calculated would be in the full brain

714
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:25,479
Speaker 1: was about a half of a percent of the entire brain,

715
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 1: like the weight of the brain zero point five percent

716
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:33,440
Speaker 1: of that, which to some neurologists is incredibly high, Like

717
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: they're like that level that amount of plastic, like, you know,

718
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: half of a percent throughout the brain is not something

719
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,240
Speaker 1: we would miss. We would you know, we would clearly

720
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:44,280
Speaker 1: see it. And it's so much higher than other tissues

721
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:46,400
Speaker 1: that it just kind of doesn't seem plausible on the

722
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:48,320
Speaker 1: face of it. But yeah, I guess we'll see.

723
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 2: I guess we'll see.

724
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 3: All right, So let's just establish whether it's a spoon

725
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:56,440
Speaker 3: or a small spoon, A tea spoon ladle of plastic

726
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 3: in your brain, that there are plastics in our bodies.

727
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 3: And then there's these sort of two other things. So

728
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 3: one is, you know, do we have good evidence that

729
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 3: in laboratory kind of cell settings plastics are bad? And

730
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 3: my read of that is yes, that there's a lot

731
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 3: of evidence that if we take labs, either mice or

732
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 3: cells or organoids, which are like you try to make

733
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 3: like tiny pieces of human organs and you expose them

734
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:26,720
Speaker 3: to a lot of microplastics, all kinds of bad stuff

735
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 3: happens to them.

736
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, fertility issues in mice.

737
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, But like contextually speaking, this is also true of

738
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,760
Speaker 1: like everything we do to cells and mice and stuff

739
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: in the lab. Like this will come up again and again,

740
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: which is you know, if you take a model organism

741
00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: or you take a cell in the petry dish and

742
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,399
Speaker 1: you sort of stress it out with like whatever you're

743
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:49,280
Speaker 1: going to pour on top of it, you know, whether

744
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: it's microplastics or whether it's like you know, round up

745
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: pesticide or whatever you do, you're going to get a

746
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 1: reaction out of those cells. It's similar to you know,

747
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: this particular dye, you know, food dye causing cancer or

748
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 1: something like that. Right, It's it's like that is the baseline. Again,

749
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,360
Speaker 1: we always talk about biologic plausibility. Is it plausible that

750
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: there's a problem. Sure, we have some evidence, kind of

751
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: the floor of evidence, which is like if you soak

752
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:19,360
Speaker 1: a cell in microplastic, it isn't happy about it. But

753
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: the you know, wellness world tends to run with that

754
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 1: and like go conclusion, conclusion, conclusion, conclusion, microplastics cause cancer.

755
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,399
Speaker 1: Only drink out of like a wooden bowl from now on, right,

756
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: And we actually need to tie those together, and we

757
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: haven't tied those together very well yet. But maybe Emily,

758
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: we can talk about some of the areas that people

759
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: have said microplastics effects. So I think we talked about

760
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:47,719
Speaker 1: the brain. We're not too sure what's going on in

761
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 1: the brain yet. But other things that have come out

762
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 1: or that people claim about microplastics are like obesity, for example.

763
00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: So so do we think that plastic intake is causal

764
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 1: like leads to obesity?

765
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:06,239
Speaker 2: I don't think so.

766
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 3: All of the literature that I have so let me

767
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 3: let me say I've read a bunch of this literature,

768
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:17,960
Speaker 3: and it tends to associate levels of microplastic consumption or

769
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 3: you know, eating from takeout containers that have a lot

770
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 3: of microplastics with obesity. And the problem is that that

771
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 3: is an associational study, not a causal study.

772
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 2: And so the.

773
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 3: Fact that people who are exposed to more microplastics are

774
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 3: also more likely to be obese could easily, for example,

775
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 3: be explained by microplastic exposure from containers that are more

776
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 3: likely to contain process foods, which we know is associated

777
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 3: with obesity. So there's just looks so difficult to learn

778
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,359
Speaker 3: from that kind of evidence. I just think that's I

779
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,320
Speaker 3: just think that evidence is all such complete garbage.

780
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 1: I saw it my favorite graph recently, which looked at

781
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,240
Speaker 1: the rate of obesity between nineteen seventy six and twenty

782
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 1: nineteen and the rate of plastic production between nineteen seventy

783
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: six and twenty nineteen. It was like, look, they're both

784
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: going up. It's like, okay, guys, you know, there's a

785
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: lot of things that have gone up since.

786
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:19,240
Speaker 2: A lot of other a lot of other eventyow.

787
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,080
Speaker 3: But even like, the thing that's amazing about that is

788
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 3: like you could draw an interesting causal story there. You'd

789
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 3: be like, as it's been easy to make plastics, actually

790
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 3: we've that is contributed to like things about our food system.

791
00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 3: So it could be that there's a like, in a

792
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:38,840
Speaker 3: weird way, there's a causal link between plastics and what

793
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 3: it has made possible with the food system and obesity.

794
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 2: But it's not for microplastics.

795
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

796
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 2: Even if that got for causal, it wouldn't be for

797
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 2: this reason, is what I'm saying.

798
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:48,360
Speaker 1: It's such a good point.

799
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:50,680
Speaker 3: The other place I think that that people talk a

800
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 3: lot about this is infertility. Yeah, and so you know,

801
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 3: we see microplastics in sperm, we see microplastics in the placenta,

802
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 3: and people worry about ertility rates. And I will say

803
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 3: in mice evidence again very high exposure to microplastics in

804
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 3: mice does seem to interfere with reproduction.

805
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,439
Speaker 2: What is your read of that literature? In people.

806
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: Again very clear that there are microplastics in the placenta,

807
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: and in fact it's one of the tissues that they

808
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 1: see more microplastics than in some other tissues for reasons

809
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:29,319
Speaker 1: that aren't entirely clear to me, Because the placenta is

810
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 1: not like a filtering organ like the liver or the

811
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: kidneys are, although maybe it is some kind of interface

812
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 1: that you know, makes microplastics more prone to be there.

813
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: The question is does it matter? And it's been very

814
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: difficult to show that there's a link between the microplastic

815
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: content in the placenta or a microplastic exposures and birth outcomes,

816
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 1: which is the important thing that you know, we care

817
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: about here. What do you think, Emily, I mean, this

818
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:58,759
Speaker 1: is this is your your your wheelhouse.

819
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:00,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know. So.

820
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 3: I don't think that there's any compelling evidence of particularly

821
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 3: important effects here. I mean, and I guess this gets

822
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 3: into where I end up on basically all of these things,

823
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:16,400
Speaker 3: you know, cardiovascular disease, dementia, etc. Like Is it possible

824
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,319
Speaker 3: that there is at some level of microplastics and effect, Yeah,

825
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 3: I think so. Is it likely that there's an effect

826
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,480
Speaker 3: at the levels that we see people being exposed. I

827
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:28,759
Speaker 3: don't think we have any evidence of that, and all

828
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:32,319
Speaker 3: the literature on this is very very poor. And to

829
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 3: the extent you're seeing a correlation, almost certainly like nearly

830
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:40,080
Speaker 3: all that correlation is driven by other differences across people

831
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 3: and not by the microplastics.

832
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sometimes it's helpful to imagine imagine two people, like

833
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: the ultimate microplastic consumer and then the ultimate like non

834
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: microplastic person, not because they're deliberately trying to avoid them,

835
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:56,759
Speaker 1: but like, what is sort of the image you have?

836
00:42:57,160 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: And if I think of like, you know, who's not

837
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:02,479
Speaker 1: getting many brighter plastics, well, it's like this this guy

838
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 1: out in a log cabin in the woods who's like,

839
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: you know, hunting and fishing and eating whole foods and

840
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 1: you know, doing that kind of stuff and like whittling

841
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: his own z at block bags from a cherry tree.

842
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: And then you know, I think of the like microplastic consumer,

843
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 1: and you have someone who's you know, yeah, eating a

844
00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 1: lot of takeout and all that kind of stuff, and

845
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: those are all what we call confounders. Those are all

846
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:27,959
Speaker 1: problems when you're trying to tie microplastics to something because

847
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 1: the type of people who have more microplastics in them

848
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: are different than the type of people who have less

849
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:35,839
Speaker 1: microplastics in them, and those differences can matter in terms

850
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: of all sorts of health outcomes.

851
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I mean, I think I am very skeptical

852
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:44,359
Speaker 3: of claims that exposure to microplastics are an important part

853
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 3: of people's health. So, like, is it possible they are

854
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 3: a little bit of it?

855
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:50,280
Speaker 2: Maybe? Is it likely that this is a very important

856
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 2: driver of various problems that people have in their health.

857
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 2: Just the answer is I think no.

858
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:58,880
Speaker 1: I agree, I think this isn't the biggest problem we

859
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: face health wise. But I also always like to look

860
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: at like, okay, maybe it's not, but are there easy steady?

861
00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 1: Like if I care, how easy would it be to

862
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: change this? And as we've been talking, you know, you've

863
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 1: told me about dust being a major contributor of microplastics. Like,

864
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: all right, I'm not going to change that. But it

865
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:18,880
Speaker 1: feels like if you believe the tea study, right, like, okay,

866
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just make tea using tea leaves and a

867
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:26,879
Speaker 1: stainless steel tea filter. That's pretty easy. Do you think

868
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 1: there's like some easy stuff we should be doing. I

869
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 1: should I have a Stanley water bottle, like low hanging fruit.

870
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 3: Here, So I think there's the lowest hanging fruit is

871
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:41,439
Speaker 3: avoiding like non reusable water bottles. So like plastic water

872
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 3: bottles are among the higher microplastic giver offers, they are

873
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 3: also not very good for the environment. And so there's

874
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 3: a kind of double whammy positive of just trying to

875
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 3: you know, not be neurotic and never ever use disposable

876
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:01,359
Speaker 3: plastic water bottles, but think a little bit about you know,

877
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 3: limiting those. I think that's that is the simplest thing.

878
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 3: I think for most people that would change their microplastic

879
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:11,759
Speaker 3: exposure some and almost every other change you.

880
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 2: Would make is totally unrealistic, like don't breathe.

881
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't recommend that in the medical spheres.

882
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 1: I think for me, yeah, I think I can use

883
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:24,759
Speaker 1: a reusable water bottle. I think when I'm reheating my

884
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:27,719
Speaker 1: takeout food in the microwave, like maybe I'll transfer it

885
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 1: to a bowl that is not plastic before I reheat

886
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: it in the plastic thing. I don't know that's easy.

887
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I mean I again, I think that's that

888
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 2: could be easy. I think you have to.

889
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 3: Ask the question, like what is easy for you? And

890
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 3: maybe that's also a question about reusable water bottles. I

891
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 3: think we could say, like, here are two things you

892
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 3: could do. Use fewer disposable water bottles and don't microwave

893
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:51,799
Speaker 3: your takeout, and then you can think about, you know,

894
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 3: how feasible are those changes for you?

895
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:58,360
Speaker 1: I like it, all right, let's bottom line this thing, Emily,

896
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: microplastics smash your pass or actually should probably say avoiding

897
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: microplastics smasher pass.

898
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 3: I'm a pass on this because I think that in

899
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 3: the space of things people can do with their limited

900
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 3: attention and time for their health, trying to avoid all

901
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,719
Speaker 3: sources of microplastics is not a very good use of

902
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 3: that limited time and energy. So, you know, if someone

903
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 3: said I'm going to use fewer single use water bottles, sure,

904
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:30,719
Speaker 3: I think that's a good thing to do for the

905
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,399
Speaker 3: environment in general. But from my taste, I think people

906
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 3: could think less about microplastics for their own health.

907
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: I am going to smash this one. I'm going to

908
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 1: smash avoiding microplastics primarily from other earth. I think we

909
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: all should be using less plastics, and I you know,

910
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: I don't think everything can be avoided, But like, am

911
00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:54,319
Speaker 1: I going to maybe not reheat my leftovers in the

912
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:58,720
Speaker 1: plastic container? Maybe use my you know, aluminum water bottle

913
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:01,359
Speaker 1: a little bit more based on what I've seen so far. Yeah,

914
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: that's some That's a change I can make. Change I

915
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 1: can live with.

916
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:06,719
Speaker 2: Okay, it's our first disagreement.

917
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: Is it over?

918
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 2: I think it's over.

919
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: I feel like we.

920
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 2: Did a good I feel like we did a good

921
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 2: job on that respectful disagreement. Okay, all right, that's it

922
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:20,720
Speaker 2: for microplastics. Your mailbag question of the week after the break.

923
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 5: Hi, am LeAnn Perry. This is Rachel from Philadelphia, and

924
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 5: I have a question about my weight, specifically, how I'm

925
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:35,000
Speaker 5: ever supposed to trust.

926
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: What the scale says.

927
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 5: It's always fluctuating by a few pounds, and I really

928
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 5: can't figure out where those pounds are coming from. I

929
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,319
Speaker 5: feel like my eating habits really aren't changing that much.

930
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 5: How often should I be weighing myself? And when is

931
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 5: a good time of day First thing in the morning,

932
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:53,479
Speaker 5: later in the evening. I'm really just trying to get

933
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 5: an accurate idea.

934
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: Thank you, awesome question. I love this question because people

935
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,320
Speaker 1: get really obsessed with weight. It's part of their daily habit.

936
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 1: They get on that scale and on a day to

937
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:09,600
Speaker 1: day basis, there's a ton of stuff that makes your

938
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:12,840
Speaker 1: weight fluctuate, and none of it is like the fat

939
00:48:12,880 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: content in your body. The primary driver of day to

940
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,880
Speaker 1: day fluctuation and weight is water. So water's very heavy.

941
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,359
Speaker 1: A leader of water weighs two point two kilograms, which

942
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:24,799
Speaker 1: is about five pounds almost. That's a big swing. And

943
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 1: you drink water based on how much salt you intake.

944
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 1: So the more salt you eat, the more reflexively the

945
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: more water you go for. That's you can experience that,

946
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:36,279
Speaker 1: you know, after driving Chinese food or something. It is

947
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:38,440
Speaker 1: literal water weight. That is what is driving day to

948
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:41,719
Speaker 1: day weight changes. The only utility of that is to

949
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 1: look at large trends over time to get a sense

950
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: of what's happening with like fat mass, muscle mass, et cetera. Emily,

951
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:48,960
Speaker 1: do you weigh yourself every day?

952
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 3: I don't weigh myself every day, but I'm going to

953
00:48:51,160 --> 00:48:55,720
Speaker 3: tell you something that's interesting about water and salt, which

954
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 3: is one of the things that I sometimes do before

955
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:03,279
Speaker 3: short distance races is take sodium bycarb, which is just

956
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:06,919
Speaker 3: a really really really high dose of baking soda which

957
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 3: gives you a tremendous amount of sodium, like a billion

958
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 3: times not a billion, but like a lot, like a

959
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 3: lot of sodium. And it's good for performance in various ways.

960
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 3: But it also makes you incredibly thirsty and it makes

961
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 3: you retain like an enormous amount of water. And so

962
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:24,240
Speaker 3: if you weigh yourself in the morning after a race,

963
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 3: after you have taken sodium bycarb, it's like a substantial

964
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,239
Speaker 3: amount of we gain that sort of like fades out

965
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 3: over time. I did once experiment by weighing myself every

966
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:35,799
Speaker 3: day for like four or five days after and it

967
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 3: took a few days to kind of come back to normal.

968
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is classic physiology they teach you in med school.

969
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 3: So if you are tracking your weight over time, there

970
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:47,560
Speaker 3: are a few different ways you could do. What You

971
00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 3: could weigh yourself every day, but look for overall trends

972
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:54,959
Speaker 3: over time. I tend to think that that makes people

973
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 3: who are trying to lose weight very anxious, and so

974
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 3: I don't think it's like a generally recommended thing to do.

975
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 3: But certainly there are some medical circumstances in which it

976
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:05,240
Speaker 3: would make sense. If you are going to weigh yourself

977
00:50:05,239 --> 00:50:07,080
Speaker 3: every day, try to do it at the same time.

978
00:50:07,600 --> 00:50:10,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, typically we tell people in the medical field people

979
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 1: who should wag themselves. There typically people with heart failure

980
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:15,760
Speaker 1: where we really are managing that fluid status that's so important,

981
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: and we're using it not to see what they're fat

982
00:50:18,160 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: or muscle masses. We're using it to assess water weight.

983
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: So if you don't have heart failure, no need to

984
00:50:23,080 --> 00:50:25,239
Speaker 1: weigh yourself every day. We do tell people. If you

985
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 1: want consistent results, do it first thing in the morning,

986
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 1: after you pee. That's it for us today. Stick with

987
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,400
Speaker 1: us next week when we'll ask what's the deal with

988
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: stem cell therapy?

989
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:41,400
Speaker 3: Wellness Actually is produced in association with iHeartMedia.

990
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:44,000
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Tamar Avisheik.

991
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:47,959
Speaker 3: Our executive producer at iHeart is Jennifer Bassett. Our theme

992
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 3: music is by Eric Deutsch, and our content is for

993
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 3: educational purposes only.

994
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: If you like the show, help other people find us,

995
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your

996
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:00,919
Speaker 1: podcatcher of choice and help us spread the word about

997
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: the show. You can follow us on Instagram at Wellness

998
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 1: Actually pod and don't forget We want to hear from you.

999
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: Head over to Wellness Actually dot fm and leave us

1000
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 1: a question for our mailbag or suggest a topic for

1001
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:13,439
Speaker 1: a future show.

1002
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:16,080
Speaker 2: We'll let the influencers have the last word.

1003
00:51:16,520 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 6: Microplastics. Here's a public service announcement. If you go get

1004
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 6: a cup of coffee and it's in a paper cup,

1005
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,239
Speaker 6: the entire paper cup is plastic. When they put the

1006
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 6: hot water in there, you're drinking a cup of plastic.

1007
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 6: They're already showing that it's disrupting hormones, it's disrupting mitochondria,

1008
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 6: is disrupting so much heavy in fertility. They're finding plastics

1009
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 6: in people's testicles anyway, So finding a detoxification while your

1010
00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:42,359
Speaker 6: body is detoxifying in a sauna helps push it all

1011
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 6: out