Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about spinning around in circles.
Speaker 1: That's right, this is This is probably gonna be a
Speaker 1: two parter. Sometimes we figure this out as we go,
Speaker 1: but I believe this will be a part one in
Speaker 1: a part two, and we're gonna be We're gonna be
Speaker 1: looking at at humans spinning around in circles from several
Speaker 1: different vantage points. You know, what is it doing? Uh
Speaker 1: at a at a biological level, Uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: psychological level. Um, how does it factor into various traditions
Speaker 1: and games, etcetera. Um, this is what I'm pretty excited
Speaker 1: to do. And the genesis for this one was a
Speaker 1: listener email who wrote in about about spinning in um
Speaker 1: in ballet, and we were we we had a brief
Speaker 1: back and forth in a listener mail of where we
Speaker 1: talked about then we're like, yeah, we should totally do
Speaker 1: an up. So, so here we are. But to start off,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to start off somewhere where
Speaker 1: at least my mind went to if not first, then
Speaker 1: maybe second or third, and that is the world of
Speaker 1: of of fantasy. Combat has found in science fiction and
Speaker 1: fantasy films, but also especially in the video games, because
Speaker 1: when I think of people spinning, I have to say,
Speaker 1: I instantly think of im Bison from Street Fighter doing
Speaker 1: his psycho crusher attack. Do you remember this one, Joe?
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was called a psycho crusher, but
Speaker 1: I remember m Bison. So if you ever played Street Fighter,
Speaker 1: he's like the big guy in the hat. He's like
Speaker 1: the final boss or something, isn't he Yeah, yeah, or
Speaker 1: he tends to be. I think sometimes they, you know,
Speaker 1: later in incarnations they introduce new bosses, but he's he's
Speaker 1: the boss. He's this boss of Street Fighter. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think he's supposed to be some kind of dictator
Speaker 1: or something. He's dressed up in in I don't know,
Speaker 1: off brand military regalia. He's wearing like a like a
Speaker 1: captain's hat that's read in some kind of uniform. But
Speaker 1: he's also got the magic powers, and so he can
Speaker 1: attack you by flying at you kind of like the
Speaker 1: rad in like horizontal dive towards you. But he's spinning
Speaker 1: around in circles. Yeah, it's and he's flaming, of course,
Speaker 1: and also it's it's a cool attack. Um. And you'll
Speaker 1: see various versions of that particular attack in various games.
Speaker 1: But there's also the version that you see in the
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat games as a character Nam Kung Lao, he's
Speaker 1: the guy with a the razor blade hat uh. And
Speaker 1: you also see something similar with Baraka. But but they
Speaker 1: both have attacks in some of the games where they
Speaker 1: spin around like a top and either either it's offensive
Speaker 1: like they're they're spinning like a top and coming towards
Speaker 1: you with their blades, or they're spinning like a top.
Speaker 1: Kung Mile does this where he he's deflecting you, like
Speaker 1: so if you jump at him, he starts spinning and
Speaker 1: then bam, your injury. Well, it's very much child brain
Speaker 1: self defense logic, where you think, like, if I spin
Speaker 1: my arms around in circles, nobody could come anywhere near me,
Speaker 1: right right. It's like that Simpsons been I'm gonna move
Speaker 1: my arms like this, I'm gonna move my feet like this,
Speaker 1: and if you get in the way, you're gonna get hit. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think there's also a Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil vibe
Speaker 1: to certainly the the the Kung Lao style attack, you know,
Speaker 1: where you're just spinning in one spot and you're just
Speaker 1: spinning so fast that you become a little tornado. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's at least an intuition people have that, you know,
Speaker 1: you could really do some damage to somebody by spinning
Speaker 1: at them in one way or another. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to say in Star Wars, Darth City Is busts out
Speaker 1: a cool psycho crusher style. I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 1: actually an attack, but more of like an advance, like
Speaker 1: a way to quickly get at your opponents. But he
Speaker 1: uses this in both the Revenge of the Sith and
Speaker 1: the Clone Wars series. Oh okay, you know, I gotta say,
Speaker 1: I I hate I know you're more of a fan
Speaker 1: of the Prequels than I am, and I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to start a fight, but I gotta say one of
Speaker 1: my least favorite things about the Prequels is there's just
Speaker 1: way too much spinning in the lightsaber battles, and the
Speaker 1: Prequels way too much like jumping and flipping around the
Speaker 1: the lightsaber battles become less dramatic and more frantic. I
Speaker 1: like the lightsaber battle in uh the Empire strikes back.
Speaker 1: You know that that's got like classic sword fight drama. Uh,
Speaker 1: the ones where like Yoda is just doing like fourteen
Speaker 1: somersaults in the air and these three sixty jumps and
Speaker 1: and they're they're doing the psycho crusher and twirling around
Speaker 1: like a screw. I don't know it kind of it
Speaker 1: kind of takes me out of the Star Wars mindset. Well,
Speaker 1: Yoda's shortened statue, I mean, he's gotta he's gotta do
Speaker 1: those flips in order to combat a tower opponent. Um.
Speaker 1: I I see what you're saying. But I do think
Speaker 1: that the City of Spin works really well because it's
Speaker 1: like it comes out of nowhere and then he instantly
Speaker 1: uses more traditional attacks to to kill like three different
Speaker 1: Jedi masters. So it seems it seems to work well
Speaker 1: for it. You can't argue with success, Joe. I correct there.
Speaker 1: And also I admit my ignorance because when you shared
Speaker 1: this clip from the movie, I thought for a second
Speaker 1: it was Christopher Lee, and I was like, oh, Christopher Lee. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it shows what I know. Well. It does raise
Speaker 1: the question, though, do we see that many full spins
Speaker 1: in actual combat, because I suppose even with something like
Speaker 1: a spin kick, you have to be careful, right, like
Speaker 1: you don't want to throw off your your own balance
Speaker 1: or present your back to your opponent. Um. Without even
Speaker 1: getting into the magical effects that are often associated with
Speaker 1: these attacks in movies and video games. UM. Now, I
Speaker 1: have to say, I'm not a real fight officionado. I'm
Speaker 1: not like in the n m A or boxing or
Speaker 1: you know, any any of these. I tend to like
Speaker 1: my my combat fictional and worked. Um and and in
Speaker 1: those contexts, I love a good spinning kick. I love
Speaker 1: a nice roaring elbow in Japanese pro wrestling. Um. But
Speaker 1: but I was initially unsure, like does it make sense
Speaker 1: to spin or is that just a risky flourish. Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I remember asking this myself from the first
Speaker 1: person perspective, because when I was a kid, I took
Speaker 1: I'm doing air quotes here, tae kwondo. I guess I
Speaker 1: took whatever like severely watered down version of this martial
Speaker 1: art was being taught to young children in Tennessee in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties. You know, it's like, uh, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what exactly I was learning, but I took taekwondo classes,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, even then as a child, having
Speaker 1: questions about the practicality of the spinning kick moves, because
Speaker 1: there would be a type of kick you do where
Speaker 1: you would turn around, you turn all the way around
Speaker 1: and perform a kick, And I was like, why couldn't
Speaker 1: you just kick without turning? Does this do some kind
Speaker 1: of advantage? Would this ever be applicable in a real
Speaker 1: self defense situation? Uh? Like, even as a kid, I
Speaker 1: remember having the thought, this feels more like a dance
Speaker 1: move than a useful fighting technique, which I think is
Speaker 1: kind of applicable, because at least the way I learned taekwondo,
Speaker 1: it was in many ways indistinguishable from a dance class,
Speaker 1: Like you were learning routines, like patterns of movement that
Speaker 1: were you know, they were exercise. It was aerobic exercise,
Speaker 1: and it was I guess supposed to look good, look
Speaker 1: cool from the outside. I don't know, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of crossover between dance and exercise
Speaker 1: and martial art. Uh you find you you find these
Speaker 1: these intermingled, uh to to a large extent. And I
Speaker 1: guess also there's the psychological aspect to fight too, right,
Speaker 1: something might be more about confusing an opponent. So I
Speaker 1: wasn't just wasn't sure on this either, but I did
Speaker 1: a quick glance around on YouTube to see, okay, are
Speaker 1: legit m m A fights um ending with spin kicks?
Speaker 1: And I did find this this amazing clip from I
Speaker 1: think earlier in the summer and apparently went viral. So
Speaker 1: if you're at all in an m m A out there,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this, but it's uh Hakeen Buckley
Speaker 1: is the m m A fighter and he busts out
Speaker 1: this spin kick uh in the middle of this match,
Speaker 1: and it's just a complete knockout. I'm usually not one
Speaker 1: to find a lot of joy in UM in clips
Speaker 1: of like legitimate knockout blows, but this one was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: I always find they make me they look kind of sickening,
Speaker 1: like watching somebody's head snap back and then they fall
Speaker 1: to the ground. It's like, yeah, this one is a
Speaker 1: bit sickening, so don't don't don't look at it look
Speaker 1: for it unless you you want to see this sort
Speaker 1: of action. But it did answer my question, like, well,
Speaker 1: that's a spin kick. He certainly did a complete spin
Speaker 1: on that and just knocked a guy out, so um so,
Speaker 1: so that initially answered my question, and I started looking
Speaker 1: around a little bit more on that, and I found
Speaker 1: an interesting post about taekwondo spinning kicks at turtle press
Speaker 1: dot com by saying h kim and the author points
Speaker 1: out that this apparently what spin kicks weren't a were
Speaker 1: not a viable tactic in taekwondo until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Uh and and the author explains that this is due
Speaker 1: to advances in footwork and changes in fighting stance preferences
Speaker 1: that made it more of a viable option. Also, less
Speaker 1: restrictive protective gear made it more of an option, as
Speaker 1: did sort of a broadening of style to include different
Speaker 1: weight classes and sort of added creativity to the style.
Speaker 1: So I found that interesting. Okay, well, I'll have to
Speaker 1: take their word for it on that one. I I
Speaker 1: cannot claim to have thoughts on this. Well, I'd be
Speaker 1: interested to hear what any and martial arts practitioners out
Speaker 1: there listening to this episode have to say. Certainly right
Speaker 1: in and let us know, you know, within your style
Speaker 1: or within you know, martial arts in general. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that gets going in my brain when
Speaker 1: I think about spinning, is that uh And and I'll
Speaker 1: have an example to talk about a little bit later on.
Speaker 1: Spinning around in circles as an adult is not fun,
Speaker 1: and in fact it's it's not fun for like significant
Speaker 1: periods of time after you're done doing it. But I
Speaker 1: remember as a child, I love spinning around in circles
Speaker 1: and I would just like do it. I'd just be
Speaker 1: out in the yard and be like, Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: spin around until I fall over. This is great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of adults, and if not, most
Speaker 1: adults can can can relate to this. Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: think back on the fun, spinny things you did as
Speaker 1: a kid, Like remember Mary got rounds. They still have
Speaker 1: these occasionally at playgrounds, but it was a standard playgrounds
Speaker 1: when when we were kids, and it would just be
Speaker 1: kids just getting this thing going to as fast as possible,
Speaker 1: just incredible speeds. Just write it. We had this. There
Speaker 1: was a playground near my grandmother's house that had the
Speaker 1: spinning aluminum death machine that I think they originally I
Speaker 1: think they eventually had to take out because it was
Speaker 1: just injury city. Every time children got on it, they'd
Speaker 1: end up having to go to the hospital. And I
Speaker 1: loved this thing because you could spin it so fast, uh,
Speaker 1: like it was it was human powered, you know. It
Speaker 1: was one of those where you push it, you'd get
Speaker 1: it going like Conan the Barbarian pushing the mill wheel.
Speaker 1: But then you build up a lot of speed and
Speaker 1: then you just grab hold and hang on. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what kind of horrific injuries came off of this thing,
Speaker 1: but but it was great when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: And now now that sounds like torture to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea of spinning around like I did as a
Speaker 1: child for fun, Now that sounds about as appealing as
Speaker 1: a kick to the groin, and it's just like, why
Speaker 1: would you want to do that? Also, add that the
Speaker 1: I remember the playground mary, uh, the spinning things, the
Speaker 1: merrygrounds and whatnot. They would often have that you know,
Speaker 1: that foot trail beat into the dirt around it, which
Speaker 1: of course would become just a complete circular mud pit
Speaker 1: after a rain, right exactly. Another big one is is,
Speaker 1: of course, when you're a kid rolling down a hill,
Speaker 1: like you know, where you you lay down and then
Speaker 1: you just roll down the hill like I remember that
Speaker 1: being a lot of fun. And I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I encourage that with with my own son at a
Speaker 1: hill near our our house in a park. But as
Speaker 1: an adult, you're like, oh, my goodness, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a weird rock here, there's some sort of a pipe here.
Speaker 1: All right, here's a fire ant nest, here's another fire
Speaker 1: ant nest. And that's not even getting into the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 1: as an adult, the idea of spinning that much, you
Speaker 1: would just you never get up once you got to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hill. Yeah, And I think these, uh,
Speaker 1: these changes in experience are not unique to us. It
Speaker 1: seems like there's something going on where like spinning, spinning
Speaker 1: is highly attractive to children then and it loses its
Speaker 1: luster as the body ages. Yeah, so let's let's start
Speaker 1: with the kids. Why did the kids love to spin? Well?
Speaker 1: I was looking around the for information on this, and
Speaker 1: I found a wonderful post on this at the Penn
Speaker 1: State Extensions Better a Kid Care page, and they point
Speaker 1: out that spinning, rolling, and swinging are crucial sensory and
Speaker 1: motor skill inputs to help children's nervous systems mature and organize.
Speaker 1: So they really need these sorts of big body movements
Speaker 1: in ways they really make our tendency to isolate them
Speaker 1: in desks or in front of teleschool computers and so forth,
Speaker 1: you know, more than a bit ridiculous. I think maybe
Speaker 1: there's less of that now. I I know that education
Speaker 1: has has has evolved somewhat and they understand the need
Speaker 1: for big body movements and and and so forth. And
Speaker 1: then they understood it to a certain extent when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. You know, you would still have p
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But yeah, kids need to spin around. You
Speaker 1: You know, when a child spins in circles, it's because
Speaker 1: their body craves it. And the same goes for rolling
Speaker 1: around on the floor, standing on their heads rhythmically swaying.
Speaker 1: Uh So they need a space to do these things.
Speaker 1: I mean it seems in a way it's information gathering,
Speaker 1: your your your celebrating the system, like you have to
Speaker 1: do with your phone. When the gyroscope or whatever gets
Speaker 1: you know, out of whack, you've got to do some
Speaker 1: exercises to get it back on track. Yeah. So in
Speaker 1: this extension article, the Penn State Extension article that they
Speaker 1: point out there are some very specific ways that spinning
Speaker 1: helps children. So, first of all, it gives them a
Speaker 1: sense of body awareness, establishing their center for improved coordinated
Speaker 1: movement across both sides of their bodies. UH. It also
Speaker 1: improves shore surefootedness, which is something that might seem counterintuitive
Speaker 1: sometimes you think, oh, this kid is just spinning around
Speaker 1: in circles. You know, they're falling all over the place,
Speaker 1: they're gonna run into things. But it's actually helping them
Speaker 1: become more short surefooted. UH. It has also been shown
Speaker 1: to improve concentration in the classroom, and they point out
Speaker 1: that a two thousand five study from Choir, Frick and Frick,
Speaker 1: two different fricks, UH found that the centrifugal force of
Speaker 1: many spinning activities and experiences activate the fluid filled cavities
Speaker 1: in the inner ear. And these are sensors that help
Speaker 1: the brain orient the head quote which develops grounding and
Speaker 1: sustaining attention to task. And then overall it's a boost
Speaker 1: to the vestibular system, which controls balance, posture, gaze stabilization,
Speaker 1: and spatial orientation. And and there's also apparently a link
Speaker 1: to impulse control. Fun fact, right after I finished researching
Speaker 1: this section, I went off to get some coffee and
Speaker 1: was immediately attacked by my son with imaginary lightsabers, and
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah he has. He has a pair that
Speaker 1: he he he really likes a Soo Katano and she
Speaker 1: has to uh two lightsabers, so he's made two of
Speaker 1: them out of uh tinfoil um cardboard tubes. And uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: he was attacking me, and I observed quite a bit
Speaker 1: of spinning in his attacks, and I tried to do
Speaker 1: one spin and I nearly fell down, uh and then
Speaker 1: he cut my head off. But but but I I
Speaker 1: looked around, and I've noticed that that there are actually
Speaker 1: lightsaber exercise classes for kids out there that they can
Speaker 1: do like virtual and i't tempted to sign him up
Speaker 1: for one, especially after learning more about the importance of
Speaker 1: spinning around in circles. That's genius. I would have done
Speaker 1: that as a kid. You have exercise, get that energy out.
Speaker 1: You just pretend to have a lightsaber. How has nobody
Speaker 1: thought of this before? Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. I mean,
Speaker 1: my my only hesitation is is what what is it
Speaker 1: going to mean for the lamps and the televisions in
Speaker 1: your house. You gotta have a good space for that,
Speaker 1: I imagine. So let's come back to the adults for
Speaker 1: for most of us, Why does spinning around in circles
Speaker 1: make us dizzy? Why when a yoga instructor on a
Speaker 1: yoga video asked me to spin around just like three
Speaker 1: or five times, why did I have to lay down
Speaker 1: for like ten minutes after that? Yeah? This is funny
Speaker 1: because this is a question that I expected to have
Speaker 1: just a single, totally straightforward physiological answer, and instead I
Speaker 1: found a strange variety of answers to this question without
Speaker 1: a lot of acknowledgement that that there was variety in
Speaker 1: the ways people are answering this. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I've stumbled on something that's actually controversial or different. Uh,
Speaker 1: different sources are just emphasizing different aspects of of vertigo
Speaker 1: induced by spinning. But in any case, the answer to
Speaker 1: this question definitely ended up taking a shape that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect. But before we get to the direct answer
Speaker 1: of like why spinning in circles makes you dizzy? I
Speaker 1: think we have to meet a fascinating and important element
Speaker 1: in this discussion. When you just mentioned a mintigo, which
Speaker 1: is the human vestibular system. Uh, so interesting. Fact number one.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show many times before,
Speaker 1: but maybe you're new the show. Humans actually have way
Speaker 1: more than five senses. I think it's funny when when
Speaker 1: people end up talking about the five senses. I guess
Speaker 1: you could maybe call them the big five senses. They're
Speaker 1: the most obvious as senses, you know, site, hearing, taste, smell, touch,
Speaker 1: But we have other ways of getting information from the
Speaker 1: outside world and coordinating that within the brain. And one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of a lesser known but extremely
Speaker 1: important sense distinct from the big five is appropriate reception.
Speaker 1: It's the sense that informs you where the different parts
Speaker 1: of your body are. So, how is it that you
Speaker 1: can type without looking at the keys? How is it
Speaker 1: that you can close your eyes and you still know
Speaker 1: where your hands are. You know whether they're at your
Speaker 1: sides or over your head, even if you're blindfolded. We
Speaker 1: have a sense that's constantly updating the brain with information
Speaker 1: about the position and orientation of the rest of the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one that I can't help but feel that it's
Speaker 1: it's so invisible to us because it is so constant.
Speaker 1: It's not as easily disruptible, you know, in the sense
Speaker 1: that we can close our eyes, we can sort of
Speaker 1: stopper our ears and so forth. But but in terms
Speaker 1: of turning off appropriate exception, um, not so easily done.
Speaker 1: And then also it's just so it's so close to us.
Speaker 1: It's you know, this is very much you can't see
Speaker 1: the forest for the trees situation. Yeah, yeah, that is
Speaker 1: very interesting. It's harder to turn that one off than
Speaker 1: it is some of the other senses. But in a way,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's part of them. When people go
Speaker 1: for sort of like a sense deprivation or certain types
Speaker 1: of meditation that are that try to ignore sensory stimuli
Speaker 1: or just focus on one particular sensory stimuli, I think
Speaker 1: one of the difficult things is ignoring that like feeling
Speaker 1: of where your body is, and that I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the important reasons why meditation often requires you
Speaker 1: to be in a position of rest, because it's easier
Speaker 1: to ignore the position of your body if you're not
Speaker 1: really doing anything active with your body. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: definitely it's the case with float tanks where if it's
Speaker 1: calibrated correctly, you're you're floating in water that's about the
Speaker 1: same temperature as your own body. And yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: about sort of losing a sense of of your physical self. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank thank But they're all kinds of senses. Some some
Speaker 1: bleed more silly into others, or you can make the
Speaker 1: argument that they do. Like you can make arguments that
Speaker 1: they're different types of touch sensations, you know, feeling of
Speaker 1: tactile pressure versus feeling of heat. You know, you can
Speaker 1: talk about that. Another interesting one is chronoception, the sensation
Speaker 1: of the passing of time and judgment of duration. That
Speaker 1: actually is a sense of the external world. And there
Speaker 1: are types of nervous system conditions that can affect your chronoception.
Speaker 1: In fact, not just conditions as in diseases, but chronoception
Speaker 1: changes as you age, for example. But here's where things
Speaker 1: get even weirder. The ear is not only responsible for
Speaker 1: the sense of hearing. There are other senses that are
Speaker 1: located within the ear. Organs in the human inner ear
Speaker 1: are also responsible for one major component of equilibrioception, or
Speaker 1: the sense of balance, and these organs together in the
Speaker 1: inner ear, are known as the vestibul alert system. If
Speaker 1: you get a chance, you should look up an illustration
Speaker 1: of the human vestibular system. It is like a chambered
Speaker 1: nautilus or an alien squid snail. It's got one section
Speaker 1: which curls, and this is less related to the equilibrio sception.
Speaker 1: That's the cochlea, the swirling snail shell part. But then
Speaker 1: coming out of the head of the swirling snail shell
Speaker 1: of the cochlea, there are these strange tentacle things, these
Speaker 1: three looping canals, each one like a semicircular tube snaking
Speaker 1: back on itself. And then you've also got these two
Speaker 1: tiny organs below the position down below the bases of
Speaker 1: these three semicircular canals. These two tiny organs are known
Speaker 1: as the utricle and the saccule, and together the utricle
Speaker 1: and the saccule are what's known as the odo lith organs,
Speaker 1: which literally means ear stones or ear rocks uh all
Speaker 1: so in the realm of cool names, this whole complex
Speaker 1: of organs here is known as the labyrinth, or the
Speaker 1: vestibular labyrinth, the bony labyrinth. You have one labyrinth in
Speaker 1: each year. Now, if you go back to these hammer
Speaker 1: loop snake tentacles, the three semicircular canals which each sort
Speaker 1: of loop in a different orientation, these things are hollow
Speaker 1: and partially filled with fluid fluid and gel uh the
Speaker 1: gel known as cupula and the fluid known as indo lymph,
Speaker 1: and they include interior spaces with these little hair cells,
Speaker 1: these little follicles that are sensitive and connected to nerve
Speaker 1: tissue that runs out to the rest of the brain.
Speaker 1: So when you move your head, so you turn your
Speaker 1: head to the right or the left, or you tilt
Speaker 1: your head from side to side, or you tilt your
Speaker 1: head forward or back. Inside these loops, the fluid moves
Speaker 1: around in the canals in the inner spaces and it
Speaker 1: comes into contact with the different hair cells and the
Speaker 1: hair cells since the movement of this fluid and this
Speaker 1: can give you information about the orientation of your head.
Speaker 1: And the hair cells are connected to the brain via
Speaker 1: a nerve fiber called the vestibular nerve, and then the
Speaker 1: brain interprets the stimulation data from those hair cells into
Speaker 1: sense information about the orientation of the head. And the
Speaker 1: main part of the brain involved in processing coordinating information
Speaker 1: about balance and movement is the cerebellum, which, if you've
Speaker 1: seen an illustration of the brain, is that little meaty
Speaker 1: lump position on the rear underside of the brain. Is
Speaker 1: kind of the brains but it's sort of right at
Speaker 1: the top of the spinal column. So everybody feel your
Speaker 1: brain and and and you'll you'll feel it. Get your
Speaker 1: get your hand right in there. Now, about these canals
Speaker 1: in the labyrinth, one thing that I think is really
Speaker 1: cool is that, Okay, so there's one canal that is
Speaker 1: devoted to sensing the tilting of the head forward or backward.
Speaker 1: There is another canal that's devoted to sensing the turning
Speaker 1: of the head from side to side, and then there's
Speaker 1: another that is dedicated to sensing the tilting of the
Speaker 1: head toward each shoulder. And so what you can realize
Speaker 1: is that these three canals represent the three different dimensions
Speaker 1: of space. So if I'm understanding correctly, I think i am.
Speaker 1: These three canals also correspond to the three attitude variables
Speaker 1: of aircraft and submarines, which are role, pitch, and yaw.
Speaker 1: So what mammal heads and B fifty twos have in
Speaker 1: common is that they live in three dimensional space. And
Speaker 1: if you're going to adjust movements through three dimensional space,
Speaker 1: and since uh all the different ways that you can
Speaker 1: change your attitude or change the vector along which you're moving,
Speaker 1: then you need a sensor for one of each of
Speaker 1: these three dimensions. Interesting, Rob, I know you're a big
Speaker 1: fan of of airplanes. Do do you ever think about
Speaker 1: your body in terms of role, pitch, and y'all? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think I have, though. It's it's
Speaker 1: certainly now that you may bring it up here. It's
Speaker 1: it's making me think back to like flight simulator games,
Speaker 1: you know, where you you definitely have visual displays of roll, pitch,
Speaker 1: and yaw, But we don't think about that in terms
Speaker 1: of our own personal experience of physical reality. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are babies of the three D space, so it
Speaker 1: governs man and machine alike. Now, earlier I also mentioned
Speaker 1: these otolith organs. They also have sensitive hair cells, but
Speaker 1: the sensitive hair cells here are arrayed with strange mineral
Speaker 1: formations made out of calcium carbonate again, hence otolith the
Speaker 1: name ear stones or ear rocks, and calcium carbonate is
Speaker 1: the same compound that makes up the bulk of the
Speaker 1: shells of sea creatures and pearls, but also chalk. It's
Speaker 1: a very widespread, widely found mineral. UH. It's used in
Speaker 1: tons of human technology. It's used in for example, agricultural
Speaker 1: lime UH to make chalk for a blackboard, all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. But I also found one totally off topic
Speaker 1: connection that I couldn't bear not to mention, and that
Speaker 1: is that there's one common stable crystal form of calcium
Speaker 1: carbonate known as calcite, and there is one very strange
Speaker 1: and beautiful form of calcite known as iceland spar, which
Speaker 1: is a transparent rock. It's a mineral that is clear,
Speaker 1: like ice or like slightly you know, uh, slightly jacked
Speaker 1: up glass. And it's been speculated that this transparent crystal,
Speaker 1: iceland spar, was actually the historical reference point for an
Speaker 1: object that is recorded in medieval histories known as the sunstone,
Speaker 1: and their references to this in medieval Norse texts. I
Speaker 1: think we're talking about Iceland because this crystal can be
Speaker 1: used to detect the direction of the sun. When you're
Speaker 1: sailing in the Arctic and the sun is totally obscured
Speaker 1: by clouds, so you're out, it's a gray day. You
Speaker 1: can't see where the sun is at all, but you
Speaker 1: need to know where the sun is in order to
Speaker 1: navigate your boat. You can apparently use a chunk of
Speaker 1: this transparent crystal to find the location of the sun
Speaker 1: by by the crystal's effect on the polarized light coming
Speaker 1: from the sun through the clouds. Oh fascinating. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think we've all been saying out on the beach
Speaker 1: perhaps on one of these days where it's overcast, you
Speaker 1: know the sun is up there, but you're not exactly
Speaker 1: sure what position it's in. Yeah. So calcium carbonate itself
Speaker 1: is just a very versatile and mini splendored mineral on
Speaker 1: its own. In fact, it's the subject of a of
Speaker 1: a great classic talk in science, the talk about a
Speaker 1: piece of chalk that was given by by T. H. Huxley.
Speaker 1: But but I also included a picture for you to
Speaker 1: look at here, rob, which is a scanning electron micrograph
Speaker 1: that I found of calcium carbonate crystals from the from
Speaker 1: the utricle of a cat. And so it's showing these
Speaker 1: tiny crystals. Each one is mike ascopically small, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they these rocks. Basically, these crystals play a role in
Speaker 1: the physiology and function of the inner ear. Now, what
Speaker 1: these odo lith organs do that's different from the semicircular
Speaker 1: canals is that the the odoliths detect vectors of acceleration
Speaker 1: horizontal and vertical, and So this is why you can
Speaker 1: feel whether you are going up or down in an
Speaker 1: elevator even though you can't see out of it. So
Speaker 1: in an elevator, you're not changing the orientation of your head.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not bending it forward or whatever. The
Speaker 1: head is staying fixed relative to to gravity basically. But
Speaker 1: you are moving, You're going up and down, and so
Speaker 1: the the saccula in there can detect that. So we're
Speaker 1: left with this really strange fact. Inside your ears you
Speaker 1: have tiny organs lined with crystals of the material that
Speaker 1: makes oyster shells and pearls, and they detect which directions
Speaker 1: you're accelerating in even if you can't see, which I
Speaker 1: thought was just a beautiful connection. The crystalline new a
Speaker 1: genus of the inner ear. Oh, that'd be great. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that one. And people who like give
Speaker 1: their friends crystals for like certain healing powers or something.
Speaker 1: What are the crystals of the human inner ear? Do
Speaker 1: if you like slay your enemies and take the crystals
Speaker 1: out of their ears? Oh man, that would be a great. Uh.
Speaker 1: That would be a great function of some sort of
Speaker 1: like alien invasion story where the alien has to feed
Speaker 1: on on on these crystals, you know. I was also
Speaker 1: I didn't get super deep into this because it's kind
Speaker 1: of a tangent, but I was also just looking at
Speaker 1: studies indicating the many faces of of a healthy odo
Speaker 1: lith and what it does for the body. For example,
Speaker 1: one study I was looking at mission the possibility that
Speaker 1: auto liths are possibly important for the formation of spatial memories,
Speaker 1: and that the degradation of the effectiveness of the odo
Speaker 1: lith oysters may account for the decline of spatial memory
Speaker 1: with age. So as you get older and the oyster
Speaker 1: shells in your ears, the otoliths become a little bit
Speaker 1: less good at what they do, and this actually could
Speaker 1: be related to people being less accurate at forming spatial
Speaker 1: memories as they get older. Interesting, Yeah, because there's certainly
Speaker 1: there's the brain itself, but the brain has to make
Speaker 1: use of sensory information. Yeah, and this ties into stuff
Speaker 1: we've talked about before and how um in some ways
Speaker 1: the brain remembers spaces by simulating movement but through them.
Speaker 1: But the vestibular system is also it should be mentioned,
Speaker 1: a team player. So these canals and the otoliths, they
Speaker 1: don't have much use alone, but rather they coordinate information
Speaker 1: in the brain with other sensory systems such as the
Speaker 1: visual system, appropriate receptive faculties to form a comprehensive movement
Speaker 1: detection and feedback and adjustment system. And there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff that has to happen, like, uh, for example,
Speaker 1: your visual system adjusts itself to account for changes in
Speaker 1: the movement and orientation of your body that are sensed
Speaker 1: by the vestibular system, and so the eyes can see
Speaker 1: your orientation with respect to the environment. The vestibular system,
Speaker 1: since it is the head's orientation and movement with respect
Speaker 1: to gravity and to inertia, the appropriate sceptive system feels
Speaker 1: where the rest of the body is in relation to
Speaker 1: the head. And these systems all kind of have to
Speaker 1: work together to to give you a picture of here's
Speaker 1: where your body is and how it's moving. And so
Speaker 1: when we come back to the question of dizziness and vertigo, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess that's addressing what happens when these systems get
Speaker 1: out of synchronization with each other, or when one of
Speaker 1: the systems begins to fail or have problems, And so
Speaker 1: to ask the question like what is dizziness? That's also
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting question because there are a range
Speaker 1: of different sensations that people call dizziness, that they're all
Speaker 1: kind of associated with one another. So, for example, I
Speaker 1: was reading a paper called Dizziness in Vertigo Syndromes Viewed
Speaker 1: with a Historical Eye by Dorin Hoopert and Thomas Brandt
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Neurology, published in and they cite
Speaker 1: a definition of dizziness and vertigo from the International Barani
Speaker 1: Society of neuro Autology, and they say, quote, vertigo is
Speaker 1: the sensation of self motion when no self motion is occurring.
Speaker 1: Dizziness is the sensation of disturbed or impaired spatial orientation
Speaker 1: without a false or distorted sense of motion. And imbalance
Speaker 1: or unsteadiness is the feeling of being unstable while sitting, standing,
Speaker 1: or walking without a particular directional preference. But I gotta
Speaker 1: say so, so that may be applied at the clinical
Speaker 1: level or in the in the literature, but it's clear
Speaker 1: that when people talk about dizziness, a lot of times
Speaker 1: what they're talking about here is vertigo, right. It is
Speaker 1: the sense that you are spinning or moving when you're not.
Speaker 1: And though a lot of sources I was reading said
Speaker 1: the sense that you're moving when you're not to be pedantic.
Speaker 1: I think technically, what you'd really have to say is
Speaker 1: it's the sense that you're accelerating, not the sense that
Speaker 1: you're moving, because once you're moving at a constant speed
Speaker 1: and direction, movement is imperceptible. It's only changes in speed
Speaker 1: or direction that that are sensed in the inner ear.
Speaker 1: But I think you absolutely correct about how we just
Speaker 1: we we tend to refer to things as dizziness or
Speaker 1: feeling dizzy, even if we're talking about vertico, etcetera. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think a more you know, street level definition
Speaker 1: that people would use I found on the Mayo Clinic website. Uh,
Speaker 1: they say dizziness is a term used to describe a
Speaker 1: range of sensations such as feeling faint, woozy, weak, or unsteady.
Speaker 1: Dizziness that creates the false sense that you or your
Speaker 1: surroundings are spinning or moving is called vertigo. Uh So
Speaker 1: these terms might be used differently in the literature sometimes,
Speaker 1: but I think we can basically say, you know, dizziness vertigo.
Speaker 1: We're we're sort of talking about the same thing and
Speaker 1: related things. Now that's paper I just mentioned the one
Speaker 1: by Dorian Hoopert and Thomas Brandt in the Journal of Neurology.
Speaker 1: UH it has a section where it looked into, uh
Speaker 1: the etymology of terms used for dizziness, which which I
Speaker 1: thought was actually extremely interesting and revealing. So in this
Speaker 1: part of their paper they say, uh, quote Latin, for example,
Speaker 1: has at least two source words to describe the condition vertigo.
Speaker 1: Vertigo in Latin refers to turning, spinning, rotating, and is
Speaker 1: derived from the verb vertere, meaning to turn. Another word,
Speaker 1: caligo means darkening of the eyes, funereal crape, and I
Speaker 1: think that's a cloth that would be placed over a
Speaker 1: over a body at a funeral and and dizziness. So strange,
Speaker 1: darkening of the eyes, the cloth over the over the
Speaker 1: body at a funeral, and dizziness. And they say that
Speaker 1: this word caligo and not the word vertigo, appears in
Speaker 1: ancient x passages referring to heights and the symptoms of
Speaker 1: a fear of heights. So you know, often people will
Speaker 1: feel vertigo or dizziness if they've got a fear of
Speaker 1: heights and they you know, look off of a cliff
Speaker 1: for something. But they say that collego was also used
Speaker 1: quote metaphorically for dizziness arising from feelings of exultation or
Speaker 1: for being overwhelmed and losing one's grip on reality. For example,
Speaker 1: Tacitus in his work History A describes how Vespasian wanted
Speaker 1: to become an emperor himself after Nero's suicide. He is
Speaker 1: said to have felt dizzy when the soldiers addressed him
Speaker 1: as emperor and used other high ranking titles. Interesting. But
Speaker 1: then this next piece of etymology I thought was also
Speaker 1: really interesting. They say the word giddy is believed to
Speaker 1: be derived from the Old English word giddig, meaning insane
Speaker 1: or literally possessed by a god. The Oxford English Dictionary
Speaker 1: defines the word dizzy as having or involving a sensation
Speaker 1: of spinning around and losing one's balance. It is said
Speaker 1: to originate from the Old English word disig, meaning foolish,
Speaker 1: and is thought to be related to the Low German
Speaker 1: do sig, meaning giddy, and the Old High German tusig,
Speaker 1: which relates, which translates as foolish or weak. So really
Speaker 1: interesting this this ancient um historical association between insanity and
Speaker 1: being possessed by a god with the with the feeling
Speaker 1: of dizziness. But okay, anyway to look at the question
Speaker 1: of what's actually happening in the body when you spin
Speaker 1: around in circles and become dizzy. Uh So, first of all,
Speaker 1: I have to say I could not find a single
Speaker 1: authoritative scientific paper that really looks directly at this question.
Speaker 1: There are some studies that, uh look at dizziness from
Speaker 1: a question of like things that can be done to
Speaker 1: alleviate it. But if there's a paper that just looks
Speaker 1: at what causes dizziness and spinning, I was not able
Speaker 1: to find that. Yet, maybe maybe it's out there somewhere
Speaker 1: and somebody can find it and send it our way.
Speaker 1: I did find a number of articles on popular scientific websites,
Speaker 1: but again these articles were somewhat in disagreement with each other,
Speaker 1: without any acknowledgement that they were citing different explanations. So
Speaker 1: one example that I found in a number of articles
Speaker 1: had to do with the effects of inertia on the
Speaker 1: fluid in the canals in the inner ear. Now, this
Speaker 1: is an article. This is from an article on Live
Speaker 1: Science by Natalie Wolkover, and the author here writes that quote,
Speaker 1: when you spin in a circle, inertia initially causes the
Speaker 1: indo lymph. Remember that's the fluid in the inner ears
Speaker 1: that moves around to stimulate those hair cells, and that
Speaker 1: allows your body to detect orientation of the head and motion. Uh,
Speaker 1: she says. Inertia initially causes the indo lymph to slosh
Speaker 1: in the direction opposite of your head's motion. It resists
Speaker 1: the movement of your head, dragging the cupula and again
Speaker 1: that's the the slower moving gel that's in there backwards
Speaker 1: with it and thus causing the sensory hair suspended inside
Speaker 1: the cupula to bend against the direction in which you're spinning. However,
Speaker 1: within moments, the endo lymph and thus the more gelatinous
Speaker 1: cupula adjust to the movement of your head and start
Speaker 1: going with the flow. This causes the hair cells to
Speaker 1: straighten and your brain no longer receives the message that
Speaker 1: you're spinning. Your perception has become normalized, the rotation of
Speaker 1: your head giving you the sense that you are still
Speaker 1: and the world is rotating around you. Okay, So that
Speaker 1: would sort of pair up with the understanding of dizziness
Speaker 1: that it is the sensation of motion even when you
Speaker 1: are not moving right like, I'm no longer spinning around
Speaker 1: in circles. I've stopped, but I feel like I'm spinning
Speaker 1: around in circles, and therefore I have to lay down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and from a first person perspective, I would say that
Speaker 1: is part of the sensation of dizziness. Uh, though dizziness
Speaker 1: might also be more than that. But but of course,
Speaker 1: then when you stop spinning walk over rights, you have
Speaker 1: halted the rotation of your semicircular canals. And because of inertia,
Speaker 1: the indo lymph keeps spinning. And so it's kind of
Speaker 1: the way that you know, you can spin a bucket around,
Speaker 1: but then if you stop spinning the bucket, the water
Speaker 1: in the bucket will keep spinning, it will keep slashing um,
Speaker 1: she writes. Because of inertia, the indo lymph keeps spinning,
Speaker 1: resisting change. Yet again, as the fluid continues to move,
Speaker 1: it once again deflects the cupula, this time in the
Speaker 1: direction in which you were spinning moments before. And as
Speaker 1: the using cupula bends those hair cells, a signal of
Speaker 1: movement is transmitted to the brain you since you are moving,
Speaker 1: but you're not, and that's dizziness. Okay, So you know,
Speaker 1: based on the other things I've been reading, that explanation
Speaker 1: would make some amount of sense. It's saying that the
Speaker 1: effects of inertia on the fluid in the canals in
Speaker 1: the inner ear after you stop spinning, causes some kind
Speaker 1: of you know, uh, causes some false signals in the brain.
Speaker 1: And this is disorienting, especially impaired with your other senses,
Speaker 1: like your eyes and everything are telling you you're not
Speaker 1: spinning anymore, but your interer ear feels like you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the slough bladders in our in our head and are
Speaker 1: all slashed up, basically. And this is mirrored in another
Speaker 1: article I was I found on the subject, one in
Speaker 1: Popular Science by Claire Muldarelli, again referencing the movement of
Speaker 1: the indo lymph and the cupula UH. Muldarelli writes, quote,
Speaker 1: the problem comes when you stop. Your muscles are able
Speaker 1: to start and stop really quickly without any issues, but
Speaker 1: that fluid doesn't work as fast. Even though you stopped,
Speaker 1: the fluid is still moving and it takes some time
Speaker 1: for it to finally stop. While it's still moving, those
Speaker 1: hairs are still picking up on the motion and sending
Speaker 1: signals saying I'm moving to the brain. The brain receives
Speaker 1: the signal, but at the same time knows the body
Speaker 1: is perfectly still, and the same explanation about the the
Speaker 1: inertial effects of the moving indo lymph within the canals
Speaker 1: in the brain or in the in the in the
Speaker 1: inter eear. This is also mirrored in the House to
Speaker 1: four article that I found on the subject. Is basically
Speaker 1: the endo lymph keeps moving after you stop spinning. This
Speaker 1: confuses the brain. While these explanations so I found this
Speaker 1: across multiple sources. It does seem to sort of make sense.
Speaker 1: But if this is true, one thing I wonder about
Speaker 1: is why is it that spinning in particular is liable
Speaker 1: to make you dizzy? And why not other types of
Speaker 1: movement couldn't other types of movement apart from spinning also
Speaker 1: cause you know, inertial drag in the fluids in your
Speaker 1: inner ears, and that your body would stop moving before
Speaker 1: the fluid stops moving. Yeah, that's a good question, I am,
Speaker 1: you know, based on some of the stuff will discuss
Speaker 1: I think mostly in the next episode. It does make
Speaker 1: me think about the frequency of of use when it
Speaker 1: comes to spins, you know, um, like in terms of
Speaker 1: just straight up acceleration and deceleration. Uh, in our daily lives,
Speaker 1: like we might not be running marathons and pass and
Speaker 1: batons all that much, but we are still accelerating and
Speaker 1: decel wrating fairly regularly. Yeah. Whereas the spin, especially, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of spins that we think about, uh an
Speaker 1: experience related to dizziness, those are not going to necessarily
Speaker 1: be a regular part of your daily life, That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be a it could be a conditioning thing,
Speaker 1: and the conditioning thing would actually tie into something that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in a bit when we
Speaker 1: get into how like dancers and and ice skaters supposedly
Speaker 1: deal with this. But before we get into that, I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention the other explanations I came across um
Speaker 1: for for why we get dizzy when we spin in circles,
Speaker 1: and specifically, these other explanations are based in the brains
Speaker 1: constant attempt to coordinate vestibular information with visual information from
Speaker 1: the eyes specifically. So this is from an explainer I
Speaker 1: found written in Scientific American written by Amir Karadmond, who
Speaker 1: is a neurologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Kadmond has
Speaker 1: has this different explana nation. He says, quote, if we
Speaker 1: rotate our head to the right. While our eyes remain
Speaker 1: focused on an object straight ahead, our eyes naturally moved
Speaker 1: to the left at the same speed. This involuntary response
Speaker 1: allows us to stay focused on a stationary object. And
Speaker 1: this is really physiologically important, right, Like for the body
Speaker 1: to function, you need to be able to keep focused
Speaker 1: on something while you're moving around, you know, otherwise it
Speaker 1: would be really difficult to like hunt or fight or
Speaker 1: you know, do anything like that if you can't stay
Speaker 1: focused even while your body is moving. So the eyes
Speaker 1: adjust as as the body moves. Um, but Karadmon continues quote.
Speaker 1: Spinning is more complicated. When we move our head during
Speaker 1: a spin, our eyes start to move in the opposite direction,
Speaker 1: but reach their limit before our head completes a full
Speaker 1: three and sixty degree turn, So our eyes flick back
Speaker 1: to a new starting position mid spin, and the motion
Speaker 1: repeats as we rotate. When our head rotation triggers this
Speaker 1: automatic repetitive eye movement called nastagmus, we get dizzy. Uh
Speaker 1: so nastagmus again, Yeah, it's this repetitive jerking around of
Speaker 1: the eyes. Um and nastagmus can be triggered by certain
Speaker 1: kinds of stimuli, like if you show people a rotating
Speaker 1: drum that has stripes painted on it, you can trigger
Speaker 1: nastagmus as the eye tries to track the fast moving
Speaker 1: stripes as as they go past um. But another interesting
Speaker 1: fact I found is that nastagmus plays an important role
Speaker 1: in the arsenal of field sobriety tests used by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: So the normal procedure for this is, if you know
Speaker 1: a police officers trying to do a field sobriety test
Speaker 1: on somebody they've pulled over, they will ask them to
Speaker 1: hold their heads still, and then they will ask the
Speaker 1: subject to follow a moving stimulus with their eyes without
Speaker 1: moving their head, and then you move the stimulus steadily,
Speaker 1: sort of in an arc around towards the person's side,
Speaker 1: and as they follow it with their eyes. Supposedly, there
Speaker 1: are types of nastagmus, or these repetitive jerking movements of
Speaker 1: the eyes that are usually indicative of intoxication. Though I
Speaker 1: should note that just in poking around a little bit,
Speaker 1: it looks like there's some controversy over the reliability of
Speaker 1: this test and it's used by police. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like you have a tricorder type device that
Speaker 1: you hold up and and scan the eyes. It's based
Speaker 1: on what the police officer is observing and then reporting
Speaker 1: regarding the movement the the the slight movements of the
Speaker 1: individual's eyes. Right. And so this is interesting because I
Speaker 1: feel like now we've got at least two different explanations.
Speaker 1: In fact, this would be getting into a whole other
Speaker 1: canni worms. I found another explanation in a very short
Speaker 1: explainer article for the BBC by a by a zoologist
Speaker 1: and science communicator who who framed their explanation more in
Speaker 1: terms of the brain getting desensitized to spinning input and
Speaker 1: then deciding to ignore it, and then when you stop spinning,
Speaker 1: the canceling out it has had to do of the
Speaker 1: spinning input is uh is suddenly counterproductive and makes you
Speaker 1: think the body is still moving. I'm going to ignore
Speaker 1: that one for now and look at these other main
Speaker 1: two explanations. So one is about the inertia of the
Speaker 1: fluids in the canals in the inner ear as as
Speaker 1: you spin around, and and that inertia causing a feeling
Speaker 1: of spinning even after the body has stopped spinning. The
Speaker 1: other is UH is about this very different thing about
Speaker 1: what's happening with the eyes when you spin around. And
Speaker 1: so I actually I was like, maybe I can get
Speaker 1: some insight onto which of these is correct. Uh though,
Speaker 1: though I guess one thing I should say is that
Speaker 1: these explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I mean, it
Speaker 1: could be that both of these things contribute to dizziness. Um.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get some insight on this by
Speaker 1: experimenting on myself. I was actually lying in bed last
Speaker 1: night thinking about this, trying to sort out, like why
Speaker 1: these two different explanations have come cross, which one could
Speaker 1: be correct or more correct? And I decided I had
Speaker 1: to get up out of bed and spin around to
Speaker 1: test this out. So um, so I recognized this experiment
Speaker 1: is just on me. I just did it once. This
Speaker 1: is not going to pass peer review. This is not
Speaker 1: scientifically rigorous, but it was at least interesting to me.
Speaker 1: So what what I did was I tried spinning around
Speaker 1: for twelve revolutions uh boat in two different conditions, one
Speaker 1: with my eyes closed so I'd be unlikely to experience
Speaker 1: ni stagmas, and one with my eyes open so I
Speaker 1: would be And I was trying to go to constant speed.
Speaker 1: I tried to keep the number of revolutions the same
Speaker 1: for for each test condition um and and have the
Speaker 1: only thing different being whether my eyes were open or closed.
Speaker 1: So I will say I felt dizzy after both spinning sessions,
Speaker 1: but I felt significantly worse, significantly dizzy or after the
Speaker 1: one with my eyes open. Though It's complicated because that
Speaker 1: was the second one I did, so there could also
Speaker 1: be cumulative effects. I tried to rest in between them,
Speaker 1: but I didn't rest that long, and so there could
Speaker 1: have been cumulative effects where it wasn't necessarily that spinning
Speaker 1: with the eyes open is worse, but just that I
Speaker 1: spun around in circles twenty four times recently instead of
Speaker 1: twelve times after that one. So the other thing is
Speaker 1: I really really do not recommend spinning in circles twenty
Speaker 1: four times before bed I was lying there feeling pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: As you listen to these episodes, you're going to want
Speaker 1: to try a little bit of spinning. That's understandable and
Speaker 1: we encouraged that. But please be careful, Please be careful spinning.
Speaker 1: Uh and you know, realize that you will probably become
Speaker 1: dizzy and you, I mean, you don't want to separate
Speaker 1: fall or anything like that. Yeah, Uh, so I don't
Speaker 1: think my my personal experiment really settled the question, and
Speaker 1: it could be their confounding varials variables. But I did
Speaker 1: find that at least seemed possible to me that having
Speaker 1: your eyes opened during spinning makes the dizziness issue significantly
Speaker 1: worse than than spinning with the eyes closed, which would
Speaker 1: seem to lend some credence to the explanation offered by
Speaker 1: Karadmond that it has something to do with the movement
Speaker 1: of the eyes. But like I said, it could be
Speaker 1: the case that actually both of these things contribute to dizziness,
Speaker 1: and they were just emphasizing different aspects of why we
Speaker 1: get dizzy from spinning. Though there's another idea that I
Speaker 1: that I got, I guess maybe a hypothesis that my
Speaker 1: experiment brought up, which is, what if dizziness from spinning
Speaker 1: is strongly influenced by the amount of time spent spinning
Speaker 1: as opposed to just the number of rotations. So if we're,
Speaker 1: you know, in a minute, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: like ballerinas and skaters, you would have to think that
Speaker 1: if a skater does ten turns really fast as as
Speaker 1: opposed to me doing you know, ten or twelve turns
Speaker 1: pretty slow, standing in my bedroom. Uh is that you
Speaker 1: know that the skater would have it worse. But but
Speaker 1: maybe it's actually worse to be spinning for a longer
Speaker 1: period of time slower than a shorter period of time
Speaker 1: really fast. Well, all right, let's let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the art of spinning, particularly as it relates
Speaker 1: to ballet dancers and figure skaters. So, uh, certainly both
Speaker 1: of these involve a fair amount of spinning around in circles.
Speaker 1: That are the most amazing examples figure skaters, ballerinas, balot
Speaker 1: ballet dancers whose feats of spinning athletics are certainly enough
Speaker 1: to cause feelings of a vertigo in the view or
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, and yet we don't see these individuals
Speaker 1: tremendously affected. You know, like like if of a dancer,
Speaker 1: does you know a really impressive pirouette, Uh, they don't
Speaker 1: immediately fall onto the floor, or at least that's not
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. Um. The same goes for figure skaters, right,
Speaker 1: they do some phenomenal spin and then they're out informed
Speaker 1: to continue their routine. Right. I mean, so if I
Speaker 1: spinning around slowly like twelve times, have to stumble to
Speaker 1: my bed, afterwards, what how do how do you continue
Speaker 1: a a really difficult intricate you know, executing dance moves
Speaker 1: or or or continuing to skate. I mean skating alone
Speaker 1: is difficult enough with your balance thrown off like it
Speaker 1: like you would think it should be after one of
Speaker 1: those spinning moves. Yeah, and yet they're not. And what
Speaker 1: it basically seems to come down to is that they've
Speaker 1: essentially trained their brains not to pay as much attention
Speaker 1: to the input from from the vestibular system, so not
Speaker 1: to be thrown off by the signals coming in. And
Speaker 1: this is something that that comes through just continual practice
Speaker 1: and ratcheting up of your sort of spinning tolerance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this seems to be what I was reading as well.
Speaker 1: It's it seems to be one of the main explanations
Speaker 1: is just conditioning. It's like practice and conditioning of the
Speaker 1: brain to not get as thrown off by the vestibular
Speaker 1: system's response to spinning. Right. And it's and and that's
Speaker 1: not to discount it. It's like it's really impressive. I
Speaker 1: was looking at a paper about this two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: Imperial College London study published in the journal Cerebrial Cortex
Speaker 1: by the by Nigga Enigma Tolina at all and it
Speaker 1: was looking at why dancers don't get dizzy. So what
Speaker 1: they did is they looked at twenty nine female dancers
Speaker 1: and twenty female age matched controls with no dancing experience.
Speaker 1: And this is we see this in another study we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in the second episode, where basically you have
Speaker 1: your expert spinners and your control group is gonna consist
Speaker 1: of people who are more or less comparable individuals, just
Speaker 1: without that spinning experience, without that dancing experience in this case,
Speaker 1: So they took these individuals and they put them through
Speaker 1: a series of spinning tests in a chair in a
Speaker 1: dark room. Um then they measured the brains of the
Speaker 1: two groups and how the volunteers reacted to the spinning,
Speaker 1: and they found that the dancers recover faster than the
Speaker 1: non dancers. Basically, the dancers brains have adapted over years
Speaker 1: of training to suppress the input that causes dizziness. It's
Speaker 1: a case of training related brain plasticity. It's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that you know could one day be used
Speaker 1: to actually treat other conditions. Knowledge of this could be
Speaker 1: used to treat other conditions and enhance our understanding of
Speaker 1: how the brain heals itself. Now, many ballet dancers, including
Speaker 1: those used in the study, use something called spotting in
Speaker 1: their training. Yeah, that explained by Karadmond mentions this that,
Speaker 1: uh I think more so for ballet dancers than for
Speaker 1: ice skaters. Uh. Yes, the having to do with the
Speaker 1: speed of the rotation. But the ballet dancers use this
Speaker 1: trick of how they move the head and focus the
Speaker 1: vision to prevent than being overwhelmed by nastagmus was the
Speaker 1: reason he cited for it. Right. I believe this is
Speaker 1: pretty well presented in I mean you can you can
Speaker 1: see it in dance. And if you are like me
Speaker 1: and most of your ballet experience these days comes from
Speaker 1: watching ballet horror movies like The Two Suspirias and ax Swan,
Speaker 1: then you know what I'm talking about. Like it's really,
Speaker 1: you know, interesting to watch the way their head seems
Speaker 1: to like swing back around to the same position as
Speaker 1: their body spins. You focus, as the dancer, you focus
Speaker 1: your eyes on one area in front of you as
Speaker 1: you spin around over and over again, and this helps
Speaker 1: you stay steady. You keep moving your head around at
Speaker 1: the same point while the body spins but the authors
Speaker 1: in this particular study say that that spotting alone isn't
Speaker 1: enough to account for the ability. And likewise, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: figure skaters don't really do spotting, not exactly. So basically
Speaker 1: there's figure skaters are spinning way too fast, for one thing.
Speaker 1: So I've read that some figure skaters do use a
Speaker 1: form of spotting to count their revolutions. So just just
Speaker 1: counting how many times a particular spot on the ice
Speaker 1: passes you buy? Uh. They may also instantly focus on
Speaker 1: something as they come out of an intense spin in
Speaker 1: order to get their bearing straight, but as with ballet dancers,
Speaker 1: figure skaters simply get used to the in I was
Speaker 1: reading that they only really feel dizzy when they start
Speaker 1: upping their spin levels and training, but then their their
Speaker 1: bodies their minds adjust to that as well. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's not just like there is a
Speaker 1: trick to not feeling dizzy from spinning. It's there are
Speaker 1: tricks like spotting, but that doesn't fully explain it. A
Speaker 1: lot of it's probably just conditioning is just practice, right,
Speaker 1: and the more you spin, the more your your brain
Speaker 1: becomes accustomed to this input and realizes, Yeah, the spinning
Speaker 1: is what we do. This is we can we can
Speaker 1: it basically acclimatizes to the spinning reality. It makes me
Speaker 1: wonder if you could, you know, create a generation of
Speaker 1: like super ballerinas or super skaters by by bringing them
Speaker 1: up from from infancy in an environment where they're deeply
Speaker 1: desensitized to like different types of vestibular disorientation, like if
Speaker 1: you maybe if you raise them in space or something.
Speaker 1: Um well, I mean, on one hand, I feel like
Speaker 1: what you just described and him that far from like
Speaker 1: the really hardcore world of of professional dance, right, like
Speaker 1: to start conditioning them very young. But on the space question, uh,
Speaker 1: I looked that up as well. You know, can you
Speaker 1: get dizzy into space? I mean, what does dizziness and
Speaker 1: space consists of? And I found an Avery Thompson piece
Speaker 1: on Popular Mechanics. The discussed this, citing personal experiments, um
Speaker 1: you know personal um, you know, informal experiments performed by
Speaker 1: astronaut Tim Peak. And basically it's a case again of
Speaker 1: of of the brain adapting. In this case, the brain
Speaker 1: adapting to the initial feeling of spinning that one experiences
Speaker 1: in low gravity, and the brain adapts to this change
Speaker 1: and then it's very difficult to feel dizzy, um Peak
Speaker 1: says unless sudden acceleration is involved. I think this was
Speaker 1: the ultimate plan of that guy from Moonraker. He wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know what he was like going to
Speaker 1: sterilize the Earth or kill all the humans, and he's
Speaker 1: like moved all of his beloved people up to the
Speaker 1: to the space station. Clearly he's trying to create a
Speaker 1: generation of super ballerinas to rule the post apocalyptic Earth.
Speaker 1: Oh man, yeah, Moonraker so good. I feel like Moonraker
Speaker 1: is probably good the one Bond film we could do
Speaker 1: for weird house cinema, like it's the it's the weirdest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Well, well, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: that last pierced Bras in the movie with the invisible
Speaker 1: car and the castle made of ice, that that's Oh
Speaker 1: I never saw that one, but I yeah, I have
Speaker 1: heard it has some pretty bonkers elements to it. It's
Speaker 1: up there with Moonraker for for weirdness. Those are the
Speaker 1: two weirdest ones. Yeah. All right, Well, again this was
Speaker 1: part one. We're gonna come back for part two, and
Speaker 1: in part two we're going to discuss, among other things,
Speaker 1: um meditative states in spinning, We're gonna we're gonna discuss
Speaker 1: the Sufi whirling UH, Sufi mysticism and UH and the
Speaker 1: spinning that is involved in that and in a particular
Speaker 1: study that looks at at it. UH. So we hope
Speaker 1: that you will come back for that episode. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
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