Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and jar Jar Binks is here too, and
Speaker 1: that makes this short stuff. She's sitting in for dave C.
Speaker 1: Everybody say hi to dave C. He'll be glad to
Speaker 1: hear that later on.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is not about Pinky in the brain.
Speaker 2: It's about Botox in the brain.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is.
Speaker 2: Because when I saw Botox in the brain, I was like,
Speaker 2: that sounds like a TV show, but I was like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking Pinky in the brain.
Speaker 1: Now, Botox in the Brain is a cop show, not
Speaker 1: a cartoon.
Speaker 2: Big thanks to Helio and Live Science very well, health
Speaker 2: study findes, Neuroscience News and other sources. Take it away, Josh.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about botox, right. Botox, I believe is
Speaker 1: a brand name, but it's like Kleenex. It's become a
Speaker 1: proprietary eponym, is it really, Yes for sure. Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of different brands of botox, like Disport and
Speaker 1: there's plenty of others, but what they all are is
Speaker 1: theinum toxin or BTX, and that is produced by Clostridium
Speaker 1: boculinum and botulism. Anybody who's ever seen dead calm knows
Speaker 1: what botulism is and how horrible it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: But it's a bacteria that grows in the absence of air,
Speaker 1: typically on food. I think beef is like a real
Speaker 1: big grower of botulism, which is why if you ever
Speaker 1: have like a dented can of beef stew, just throw
Speaker 1: it away because it could kill you. Because bochulin or yeah,
Speaker 1: boculinum toxin is the most potent neurotoxin known to humans.
Speaker 1: And the reason it's so potent, chuck is it goes
Speaker 1: in there into your nerve cells and it binds to them,
Speaker 1: and in particular, it binds to nerve cells where your
Speaker 1: blood and your muscles meat, which is usually fairly close
Speaker 1: to the skin, and it blocks the setylcholine from coming
Speaker 1: and getting into those the ends of those nerve cells,
Speaker 1: which means that those nerve cells just don't function, which
Speaker 1: means that your muscle are paralyzed, which is bad enough
Speaker 1: when it starts in your mouth, but then it goes
Speaker 1: to your throat and eventually your lungs, and then you
Speaker 1: die a really terrible death from botulism. So it's of
Speaker 1: course totally unsurprising that somebody figured out that you could
Speaker 1: use this incredibly potent neurotoxin to get rid of wrinkles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, using botulism met I'm sorry, Well, I guess it
Speaker 2: is bochlism. Using botox medically came around the seventies with
Speaker 2: doctor Alan B. Scott, who went to the FDA and said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I think I can treat strabismus, which is I guess wandering.
Speaker 2: I could be a lazy way of saying that or
Speaker 2: lazy eye. Sure, and said I think I can treat
Speaker 2: strabismus with this. FDA said, have at it. He would
Speaker 2: inject it locally in the face. One thing that did
Speaker 2: was prove that it was safe to do relatively speaking,
Speaker 2: and it could treat muscle disorders. And then starting in
Speaker 2: the two thousands is when it really came on the
Speaker 2: scene with setians doing what we all think of as
Speaker 2: you know Botox's main function now, which is you get
Speaker 2: these injections locally and very specific places in your face usually,
Speaker 2: and it takes three or four days, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, for about three months, you will be
Speaker 2: walking around with a forehead smooth as a shiny apple
Speaker 2: and an expression that says nothing.
Speaker 1: Right, you can really get a good poker face from
Speaker 1: around a bowtox. Yeah, so, yeah, it just relaxes those
Speaker 1: muscles that cause the wrinkles, say around your eyes, around
Speaker 1: your mouth, and your forehead in between your brow in particular,
Speaker 1: those are called your elevens, and by paralyzing those muscles,
Speaker 1: it relaxes them and hence the wrinkles aren't there anymore.
Speaker 1: And like you said, it lasts for about three to
Speaker 1: four months. And because you can't, you have just like
Speaker 1: a blank face in a lot of ways, depending on
Speaker 1: where you get the botox injection. You can't really smile,
Speaker 1: like you physically are incapable of smiling because the muscles
Speaker 1: involved are paralyzed. More often, you can't really frown or
Speaker 1: furrow your brow because those muscles are paralyzed. And so right,
Speaker 1: like right off the bat, people started reporting that if
Speaker 1: you saw somebody with boatox, they couldn't express emotion using
Speaker 1: their faces anymore for that three to four month period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, like you know, you can
Speaker 2: make the shape of a smile with your mouth and
Speaker 2: the shape of a smile or a frown with your mouth,
Speaker 2: but what people you know, I think people realize this
Speaker 2: is about say what people don't realize, but when you
Speaker 2: think about it, is what I meant to say. You
Speaker 2: express emotion with your faces. You smile and frown with
Speaker 2: your face, not just your mouth. Sure, your mouth may
Speaker 2: go up, your mouth may I guess, go down or
Speaker 2: express upsettedness, But it's really you know, people smile with
Speaker 2: their eyes and their faces and you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: your brow gets furrowed. It's a whole face experience, which
Speaker 2: is a great album title. Yeah, and botox. That's what
Speaker 2: it cuts off. And that's what can be kind of
Speaker 2: creepy looking, is when someone is smiling with their mouth
Speaker 2: but the rest of their face is dead and it's
Speaker 2: a little strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, played a great effect in Insidious, Right, I love
Speaker 1: that stuff.
Speaker 2: Should we take a break because this is where things
Speaker 2: get super interesting?
Speaker 1: Yes? I agree, Yes, all right, we'll be right back, so, Chuck.
Speaker 1: It makes sense that you can't really read someone's emotions
Speaker 1: through their face after they've gotten a pretty good round
Speaker 1: of botox. But there was something stranger that stood to
Speaker 1: come in as reports from people who got botox injections
Speaker 1: or other kinds of bachulin injections that they weren't experiencing
Speaker 1: emotions like they used to, and in particular, this showed
Speaker 1: up most pronouncedly in people who suffered from depression. They
Speaker 1: started to notice that after they got botox injections in
Speaker 1: certain parts of their face, especially around their forehead and
Speaker 1: their brows, called the glabular region, their depression symptoms, if
Speaker 1: they didn't, if they weren't alleviated totally, they were certainly
Speaker 1: less pronounced than they have been before. And this was
Speaker 1: a little odd.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely a little bit odd. But so again, we're
Speaker 2: not talking about showing emotion, we're talking about actually feeling
Speaker 2: the emotion. Right, But there's this thing and it all
Speaker 2: kind of makes sense when you look at the big
Speaker 2: picture called the facial feedback hypothesis. Yes, and a very
Speaker 2: sh dumb down way of saying it is that the
Speaker 2: idea of like, hey, if you're feeling depressed, maybe just
Speaker 2: try smiling more because that can actually work, and they've
Speaker 2: done research on stuff like this. One way it can,
Speaker 2: you know, manifests itself is we have this tendency to
Speaker 2: mimic expressions of other people near us. And it's and
Speaker 2: it probably comes from just evolution of like wanting to
Speaker 2: fit in in a group and like, maybe so you
Speaker 2: won't be killed like everyone else here is smiling it
Speaker 2: that guy's and laughing at his joke, so I'm gonna
Speaker 2: do the same thing, so I just fit in better.
Speaker 2: And it's that facial feedback hypothesis at work, where it's
Speaker 2: sort of this feedback loop of smiling from someone else
Speaker 2: will usually lend to a smile even if you're not
Speaker 2: feeling it especially happy. I'm not saying like everyone's in
Speaker 2: a good mood so they're smiling, but literally just smiling
Speaker 2: because someone else in is smiling, and then that will
Speaker 2: in turn and generally make your emotions pick up as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the opposite can be true too. If you're
Speaker 1: scowling or you see someone else scowling, you mimic their
Speaker 1: scowl unconsciously, it will have a depressed state on your mood, right.
Speaker 1: And that's really interesting because people always thought that facial
Speaker 1: expressions reflected what you felt inside, not vice versa. But
Speaker 1: there's it definitely goes both ways, and that's the facial
Speaker 1: feedback hypothesis. So when people started saying, like, my depression
Speaker 1: symptoms are kind of alleviated when I get botox, they
Speaker 1: chalked it up to facial feedback, and in particular, what
Speaker 1: they suspected is that with your brow area, the glabular region,
Speaker 1: so it's like the area right above the bridge of
Speaker 1: your nose up to you know, and kind of spreading
Speaker 1: out like a Jonathan Adler fan above your eyebrows for
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's the you cut me off in traffic
Speaker 2: zone of my face exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, put chuck, that's the new name of it. I
Speaker 1: would say, if you get injections in that area, it
Speaker 1: actually has an effect on your amygdala. A migdala is
Speaker 1: the seed of your fight or flight just famous friend
Speaker 1: of the podcast Fight or Flight, yeah response early days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the seed of negative emotions like anger, fear, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and if you have depression, your amygdala is overactive and
Speaker 1: it causes you to develop a bias toward interpreting the
Speaker 1: world negatively and yourself negatively. And what they posited was
Speaker 1: that botox short circuited that feedback loop by paralyzing the
Speaker 1: muscles that trigger your amygdala to experience negative emotions or
Speaker 1: produce negative emotions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not necessarily that it can completely take away
Speaker 2: those emotions, but it tamps it down and makes things
Speaker 2: less intense. And so they you know, they basically stumbled
Speaker 2: upon this saying where they can actually treat depression through
Speaker 2: botox and checktions.
Speaker 1: Yes, which is it's huge because it's not directly it's
Speaker 1: not like they're injecting the needle into your amygdala and
Speaker 1: inserting the botox. The botox is just acting on your muscles,
Speaker 1: but it's indirectly acting on your amygdala, which makes it
Speaker 1: a much safer treatment than save pharma that acts directly
Speaker 1: on your amygdala chemically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they've co this isn't just from talking to
Speaker 2: people and getting that kind of feedback. This has been
Speaker 2: confirmed in the Wonder machine and the fMRI. They've confirmed
Speaker 2: these findings. They basically the scan showed different kinds of
Speaker 2: altered activity in the amygdala if you were a depressed
Speaker 2: patient who got those injections. And you know, they basically
Speaker 2: are saying this is like a real thing now.
Speaker 1: Yes, So yes, they've they've shown that it alters the
Speaker 1: activity in the amygdala, and not just patients with depression,
Speaker 1: but people who have borderline personality disorder as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I think they're amygdala is on hyperdrive and The thing
Speaker 1: that makes it different from Russian is that it's also
Speaker 1: coupled with lower impulsivity threshold, so they're much more likely
Speaker 1: to lash out at people around them with those negative emotions,
Speaker 1: which is what we talked about in our Emotional pain episode.
Speaker 1: Why it's just such a terrible disorder to have. But
Speaker 1: it's their amygdala being hyperactive as well. And so they've
Speaker 1: found that botox injections in the right place can actually
Speaker 1: reduce or eliminate BPD as well, at least for the
Speaker 1: three to four months until your muscles come back online
Speaker 1: and are able to trigger those emotions again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you're an adherent of acupuncture and you think, hey,
Speaker 2: this sounds kind of familiar, it's sort of along the
Speaker 2: same lines. They did comparison group treatments with acupuncture patients.
Speaker 2: In acupuncture, it did show improve clinical symptoms, but it
Speaker 2: did not hold up under the Wonder machine examination.
Speaker 1: No, Like, it still had its effect, but it didn't
Speaker 1: have a neurological EFFECTX has neurological effect. It's actually acting
Speaker 1: on the amygdila. It's huge. It was a huge, huge
Speaker 1: breakthrough when they figured this out, and then now that
Speaker 1: they've proved it It can also be used to treat
Speaker 1: anxiety if you injected in your head and neck muscles.
Speaker 1: And you can use botox to treat migrains. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: insurance has started to cover it for migrains, but they're
Speaker 1: hoping that they'll start to cover it for things like
Speaker 1: depression or borderline personality disorder or anxiety as well.
Speaker 2: Cover it insurance if it helps people, cover it for sure.
Speaker 1: And my hat is off to my dear sweet wife.
Speaker 1: You me who tipped me off to this one.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, thanks yummy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Jumy, since we both thanked Youmy chuck. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: you say that short stuff is out? I would.
Speaker 2: Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.