Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: you know, summer's here and with summer comesfation drilling holes
Speaker 1: in your skull to uh improve your mindset, to treat
Speaker 1: the traumatic injuries, that sort of thing. Yeah, people often
Speaker 1: think summer pools swimming, but what about creating pool in
Speaker 1: your forehead? Indeed, Yeah, So we are going to rerun
Speaker 1: this episode because we have a special uh hole in
Speaker 1: our hearts, hole in our brains for this um for
Speaker 1: this episode, and we hope you enjoy. And also wanted
Speaker 1: to mention that if you don't know about the stud
Speaker 1: it's called the NIB dot com. Uh. Emmy Dennis, a cartoonist,
Speaker 1: has a great little bit on trepi Nation here is.
Speaker 1: She even recreates one of these trepre Nations posts that
Speaker 1: we talk about. Well, I'll make sure to include a
Speaker 1: link to that on the landing page of this episode,
Speaker 1: as well as a link to a new Forbes article
Speaker 1: that came out. It has to do with three a
Speaker 1: trepan skulls from the Copacabana Peninsula. And the Kitty Kaka
Speaker 1: Basin of Olivia and these days back somewhere between BC
Speaker 1: and A thousand, uh see, so it's pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Will also include a link to the video we did
Speaker 1: because there's a there's some particular footage that we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the episode and you might be thinking, oh, I'd
Speaker 1: really love to see that. You might think you would
Speaker 1: love to see that, and if you would, then check
Speaker 1: out the video. I'll include the link on the landing page. Indeed,
Speaker 1: this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind does in
Speaker 1: fact deal with the brain, the physical aspect of the mind,
Speaker 1: and some rather radical things that have and can be
Speaker 1: done to it, like drilling a hole in it, yes,
Speaker 1: or particularly drilling a hole in the skull to create
Speaker 1: a pathway to the brain. Yes, that kind of a
Speaker 1: cranial release point. Yeah. I mean, we are talking about
Speaker 1: trepid nation, which is something that has been performed since
Speaker 1: prehistoric times, and we'll get more into that, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty much mostly associated with which doctors. But we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about it today in a medical sense, historical sense,
Speaker 1: and what it may or may not have to do
Speaker 1: with Alzheimer's. Yes, um, I do want to just go
Speaker 1: ahead and get this out of the way right now,
Speaker 1: and we'll probably touch on this some more. But no
Speaker 1: matter what you hear in this episode, do not drill
Speaker 1: a hole in your skull or the skulls of anyone
Speaker 1: you know. Um, it's a bad idea best left to
Speaker 1: professionals that you know. We we have caution you guys
Speaker 1: a lot before. We've talked about like you get stung
Speaker 1: by uh jelly fish, do not pee on yourself for others,
Speaker 1: because it's not gonna work. It might actually make things worse.
Speaker 1: But we are super serious when we talk about trepen nation. Um,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of laughing about it right now. But
Speaker 1: as we will go into later, people have performed self
Speaker 1: trepennations before and we'll talk about the reasons for that.
Speaker 1: But again, this is something that is uh, it's just
Speaker 1: not something that you do. I mean, it's brain surgery,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And uh, in a sense, the the oldest
Speaker 1: form of brain surgery now when we're talking about about
Speaker 1: trepid nation. Essentially, this is the surgical removal of bone segments,
Speaker 1: often circular, but sometimes it will be a square. It varies,
Speaker 1: but but you see a lot of circles from the
Speaker 1: skull in order to treat the symptoms of real or
Speaker 1: imagine brain maladies. It was practiced by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, Romans, Greeks,
Speaker 1: and the early Mesoamerican civilizations. The earliest example that has
Speaker 1: been found of a skull with trepen nation marks goes
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the Neolithic period some ten
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and the procedure is still performed today,
Speaker 1: both for medical and non medical reasons. Yeah, today doctors
Speaker 1: tend to call it a craniotomy instead of trepidation, just
Speaker 1: because trepination is kind of a for many good reasons,
Speaker 1: kind of a stigmatized term, because it does just bring
Speaker 1: to mind drilling a hole through the skull and uh,
Speaker 1: as as we'll discussed, there's a lot of baggage that
Speaker 1: comes with that. A lot of that baggage it does
Speaker 1: not deserve, but some of it it does. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when doctors do it today, it's because there's been some
Speaker 1: sort of head trauma and uh, some sort of injury
Speaker 1: that now only a sort of trepination would help to
Speaker 1: reduce swelling in the build up of blood and other
Speaker 1: fluids which can kill brain cells. Yeah, we're talking about
Speaker 1: epidural or subdural hematomas here. Uh. And and also portions
Speaker 1: of the skull will be reviewed, will be removed in
Speaker 1: order to access parts of the brain. And in those cases,
Speaker 1: of course we're taking this brain flap off in your
Speaker 1: replacing it with a titanium plate, uh, screwing it on,
Speaker 1: or using some of the forum to to fix it
Speaker 1: back in position. Yeah, And then again these are our
Speaker 1: medical reasons for undergoing this procedure. Non medical, there there
Speaker 1: are quite a few reasons, it turns out, through history,
Speaker 1: and one could be a kind of symbolic trepanning, in
Speaker 1: which you know, there's not there is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a hole made in the head, that it's more
Speaker 1: of a symbolic thing, a sort of third eye that
Speaker 1: mystics might say that you know, would help to expand
Speaker 1: your consciousness. Um, I do know that. Archaeologist Bob Arnott says,
Speaker 1: and this isn't a new scientist article the skull doctors
Speaker 1: that some holes were made after death as part of
Speaker 1: a burial right or to allow removal of the brain
Speaker 1: before mommification. And he says that in some societies people
Speaker 1: actually wore bone ambulance little discs that were cut out
Speaker 1: from the skull of a leader or a great warrior.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like the the whole symbolic transaction
Speaker 1: that happens there. If you have a little bit of
Speaker 1: warrior or leader, perhaps you possess some of their power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and undoubted, undoubtedly trepid nation was used to treat various headaches, epilepsy,
Speaker 1: mental disorders. There's even in the most basic forms of
Speaker 1: trepid nation, with like the least medical ideas, there's still
Speaker 1: this notion that there is an essential link between what's
Speaker 1: going on inside the skull and the human condition and
Speaker 1: your experience of reality, and that you can somehow adjustice,
Speaker 1: tap into it, treat it by breaking down the barrier
Speaker 1: between the world and the brain. Um and in this
Speaker 1: you do see some of these ideas there in many
Speaker 1: cases misapplied, but undoubtedly there have been holes drilled in
Speaker 1: heads to release spirits, demons, etcetera. Yeah, the spirit and
Speaker 1: demons things is something that that seems as though the
Speaker 1: Western world has applied to what they might have deemed
Speaker 1: as a primitive culture. Yeah, I think it's it's from
Speaker 1: what I've read, is definitely overstated, but it's difficult for
Speaker 1: anyone to say, no one ever drilled a hole in
Speaker 1: the head to release the spirit or demon. But but
Speaker 1: it is, it is over applied, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: the details on that. It kind of gets, you know, treprenation,
Speaker 1: gets into that weird territory that cannibalism gets into, where
Speaker 1: there's so much myth and it's freighted with with so
Speaker 1: much morality that it's sometimes hard to suess out the
Speaker 1: truth from fiction. Over a historical amount of time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because certainly, especially really you know, Western European culture in
Speaker 1: the over the last a few centuries, really into the
Speaker 1: ideas of primitive, primitive people's or people who were deemed
Speaker 1: as primitive eating each other and eating foreigners. Uh, certainly
Speaker 1: into the idea of of some sort of a primitive
Speaker 1: witch doctor just uh, you know, treating some sort of
Speaker 1: malady by saying, oh, must free ghost from skull with
Speaker 1: hammered you know, because it's just it's it's a demeaning ideas.
Speaker 1: It limits those individuals to most primitive modes of human behavior. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then we have seen this in in Westerners for
Speaker 1: a long time, this idea that you know, a Western
Speaker 1: must be much more sophisticated. So therefore it must be
Speaker 1: that they felt as though they were possessed by demon
Speaker 1: and they had to let it out. But according to
Speaker 1: Dr John Verano, who looked at something like ten years
Speaker 1: of schools that we're in museums and private collections in
Speaker 1: the U s and prow and he came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that there's plenty of evidence for advanced surgical skills
Speaker 1: among the prehistoric people of the Andies. So that's for
Speaker 1: one um. And if you start to look at this
Speaker 1: a little bit more, then you you will stumble across
Speaker 1: someone called Ephraim George Squire, who back in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: three already knew this. He already suspected this um, but
Speaker 1: he actually had a different hypothesis of why this was,
Speaker 1: and it didn't have anything to do with demons um.
Speaker 1: He was an American diplomat and he was journeying across
Speaker 1: Peru when he met Senora Zanito, who had in her
Speaker 1: possession a skull with a perfectly square uh cut in it.
Speaker 1: And what he notices that it had healing scar marks
Speaker 1: and it had new bone growth, which would indicate the
Speaker 1: person whoever inhabited that school before survived the trepid nation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were healing, They were going on with their lives
Speaker 1: despite and maybe even because of this hole. That's right.
Speaker 1: This if you want to look more into this to
Speaker 1: this specific example, it is from the mental fALS article headcase,
Speaker 1: and it goes into detailing trepid nation in various ways.
Speaker 1: And Squire, who is a rather interesting individual on his own,
Speaker 1: I mean, a self taught archaeologist that was sent by
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln to South America to deal with the guano,
Speaker 1: the guana guano business, the guano problem, and then he
Speaker 1: ends up immersed in this issue of of these skulls
Speaker 1: in ancient neurosurgery. And and and at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about Western ideals and not what primitives,
Speaker 1: primitive so called primitive societies did and do. Um. This
Speaker 1: was a time where certainly that western white Westerners we
Speaker 1: were like to view themselves as this superior species, almost
Speaker 1: certainly a superior race, and everybody uh else was just
Speaker 1: kind of piddling about. So the idea that ancient ancient
Speaker 1: Meso Americans had advanced neurosurgery was kind of was a
Speaker 1: radical idea, and in some sense it's a dangerous idea
Speaker 1: to those who wanted to hold onto these these notions
Speaker 1: of Western superiority. That's right, because we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: this in a little bit. But you know, nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: they're not having a lot of success with the procedure itself,
Speaker 1: and it had been largely abandoned by this time. So
Speaker 1: to think that a civilization, um, you know, five thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, seven thousand years ago, could have carried this
Speaker 1: out successfully seemed to fly in the face of logic.
Speaker 1: And what Squire did is he presented, um, this this skult.
Speaker 1: Paul Broca, who was a French or was a French
Speaker 1: neurosurgeon and also the person for whom Broca's area in
Speaker 1: the brain is named for, and he corroborated Squire's discovery
Speaker 1: and said, yes, this is intentional. This looks like neurosurgery. Um.
Speaker 1: But Broca thought it was done for primitive reasons, again
Speaker 1: releasing the demons the ghost of the mind. And Squire said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And he was the first, I
Speaker 1: believe at that time, to come out and say I
Speaker 1: think that it has more to do with perhaps combat. Yes. Um.
Speaker 1: I should also point out that Broke also thought that
Speaker 1: it was done almost exclusively on children. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: which he collaborated by saying, they look, I used a
Speaker 1: glass instrument to to to gouge holes in the corpses
Speaker 1: of children and adult dead adults, and I found that
Speaker 1: it was far the far faster procedure with the child.
Speaker 1: And therefore he concluded that it was used exclusively on children,
Speaker 1: which was his experience with his instruments. Right. So it's
Speaker 1: not a great way to sort of test out that hypothesis,
Speaker 1: but that's what he came to. Um. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you have things like inc and pots that are showing
Speaker 1: up depicting trepen nation, further evidence that this was happening. Um,
Speaker 1: you have a survey of ancient inc and skulls showing
Speaker 1: that more males than females had trepennation holes, probably because
Speaker 1: most warriors were men. And in addition, the majority of
Speaker 1: man made holes in the skull would occur on the
Speaker 1: left side of the school. And the idea is that
Speaker 1: right handed assailants, of which we know there are more of, Um,
Speaker 1: those the blows of those assailants would land on the
Speaker 1: left side of the school. We're talking about from a
Speaker 1: club sword, a slingshot, Um, so that's sort of more
Speaker 1: evidence that in this case, in the Incan's case, this
Speaker 1: kind of trepidation was more of an e er procedure. Really, right,
Speaker 1: you have individuals who sustained massive damage to the head.
Speaker 1: They've essentially sustained brain trauma, and so the surgical procedure
Speaker 1: of the day was to try to relieve that pressure. Yes,
Speaker 1: so let's let's give it a look, see and try
Speaker 1: to imagine what this might be. You're an Incan warrior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just stumbled in from the battlefield. I took a
Speaker 1: club blow to the head. I'm in pain, I'm bleeding.
Speaker 1: What can you do for me? Doc? Ah, Well, I
Speaker 1: see that you might have some shards of your own
Speaker 1: skull in your brain. We've got to pick this out.
Speaker 1: Let's clamp your head between minknees, pour some coconut juice
Speaker 1: on your scalp, and then we've got some freshly cut
Speaker 1: leaves that we can just put on this wound to
Speaker 1: dull the pain. Oh, okay, that would be coca leaves.
Speaker 1: Coco leaves exactly. And maybe you want to even have
Speaker 1: a little bit of our homemade alcohol because things are
Speaker 1: going to get I might need that crazy. Maybe some
Speaker 1: tobacco as well, even yes, some tobacco. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take the sharp object. It could be perhaps a tooth
Speaker 1: from the animal. Good. Good, sounds good. Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cut into your skull and I'm gonna groove it around
Speaker 1: and around this fracture you have deeper into your skull
Speaker 1: and uh, you have a little bit more of those
Speaker 1: cocoa leaves, by the way, and then you're going to
Speaker 1: feel this kind of sucking feeling when this plug of
Speaker 1: bone comes off of your brain, so rather your skull,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like my brain is sealed in
Speaker 1: a in a tupperware, right, and you have just drilled
Speaker 1: through that type of ware with your animal tooth. Yes,
Speaker 1: but it's not over yet because I have these Greek
Speaker 1: forceps that I've fashioned out of bamboo, and now I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna kind of pick around the wound, wash it
Speaker 1: out with a little bit more coconut milk, and take
Speaker 1: out any other sort of splinters because you know you
Speaker 1: don't want that. And I'm gonna dress it with leaves,
Speaker 1: a plaster of pepper, lime and beetlenut. Excellent. Now, is
Speaker 1: there any way you could you could sew things up
Speaker 1: there as well. Oh yeah, that's a good point. That's
Speaker 1: we should really sew you up with some bat bones
Speaker 1: and banana fibers. Good, good before putting that dressing on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for reminding me, because that could have been really bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have had to come back and you know,
Speaker 1: and then that's two visits and I don't know how
Speaker 1: my incot insurance covers those, uh, those postop visits. Also
Speaker 1: count yourself lucky because if this were happening in the future,
Speaker 1: in like the nineteenth century, you might be toast because
Speaker 1: you know that coconut juice super good for keeping bacteria out,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that that's a real killer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this touches on the really one of the
Speaker 1: really interesting parts about it, especially when you're looking at
Speaker 1: it from Squire's point of view in his time, because again,
Speaker 1: Western society had pretty much abandoned trepid nation. Because despite
Speaker 1: improving tools, you know, moving from more primitive instruments to
Speaker 1: two instruments of metal and devices and clamps and whatnot
Speaker 1: to put on top of the head like you see
Speaker 1: in the woodcuts. Um, despite all these advancements, there was
Speaker 1: still pretty high mortality rate for individuals sustaining any kind
Speaker 1: of nursery on up into to uh the eighteen seventies
Speaker 1: when a survey found that it's many as seventy of
Speaker 1: neurosurgical patients died now mostly from infect mostly from infection
Speaker 1: because there's one thing to to dig around in there,
Speaker 1: but then everything has to heal and and it's very
Speaker 1: susceptible to infection. Now you compare this to New Guinea
Speaker 1: tribes and uh, you see just thirty percent of those
Speaker 1: patients died. So obviously there's something here to keeping the
Speaker 1: wound infection free. And you think about this too, even
Speaker 1: like with childbirth fatalities, once things were sterilized and a
Speaker 1: good practice was put into place that really got people
Speaker 1: over the hump of of the actual procedure itself and
Speaker 1: you know, help them to heal and And here's a
Speaker 1: great example of Wow, I um survived this Trepi nation,
Speaker 1: but now I might pass away from an infected wound. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a champion of the little man
Speaker 1: in a sense, because the squire ended up end up
Speaker 1: being the victor in this uh in this argument was indicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this self taught archaeologist won over the esteemed French neurologists
Speaker 1: broke up. So kind of like that, and it's a
Speaker 1: champion for these the so called primitive societies that were
Speaker 1: looked down on. H Suddenly people had to realize, Hey,
Speaker 1: the ancient Incans, they knew what they were doing indeed,
Speaker 1: and they were doing it in a way that was
Speaker 1: more successful than they're more modern counterparts. All Right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. Uh So when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Amanda Fielding, who is best
Speaker 1: known for performing her own trep nation. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's easy to think at this point
Speaker 1: in the podcast, well, all right, we've discussed some of
Speaker 1: the ideas about wine. People would drill a hole in
Speaker 1: the head wine tref nation was practiced wine wine is
Speaker 1: still practiced today, and you might think, well, case club,
Speaker 1: we've sort of we've sort of figured it out. There
Speaker 1: are a few cases in which we need to apply
Speaker 1: this procedure in order to deal with some sort of
Speaker 1: injury to the to the skull in some sort of
Speaker 1: brain trauma or some sort of neurosurgery that requires access
Speaker 1: to the brain. There couldn't be any wacky or pseudo
Speaker 1: scientific or controversial reason to drill a hole in your head. Well, miss,
Speaker 1: you decided to drill a hole in your head. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're trying to widen your consciousness. Yes, is that the
Speaker 1: wacky reason? I think so? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea of performing trepination generally on yourself because it's hard
Speaker 1: to find somebody to do it for you if your
Speaker 1: whole goal is to expand human consciousness. Yeah, if it's
Speaker 1: not an emergency medical situation, most likely the person the
Speaker 1: surgeon is not going to perform, right. That person agreeing
Speaker 1: to do it is probably not an actual doctor, and
Speaker 1: you're probably not in a hospital. Yeah, you should check
Speaker 1: references and look around. But yeah, I mean we are
Speaker 1: talking about Amanda fil Fielding, who documented her own trepid
Speaker 1: nation and this is a nineteen seventy film called Heartbeat
Speaker 1: in the Brain. She is now seventy one years old
Speaker 1: and is the director of the Beckley Foundation, a trust
Speaker 1: that for over a decade has been carrying out research
Speaker 1: into consciousness, including the use of LSD and other psychoactive substances.
Speaker 1: She also ran for British Parliament twice on the platform
Speaker 1: of trepid nation and these great posters but she has
Speaker 1: that shows her with a bird on her shoulder looking
Speaker 1: out in the distance, and then it says trepa nation
Speaker 1: for the national health. You know, that's an interesting way
Speaker 1: to sell trepid nation, just with sort of an abstract
Speaker 1: bird like because I can easily imagine, and not to
Speaker 1: poke fun at or anything, but I can imagine her
Speaker 1: bringing up this. This is being her number one focus
Speaker 1: point for the campaign, and in her campaign people saying, well,
Speaker 1: we need to present that in a way that's a
Speaker 1: little maybe a little less on the nose. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: no images of anyone actually drilling into their head if
Speaker 1: we're saying more just a bird staring off in the distance.
Speaker 1: I feel like she took both tacks though, because I
Speaker 1: think there's another one around him, which it's the sort
Speaker 1: of iconic image from the documentary which her head is
Speaker 1: wrapped up and looking in the mirror. She look in
Speaker 1: the mirror and there's some blood going down her face. Um,
Speaker 1: so maybe she was testing out, you know, a b
Speaker 1: situations there that she was advocating trepidation. She was saying,
Speaker 1: we would be better off if we if we all
Speaker 1: did this. Before we go into the wise of why
Speaker 1: she did it, let's talk about how she did it,
Speaker 1: because again she's filming herself. She's in the mirror. She
Speaker 1: said in an interview with Vice magazine. I was obviously
Speaker 1: very cautious and prepared myself very carefully. I used an
Speaker 1: electric drill with a flat bottom and a foot pedal
Speaker 1: and tested the drill head on the membranes of my
Speaker 1: hands to see if it would damage the skin. The
Speaker 1: old thing was carefully prepared. But more than anything, I
Speaker 1: prepared myself psychologically. It's the last thing you want to do.
Speaker 1: After I'd performed the procedure, I wrapped up my head
Speaker 1: with a scarf, had a stake to replace iron from
Speaker 1: the lost blood. I think almost a point by the way,
Speaker 1: and and went to a party. It doesn't set you
Speaker 1: back at all. It doesn't incapacity incapacitate you. It is
Speaker 1: just a half hour operation. But in no way am
Speaker 1: I advocating the idea of self trepnation. It should always
Speaker 1: be carried out by members of a medical profession. So,
Speaker 1: and that's key here again. If anyone reads this and
Speaker 1: here's this and thinks I want to that sounds interesting,
Speaker 1: I'd like to give that a go. The the world's
Speaker 1: foremost trepennation advocate says, do not do this at home,
Speaker 1: and only that. She says that, yes, she had a
Speaker 1: change in dream pattern. She says her dreams became less anxious,
Speaker 1: But she says, could all of that be described as
Speaker 1: a placebo? There is, of course that possibility, and I
Speaker 1: am very conscious of that. So she acknowledges, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: drolled a hole in my head. I felt better for it.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I'm aware of the placebo effect
Speaker 1: and this could perhaps be just a psychological state for me.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about why she did this to herself. Well,
Speaker 1: for starters, she was the pupil of Bart Hugos, a
Speaker 1: Dutchman who in the nineteen sixty five carried out his
Speaker 1: own self trepi nation in order to expand his consciousness
Speaker 1: and uh and was a huge advocate of it himself,
Speaker 1: claiming that it was a way to essentially be high
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, and it's side note too, he
Speaker 1: named his daughter Maria Juana marijuana. Well I read that
Speaker 1: that's he was actually kicked out of medical school because
Speaker 1: he was a huge marijuana advocate. Yes, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: just thought there's an interesting side note since we just
Speaker 1: did an episode on names and how they have these
Speaker 1: sort of self fulfilling prophecies sometimes. Anyway, I digress, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a very interesting character. He came up with a concept
Speaker 1: called brain blood volume, and this is this idea that
Speaker 1: trepanning allows the full heart beat to express itself. And
Speaker 1: Fielding says, hey, when a baby is born, the top
Speaker 1: of the skull is really soft and flexible, and you
Speaker 1: have a fontanelle closing and then the skull bones closed.
Speaker 1: And she says this inhibits the full pulsation of the heartbeat,
Speaker 1: so it's denied its full expression of the brain, so
Speaker 1: to speak. That loss of pulse pressure results in a
Speaker 1: change of ratio between the two fluids and the brain
Speaker 1: blood and cerebral spinal fluid, which is important and won't
Speaker 1: get to that in a moment. She says, it is
Speaker 1: blood that feeds the brain cells with what they need,
Speaker 1: such as glucose and oxygen. That's cerebral spinal fluid removes
Speaker 1: some of the toxic molecules. So she's saying that trepre
Speaker 1: nation essentially works by restoring the full pulse pressure of
Speaker 1: the heartbeat. And she has been doing some research lately
Speaker 1: about this as it relates to Alzheimer's. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, I thought it would be helpful for
Speaker 1: us to kind of give a call back to a
Speaker 1: past episode called The Night Janitor, in which we talk
Speaker 1: talked about the glymphatic system. Yeah, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: glymphatic system or the glymphatic clearance pathway. It's a functional
Speaker 1: waste clearance pathway in the mammalian central nervous system. And
Speaker 1: this discovery really lands the feat of Danish biologists making
Speaker 1: nater guard um. She was leading research into sleep function
Speaker 1: at the University of Rochester's Medical school, and uh, she
Speaker 1: didn't think everything was really stacking up and making sense
Speaker 1: that I figured that the brain is too busy to
Speaker 1: recycle all this energy, that there's essentially a waste disposal
Speaker 1: problem with the human brain. Yeah, because she was looking
Speaker 1: at the lymphatic system. So muscles um create toxic by products, right,
Speaker 1: and those build up and then they're ushered out by
Speaker 1: the lymphatic system. So she was thinking, I don't think
Speaker 1: the brain can't be doing that. The brain is so
Speaker 1: active during the day. Maybe we can look at this
Speaker 1: at night and see what's going on in terms of
Speaker 1: waste removal. Yeah, she suspected that the brain shared a
Speaker 1: similar system that the muscles had, and the in o
Speaker 1: lymphatic system offered um but instead of it's predicated on
Speaker 1: cerebro spinal fluid in what she called the glymphatic system
Speaker 1: with a nod to the brains glial cells, which maintain
Speaker 1: homeostasis and protect neurons. So what she did she and
Speaker 1: her team injected anesthetized mice with fluorescent tracers into their
Speaker 1: cerebro spinal fluids. So this allowed them to track where
Speaker 1: the fluid was traveling in their bodies, in their brains,
Speaker 1: and during the mice's waking hours, that fluid barely made
Speaker 1: it into the brain, but once sleep was induced, the
Speaker 1: brain cells of the mice actually shrunk, and that made
Speaker 1: way for a flood of the cerebro spinal fluid, essentially
Speaker 1: hosing down the brain of waste with the proteins and
Speaker 1: that the toxic byproducts and ushering them out. And here's
Speaker 1: the weird thing. Are not weird, but very very interesting,
Speaker 1: and humans with dementia in Alzheimer's, there's an excess of
Speaker 1: the rains toxic byproduct beta amyloid. So that is giving
Speaker 1: researchers a really big reason to look into cerebro spinal
Speaker 1: fluid and see how it takes away these these byproducts.
Speaker 1: Because the idea is that if there is a build
Speaker 1: up well that can cause disease, it's kind of like plaque,
Speaker 1: It's like brain plaque. So now you have Russian neuro
Speaker 1: physiologist Uri muson Nico who believes that tref nation could
Speaker 1: act as a kind of release valve and allow better
Speaker 1: circulation of the cerebro spinal fluid. And he says that
Speaker 1: as we age the proteins in the brain hard in
Speaker 1: preventing this system from working as it should, and as
Speaker 1: a result, the flow of both blood and cerebro spinal
Speaker 1: fluid is reduced and impairs the delivery of oxygen and
Speaker 1: nutrients as well as a removal of waste. Now, if
Speaker 1: I'm understanding this, right Fielding is actually working with that
Speaker 1: Russian researcher and has the same beliefs about this. And
Speaker 1: you know, almost didn't want to even point these two
Speaker 1: things together with the night janitor that we discussed in
Speaker 1: the cerebrospinal fluid being attached to um the build up
Speaker 1: of proteins and disease. But it's so interesting that this
Speaker 1: trepin nation aspect of it would come into play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about this earlier, you know, hesitant to
Speaker 1: draw any lines between um, such an extreme activity as
Speaker 1: a self trepination or even advocating self trefination and an
Speaker 1: actual grounded science. But the way I like to look
Speaker 1: at it is, this is an extreme view, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like taking the train to the end of
Speaker 1: the line. Not everybody takes the train to the end
Speaker 1: of the line of the tracks maybe uh maybe you know,
Speaker 1: completely ironed out with with real science, but you can
Speaker 1: follow the tracks. It's too far, you can go a
Speaker 1: little too far down the line. And even someone in
Speaker 1: an extreme position, that extreme position is going to be
Speaker 1: in paying old with with some truths a lot of
Speaker 1: the time. And so who knows where this exactly pans
Speaker 1: out in the end? Yes, well, of course research is needed,
Speaker 1: right and then the problem is hiding research funding for trefination,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I know that they have looked
Speaker 1: at Alzheimer's patients before, and people who have had head
Speaker 1: traumas and then had trepronation, and they have seen that
Speaker 1: when they are trepinated, that the that that blood flow increases,
Speaker 1: and then when they replace that bone fragment or they
Speaker 1: seal it up that it reduces. So, yes, that's true,
Speaker 1: but there's not enough research here to say, ah, yes,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that will cure Alzheimer's or dementia.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I think the real star of this
Speaker 1: story is crebro spinal fluid, the fact that this is
Speaker 1: the stuff that hosts down the works in your brain
Speaker 1: and takes out the toxic byproducts. And then the second
Speaker 1: real story is that happens when you sleep, So you
Speaker 1: have to have enough sleep in order for you to
Speaker 1: get enough of that in your brain to take away
Speaker 1: these toxic byproducts. Now, where this where my brain goes
Speaker 1: in all of this is is not so much imagining
Speaker 1: a future where everybody goes to the doctor and has
Speaker 1: a whole drilled in their head. But but where this
Speaker 1: might lead as we understand more about the subrospinal fluid,
Speaker 1: do we reach a point where there is some other
Speaker 1: kind of trans human fix in place to sort of
Speaker 1: tweak our evolved form for operable performance, Like maybe it
Speaker 1: ends up being something that's achieved with nanotechnology. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's the possibility, right, Or is there a way to
Speaker 1: induce sell shrinkage in your brain without any adverse side effects. Um,
Speaker 1: that would allow an easier path for the fluid. I
Speaker 1: don't know. These are all really interesting questions, UM, but
Speaker 1: I thought what was most interesting, UM in terms of
Speaker 1: Amanda Fielding, is that she's not entirely on board word
Speaker 1: with the trepidation. Like she's definitely interested in pursuing it
Speaker 1: as a path to understanding consciousness and disease, but she says,
Speaker 1: in response to the question by advice, would you be
Speaker 1: doing the research even if you weren't trepanned? She says, yes,
Speaker 1: I think so. But I suppose that my personal experience
Speaker 1: of getting trepanned, which I of course would not put
Speaker 1: total faith in, gave me the feeling that it's worthy
Speaker 1: of research. So again here she is sort of she's saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's giving me a perspective that I want to pursue,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure that it's the way to go.
Speaker 1: M Do I think is helpful? Yeah? Yeah, she seems
Speaker 1: for a person that that did undergo self trepination, you know,
Speaker 1: she's she's seemed to be a very self conscious and
Speaker 1: very grounded individual. So there you have trepidation, which, in
Speaker 1: a very loose sense is is kind of like loosening
Speaker 1: the belt on your brains pants. Yeah, eating a big meal,
Speaker 1: You've been thinking a lot of thoughts that meal, and
Speaker 1: then pop, Yeah, a little bit more room, I suppose,
Speaker 1: a little bit more room to expand. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: idea at least. Um again, it's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: gruesome topic and sort of it was hard to look
Speaker 1: at the footage. If anybody's curious, it's definitely out there.
Speaker 1: That documentary is on YouTube and little um smatterings, not
Speaker 1: in its entirety, but it's very interesting stuff, all right,
Speaker 1: so they you have it trepidation in all it's uh
Speaker 1: grizzly details and up potentially um you know, mind altering details. Yes,
Speaker 1: we hope that we haven't caused any trepidation about trepidation
Speaker 1: for you. If you'd like to check out more episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, be sure to go
Speaker 1: to the mothership Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where you'll find all the episodes, uh been podcast form,
Speaker 1: you'll find the videos, you'll find a blog post, links
Speaker 1: out to social media accounts you name it. And if
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on treport Nation or these sort
Speaker 1: of feats of enlightenment. Let us know. You can email
Speaker 1: us at below the Mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it How stuff works dot com.