December 16, 2021 • 47 mins
Kidney stones are widely considered the most painful affliction a person can endure, even worse than labor. And in rare cases they can even kill. Learn all about how these things you really, really don’t want form and pass in this faint-inducing episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good luck. Hey everybody. We are super excited to return
to the sketch Fest stage and do a live show again.
We missed it so so much last year and we
can't wait to get back to San Francisco. Yeah, it's
our first live show in two years, chuck, and we're
going to be there at the Sydney Goldstein Theater and
beautiful San Francisco, California at seven thirty on Friday, January one.
(00:26):
Is a straight up stuff you should know live show,
and it's going to be off the chain, that's right.
You should show up to see if we've forgotten how
to do this, to see a skate around on stage,
nervously sure, doubting ourselves and eventually bringing the funnies. Yeah, hopefully.
Where do they go? They go to s f AS
in San Francisco, SF sketch Beest dot com. Click on
(00:48):
the schedule and tickets link. There are tons and tons
and tons of great shows. It's the best comedy uh
festival in the country in my opinion, over the whole
month of January. So go check us out and go
check out everybody else as well. Yep, it's also a
full vaccination show, so you've got to show proof of
vaccination and wear some masks. Don't be naughty. Don't be naughty,
(01:08):
be nice. So we'll see you guys on Friday, January
one in San Francisco, California. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey you, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w.
(01:29):
Chuck Brian over there, and this is Stuff you should Know.
I should say, Stuff you should now. It's a good one.
Thank you. It was off the cuff, Chuckers. You ever
had a kidney stone? No, let me. I guess it's
not good enough. No, I haven't. I have not. How
(01:51):
about you? I have it. I think I'll probably get
one one day. Yeah, you just know it's in the
cards for you. Yeah, I mean I've got I don't
have like a bad kidney issues. But you know, when
you get to be my age, certain organs starts saying, Hi,
pay attention to me a little bit. Oh yeah, yeah yeah,
And the kidney is one of those. But I'm not
I'm not dying or anything. No, I know that. It's
(02:13):
more just like, you know, what's it if if you
got a inky kidney, you could conceivably get a kidney stone.
For sure, that is certainly true. So, um, I, my friend,
wish that you never ever, ever, ever get a kidney stone.
I wish the same for Jerry. I wish the same
for every person you know and like and love, and
same for me. That's right. But wishes and dreams do
(02:39):
not bear any weight here, my friend, because I think
you got about a ten percent chance if you're living
a human of having a kidney stone, and besides being
super painful, they can kill you. About sixteen thousand people
year die from kidney stones or complications that arise. Yeah,
what a way to go, man, from kidney stones. And
you're probably not going to die from your kid He's failing,
(03:00):
because that would require both kidneys being blocked simultaneously so
badly that they just shut down on you. That's probably
not gonna happen. Um. But there's a lot of procedures that, um,
that you would probably go through to treat a terrible
kidney stone that that could kill you. An infection could
kill you. There's all sorts of ways that could lead
(03:22):
to bring about your death, and that would not be
very pleasant. I agree with you. Yeah, they are I
mean there's different kinds. We're kind of gonna kind of
gonna go through them here, but they're generally classified in
a couple of ways. Um, where they are and what
kind they are, like how they were formed. They are
all kinds of fancy schmancy doctor names for kidney stones,
(03:45):
renal calculi, uh, euro lithiasis, But they're gonna call them
kidney stones if it's a doctor that has an interest
in being your friend. Right, So, Um, the where where
they are, um is really important because they need to
know where they are so they can help you figure
(04:05):
out how to deal with these in the most particular way.
And there's only like a certain number of places that
a kidney stone is going to be. And Chuck, I
looked high and low and could not find a definitive answer,
as I saw some places that seemed to say all
kidney stones are all stones start in the kidneys. But
(04:25):
I also saw like little snippets here there that made
it seem like there's other places stones can form shoulder blade, right,
But regardless, that's my point. Regardless of where they form,
they're going to form only in your urinary tract, which
includes your kidneys, your eurotors, which are the tubes that
take your pa from your kidneys down to your bladder,
(04:48):
the bladder itself and then the urethra narrow or otherwise,
which is where the peak comes out. Yeah, I'm gonna
go ahead and say the eutors, they should have built
those a little wider. Are not a lot of heartache. Yeah,
because one of the one of the big problems that
you're going to have if you get a kidney stones,
you're your readers are like two millimeters in diameter and
(05:09):
they're not very flexible. So when you're passing a hardened stone,
a crystallized stone of mineral through that that's larger than
two millimeters, it is going to cause some problems. Yeah,
I'm sure that they didn't seem like they needed to
be bigger at the time man and woman was created.
(05:29):
But because all of it's going through, there's p but
the lack of foresight on those stones is a big problem. Yeah.
Tis tisk yahweh. That's that's right. So you've got stones
in the kidney nephro nefro liths lith means stone. You've
got your eur readero liths which are in the your readers,
and again that's a really terrible place for them to be.
(05:51):
And you've got sister liths which are in the bladder,
and I guess by proxy that the urethra too, right,
that's right. Uh, the ones in upper tract, those are
gonna be, um, a little more problematic, generally a little
more severe. Uh. If you're gonna get complications and long
term problems, they're generally generally going to be because of
(06:12):
those upper urinary tract stones. Um. But they're all, I mean,
none of them. The only ones that aren't a big
deal are the ones that are so tiny that you
just and that's why I said that. You know of
people probably thought I was joking, But you can urinate
out kidney stones and not even though you ever had one,
if they're small enough. Yeah, just pee yourself right now.
There's a chance you just peet out a little tiny
(06:35):
maybe a stone of some sort. But for the right
when you do know that you have a kidney stone,
though you really really know it. Um. And we'll talk
about the process of passing a kidney stone later. But UM.
The other way to to define a kidney stone, and
usually they're going to be defined by location and then
(06:55):
also in this other way, by composition, because kidney stones
can be made up of a lot of different things. Um.
But the upshot of them, Chuck, is that if you
have too much of something in your p or two
little p um or imbalanced p pH wise um, things
can solidify that should be liquid. They can precipitate out
(07:16):
of solution, and when that happens, it can start basically
a snowball effect where more and more that stuff is attracted,
and that's where your stone is formed. Yeah, I mean,
it's just it's just mineral things that don't that can't
be dissolved basically, and they like to have company. They
like to get together with our other non dissolved friends
and party together and hang out together. And pretty soon,
(07:38):
if you get a big enough party, you're you're gonna
be in some kind of pain. Yeah, you're gonna have
a pain party for you. But I guess we should
talk a little bit. This is sort of the about
as wonky as we're gonna get in this next section,
which is the makeup of these stones, and most of
them are made up about six or calcium oxalate, and
(08:00):
and that this is basically too much calcium or oxalate
in your urinationary system, and it's you know, there are
a number of things that can cause this, but they're
generally all metabolic problems, although I think there's a little
genetics involved with the calcium oxalate as well. Yeah, that
seems to be my take on it too, that that
genetics have a large role in whether you're predisposed to
(08:22):
having kidney stones or not. Diet and lifestyle can definitely
affect it. But it's like if you have hyper parathyroidism
and you're absorbing calcium too much calcium from your bones,
that probably doesn't have much to do with your diet. UM.
And that's one way that you can have too much calcium.
Your renal system might um not absorb enough calcium from
(08:45):
UH into waste, and so there's more of it hanging
around there than there should be. Um. There's a there's
a few ways that it can happen, but the upshot
of is either you have too much calcium or too
much oxalate and they combine together to form would you say,
like any percent of kidney stones, Yeah, that's sixty two
eighty and I think the actually I don't have a
(09:06):
percentage for struvite stones. UH. These are also called infection stones.
And there you know, if you get a lot of
U T eyes, you might be more prone to struvite stones. Um.
Sometimes there's just some kinds of bacteria and if you
match that up with the right uh metabolic condition that's
going wrong, it'll they'll get together and cause struvite stones. Yeah.
(09:29):
The struvite stones seemed to rely a lot on whether
you're um like with if your your urine is out
of balance pH wise, specifically that it's highly alkaline um,
so it's above seven uh as far as pH goes,
and that that combined with certain kinds of bacterial infections
can can create that. It looks like stag horn seems
(09:52):
to be the most common type, which I mean you
do not want to mineral that fits the bill of
stag or flowing through your urine. Yeah, you do not
good at all. Uh. Then you have about ten percent
or lesser formed by uric acid. And this is sort
of you know, if you have problems with your uric
acid or gout, uh, you're probably gonna have kidney suns
(10:14):
at some point. Uh. You know, the gout diet is
it's sort of the same triggers. They're high in what's
called purins, shellfish, organ meats, any kind of meat really beer,
for sure, Like those are all on the list of
things that you don't want if you're trying to keep
your uric acid and check. Yeah, because the uric acid
is um metabolite of purine and um it crystallizes very easily.
(10:41):
It can precipitate easily out of the P if there's
too much of it, So yeah, that that can be
a bad jam for sure. Um. There's also cysteine stones, cysteins,
and amino acid. It's it's used throughout the body for
a number of different ways. But unfortunately it's the least
soluble amino acid, so that means that it can precipitate
(11:01):
out of P fairly easily too. Luckily, those are kind
of rare. Um. You actually have probably a UM a
congenital disorder that causes sistine stones. But unfortunately that means
you have a congenital disorder that causes stones, which means
it's probably a chronic condition, right, And I think that's
the same for the rare xanthine stones, right. Yeah. And
(11:23):
xanthine is another purine or purine. It's found in caffeine, tea,
and Cola's. And it occurred to me Chuckle was researching this,
is that what Purina is trying to get across with
their their brand name, that they're from chock full of purines. Um.
Maybe I always kind of thought it was probably just
a play on the word pure. Oh, it never occurred
(11:46):
to me like that. I wonder maybe they're like, why
can't it be both Josh and Chuck. Uh. And then
there's of course the Infinity stones, which are a real
problem for about half the population. Yeah, and one other
thing also, um pass that one almost I'm glad I
stopped and took a double take. Was that written down?
(12:08):
I can't see your notes? That was no notes? Wow?
That was good then, man, I think you just won
the World Cup for in the off the cuff stuff.
You should know joke, okay, battle, I'll take it. Um.
One other thing about uric acid stones is that that
um is kind of the opposite of strew vite stones,
(12:28):
where your p s two acidic, like it'll burn right
through metal if you pee on a car. Right, should
we take a break, Yeah, we should take a break.
I need to regroup after that huge win by you.
Just we'll be right back and I'll say what I'm
gonna say after this. Yeah, so I didn't know if
(13:08):
you even I didn't think you watch those Marvel movies.
I didn't know if you'd get that joke. Well, I
mean like I'm I'm conscious, like I can form thoughts
and observe like outside stimuli, So that means, yes, I'm
familiar and aware with the Marvel cinematic universe and what
goes on in it. Well, see, I would think if
you didn't see the movies, you have no idea what
an infinity stone is. No, No, I mean, well, obviously
I've seen I guess I saw the one that you're
(13:30):
specifically referring to where half half of everybody just like dissolves.
I saw that, should say spoiler alert. Oh yeah, if
you don't know that by now, come on, those are
the biggest movies in the world. So thank you for
defending me. Like, no apologies necessary, no accountability here. But
you'll have to watch the second one to find out
what happens after that. How about that, well, they come back.
(13:56):
I haven't seen that one, but I'm just presuming there's
no way to really much part in part two. Yeah,
that's pretty funny. Yeah, I did not see the second
one yet. I guess if you didn't like it much,
you'd be like, well, am I going to spend another
two hours and forty minutes? But because I did like it,
I mean I was entertained and amused. I guess I
just knew that at the very least everybody who was
(14:16):
anybody was going to come back somehow. I didn't know how,
but I guess I didn't really care how. I just
want to strip you in a chair and uh like
clockwork clockwork orange style and make you watch the Beatles documentary. No, alright,
so back to regular kidney sounds right, yes, um so um.
(14:38):
We kind of talked about how they formed, but it's
worth just kind of saying one more time. It's basically,
you've got stuff in your P minerals that that don't
dissolve very easily, or there's too many of them or
there's not enough P and they just go and they crystallize,
and that's how it starts, and that kicks off this
process um of where usually they form an actually in
(15:00):
your kidney, but they can't form anywhere, but they'll hang
on to like a little node in your kidney and
start to nucleate. They're kind of like a snowflake. Ed
helps us with this one, and he's like, it's like
a snowflake basically growing um from like a little dust
moat when it's cold enough. Yeah, and like you said,
they don't always have to form that way. Sometimes they
(15:21):
can just form free floating in your urine, just moving
about the party. But they do better for sure when
they're attached initially to something. When one when one little
tiny particle hangs onto something like uh, I know Ed
mentioned the renal papilla. Uh, those little projections and the
kidneys papillia, that's a good place for them to get together. Uh.
(15:44):
They may grow there for a little while, they may
detach and then float away, but they also might attract
friends at these attachment points, and that's when the problem starts.
They're eventually going to detach, but they just like to
congregate and like the cool area of the party. Yeah.
And see you just said made me think like you
could probably form a stone anywhere in your urinary tract
that whole system, as long as there's a place for
(16:07):
it to kind of clamp onto, or it's bad enough
that they're just forming right in the middle of your urine,
so it doesn't necessarily have to just be your kidneys. Yeah,
and they look like I think ED had the perfect
DESCRIPTI here, it looks like a little granola chunk granula. Yeah.
Some of them look a little more um, mean and
menacing than others. Some are even like smooth where you're like, jeez,
(16:29):
I enjoy passing these. They make a very satisfying PLoP
sound when they come out of the urethra um. But again,
there's like stag horns, there's the widow maker, Um, there's
the Judas Priest. They have terrible names, but they really
kind of drive home how bad these things are. It's
(16:50):
really the Judas Priest. Wouldn't never know doctors have a
sense of humor with two of them? Wouldn't that be great? Though?
So I would I would think it would be this
like looks like the double horn fist. I was thinking
it was gonna look like that metal eagle. Oh that too,
the screaming eagle mm hm living after midnight. The metal
(17:11):
fist sounds worse though, for sure. Well, anything, and you
know this is the case with kidney stones, anything, And
that's why the stag horns are so bad if it's
the spikier. I mean, you don't have to be a
doctor to tell someone that the spiky or something is
the more painful. It's going to be, right. Yeah, they're
describing your kidney stone too, and you're like, I didn't
(17:33):
realize your doctor. They say, oh, I'm not a doctor.
I just stayed at a holiday and expressed, yeah, anybody
could tell you that. Uh so the pain that you're
gonna feel like when you get diagnosed for a kidney stone,
You're probably gonna go into the doctor after feeling uh
sort of lower groin pain for a while, maybe in
your lower back or side or abdomen, and you might
(17:55):
be going, man, this is like I didn't pull my back.
What's going on? And you may live with it for
a little while just thinking it might be a pulled
muscle or anything like that, or a strain groin even
and then at some point, hopefully someone in your life
is going to say you may want to go like that,
maybe a kidney stone, get that checked out. You may
want to get that checked out. One of the reasons
I didn't understand this, but it makes total sense. One
(18:17):
of the reasons why there's it feels so much worse
than just your urit or or your kidney saying ah,
is that there's a bunch of really important nerves that
pass right through the kidney, right through that that notch
that gives the kidney its characteristic shape. Because the celiac
plassics plexus, the inner mesenteric plexus, the lumbar splank nick.
(18:47):
I like the splank nick or the splank nick. Yeah,
I like it too. I like the Celiac plexus though.
It's got a pleasant, pleasant look to It's like cellar door. Yeah,
you love cellar door. It wasn't just me. That's a
Tolkien reference. He's I think he's said, I know, but
you mentioned in London in the show, is what I mean.
I just think it's such a great idea that somebody
(19:09):
was like, I definitively say, this is the most beautiful
word in the English language, and it just happened to
be Tolkien. So like there's an extra little twist at
the end there, and it was used in Donnie Darko,
so it's a pretty pretty great little thing. I have
my favorite word though. It's not sellar door. It's it's
moist pus. No, it's the Beatles, and it's used in
(19:30):
the Peter Jackson documentary The Beatles. Is it really that good?
It's amazing. I mean i'd say this, you would hate it.
But if you're a casual Beatles fan, it's probably not
even for you. Or even if you're like, no, I
like the Beatles, it's probably not even for you because
it it's eight hours of just sitting in there, fly
on the wall style, so you really got to be
(19:51):
into Like did you see that look that George escaped
Paul when he said that one thing? Like it's that
kind of level. Yeah, I would not like that it
at all. I've got I have a music documentary that,
um you mean and I watched the other day. That's
really good. Um it's on Sparks. Oh yeah, sure, I've
seen that. You saw it. I loved I had never
(20:11):
heard of Sparks. I didn't real Sparks existed. I'm actually
I've been disappointed in myself ever since that I didn't
realize they were a thing. But that is a great documentary.
One of the things I like about it is not
just their music, but just like how like naturally and
genuinely positive they are without trying to be positive and
also actually being kind of fiendish in their sense of humor,
(20:33):
but they're still overall like very positive. It's pretty cool,
pretty and I'll even go ahead and recommend even though
I haven't seen it. It's on the list this week.
I just got to get through the Beatles. Thing is
the Todd Haynes Velvet Underground documentary. I hear it's just
like ridiculously good, which I can't wait for because the best.
I'm going to check that out. So that was documentary corner.
(20:57):
I got my movie crush fixed. Well we should. We
need to take care berets often drop our cigarette holders
and get back to it. I think we were talking
about those three nerves and they can cause uh nausea
and vomiting because those three nerves run right through what's
called the renal hillum and that's that little you know,
if you look at a kidney or even a kidney
(21:19):
being or kidney shaped swimming pool, you can imagine what
it might look like a little notch inside that curve,
and all three of those nerves run right in there.
So if you're kidney is uh inflamed or spasming or something,
it's going to be tweaking those things like piano strings. Yeah,
and spasming is right, you just said the magic word,
because your kidney is well aware that it has something
(21:40):
that shouldn't have in it, and it actually has a
way to take care of that, and that is by
spasm ing it out, trying to push it out. The
kidney does that, and so do your your readers. UM,
and your your reader actually like clomp down around it
and try to squeeze it out through spasms. So kidney
pain is typically associated with UM basically the worst pain
(22:04):
you could ever experience. I think, UM, people have given
birth before, UM who did it without any kind of
drugs say, Nope, kidney stone is actually worse than that. UM.
And what's great is everybody can share in the fun
of a kidney stone. Did you see what Ed's friend
called it? Yeah? Ed has a friend who had kidney
(22:25):
stones instead. It was like giving birth to a knife. Right.
That kind of says it all. It really does. UM,
the worst of it from what I've seen. I found
uh urology website, UM, and it's basically says the two
worst by far is when it's in the kidney and
then when it's in the your reader, and apparently when
it's in the kidney it's even worse. That's the worst
(22:47):
of all. But the upshot of it is, in addition
to feeling nauseated for your back and your abdomen to
hurt um, you're you're actually going to be experiencing pain
in your kidney and your your reader as there pushing
this thing out, and it comes in waves of pain
called renal colic, and they will give you narcotics to
(23:09):
take care of it. It's that bad. Yeah, yeah, the
best feel good drugs available are coming your way, and
they'll probably just barely make a dent. I don't know
that that's true, but I'm really trying to drive home
how painful kidney stones are. I wish one of us
would have had it from experience. I'm actually glad that
(23:30):
we aren't. Speaking from experience. I wish that person was,
you know. Uh No, I'm glad we haven't had it.
But I'll, you know, hopefully, over the next until we retire,
I'll keep everyone up to date on whether or not
to get kidney stones. Okay, all right, I think that's
fair squatted land than kidney stones. Those are my two
lifelong updates. What about your teeth. Don't forget your teeth. Well,
(23:52):
everyone knows I got to get that tooth done again.
So man, I just had a deep, deep cleaning on
two of my teeth and it was not pleasant. But
my period onist was great, um like, very nice and
general and apologetic. Uh. And I think I'm better off
as a result. I'm a better was that the rooting
and scaling thing, I believe? So there was a gum
(24:13):
treatment sort of yeah, and there wasn't like an incision.
She didn't cut um. But they want me to do
that again. Yeah. It's not fun at all, but you
know that I'm done. It's done. I was about to say,
as if it was any better, we should get back
to kidney stones. But to get these things treated there,
they are quite a few options, thankfully. Um. It depends
(24:36):
on where it is, depends on how big it is. Uh,
if it's in, if it's one of those uh your
ead stones, They're probably gonna say pass it. It might
even take a few weeks. But drink tons of water
and see if you compete that thing out. Yeah, once
it gets out of the kidney. Yeah, And I think
if it's five millimeters or smaller. You got about a
(24:57):
nine chance of passing that thing through a year, and
and it goes down to between five millimeters and ten millimeters.
And if you can eat and you can drink and
you don't have a fever, they're probably going to send
you home with some pain pills and some flow max
to to relax your urethral sphincter so you can pee easier,
(25:18):
and you're gonna pee all the time. And as it
moves down into like your bladder, it's going to increase
the pressure there because of the inflammation your bladders. So
you're gonna have to feel like you have to pee
all the time, even though you don't necessarily. But they're
gonna send you home and be like, best wishes, best
of luck, keep us posted. Let us know if you
spike a fever something like that, Right, you're also going
(25:40):
to get all kinds of tests, um, blood test urine tests,
things like that, just to see like you may have
more than one stone, um the identification of the stone.
I mean there there could be a larger problem, you know,
if we're talking about these metabolic imbalances, like if you
may have chronic kidney stones or at least another one
in the future. They want to kind of get you
(26:00):
on the right tracks. So you're gonna do a lot
of tests as well. Yeah, and um, one of you
his friends used to get him a lot, and I
think I didn't have a chance to ask him, but
I think he might have outgrown him. I hope God willing.
But I'm pretty sure he had to pee into like
a mesh cup to catch the stone. And I realized, now,
it's not not because he was a weirdo. It was
(26:22):
because they wanted to analyze the stone. Because again, you
can tell a lot about what is driving you to
produce kidney stones if you can just look at it,
because you can see what it's made of. Well, you
can see what it's made of, and that'll tell you
a lot. I think i'd want to keep mine. Well
that's the other thing too. You got a pretty nice trophy.
You could get a grill made with it. That's what
(26:46):
I need on my fake front teeth. A couple of
kidney stone, couple like stag horns, just sticking out, slicing
into the back of your top lip. Uh. If they
are larger, you're gonna need some more. Uh. What ED
called direct intervention and that's pretty much says it all.
They're gonna look at you with X rays. Uh, they
might use an ultrasound. They're gonna find out exactly where
(27:09):
that puppy is. They're gonna see if it's moving along
or if it's kind of stuck in place, and uh,
then they're gonna go to work. It's it's a little
more expensive, but I would stay just by reading this.
If it's an option, and if you can afford it,
I would go to the uhle thought such a hard
word to say with thought tripsy method. Yeah, because it's
(27:31):
non invasive. It's all ultrasound. Like they use ultrasound maybe
X rays to find and then they use ultrasound to
break it up. And Chuck had produced the sentence that
seems innocuous until you realize that if you read it
like a monster truck ad announcer, it's really boss. Which
one is it sounds without? Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah
(28:02):
you should be a doctor. That'd be fun. I oh dude,
everything would be called the Judas Priest whatever, right, I
be like, this is a Judas Priest baby, Yeah, it's
a Judas Priest fracture. We can fix that, no problem, Uh,
if it's larger even than that, uh, like too large
and I guess this is a Judas Priest album. Too
large for lathot trip tripsy um or if they can't
(28:27):
find it, maybe if it's like exactly where it is
or you know, or maybe you don't have it available
to you because of money or wherever you live. You
can go to a uteroscopy and that is a little
bit more invasive, but not surgery yet. That's when they're
going to send a scope up through the urethra, probably
not a lot of fun uh, into the bladder, into
(28:49):
the uritor and then they capture it. It calls it
like a little basket and they and they pull it
out and then sometimes it is even bigger, they can
use a laser to break it up and then pull
it out right. But that's the key that your your
reader you read roscopy is that they actually can remove
the stones, whereas um. I think with lithotripsy man it
(29:11):
is uh that they actually they go in there and
break it up, and a complication would be is like
it's kind of like that stupid Russian um satellite missile
tests that they just did, remember where they created way
more space chunk than there used to be. You're doing
the same thing with the thought tripsy, where you're breaking
up these stones, and so one of the complications can
(29:31):
be like, now you've got a bunch of kidney stones,
and yeah they're smaller, but not all of them are
so small that you won't notice them, or that they
won't necessarily cause an infection or something like that. Right,
Or in the case of the Guinness record holder, the
man in Indian two thousand four, this thing was and
I looked up different kinds of sports balls, and the
(29:52):
closest I could find was it was about the size
of a shot put. What, Oh my goodness, five inches
in diameter. I mean, it is never thought about it,
like I even made that with my with my hands,
and I think't thinking it's got to be circumference, it's
gotta be that's no, it's diameter, because I went and
looked too. But so for those people who have never
seen a shop put and don't know what five inches is,
(30:13):
that's like thirteen centimeters in diameter. Yeah, it's bigger than
a softball. If you don't know what a softball is,
it's about a regular grape fruitish size. Yeah, I would
say so. Yeah, So obviously that was a surgical removal,
which is the last the sort of the last line
of defense is to get that surgery. And it's called
(30:36):
this one's mine, percutaneous nephro lithotomy, nicely done, and that
they make a little notch, a little incision in the
lower back. And it's that they scope it out too,
so it's not some huge, huge thing, but they use
a thin scope into kidney, break it up again, remove
the pieces. Uh. And we should mention too that some
(30:56):
of these um, I think the uteroscopy is when they utero. Yeah, uteroscope. No,
there's an extra vowel in there. It's not just me
utero scoopy. Yeah, uteroscopy. Your read a roscarbe, you read
a roscoe adding an extra vowel every time eventually pays off.
(31:18):
You read a roscope. That is the one that, um,
you still need anesthetic and you might eventually need a stint,
which again goes back to my thing that the euritor
should be bigger. Yeah, if they're putting in stints, that
means that's the size that it should have been to
begin with. Absolutely, then anything could just passed there, even
(31:40):
a five inch diameter kidney stone from India. Should we
take a break. I think we should take our second
break and come back and talk about what I think
everybody wants to know is how do you make this
never ever happened to you? Okay, Chuck. So it's actually
(32:19):
pretty simple unless you have some sort of congenital disorder
that is producing chronic kidney stones in you, which is
extremely sad and I feel very badly for you. Um,
there's some really easy ways you can keep from probably
ever getting a kidney stone in your entire life. Yeah,
I mean, I know you think drinking water is a scam,
(32:41):
but yeah, I remember you went on entire right years
ago about how that whole drinking egg glasses of water days.
But oh no, so that is drinking egg glasses of water.
That the number was made up. I think drinking water
is good, but the number of glasses is just totally
like made up. Well, this is two liters per yeah,
so that's a number it is. But there was a
(33:03):
study that backed it up. Okay, they say the study
that said if you drink a couple of liters of
water a day, it resulted in a hundred and forty
nine fewer stones per one thousand people, and it just
makes sense, you know, to keep water flowing through your
kidneys and flowing through your system and keeping everything nice
and saturated, that it would help prevent the build up
(33:26):
of those uh of those little particles, those minerals, right,
because you've got enough p that those things, even the
toughest um solubles, are going to stay in solution rather
than precipitate out. But also one thing that's easily overlooked
is when you drink a lot of water, water is
pretty much across the board a neutral substance, so it
actually helps maintain the pH balance in your body. And
(33:49):
as we've seen, there's at least two different kinds of
kidney stones you can get depending on whether you're urine
is too acidic or two alkaline. And drinking a lot
more water can make your urine a closer to neutral,
which is a big big deal to Plus, it just
mechanically helps flush awayte stuff before they get a chance
to to really aggregate. Yeah, you can cut down on
(34:11):
animal proteins, you can cut down your salt, you can
cut down in your oxalate um. You won't find oxylating
a lot of stuff, but it is uh there's a
lot of oxalating spinach and apparently chocolate and rubar, but spinach.
You know, how much spinach are you really eating? I
didn't see how much it would take to really start
(34:32):
to get into the danger zone with kidney stones. But
I mean, but it's more one of those things. It's like, man,
you just can't win. No matter how how good you're
trying to be, how healthy you're trying to be, you're
still it's gonna get you. Yeah, always gonna get you
one way or another. Uh, that's what the shirt says.
The calcium. You might think, well, if it's a calcium
(34:53):
build up, then have less calcium. But that's a bit
of a thing too, because oxalate is there and if
you're if you're low on calcium, then it's going to
increase excretion of oxalate. So just keep your calcium intake normal. Yeah,
just don't overdo anything, but also don't under just don't
do anything. Just lie. They're drinking water all day long
(35:15):
and you might be Okay, that's right. That's all called
primary prevention. Things you can do on the front end. Uh,
if you have chronic kidney problems and kidney stones, then
secondary prevention is, uh, that's when that's gonna come into play.
And that basically means you're gonna be on medication. Then
you're gonna be checking your pH in, your urine and
(35:35):
stuff like that a lot. Yeah, And usually, like if
you have eight kidney soon as your first one ever,
they're probably not going to do a whole lot of
investigative work. But if you start to show symptoms that
you have chronic kidney stones, then they're gonna want to
figure out what it is in your body, what it
is in your diet, your lifestyle, your metabolism, whether it's
a congenital disorder. Um, they're going to really kind of
(35:57):
try to get to the bottom of it so that
they can adjust you, either by meds or by lifestyle
adjustments to make it less likely that you're going to
produce any more stones. All right, should we talk about
it now? Is it time? Sure? How we passed these things? No,
you don't want to What are we talking about? How
we passed the stones? Oh? How we passed them? I
(36:18):
thought you said, are we passed it? I was like,
we're still in the thick of it as far as
I could tell. So when the stones are forming, You're
not gonna feel much pain. You're not gonna even know
what's going on. I don't care how in tune you
are with your body. You're not gonna feel those little
minerals getting together and having a party down there. Uh.
When it detaches from the wall of the kidney or
(36:40):
wherever it's meeting up, that is when you're going to
start to feel the pain. You mentioned fever and chills
that could certainly happen, and those spasms. I did mention
that it might feel like a pulled muscle, And the
spasms are pretty you know, chronic, like one to four
spasms an hour of them trying to shake that thing loose.
And I have a feeling that's about all the kidney
(37:02):
can manage, because it's probably doing about all I can. Yeah,
and then once his kidney stones have moved on from there,
that's kind of the worst part. Yeah, well that's comparatively
speaking from what I can tell, it's the worst part.
It still gets pretty bad. Um And by the way,
(37:23):
big shout out to umu Urology of Greater Atlanta for
spelling this out for us. But um they say that
once you once you hit stage two, it's reached your eurrotors,
and yes, you'll probably be like, Wow, that kidney pain
was pretty bad. This is not that bad compared to it.
But if the average person just went into urin or pain,
(37:45):
kidney stone pain, they would probably you know, big for
you to lay on them with a pillow on their face. Yeah,
that's an eight or nine. When they ask you that
that awesome question. Yeah, and they're like, well, I don't
understand the number you just said. Can you make the
face on this chart? I always just say nine. That's
my default, is it. I thought you had a high
(38:06):
pain threshold. I do have a high threshold for pain.
I just like to I like to shock the doctors,
shock the doctor's um. So still, like I said before,
the uritor is not flexible. It's a very narrow opening
um and it itself has that kind of mechanism where
it clamps onto the stone and tries to pulsate the
(38:31):
muscles above it so that it pushes it down, and
it occurs in spasms and waves as well. Finally, when
this thing pops out into your bladder, that's when you
might just not feel anymore pain, depending on the size
of the stone, and if you don't have trouble passing urine,
you're probably going to be able to pass this thing, uh,
(38:53):
provided that it's it's smaller than the opening in your
urethra um without any of their problems. The problem is
is if you do have problems passing p that bladder
can develop into a bladder, or that stone can develop
into a bladder stone where it just sits there. It
doesn't get passed out of there very easily, and um,
(39:13):
it can get worse there, and then you can have
a whole other advent of pain. Yeah. And and is
that when you're talking when it's stuck in the urethra
or just uh no, it can stay in your bladder. Yes,
it can also get stuck in your eurethra too, because
your bladder, from what I can tell, is definitely the
biggest part of your whole urinary tract. Yeah, if it's
(39:33):
stuck in your urethra you're you're you're close friends. So
you're almost there, and you have to do what what
sports teams talk about, which is trust the process, and
that means every five or ten minutes you've got to
go in there and give it another, give it the
old college try, and it'll it'll come out. Apparently. Um,
(39:56):
your urology of Greater Atlanta says that, Um, you need
to push, and you need to push hard to get
it to shoot out, and keep pushing until the stone
shoots out into the bowl of your toilet. Or I
guess if you go to a different neurologist into your
little plastic mesh thing that you're prying into, that you
could wear his a hat later on. Uh. I can't
(40:18):
imagine that the relief one might feel when that thing
finally plops into that toilet bowl. I can't either. There's
surely are tears involved. Yeah, I mean tears of joy,
all kinds of tears, tears of triumph. I would have
a ceremony. I would throw a party. Yeah. What would
you do to the stone then? If you wouldn't get
it made into a grill, I just put it in
(40:41):
a little form alde high jar and wear it around
my neck on a chain. Okay, I like that one too.
I mean the girls a little gaudy. I think a
necklace is more appropriate. Um. Do you want to talk
about history? Yeah? I mean this is always fun. Um.
Obviously there's been kidney stones since the beginning of time,
and I just that's why I always love talking about
(41:02):
old timey medicine, is because just the the confusion they
all must have felt with with everything that happened to them,
including something like this. Well, yeah, I mean think about it.
If you're pre scientific, you would just you would feel
like you were being punished for going in this if
you had no idea what was going on. And there
(41:24):
were surely countless untold numbers of human beings who experienced
kidney stones before we had any idea what they were.
But the fact that that you were standing there trying
to pee this thing out, whether this was a hundred
and fifty thousand years ago or a thousand years ago,
some people would pass them, and there would be some
(41:46):
curious types around. He would say, let me see that thing,
what is that? Where'd that come from? And it started
to get us to investigate and think about it, how
to deal with these things. It's amazing. I think they
found a mummy that clearly had kidney stones dated to
what ce not bad uh. And then there's good old
(42:06):
Alice Cornelius Celsus, who wrote a very very great detailed
encyclopedia of surgical techniques of the time, which was around
fifty c E. And this is like legit. He he
really goes into pretty good detail about surgical removal uh
(42:27):
incisions in the perennium and locating the stone with his
fingers and holding it there with a tool and cutting
it out and with been removing it. So it's it's
one of the first I mean, I say it worked.
I think that was about mortality rate, but I would
say one of the first semi successful surgical procedures that
people did right. And so this this it was called
(42:49):
thought lithoto lithotomy with tutotomy um it uh ed makes
a really good point that I think is easy to
overlook that like if if this guy was writing this
nearly two thousand years ago, and he was writing like,
this is how you do this, and it seems like
a pretty straightforward procedure, Like think about how much trial
(43:11):
and error and terrible surgeries were performed to figure out
how to perform that surgery to remove kidney stones. He
wasn't first try nailed it, Yeah, nailed it right. And
apparently up until the nineteenth century, the mortality rate for
a lithotomy was still around a quarter of people just
(43:33):
died from that procedure. Which makes sense because in case
you didn't notice, the perennium is the area between your
growing and your anus, and that's what they were cutting
into to get to your bladder to remove the stone.
Which is weird because by that time you would think
you'd already gone through the worst of it, so it
must have been bladder stone. Specifically that this this surgery
(43:56):
was for aging dr taint. So so that means then, Chuck,
that you already went through the worst of the pain
stage one and stage two. It finally made in the
bladder and now they're cutting in your perennium to get
it out of there. So I just wanted to make
sure that if you haven't fainted from queasiness in this episode,
we gave it one more chance. Okay, yes, I can
(44:19):
uncross my legs. Now you got anything else? Nothing else.
I don't have anything else either, And since I said
that it's time for listener mail, uh, this is a
fall out. We got a lot of good feedback on
the dentistry episode. Um a theory on the worms. My
name is Tony and I'm a dental nurse from London, UK.
(44:41):
First of all, I have to let you know what
a big phan. I'm in the podcast, have learned countless
things and it always manages to perk me up on
even the most mundane days. I decided to write in
on the listener mail because you were talking about the
Babylonians describing a toothache's toothworms, and wonder where the phrase
came from. It's a complete guess. We'll likely never know
for sure, but I do have a eerie When a
tooth is broken, oh or extensively decayed, the nerve can
(45:05):
sometimes become exposed, and not only is extremely painful for
the person whose tooth it is, but the nerve it
looks like a little pink string or worm. If you
type into google tooth nerve or exposed tooth nerve you
will find some images of what I mean. It's just
a theory, but I hope it helps. Kindest regards from
Tony in the UK, and I bet Tony is totally right. Yeah, man,
(45:27):
that actually is a great guess. Like I, I subscribe
to Tony's hypothesis because that's what those yokels did back then.
They just said it looks like this, let's call it that.
But dude, imagine your tooth being so broken that the
nerve is just sitting there dangling out. I can't imagine
how bad that would hurt. Josh for one of my
(45:50):
three teeth, I bit into a chicken wing and my
tooth broken half man, and your nerve was exposed. My
nerve wasn't exposed. It actually didn't hurt at all. I
stayed for the rest of the football game even nice.
Uh it was it a Falcons game? Yeah, but I
knew immediately this was the second one. I was like, man,
I can't tell you what the words I said, but
(46:13):
and I just kept my mouth shut the rest of
the game and didn't I didn't even tell my friends,
like you literally kept your mouth shut to like hold
the tooth in place or something not holding place. But yeah,
I kind of just kept my I mean I would talk,
but I would generally keep my mouth close because boy,
I had a sorry this is I can't not show us.
(46:36):
I had a root. Now like this past spring, and
the dentist or the the end of honest, did such
a good job getting the nerve out of that particular tooth.
It came out on one piece and I was like,
can I see And they held it in front of
me and it really did look like a tiny little
white worm. So I really think Tony might be onto
something there. I think you're right, Tony, Tony, then I well,
(46:59):
thanks a lot, Tony. You with an eye in jolly
old England. I believe jolly old England. And if you
want to get in touch with us, like Tony with
an I did, you can send us an email send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(47:22):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Good luck. Hey everybody. We are super excited to return
to the sketch Fest stage and do a live show again.
We missed it so so much last year and we
can't wait to get back to San Francisco. Yeah, it's
our first live show in two years, chuck, and we're
going to be there at the Sydney Goldstein Theater and
beautiful San Francisco, California at seven thirty on Friday, January one.
(00:26):
Is a straight up stuff you should know live show,
and it's going to be off the chain, that's right.
You should show up to see if we've forgotten how
to do this, to see a skate around on stage,
nervously sure, doubting ourselves and eventually bringing the funnies. Yeah, hopefully.
Where do they go? They go to s f AS
in San Francisco, SF sketch Beest dot com. Click on
(00:48):
the schedule and tickets link. There are tons and tons
and tons of great shows. It's the best comedy uh
festival in the country in my opinion, over the whole
month of January. So go check us out and go
check out everybody else as well. Yep, it's also a
full vaccination show, so you've got to show proof of
vaccination and wear some masks. Don't be naughty. Don't be naughty,
(01:08):
be nice. So we'll see you guys on Friday, January
one in San Francisco, California. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey you, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w.
(01:29):
Chuck Brian over there, and this is Stuff you should Know.
I should say, Stuff you should now. It's a good one.
Thank you. It was off the cuff, Chuckers. You ever
had a kidney stone? No, let me. I guess it's
not good enough. No, I haven't. I have not. How
(01:51):
about you? I have it. I think I'll probably get
one one day. Yeah, you just know it's in the
cards for you. Yeah, I mean I've got I don't
have like a bad kidney issues. But you know, when
you get to be my age, certain organs starts saying, Hi,
pay attention to me a little bit. Oh yeah, yeah yeah,
And the kidney is one of those. But I'm not
I'm not dying or anything. No, I know that. It's
(02:13):
more just like, you know, what's it if if you
got a inky kidney, you could conceivably get a kidney stone.
For sure, that is certainly true. So, um, I, my friend,
wish that you never ever, ever, ever get a kidney stone.
I wish the same for Jerry. I wish the same
for every person you know and like and love, and
same for me. That's right. But wishes and dreams do
(02:39):
not bear any weight here, my friend, because I think
you got about a ten percent chance if you're living
a human of having a kidney stone, and besides being
super painful, they can kill you. About sixteen thousand people
year die from kidney stones or complications that arise. Yeah,
what a way to go, man, from kidney stones. And
you're probably not going to die from your kid He's failing,
(03:00):
because that would require both kidneys being blocked simultaneously so
badly that they just shut down on you. That's probably
not gonna happen. Um. But there's a lot of procedures that, um,
that you would probably go through to treat a terrible
kidney stone that that could kill you. An infection could
kill you. There's all sorts of ways that could lead
(03:22):
to bring about your death, and that would not be
very pleasant. I agree with you. Yeah, they are I
mean there's different kinds. We're kind of gonna kind of
gonna go through them here, but they're generally classified in
a couple of ways. Um, where they are and what
kind they are, like how they were formed. They are
all kinds of fancy schmancy doctor names for kidney stones,
(03:45):
renal calculi, uh, euro lithiasis, But they're gonna call them
kidney stones if it's a doctor that has an interest
in being your friend. Right, So, Um, the where where
they are, um is really important because they need to
know where they are so they can help you figure
(04:05):
out how to deal with these in the most particular way.
And there's only like a certain number of places that
a kidney stone is going to be. And Chuck, I
looked high and low and could not find a definitive answer,
as I saw some places that seemed to say all
kidney stones are all stones start in the kidneys. But
(04:25):
I also saw like little snippets here there that made
it seem like there's other places stones can form shoulder blade, right,
But regardless, that's my point. Regardless of where they form,
they're going to form only in your urinary tract, which
includes your kidneys, your eurotors, which are the tubes that
take your pa from your kidneys down to your bladder,
(04:48):
the bladder itself and then the urethra narrow or otherwise,
which is where the peak comes out. Yeah, I'm gonna
go ahead and say the eutors, they should have built
those a little wider. Are not a lot of heartache. Yeah,
because one of the one of the big problems that
you're going to have if you get a kidney stones,
you're your readers are like two millimeters in diameter and
(05:09):
they're not very flexible. So when you're passing a hardened stone,
a crystallized stone of mineral through that that's larger than
two millimeters, it is going to cause some problems. Yeah,
I'm sure that they didn't seem like they needed to
be bigger at the time man and woman was created.
(05:29):
But because all of it's going through, there's p but
the lack of foresight on those stones is a big problem. Yeah.
Tis tisk yahweh. That's that's right. So you've got stones
in the kidney nephro nefro liths lith means stone. You've
got your eur readero liths which are in the your readers,
and again that's a really terrible place for them to be.
(05:51):
And you've got sister liths which are in the bladder,
and I guess by proxy that the urethra too, right,
that's right. Uh, the ones in upper tract, those are
gonna be, um, a little more problematic, generally a little
more severe. Uh. If you're gonna get complications and long
term problems, they're generally generally going to be because of
(06:12):
those upper urinary tract stones. Um. But they're all, I mean,
none of them. The only ones that aren't a big
deal are the ones that are so tiny that you
just and that's why I said that. You know of
people probably thought I was joking, But you can urinate
out kidney stones and not even though you ever had one,
if they're small enough. Yeah, just pee yourself right now.
There's a chance you just peet out a little tiny
(06:35):
maybe a stone of some sort. But for the right
when you do know that you have a kidney stone,
though you really really know it. Um. And we'll talk
about the process of passing a kidney stone later. But UM.
The other way to to define a kidney stone, and
usually they're going to be defined by location and then
(06:55):
also in this other way, by composition, because kidney stones
can be made up of a lot of different things. Um.
But the upshot of them, Chuck, is that if you
have too much of something in your p or two
little p um or imbalanced p pH wise um, things
can solidify that should be liquid. They can precipitate out
(07:16):
of solution, and when that happens, it can start basically
a snowball effect where more and more that stuff is attracted,
and that's where your stone is formed. Yeah, I mean,
it's just it's just mineral things that don't that can't
be dissolved basically, and they like to have company. They
like to get together with our other non dissolved friends
and party together and hang out together. And pretty soon,
(07:38):
if you get a big enough party, you're you're gonna
be in some kind of pain. Yeah, you're gonna have
a pain party for you. But I guess we should
talk a little bit. This is sort of the about
as wonky as we're gonna get in this next section,
which is the makeup of these stones, and most of
them are made up about six or calcium oxalate, and
(08:00):
and that this is basically too much calcium or oxalate
in your urinationary system, and it's you know, there are
a number of things that can cause this, but they're
generally all metabolic problems, although I think there's a little
genetics involved with the calcium oxalate as well. Yeah, that
seems to be my take on it too, that that
genetics have a large role in whether you're predisposed to
(08:22):
having kidney stones or not. Diet and lifestyle can definitely
affect it. But it's like if you have hyper parathyroidism
and you're absorbing calcium too much calcium from your bones,
that probably doesn't have much to do with your diet. UM.
And that's one way that you can have too much calcium.
Your renal system might um not absorb enough calcium from
(08:45):
UH into waste, and so there's more of it hanging
around there than there should be. Um. There's a there's
a few ways that it can happen, but the upshot
of is either you have too much calcium or too
much oxalate and they combine together to form would you say,
like any percent of kidney stones, Yeah, that's sixty two
eighty and I think the actually I don't have a
(09:06):
percentage for struvite stones. UH. These are also called infection stones.
And there you know, if you get a lot of
U T eyes, you might be more prone to struvite stones. Um.
Sometimes there's just some kinds of bacteria and if you
match that up with the right uh metabolic condition that's
going wrong, it'll they'll get together and cause struvite stones. Yeah.
(09:29):
The struvite stones seemed to rely a lot on whether
you're um like with if your your urine is out
of balance pH wise, specifically that it's highly alkaline um,
so it's above seven uh as far as pH goes,
and that that combined with certain kinds of bacterial infections
can can create that. It looks like stag horn seems
(09:52):
to be the most common type, which I mean you
do not want to mineral that fits the bill of
stag or flowing through your urine. Yeah, you do not
good at all. Uh. Then you have about ten percent
or lesser formed by uric acid. And this is sort
of you know, if you have problems with your uric
acid or gout, uh, you're probably gonna have kidney suns
(10:14):
at some point. Uh. You know, the gout diet is
it's sort of the same triggers. They're high in what's
called purins, shellfish, organ meats, any kind of meat really beer,
for sure, Like those are all on the list of
things that you don't want if you're trying to keep
your uric acid and check. Yeah, because the uric acid
is um metabolite of purine and um it crystallizes very easily.
(10:41):
It can precipitate easily out of the P if there's
too much of it, So yeah, that that can be
a bad jam for sure. Um. There's also cysteine stones, cysteins,
and amino acid. It's it's used throughout the body for
a number of different ways. But unfortunately it's the least
soluble amino acid, so that means that it can precipitate
(11:01):
out of P fairly easily too. Luckily, those are kind
of rare. Um. You actually have probably a UM a
congenital disorder that causes sistine stones. But unfortunately that means
you have a congenital disorder that causes stones, which means
it's probably a chronic condition, right, And I think that's
the same for the rare xanthine stones, right. Yeah. And
(11:23):
xanthine is another purine or purine. It's found in caffeine, tea,
and Cola's. And it occurred to me Chuckle was researching this,
is that what Purina is trying to get across with
their their brand name, that they're from chock full of purines. Um.
Maybe I always kind of thought it was probably just
a play on the word pure. Oh, it never occurred
(11:46):
to me like that. I wonder maybe they're like, why
can't it be both Josh and Chuck. Uh. And then
there's of course the Infinity stones, which are a real
problem for about half the population. Yeah, and one other
thing also, um pass that one almost I'm glad I
stopped and took a double take. Was that written down?
(12:08):
I can't see your notes? That was no notes? Wow?
That was good then, man, I think you just won
the World Cup for in the off the cuff stuff.
You should know joke, okay, battle, I'll take it. Um.
One other thing about uric acid stones is that that
um is kind of the opposite of strew vite stones,
(12:28):
where your p s two acidic, like it'll burn right
through metal if you pee on a car. Right, should
we take a break, Yeah, we should take a break.
I need to regroup after that huge win by you.
Just we'll be right back and I'll say what I'm
gonna say after this. Yeah, so I didn't know if
(13:08):
you even I didn't think you watch those Marvel movies.
I didn't know if you'd get that joke. Well, I
mean like I'm I'm conscious, like I can form thoughts
and observe like outside stimuli, So that means, yes, I'm
familiar and aware with the Marvel cinematic universe and what
goes on in it. Well, see, I would think if
you didn't see the movies, you have no idea what
an infinity stone is. No, No, I mean, well, obviously
I've seen I guess I saw the one that you're
(13:30):
specifically referring to where half half of everybody just like dissolves.
I saw that, should say spoiler alert. Oh yeah, if
you don't know that by now, come on, those are
the biggest movies in the world. So thank you for
defending me. Like, no apologies necessary, no accountability here. But
you'll have to watch the second one to find out
what happens after that. How about that, well, they come back.
(13:56):
I haven't seen that one, but I'm just presuming there's
no way to really much part in part two. Yeah,
that's pretty funny. Yeah, I did not see the second
one yet. I guess if you didn't like it much,
you'd be like, well, am I going to spend another
two hours and forty minutes? But because I did like it,
I mean I was entertained and amused. I guess I
just knew that at the very least everybody who was
(14:16):
anybody was going to come back somehow. I didn't know how,
but I guess I didn't really care how. I just
want to strip you in a chair and uh like
clockwork clockwork orange style and make you watch the Beatles documentary. No, alright,
so back to regular kidney sounds right, yes, um so um.
(14:38):
We kind of talked about how they formed, but it's
worth just kind of saying one more time. It's basically,
you've got stuff in your P minerals that that don't
dissolve very easily, or there's too many of them or
there's not enough P and they just go and they crystallize,
and that's how it starts, and that kicks off this
process um of where usually they form an actually in
(15:00):
your kidney, but they can't form anywhere, but they'll hang
on to like a little node in your kidney and
start to nucleate. They're kind of like a snowflake. Ed
helps us with this one, and he's like, it's like
a snowflake basically growing um from like a little dust
moat when it's cold enough. Yeah, and like you said,
they don't always have to form that way. Sometimes they
(15:21):
can just form free floating in your urine, just moving
about the party. But they do better for sure when
they're attached initially to something. When one when one little
tiny particle hangs onto something like uh, I know Ed
mentioned the renal papilla. Uh, those little projections and the
kidneys papillia, that's a good place for them to get together. Uh.
(15:44):
They may grow there for a little while, they may
detach and then float away, but they also might attract
friends at these attachment points, and that's when the problem starts.
They're eventually going to detach, but they just like to
congregate and like the cool area of the party. Yeah.
And see you just said made me think like you
could probably form a stone anywhere in your urinary tract
that whole system, as long as there's a place for
(16:07):
it to kind of clamp onto, or it's bad enough
that they're just forming right in the middle of your urine,
so it doesn't necessarily have to just be your kidneys. Yeah,
and they look like I think ED had the perfect
DESCRIPTI here, it looks like a little granola chunk granula. Yeah.
Some of them look a little more um, mean and
menacing than others. Some are even like smooth where you're like, jeez,
(16:29):
I enjoy passing these. They make a very satisfying PLoP
sound when they come out of the urethra um. But again,
there's like stag horns, there's the widow maker, Um, there's
the Judas Priest. They have terrible names, but they really
kind of drive home how bad these things are. It's
(16:50):
really the Judas Priest. Wouldn't never know doctors have a
sense of humor with two of them? Wouldn't that be great? Though?
So I would I would think it would be this
like looks like the double horn fist. I was thinking
it was gonna look like that metal eagle. Oh that too,
the screaming eagle mm hm living after midnight. The metal
(17:11):
fist sounds worse though, for sure. Well, anything, and you
know this is the case with kidney stones, anything, And
that's why the stag horns are so bad if it's
the spikier. I mean, you don't have to be a
doctor to tell someone that the spiky or something is
the more painful. It's going to be, right. Yeah, they're
describing your kidney stone too, and you're like, I didn't
(17:33):
realize your doctor. They say, oh, I'm not a doctor.
I just stayed at a holiday and expressed, yeah, anybody
could tell you that. Uh so the pain that you're
gonna feel like when you get diagnosed for a kidney stone,
You're probably gonna go into the doctor after feeling uh
sort of lower groin pain for a while, maybe in
your lower back or side or abdomen, and you might
(17:55):
be going, man, this is like I didn't pull my back.
What's going on? And you may live with it for
a little while just thinking it might be a pulled
muscle or anything like that, or a strain groin even
and then at some point, hopefully someone in your life
is going to say you may want to go like that,
maybe a kidney stone, get that checked out. You may
want to get that checked out. One of the reasons
I didn't understand this, but it makes total sense. One
(18:17):
of the reasons why there's it feels so much worse
than just your urit or or your kidney saying ah,
is that there's a bunch of really important nerves that
pass right through the kidney, right through that that notch
that gives the kidney its characteristic shape. Because the celiac
plassics plexus, the inner mesenteric plexus, the lumbar splank nick.
(18:47):
I like the splank nick or the splank nick. Yeah,
I like it too. I like the Celiac plexus though.
It's got a pleasant, pleasant look to It's like cellar door. Yeah,
you love cellar door. It wasn't just me. That's a
Tolkien reference. He's I think he's said, I know, but
you mentioned in London in the show, is what I mean.
I just think it's such a great idea that somebody
(19:09):
was like, I definitively say, this is the most beautiful
word in the English language, and it just happened to
be Tolkien. So like there's an extra little twist at
the end there, and it was used in Donnie Darko,
so it's a pretty pretty great little thing. I have
my favorite word though. It's not sellar door. It's it's
moist pus. No, it's the Beatles, and it's used in
(19:30):
the Peter Jackson documentary The Beatles. Is it really that good?
It's amazing. I mean i'd say this, you would hate it.
But if you're a casual Beatles fan, it's probably not
even for you. Or even if you're like, no, I
like the Beatles, it's probably not even for you because
it it's eight hours of just sitting in there, fly
on the wall style, so you really got to be
(19:51):
into Like did you see that look that George escaped
Paul when he said that one thing? Like it's that
kind of level. Yeah, I would not like that it
at all. I've got I have a music documentary that,
um you mean and I watched the other day. That's
really good. Um it's on Sparks. Oh yeah, sure, I've
seen that. You saw it. I loved I had never
(20:11):
heard of Sparks. I didn't real Sparks existed. I'm actually
I've been disappointed in myself ever since that I didn't
realize they were a thing. But that is a great documentary.
One of the things I like about it is not
just their music, but just like how like naturally and
genuinely positive they are without trying to be positive and
also actually being kind of fiendish in their sense of humor,
(20:33):
but they're still overall like very positive. It's pretty cool,
pretty and I'll even go ahead and recommend even though
I haven't seen it. It's on the list this week.
I just got to get through the Beatles. Thing is
the Todd Haynes Velvet Underground documentary. I hear it's just
like ridiculously good, which I can't wait for because the best.
I'm going to check that out. So that was documentary corner.
(20:57):
I got my movie crush fixed. Well we should. We
need to take care berets often drop our cigarette holders
and get back to it. I think we were talking
about those three nerves and they can cause uh nausea
and vomiting because those three nerves run right through what's
called the renal hillum and that's that little you know,
if you look at a kidney or even a kidney
(21:19):
being or kidney shaped swimming pool, you can imagine what
it might look like a little notch inside that curve,
and all three of those nerves run right in there.
So if you're kidney is uh inflamed or spasming or something,
it's going to be tweaking those things like piano strings. Yeah,
and spasming is right, you just said the magic word,
because your kidney is well aware that it has something
(21:40):
that shouldn't have in it, and it actually has a
way to take care of that, and that is by
spasm ing it out, trying to push it out. The
kidney does that, and so do your your readers. UM,
and your your reader actually like clomp down around it
and try to squeeze it out through spasms. So kidney
pain is typically associated with UM basically the worst pain
(22:04):
you could ever experience. I think, UM, people have given
birth before, UM who did it without any kind of
drugs say, Nope, kidney stone is actually worse than that. UM.
And what's great is everybody can share in the fun
of a kidney stone. Did you see what Ed's friend
called it? Yeah? Ed has a friend who had kidney
(22:25):
stones instead. It was like giving birth to a knife. Right.
That kind of says it all. It really does. UM,
the worst of it from what I've seen. I found
uh urology website, UM, and it's basically says the two
worst by far is when it's in the kidney and
then when it's in the your reader, and apparently when
it's in the kidney it's even worse. That's the worst
(22:47):
of all. But the upshot of it is, in addition
to feeling nauseated for your back and your abdomen to
hurt um, you're you're actually going to be experiencing pain
in your kidney and your your reader as there pushing
this thing out, and it comes in waves of pain
called renal colic, and they will give you narcotics to
(23:09):
take care of it. It's that bad. Yeah, yeah, the
best feel good drugs available are coming your way, and
they'll probably just barely make a dent. I don't know
that that's true, but I'm really trying to drive home
how painful kidney stones are. I wish one of us
would have had it from experience. I'm actually glad that
(23:30):
we aren't. Speaking from experience. I wish that person was,
you know. Uh No, I'm glad we haven't had it.
But I'll, you know, hopefully, over the next until we retire,
I'll keep everyone up to date on whether or not
to get kidney stones. Okay, all right, I think that's
fair squatted land than kidney stones. Those are my two
lifelong updates. What about your teeth. Don't forget your teeth. Well,
(23:52):
everyone knows I got to get that tooth done again.
So man, I just had a deep, deep cleaning on
two of my teeth and it was not pleasant. But
my period onist was great, um like, very nice and
general and apologetic. Uh. And I think I'm better off
as a result. I'm a better was that the rooting
and scaling thing, I believe? So there was a gum
(24:13):
treatment sort of yeah, and there wasn't like an incision.
She didn't cut um. But they want me to do
that again. Yeah. It's not fun at all, but you
know that I'm done. It's done. I was about to say,
as if it was any better, we should get back
to kidney stones. But to get these things treated there,
they are quite a few options, thankfully. Um. It depends
(24:36):
on where it is, depends on how big it is. Uh,
if it's in, if it's one of those uh your
ead stones, They're probably gonna say pass it. It might
even take a few weeks. But drink tons of water
and see if you compete that thing out. Yeah, once
it gets out of the kidney. Yeah, And I think
if it's five millimeters or smaller. You got about a
(24:57):
nine chance of passing that thing through a year, and
and it goes down to between five millimeters and ten millimeters.
And if you can eat and you can drink and
you don't have a fever, they're probably going to send
you home with some pain pills and some flow max
to to relax your urethral sphincter so you can pee easier,
(25:18):
and you're gonna pee all the time. And as it
moves down into like your bladder, it's going to increase
the pressure there because of the inflammation your bladders. So
you're gonna have to feel like you have to pee
all the time, even though you don't necessarily. But they're
gonna send you home and be like, best wishes, best
of luck, keep us posted. Let us know if you
spike a fever something like that, Right, you're also going
(25:40):
to get all kinds of tests, um, blood test urine tests,
things like that, just to see like you may have
more than one stone, um the identification of the stone.
I mean there there could be a larger problem, you know,
if we're talking about these metabolic imbalances, like if you
may have chronic kidney stones or at least another one
in the future. They want to kind of get you
(26:00):
on the right tracks. So you're gonna do a lot
of tests as well. Yeah, and um, one of you
his friends used to get him a lot, and I
think I didn't have a chance to ask him, but
I think he might have outgrown him. I hope God willing.
But I'm pretty sure he had to pee into like
a mesh cup to catch the stone. And I realized, now,
it's not not because he was a weirdo. It was
(26:22):
because they wanted to analyze the stone. Because again, you
can tell a lot about what is driving you to
produce kidney stones if you can just look at it,
because you can see what it's made of. Well, you
can see what it's made of, and that'll tell you
a lot. I think i'd want to keep mine. Well
that's the other thing too. You got a pretty nice trophy.
You could get a grill made with it. That's what
(26:46):
I need on my fake front teeth. A couple of
kidney stone, couple like stag horns, just sticking out, slicing
into the back of your top lip. Uh. If they
are larger, you're gonna need some more. Uh. What ED
called direct intervention and that's pretty much says it all.
They're gonna look at you with X rays. Uh, they
might use an ultrasound. They're gonna find out exactly where
(27:09):
that puppy is. They're gonna see if it's moving along
or if it's kind of stuck in place, and uh,
then they're gonna go to work. It's it's a little
more expensive, but I would stay just by reading this.
If it's an option, and if you can afford it,
I would go to the uhle thought such a hard
word to say with thought tripsy method. Yeah, because it's
(27:31):
non invasive. It's all ultrasound. Like they use ultrasound maybe
X rays to find and then they use ultrasound to
break it up. And Chuck had produced the sentence that
seems innocuous until you realize that if you read it
like a monster truck ad announcer, it's really boss. Which
one is it sounds without? Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah
(28:02):
you should be a doctor. That'd be fun. I oh dude,
everything would be called the Judas Priest whatever, right, I
be like, this is a Judas Priest baby, Yeah, it's
a Judas Priest fracture. We can fix that, no problem, Uh,
if it's larger even than that, uh, like too large
and I guess this is a Judas Priest album. Too
large for lathot trip tripsy um or if they can't
(28:27):
find it, maybe if it's like exactly where it is
or you know, or maybe you don't have it available
to you because of money or wherever you live. You
can go to a uteroscopy and that is a little
bit more invasive, but not surgery yet. That's when they're
going to send a scope up through the urethra, probably
not a lot of fun uh, into the bladder, into
(28:49):
the uritor and then they capture it. It calls it
like a little basket and they and they pull it
out and then sometimes it is even bigger, they can
use a laser to break it up and then pull
it out right. But that's the key that your your
reader you read roscopy is that they actually can remove
the stones, whereas um. I think with lithotripsy man it
(29:11):
is uh that they actually they go in there and
break it up, and a complication would be is like
it's kind of like that stupid Russian um satellite missile
tests that they just did, remember where they created way
more space chunk than there used to be. You're doing
the same thing with the thought tripsy, where you're breaking
up these stones, and so one of the complications can
(29:31):
be like, now you've got a bunch of kidney stones,
and yeah they're smaller, but not all of them are
so small that you won't notice them, or that they
won't necessarily cause an infection or something like that. Right,
Or in the case of the Guinness record holder, the
man in Indian two thousand four, this thing was and
I looked up different kinds of sports balls, and the
(29:52):
closest I could find was it was about the size
of a shot put. What, Oh my goodness, five inches
in diameter. I mean, it is never thought about it,
like I even made that with my with my hands,
and I think't thinking it's got to be circumference, it's
gotta be that's no, it's diameter, because I went and
looked too. But so for those people who have never
seen a shop put and don't know what five inches is,
(30:13):
that's like thirteen centimeters in diameter. Yeah, it's bigger than
a softball. If you don't know what a softball is,
it's about a regular grape fruitish size. Yeah, I would
say so. Yeah, So obviously that was a surgical removal,
which is the last the sort of the last line
of defense is to get that surgery. And it's called
(30:36):
this one's mine, percutaneous nephro lithotomy, nicely done, and that
they make a little notch, a little incision in the
lower back. And it's that they scope it out too,
so it's not some huge, huge thing, but they use
a thin scope into kidney, break it up again, remove
the pieces. Uh. And we should mention too that some
(30:56):
of these um, I think the uteroscopy is when they utero. Yeah, uteroscope. No,
there's an extra vowel in there. It's not just me
utero scoopy. Yeah, uteroscopy. Your read a roscarbe, you read
a roscoe adding an extra vowel every time eventually pays off.
(31:18):
You read a roscope. That is the one that, um,
you still need anesthetic and you might eventually need a stint,
which again goes back to my thing that the euritor
should be bigger. Yeah, if they're putting in stints, that
means that's the size that it should have been to
begin with. Absolutely, then anything could just passed there, even
(31:40):
a five inch diameter kidney stone from India. Should we
take a break. I think we should take our second
break and come back and talk about what I think
everybody wants to know is how do you make this
never ever happened to you? Okay, Chuck. So it's actually
(32:19):
pretty simple unless you have some sort of congenital disorder
that is producing chronic kidney stones in you, which is
extremely sad and I feel very badly for you. Um,
there's some really easy ways you can keep from probably
ever getting a kidney stone in your entire life. Yeah,
I mean, I know you think drinking water is a scam,
(32:41):
but yeah, I remember you went on entire right years
ago about how that whole drinking egg glasses of water days.
But oh no, so that is drinking egg glasses of water.
That the number was made up. I think drinking water
is good, but the number of glasses is just totally
like made up. Well, this is two liters per yeah,
so that's a number it is. But there was a
(33:03):
study that backed it up. Okay, they say the study
that said if you drink a couple of liters of
water a day, it resulted in a hundred and forty
nine fewer stones per one thousand people, and it just
makes sense, you know, to keep water flowing through your
kidneys and flowing through your system and keeping everything nice
and saturated, that it would help prevent the build up
(33:26):
of those uh of those little particles, those minerals, right,
because you've got enough p that those things, even the
toughest um solubles, are going to stay in solution rather
than precipitate out. But also one thing that's easily overlooked
is when you drink a lot of water, water is
pretty much across the board a neutral substance, so it
actually helps maintain the pH balance in your body. And
(33:49):
as we've seen, there's at least two different kinds of
kidney stones you can get depending on whether you're urine
is too acidic or two alkaline. And drinking a lot
more water can make your urine a closer to neutral,
which is a big big deal to Plus, it just
mechanically helps flush awayte stuff before they get a chance
to to really aggregate. Yeah, you can cut down on
(34:11):
animal proteins, you can cut down your salt, you can
cut down in your oxalate um. You won't find oxylating
a lot of stuff, but it is uh there's a
lot of oxalating spinach and apparently chocolate and rubar, but spinach.
You know, how much spinach are you really eating? I
didn't see how much it would take to really start
(34:32):
to get into the danger zone with kidney stones. But
I mean, but it's more one of those things. It's like, man,
you just can't win. No matter how how good you're
trying to be, how healthy you're trying to be, you're
still it's gonna get you. Yeah, always gonna get you
one way or another. Uh, that's what the shirt says.
The calcium. You might think, well, if it's a calcium
(34:53):
build up, then have less calcium. But that's a bit
of a thing too, because oxalate is there and if
you're if you're low on calcium, then it's going to
increase excretion of oxalate. So just keep your calcium intake normal. Yeah,
just don't overdo anything, but also don't under just don't
do anything. Just lie. They're drinking water all day long
(35:15):
and you might be Okay, that's right. That's all called
primary prevention. Things you can do on the front end. Uh,
if you have chronic kidney problems and kidney stones, then
secondary prevention is, uh, that's when that's gonna come into play.
And that basically means you're gonna be on medication. Then
you're gonna be checking your pH in, your urine and
(35:35):
stuff like that a lot. Yeah, And usually, like if
you have eight kidney soon as your first one ever,
they're probably not going to do a whole lot of
investigative work. But if you start to show symptoms that
you have chronic kidney stones, then they're gonna want to
figure out what it is in your body, what it
is in your diet, your lifestyle, your metabolism, whether it's
a congenital disorder. Um, they're going to really kind of
(35:57):
try to get to the bottom of it so that
they can adjust you, either by meds or by lifestyle
adjustments to make it less likely that you're going to
produce any more stones. All right, should we talk about
it now? Is it time? Sure? How we passed these things? No,
you don't want to What are we talking about? How
we passed the stones? Oh? How we passed them? I
(36:18):
thought you said, are we passed it? I was like,
we're still in the thick of it as far as
I could tell. So when the stones are forming, You're
not gonna feel much pain. You're not gonna even know
what's going on. I don't care how in tune you
are with your body. You're not gonna feel those little
minerals getting together and having a party down there. Uh.
When it detaches from the wall of the kidney or
(36:40):
wherever it's meeting up, that is when you're going to
start to feel the pain. You mentioned fever and chills
that could certainly happen, and those spasms. I did mention
that it might feel like a pulled muscle, And the
spasms are pretty you know, chronic, like one to four
spasms an hour of them trying to shake that thing loose.
And I have a feeling that's about all the kidney
(37:02):
can manage, because it's probably doing about all I can. Yeah,
and then once his kidney stones have moved on from there,
that's kind of the worst part. Yeah, well that's comparatively
speaking from what I can tell, it's the worst part.
It still gets pretty bad. Um And by the way,
(37:23):
big shout out to umu Urology of Greater Atlanta for
spelling this out for us. But um they say that
once you once you hit stage two, it's reached your eurrotors,
and yes, you'll probably be like, Wow, that kidney pain
was pretty bad. This is not that bad compared to it.
But if the average person just went into urin or pain,
(37:45):
kidney stone pain, they would probably you know, big for
you to lay on them with a pillow on their face. Yeah,
that's an eight or nine. When they ask you that
that awesome question. Yeah, and they're like, well, I don't
understand the number you just said. Can you make the
face on this chart? I always just say nine. That's
my default, is it. I thought you had a high
(38:06):
pain threshold. I do have a high threshold for pain.
I just like to I like to shock the doctors,
shock the doctor's um. So still, like I said before,
the uritor is not flexible. It's a very narrow opening
um and it itself has that kind of mechanism where
it clamps onto the stone and tries to pulsate the
(38:31):
muscles above it so that it pushes it down, and
it occurs in spasms and waves as well. Finally, when
this thing pops out into your bladder, that's when you
might just not feel anymore pain, depending on the size
of the stone, and if you don't have trouble passing urine,
you're probably going to be able to pass this thing, uh,
(38:53):
provided that it's it's smaller than the opening in your
urethra um without any of their problems. The problem is
is if you do have problems passing p that bladder
can develop into a bladder, or that stone can develop
into a bladder stone where it just sits there. It
doesn't get passed out of there very easily, and um,
(39:13):
it can get worse there, and then you can have
a whole other advent of pain. Yeah. And and is
that when you're talking when it's stuck in the urethra
or just uh no, it can stay in your bladder. Yes,
it can also get stuck in your eurethra too, because
your bladder, from what I can tell, is definitely the
biggest part of your whole urinary tract. Yeah, if it's
(39:33):
stuck in your urethra you're you're you're close friends. So
you're almost there, and you have to do what what
sports teams talk about, which is trust the process, and
that means every five or ten minutes you've got to
go in there and give it another, give it the
old college try, and it'll it'll come out. Apparently. Um,
(39:56):
your urology of Greater Atlanta says that, Um, you need
to push, and you need to push hard to get
it to shoot out, and keep pushing until the stone
shoots out into the bowl of your toilet. Or I
guess if you go to a different neurologist into your
little plastic mesh thing that you're prying into, that you
could wear his a hat later on. Uh. I can't
(40:18):
imagine that the relief one might feel when that thing
finally plops into that toilet bowl. I can't either. There's
surely are tears involved. Yeah, I mean tears of joy,
all kinds of tears, tears of triumph. I would have
a ceremony. I would throw a party. Yeah. What would
you do to the stone then? If you wouldn't get
it made into a grill, I just put it in
(40:41):
a little form alde high jar and wear it around
my neck on a chain. Okay, I like that one too.
I mean the girls a little gaudy. I think a
necklace is more appropriate. Um. Do you want to talk
about history? Yeah? I mean this is always fun. Um.
Obviously there's been kidney stones since the beginning of time,
and I just that's why I always love talking about
(41:02):
old timey medicine, is because just the the confusion they
all must have felt with with everything that happened to them,
including something like this. Well, yeah, I mean think about it.
If you're pre scientific, you would just you would feel
like you were being punished for going in this if
you had no idea what was going on. And there
(41:24):
were surely countless untold numbers of human beings who experienced
kidney stones before we had any idea what they were.
But the fact that that you were standing there trying
to pee this thing out, whether this was a hundred
and fifty thousand years ago or a thousand years ago,
some people would pass them, and there would be some
(41:46):
curious types around. He would say, let me see that thing,
what is that? Where'd that come from? And it started
to get us to investigate and think about it, how
to deal with these things. It's amazing. I think they
found a mummy that clearly had kidney stones dated to
what ce not bad uh. And then there's good old
(42:06):
Alice Cornelius Celsus, who wrote a very very great detailed
encyclopedia of surgical techniques of the time, which was around
fifty c E. And this is like legit. He he
really goes into pretty good detail about surgical removal uh
(42:27):
incisions in the perennium and locating the stone with his
fingers and holding it there with a tool and cutting
it out and with been removing it. So it's it's
one of the first I mean, I say it worked.
I think that was about mortality rate, but I would
say one of the first semi successful surgical procedures that
people did right. And so this this it was called
(42:49):
thought lithoto lithotomy with tutotomy um it uh ed makes
a really good point that I think is easy to
overlook that like if if this guy was writing this
nearly two thousand years ago, and he was writing like,
this is how you do this, and it seems like
a pretty straightforward procedure, Like think about how much trial
(43:11):
and error and terrible surgeries were performed to figure out
how to perform that surgery to remove kidney stones. He
wasn't first try nailed it, Yeah, nailed it right. And
apparently up until the nineteenth century, the mortality rate for
a lithotomy was still around a quarter of people just
(43:33):
died from that procedure. Which makes sense because in case
you didn't notice, the perennium is the area between your
growing and your anus, and that's what they were cutting
into to get to your bladder to remove the stone.
Which is weird because by that time you would think
you'd already gone through the worst of it, so it
must have been bladder stone. Specifically that this this surgery
(43:56):
was for aging dr taint. So so that means then, Chuck,
that you already went through the worst of the pain
stage one and stage two. It finally made in the
bladder and now they're cutting in your perennium to get
it out of there. So I just wanted to make
sure that if you haven't fainted from queasiness in this episode,
we gave it one more chance. Okay, yes, I can
(44:19):
uncross my legs. Now you got anything else? Nothing else.
I don't have anything else either, And since I said
that it's time for listener mail, uh, this is a
fall out. We got a lot of good feedback on
the dentistry episode. Um a theory on the worms. My
name is Tony and I'm a dental nurse from London, UK.
(44:41):
First of all, I have to let you know what
a big phan. I'm in the podcast, have learned countless
things and it always manages to perk me up on
even the most mundane days. I decided to write in
on the listener mail because you were talking about the
Babylonians describing a toothache's toothworms, and wonder where the phrase
came from. It's a complete guess. We'll likely never know
for sure, but I do have a eerie When a
tooth is broken, oh or extensively decayed, the nerve can
(45:05):
sometimes become exposed, and not only is extremely painful for
the person whose tooth it is, but the nerve it
looks like a little pink string or worm. If you
type into google tooth nerve or exposed tooth nerve you
will find some images of what I mean. It's just
a theory, but I hope it helps. Kindest regards from
Tony in the UK, and I bet Tony is totally right. Yeah, man,
(45:27):
that actually is a great guess. Like I, I subscribe
to Tony's hypothesis because that's what those yokels did back then.
They just said it looks like this, let's call it that.
But dude, imagine your tooth being so broken that the
nerve is just sitting there dangling out. I can't imagine
how bad that would hurt. Josh for one of my
(45:50):
three teeth, I bit into a chicken wing and my
tooth broken half man, and your nerve was exposed. My
nerve wasn't exposed. It actually didn't hurt at all. I
stayed for the rest of the football game even nice.
Uh it was it a Falcons game? Yeah, but I
knew immediately this was the second one. I was like, man,
I can't tell you what the words I said, but
(46:13):
and I just kept my mouth shut the rest of
the game and didn't I didn't even tell my friends,
like you literally kept your mouth shut to like hold
the tooth in place or something not holding place. But yeah,
I kind of just kept my I mean I would talk,
but I would generally keep my mouth close because boy,
I had a sorry this is I can't not show us.
(46:36):
I had a root. Now like this past spring, and
the dentist or the the end of honest, did such
a good job getting the nerve out of that particular tooth.
It came out on one piece and I was like,
can I see And they held it in front of
me and it really did look like a tiny little
white worm. So I really think Tony might be onto
something there. I think you're right, Tony, Tony, then I well,
(46:59):
thanks a lot, Tony. You with an eye in jolly
old England. I believe jolly old England. And if you
want to get in touch with us, like Tony with
an I did, you can send us an email send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(47:22):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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