July 2, 2026 • 53 mins
In this series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the biology, history and mythology of the gila monster, the venomous lizard with surprising connections to modern pharmacology. (part 3 of 3)
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the
third part in our series on HeLa monsters and their
close relatives, the beaded lizards, the lizards of the genus Heloderma.
If you haven't heard the other two parts of this series,
I would recommend you go back and listen to those.
First we in the first episode talked about general HeLa
(00:36):
monster biology. We talked a lot about their venom and
the excruciating effects of the Helo monster bite. In the
second episode, we talked about the HeLa monster, the kind
of living fossil, a bit about its evolutionary history, and
then also human beliefs about HeLa monsters that may or
may not be rooted in fact. And then today we're
(00:58):
back to talk talks more especially about heala monsters and medicine.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
That's right, and before we get into Heala monster related
medicine specifically, I wanted to back up just a little
bit and sort of set the stage. In fact, going
back far enough, they're just talking about the use of
animals in medicine in general, So humans have long turn
to other organisms from medicine, obviously, to the extent that
(01:26):
you might not even think about it all that much.
And it makes perfect sense that we would have stumbled
onto this pretty early early on, because we consume other
living things in order to live, and these various organism
derived substances offer an array of effects, short term and
long term, beneficial, life threatening, mind expanding, religious experiences, psychedelic experiences,
(01:51):
whatever you want to call them. The things that we
eat have all sorts of effects, and we are what
we eat, and that covers a lot of ground in
the human experience. Now, when it comes to what we
can more specifically define as metis and thinking of it again,
not as anything overtly spiritual, but more curative or preventative,
(02:13):
plants are the most straightforward example. In some ways, I'm
reminded of a Chinese mythological figure that we've mentioned on
the show multiple times, the figure of Shinong, the divine farmer,
who samples all the plants in the world to determine
which your food, which are poison and which are beneficial.
It's obviously a mythological simplification, but this is also it
(02:37):
is also somewhat true like this is how humans work
their way through the properties of local flora over the
course of generations and generations, figuring out you know, what
is good for us, what is not good for us,
and all the little spaces in between. Because this is
obviously the case, some things in nature have evolved as
some sort of a weapon, a poison, at offensive chemical,
(03:01):
and taken in small doses, we can find uses for them,
ways that they can be used as medicine, for example.
Now the floor connection is also an easy one to
look at because a number of well known modern medications
stem from botanical sources. Aspirin is probably one of the
best examples of this. It has roots in the ancient
(03:23):
use of sal isolate rich plants like the willow, dating
back to the ancient world and even before. There's evidence
that Neanderthals chewed poplar tree bark, for example, and traditional
medicine stemming from animal components go way back as well.
We've discussed the ancient Egyptian use of honey, for example,
(03:44):
and various ancient traditional medicinal systems, from traditional Chinese medicine
to aravedic medicine have made use of such components as
snake venom or tarantulas and various other animal components of
both old and re incorporation. So, for instance, last year's
manta ray episodes, which we recently re aired, in that
(04:06):
we touched on the fact that you know, you have
a traditional Chinese medicine which is quite old, but then
very recently parts of manta rays were incorporated into some
of these traditions and it has no like real deep
historical background nor any scientifically proven benefit.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, That's a good point. As we talked about, then
just because something is called traditional doesn't mean it's actually
an ancient tradition or a long running tradition. Some things
are I think more called traditional because of the general
milieu of behaviors they fit into, not necessarily because they
go way back in history.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah. Yeah, And we've touched to on some of the
ways that things that don't actually work can seem to work.
You have everything from the blucebo effect or to that
sort of something is happening effect where I don't know,
you take something and it causes your in to tinkle.
You're not treating something that is even a dermatological issue,
So you're treating something intestinal in nature. But your skin
(05:08):
is tingling, something is happening. The medicine is doing something,
and then that, combined with the placebo effect, can create
this idea that something is being cured.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, it made me vomit, therefore it does something. It's
not nothing.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, yeah, vomiting ain't nothing. You feel different afterwards or
the other. So, yeah, many of these animal components that
were used traditionally are not scientifically backed up today. They
have no provable effect. And again we're dealing with a
lot of pre scientific medicine here, you know. So not
everything is an example of somebody like trying to con
somebody that I think is typically more of a modern scenario.
(05:45):
You know, a lot of times people were doing the
best they could with what tools they had, making educated guesses,
and you know, some of these practices end up being
picked up even if they don't work. And it's important
to note that, especially when we start talking about some
of thecientific tools we have today, there is to a
certain degree a reevaluation of some of these long standing
(06:09):
animal based or even plant based ingredients. Trying to figure out, okay,
what if there is something here in this that works.
Maybe there's a way that we can really laser focus
on it today with our modern scientific tools and figure
out what it is. But and I guess this comes
down to the fact that at the end of the day,
the idea of taking something from the process of another
(06:32):
animal's body and somehow incorporating it in a meaningful way
as medicine into our own body is perfectly reasonable. We
just didn't really have the science to do it until
the twentieth century. And these advancements hinge in large part
on the manipulation of peptides. I'm going to try and
do like a broader description of what peptides are and
(06:54):
how we use them. I might miss some of the
nuances of it here, or certainly some of the the
medical technical detail, but here it goes.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Peptides are chains of amino acid smaller than proteins. Organisms
naturally produce peptides like endorphins, oxytocin, and insulin to regulate
all manner of things in the body. You can think
of them as as keys to do very specific things
inside the cellular locks of particular organisms, and to limited
(07:27):
extents those keys can work in other organisms. But when
you take this peptide key from one animal, plug it
into another animal, turn it. Yet you might get some benefits,
but you could also end up with some complications rejection
as well as allergies and so forth, and things can
(07:48):
go wrong because ultimately that key was not meant for
this lock. The breakthrough of the twentieth century was figuring
out how to make a fully human peptide key based
on the peptides found in another organide, So taking the
key from this organism and not just sticking it into
the next, but changing it, creating kind of almost a
hybrid key, one will work without rejection in the target organism.
(08:15):
So the successful synthesis of the first therapeutic peptide insulin
in nineteen twenty one sets the stage for a number
of medical breakthroughs. The production of human insulin couldn't keep
up with demand for a while, and this required the
use of animal derived insulin until the successful development of
recombinant insulin in nineteen seventy eight. And we have a
(08:37):
key peptide advancement related to snake venom in the nineteen
seventies as well. At this point, obviously we're getting into
into reptile venom and how we might take the reptile
venom as a key in one organism and reuse it
as a key in another organism to do something ultimately
rather different than was intended. And this has to do
(09:00):
with the synthesis of captapril from Brazilian pit viper venom
to treat hypertension in some types of congestive heart failure.
So we mentioned in the one of the previous episodes
in a tangent about other venoms and other reptiles, notably
in snakes, how different venoms target different parts of the
(09:22):
victim's body. So some you know, are aimed at the heart,
others of nervous systems. Other times it's tissue destruction. Well,
in this case, it was taking the cardiac toxin elements
of the venom, the parts of the venom that are
targeting the cardiac system a cardiotoxin, and then retooling it
(09:44):
into a medicine to treat cardiac conditions. So, before we
come back and start really looking more at heala monsters
in general, I just want to point out that, yeah,
this sort of peptide based synthesis approach has become a
major mover in pharmacology, and just a handful of other
examples of note include the non opiate pain medication ziconotide,
(10:08):
which is derived from the toxin of the magician cone snail.
You know, I can't remember if we've talked about cone
snails on the show before. Maybe we have and it's
just been a long time, but these recently, Yeah, these
are fascinating creatures in their own ride. So they they
they're mollusks with a shell and they hunt using a
(10:30):
toxic dart or harpoon, which is itself a modified radular
tooth that they fire from their proboscis at prey to
deliver one of the strongest venoms in nature, and then
they reel the prey in via unattached tether. Get over here,
pretty much. Yeah, kind of like a yeah, toxic scorpion
(10:53):
slug or a snail rather it does have a does
have a shell. But yeah, these are amazing high powered
tox and one of the most high powered toxins. But
then gets reutilized into this pain medication. Let's see. Another
one is and I may get some of these pronunciation
wrongs because we're getting in these medication names, but there's
(11:14):
aptifa battaitide. This is derived from the venom of the
pygmy rattlesnake. And this is another cardiotoxin reutilized to prevent
clotting during heart heart attacks. And then another one that
has no connection to snakes is or even really a
venom of any kind, is bi valid rudin. This is
(11:34):
a synthetic take on the anti blood clotting properties of
the medicinal leeches saliva. So the medicinal leech, of course
long used in medicine. This was a way to figure out, Okay,
what are we getting out of this leach that's useful
when dealing you know, when we want to prevent clotting.
Let's go ahead and get that out turn it into
(11:55):
a medication via this peptide process.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Is the leech wants to keep blood flowing.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so let's and you know, for a
long time we have manipulated that to our favor, like
get in there, leech, keep the blood flowing around this
vital area. But then we can just cut the leech
out of it entirely, all right, Before we get heavy
into peptides and helo monsters here, I wanted to take
(12:22):
just a few minutes to talk about older uses of
the HeLa monster in medicine and in some cases indigenous medicine.
And for this we turn once more to Daniel D.
Beck's book Biology of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards from
the University of California Press. This is the book we've
turned to throughout these episodes. So Beck profiles a number
(12:45):
of different practices involving either the HeLa monster or beaded
lizards in general. First, from different indigenous practices, he mentions
that the Aqua people of Sonora, Mexico believed that the
skin of these lizards had healing proper and you could
place them over a wound and the wound would sort
of leech out the sickness or leach out the poison
(13:06):
in some manner. The Siri people who've mentioned before in
these episodes used Helo monster tails to treat psychosomatic illnesses
and would place Helo monster skin on the head to
treat headaches. And then there are Navajo traditions of the
Helo monster as a healer or tied to this idea
(13:28):
of old man Helo monster the great healer. And this
seems to connect in large part to comparisons to be
made with the sort of between the sort of trembling
nature of a helo monster's gait or observations that a
helo monsters kind of trembling, and the so called hand
trembling practices of traditional healers in Navajo culture. So there's
(13:51):
a lot to this, but hand trembling is part of
a traditional diagnostic ritual practice among the Navajo, where by
the healer, in the midst of a ritual that has
other major components, holds a hand over the body of
a sick person and the trembling of the hand reveals
where in the body the sickness is centered. And then
(14:14):
the person once they've determined where the sickness is located,
then they're referred out to an herbalist or more a
singer for proper treatment of that condition. And so again
there's mythic connection, let's see. Additionally, Beck mentions that early
settlers in Mexico claimed that the Mexican beaded lizard's tail
was an aphrodisiac. This, of course is often the case
(14:37):
with different animal parts and cultures around the world. Oftentimes
there's generally nothing to it. It's just it's tied up
in ideas right of and certainly imagine benefits and then
he points out that during the eighteen nineties, different doctors,
(14:58):
you know, colonial doctors Westerners, started experimenting with HeLa monster venom,
and he profiles one in particular that was somewhat amusing
and frightening depending on how you look at it, and
that is one R. Boocock, who experimented with giving small
doses or provings to patients and apparently did a lot
(15:18):
of experiments on himself. And I just want to read
a fragment here from Beck's book, because he summarizes it
rather amusingly quote using only himself as a subject. Boocock
published a painfully detailed, if not well replicated, set of
trials describing how small dosages of heloderma venom taken with
(15:41):
quote sugar of milk, produced a number of symptoms. These
symptoms ranged from lethargy, headaches, dizziness, and running nose, to
erection and enhanced sexual performance. The most striking system noted
by Boocock was quote uninternal coldness from my heart, as
if I was being frozen to death internally and I
(16:04):
had no way of warming myself.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Oh yeah, we talked last time about or in the
first episode, about one of the effects of helo monster
venom being being hypothermia.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah. Yeah, so you know it sounds like I don't
know this is this is touching on a number of
the problems with understanding the helo monster's venom that we
discussed already, you know, like what is the dositure that
is being administered and then you know, how does it
feel in one body versus another? But yeah, it does
seem like he is, at least at least in that case,
he's tapping into the real power of the venom. And
(16:39):
then anyway, back continues and says Boucock used the remedy
on a number of his patients, claiming to have successfully
treated a quote patient with a staggering gait and another
with skin infections and swollen legs who was near death.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Okay, I got my doubts.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So Bookock is just dosing himself daily with tiny heat
monster potions and then taking stock of what his body
is doing. And you know, maybe in some cases it's
less it's less what the the it's less helo monster
related and just something else going on in his body.
Other times, I think maybe a stronger case to be made,
like oh yeah, maybe you took a little too much
(17:18):
or enough. That's the thing that's kind of the always
been the balance with various naturally occurring properties from other organisms. Right,
if it's it's a chemical weapon in a plant or
an animal, we're trying to use it for a different source.
We don't actually want our heart to blow up, but
we want to feel it enough that we wake up
in the morning, right, that sort of thing. So he
(17:40):
notes here that other doctors look for ways that heloder
dermo venom might be used to treat paralysis and neurological problems,
including some tied to late stage syphilis. He says that
during the First World War, the Germans actually had HeLa
monsters harvested and shipped over for possible use in the
treatment of different degenerative diseases of the nervous system. I'm
(18:05):
not sure how. I'm assuming they didn't travel in comfort.
I'm imagining that these were dead bodies, but I'm not
sure on the details there. But generally, once we get
into the twentieth century, he points out that scientific inquiry
becomes a lot more rigorous. Though heloderma venom was still
used in some homeopathic practices and still was as of
(18:26):
this book's writing, Beck rides quote. Because homeopathic remedies are
often given at doses below levels that might be expected
to have significant physiological effects. The mechanism of homeopathic cures
beyond the placebo effect has so far eluded science.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I'll go on the record and say that I don't
think homeopathic medicines have an effect other than the placebo effect,
because they are based on this dilution concept, the idea
that you can dilute the active ingredient to levels where
it basically no longer exists and it's still supposed to
have some effect.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah. Like this kind of reminds me a lot of
the discussions around micro doosing in our culture today. Like
if you take such a small dosage of something that
at a larger dosage has a more pronounced and or
meaningful effect, what happens if you take it at a
very small dose and it's maybe not even perceivable, Like
is it doing anything or is it just the idea
(19:23):
of it? Is it again just placebo effect and the
idea of it doing something in you?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
So yeah, So you know, going back to Bukock, micro
dosing HeLa monster venom, and a case could be made
that maybe that's the case with these homeopathic practices as well.
(19:50):
But any rate, by the time we get to the
nineteen eighties, that's when the peptide breakthroughs really really come
into play regarding he monster venom.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I would say, especially in the early nineteen nineties, that's
when we really start to see the relevance of I mean,
this is not the only potentially medically interesting component of
helo monster venom, because, as we talked about, helo monster
venom is a very complex cocktail with tons of different
(20:21):
toxins in it that do different things. But the main
and most interesting element of helo monster venom is, at
least in a medical sense, is one that is known
as exendin four. So the extending four peptide found in
helo monsters is in fact very similar to a hormone
(20:46):
that occurs naturally in human bodies called GLP one. Listeners
will probably have heard this phrase a lot lately. This
stands for a glucagon like peptide one. So what does
does GLP one do, and thus why is the functional
similarity of extendin four to GLP one relevant. I'm going
(21:09):
to explain that, but to do so, we kind of
have to take a few steps back and go over
some of the basics of vertebrate metabolism, including the concepts
of glucose and insulin. So starting with glucose. Glucose is
one of the body's primary sources of energy. So when
you eat carbs eat carbohydrates, your digestive system breaks down
(21:32):
complex carbohydrates into simple sugars, which enter the blood stream
as glucose. Then also some amino acids from proteins get
converted into glucose by the liver in a process known
as glucooneogenesis, So making glucose out of these other constituents
out of amino acids from proteins. So after a meal,
(21:57):
the amount of glucose in the blood stream goes up.
This is the blood sugar spike, the post prandial blood
sugar spike from eating. But this glucose is not helpful
to the body just floating around in your blood. The
body needs to take some extra steps to make use
of it or store it, and this is where insulin
(22:18):
comes in. So insulin is a hormone that allows tissues
such as the muscles to take in glucose from the
blood and do something with it in a commonly used metaphor.
Insulin chemically opens the gate in muscle cells to allow
glucose to enter and then provide power to the muscles. Meanwhile,
(22:41):
in the liver, insulin stimulates the organ to convert glucose
into glycogen, which is a more complex carbohydrate that is
stored in the liver and in the muscles for use
in the near future. This is something that's you know,
you might need soon, so we're gonna store it in
this other molecular form it can be used later. And
(23:03):
also insulin signals to the liver to stop making synthetic
glucose from other nutrients. It's like we've already got glucose
in the blood liver. You could stop synthesizing glucose. We
don't need that right now. You can stop turning amino
acids from protein into glucose. Instead, We're ready to make
(23:23):
use of the glucose we have from food, so insulin
to review. It enables the body to do several things.
Convert glucose into cellular energy to be used immediately, to
store glucose for use in the medium term by converting
it into glycogen, or it stimulates the body to convert
glucose into fat for long term energy storage, and then
(23:47):
insulin can also stimulate the building of proteins to grow muscle,
tissue or repair the body. So insulin gets glucose out
of the blood stream and puts it to use somewhere
in the body in various ways. Here's where GLP one
comes in. When you eat a meal, your body detects
(24:08):
that food is entering the gut, and the gut reacts
by producing this hormone GLP one. So the GLP one
in the blood stream in turn triggers the pancreas to
release more insulin, so it says, hey, you know, blood
glucose is going to spike. We've got food coming in.
We need to create insulin. We need to release insulin rather.
(24:30):
So the idea is when the blood sugar spikes after
the meal, the glucose can be cleared and put to use.
GLP one also slows down gastric emptying. This means it
reduces the speed at which the stomach passes along its
contents into the small intestine, and the result of this
(24:52):
is that glucose from the meal just eaten will enter
the bloodstream more gradually. GLP one also communicates with the brain,
stimulating the feeling that we know as satiety or fullness.
So when you feel full after eating a bunch of food,
that sensation is not completely but in part due to
(25:16):
naturally occurring GLP one. That feeling in the brain. I
am full comes in part from GLP one, but there
are other signals as well. One fact that I really
like like thinking about sometimes is that the body literally
detects stretching of the stomach via dedicated Mechana receptors. So
when the stomach is crammed full of food that can
(25:37):
also make you feel full, you literally feel your stomach stretching.
But the GLP one contributes as well to the feeling
of fullness. GLP one also signals the liver to stop
releasing extra glucose into the bloodstream from stored glycogen. So
in multiple ways, GLP one helps the body deal with
(25:58):
incoming energy food. It's a regulator hormone. It's kind of
like a traffic cop for food energy in a way.
It tries to slow things down and make sure that
the body can properly use and store the food energy
entering the system. Now, there are some human diseases that
(26:19):
affect these metabolic pathways we've just been talking about, most
notably diabetes. Type one diabetes occurs when the body's immune
system attacks the pancreas, destroying the body's ability to create insulin.
Type two diabetes happens when the body develops resistance to insulin,
so that insulin no longer works as well to clear
(26:41):
glucose from the bloodstream and put it to use in cells.
And both of these conditions can lead to persistent high
levels of glucose in the blood, which has all kinds
of negative health consequences over time if that condition is
not treated. This brings us back to the HeLa monster.
So decades ago, researchers were isolating and studying the individual
(27:05):
toxins and helo monster venom and realized that one particular
component of the venom or the saliva, a peptide called
exendin four, was, though structurally pretty different, it was functionally
very similar to GLP one in the body binding to
(27:26):
our cells GLP one receptors, except with one very important difference.
While natural GLP one that is made in our bodies
gets broken down within minutes, exendin four remains active for
several hours because it is resistant to the enzymes in
(27:46):
our body that normally break the GLP one hormone apart.
So because it lasts so much longer in the blood stream,
xendin four is kind of like super GLP one like
it behaves like GILP one, but it lasts way way longer.
When this functionality was discovered, it led researchers to put
(28:08):
some facts together. So diabetes is characterized by dysfunction in
how the body makes and responds to insulin. GLP one
stimulates and regulates the body's insulin response. Exendin four behaves
like GLP one, except with a much longer half life
in the blood. So could this toxin from heal monster
(28:31):
venom help play a role in treating metabolic disorders like diabetes?
And the answer turned out to be yes. So this
line of research gave us initially drugs like eccentotide, which
is synthetic extend in four, which has been used for
years now to treat type two diabetes, very effective treatment.
(28:53):
But it is also what led not directly but conceptually
to the development of humor and GLP one mimicking drugs
based on semaglutide, and these would include you've heard the
common trade names now like ozimpic and wagovi, which are
used to treat type two diabetes and to promote weight loss, respectively.
(29:14):
So the research history kind of goes like. The study
of HeLa monster venom led to the isolation of toxins,
including exendin four, which led to research discovering the functional
similarities between exendin four and GLP one, which led to
development of treatments for diabetes based on the HeLa monster toxin,
(29:39):
which led to the concept of GLP one mimicking drugs
to promote general weight loss in humans. Now, there have
been a lot of important scientists involved in these streams
of research over the years, too many dimension here, but
one of the major figures often singled out in the
history of this research program is a guy named doctor
(30:00):
John ng a doctor who worked at the us VA
Hospital who in the early nineteen nineties was doing research
on helo monster venom, was isolating toxins from it, trying
to figure out what they did if they might have
some medical relevance, and he isolated the toxin extend in
four and discovered its functional similarity to human GLP one,
(30:23):
which had already been discovered earlier, I think in the
nineteen eighties, so we already knew about GLP one, but
doctor Ing discovered, Hey, this toxin in helo monster venom,
it has this functional similarity. And he also discovered its
most important difference from GLP one, which was again that
it took much much longer to break down in the body,
(30:45):
which is useful for multiple reasons. I mean, that is
directly useful in a way in its function in the body,
but that also makes it easier to study in the laboratory.
So it really is amazing to think about how this
revolution tionary whole new field of metabolic medicine can be
traced back to research on heal a monster venom. Yeah,
(31:09):
like this lizard that lives in the desert and has
an excruciating bite and carries this potent cocktail of venoms.
That isolating the parts of the venom could lead through
all of these steps to such an amazing, uh you know,
step change in human medicine.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, this thing that we couldn't even agree agree that
the creature had for a while and then had all
these disagreements about what its properties are. Yeah, it turns
out to be a part of you know, one of
the biggest medicine breakthroughs of the modern era, you know,
because it's these medicines are everywhere. We have listeners who
(31:48):
are using these medications, and certainly listeners know people who
are using these medications in real life and certainly in
the like the larger media sphere.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I mean it's like at this point we did not
have to introduce the idea of brand names like Ozebic
and Wagovi. Everybody listening has already heard of these at
this point.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, But anyway, I wanted to come back to another
interesting question. So we know the usefulness of extending for
in creating drugs to treat diabetes, and then also in
(32:32):
inspiring these subsequent research programs that lead to weight loss drugs,
But what does it do for the HeLa monster? As
far as I can tell, the answer is, we don't
know for sure exactly what it does for the HeLa monster.
We have some ideas, there are a number of ideas
that researchers have been kicking around to answer this question
(32:55):
for decades now, but we don't fully know exactly what
it's primary role for the HeLa monster is. I'm happy
to be corrected on this, by the way, if you're
a heel a Monster researcher out there and you have
more confidence in the research than I do. But I've
been reading around and I think it's still somewhat unsettled.
(33:15):
The ideas about what it might do fall into two
major categories. One category is effects on the bite victim.
So extending for could play a role strictly as a toxin.
Like the other toxins in the hel monster's venom, which
have a range of effects, they're designed to cause extreme
pain or around where the bite is, to lead to
(33:37):
these drops in blood pressure to you know, generally have
effects that are supposed to drive an attacking animal away,
to make it desist from trying to eat the heal
a monster.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, and as we've discussed chemical weapons like this that
the animals or plants use, there are death ways that
we can adjust the dosages or in this case, you know,
manipulate them in other ways to hone in on the
things we like about those weapons and make them work
for us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, So this would be an effect on an attacking
animal or potentially on a prey animal. Though, as we
talked about last time, a lot of helo monster research
has sort of deemphasized the role of venom in subduing prey,
especially because helo monsters don't really they don't usually attack
large prey that needs to be subdued by venom. They
(34:26):
tend to eat small, helpless prey in nests.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Like you can't fight back now, baby rabbits or egg
because I have poisoned you.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, so that's one stream of hypotheses. It might have
some effect on the thing that gets bitten, But the
other tying of this fork is effects on the HeLa
monster itself. And while most of the stuff in the
venom is designed to work on the creature that gets bitten,
(34:56):
it is true that in plenty of creatures there are
things in the saliva that do something for the creature itself.
So it could be an internal regulatory peptide that is
meant to have effects on the HeLa monster's own digestion
and metabolism. On that second idea that extended for does
something for the HeLa monster itself. The research picture here
(35:20):
also seems mixed to me, but one publication I found
somewhat supporting this idea is a letter published in the
journal Diabetes obesity and metabolism, and this was by Galina Graham,
Chris McLaughlin and Peter Flatt called Roll of Extending for
(35:40):
in the HeLa Monster Further Lessons regarding human oral glucagon
like peptide one for Therapy, and this was published in
the year twenty twenty. So the authors point out that
despite the importance of Helo monster venom in the last
thirty years of advancements in the treatment of diabetes quote,
we have not fully appreciated the contribution of the Helo
(36:03):
monster and address the obvious question of why such a
metabolically active peptide is present in its saliva. They point
out that it's not unusual for a self effective regulatory
peptide to be found in the saliva of an animal.
They say humans have regulatory peptides in our own saliva,
but in low concentrations. They say, the relative concentration of
(36:26):
extending four in Helo monster saliva is huge, and they
reason that there would not be this much of an
active peptide in the saliva by chance. It has to
serve some kind of biological purpose, and they write, quote interestingly,
this is not the creature's own form of GLP one.
(36:47):
Extending four is not the Helo monster's own GLP one quote,
which can be found in its intestinal l cells, with
a structure very similar to mammalian GLP one, including susceptibility
to degradation by DPP four. This is the common This
is the agent in the body that typically breaks down
GLP one quickly, the thing that extending four is more
(37:11):
resistant to. This is why it can last so much
longer in the blood. So they ask does extending for
play a role in immobilization of the Helo monster's prey.
The thinking would go that helo monster bites a small
mammal and then quote as a result of insulinotropic action
(37:32):
action promoting the flooding of the blood with insulin, it
induces hypoglycemia and allows the prey to be overcome and devoured.
They say, no, this is very unlikely because you would
need a very high dose to do this. They say,
the insulin stimulating effect of extending for, just like the
(37:52):
insulin stimulating effect of GLP one, is dependent on the
presence of glucose in the blood. Fortunately, it does like
GLP one, doesn't overstimulate insulin when there's no blood glucose
to process. There's kind of a natural safety valve there.
There's got to be glucose there for it to work.
(38:13):
And then the third thing they say is this, if
it were supposed to function this way, like inducing hypoglycemia
in the bite victim, this would take some time, they say, Quote,
some considerable time would be required to incapacitate the prey.
But this is in fact mediated very rapidly by toxins
targeting the nervous and cardiovascular systems. So I can imagine,
(38:38):
of course, this time objection would be true whether you're
talking about having an effect on prey though they eat
their prey very quickly, but also whether you're talking about
having an effect on a larger bite victim, because you know, like,
how long is this encounter between the attacker and the
helo monster supposed to last? Like the helo monster does
(38:58):
have to clamp on and choose venom in, but it
still doesn't want to be hanging out around this attacking
animal for a long time.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, So, yeah, it would be an expensive thing to
include in the venom if it's ultimately not playing a
role in the immediate takedown of the prey.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, unlikely to be effective by causing hypoglycemia in the
bite victim within a relevant amount of time, so they say,
quote in view of the above, we should consider an
alternative possibility based on the fact that the heel Monster
produces copious amounts of saliva when eating meals, which can
(39:37):
be up to one third of its own body weight.
This connects to something we talked about in part one
of this series that the heel Monster is going to
be living a feast or famine kind of lifestyle. It's
not getting regular small meals throughout the day, throughout the
whole year. Instead, it is going long, long periods of
(39:59):
time probably eat nothing at all, and then getting suddenly
huge meals at very infrequent times.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, I think the estimates that we discussed before was
as few as maybe five times a year as the
heat Monster actually eating, and those are not going to
be evenly spread out right.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
So an animal that only eats several relatively gigantic meals
influxes of food energy per year and the rest of
the time needs to carefully manage its reserves of stored
energy from food. That seems like an ideal candidate for
an animal that would benefit from a kind of super
(40:36):
GLP one A super version of this peptide that acts
like the metabolic traffic cop to help slow things down,
make sure everything gets where it needs to go, that
it's used efficiently, gets stored if it needs to get stored,
gets used if it needs to get used, and so anyway,
the authors continue. They say, quote, the saliva containing extended
(40:59):
four would pass into the alimentary tract, enabling the peptide
to be absorbed across the mucosa, passing into the circulation
to powerfully potentiate meal induced insulin secretion and other extra
pancreatic actions through the activation of both insulin and GLP
one rs. Such a mechanism would significantly augment the actions
(41:21):
of the creature's own enteroinsular pathway and enhance its ability
to store nutrient excess, again making good use of the
food that it takes in storing efficiently what needs to
be stored for later, They say quote. However, this scenario
would require extendin for to escape digestion in the gastrointestinal
tract pass into the blood in amount sufficient to stimulate
(41:45):
glucose dependent insulin release and trigger a powerful anabolic response,
so the authors decided to experiment. They explained that they
that experimenting with heela monsters would be very difficult, so
they're doing some preliminary research here. They first tried this
with mice to see what would happen if you administer
(42:06):
oral extend in four along with a glucose meal to
mice non diabetic mice that had been fasting fasted mice.
They say, does this extend and four have any anything
like the effect they hypothesize that it might have with
the lizards. They found somewhat surprisingly, yes, it required a
high dose, but oral extended four did stimulate insulin release
(42:31):
and it did moderate the expected blood sugar spike from
the glucose. Now, they say that they did not have
a chance to monitor circulating extend in four in the
blood of the mice because the amount of blood was limited,
But they they point to another study actually in heal monsters,
(42:53):
saying quote, one remarkable study has demonstrated that circulating extend
and four levels measured by immunoinsymmetric assay increased rapidly by
more than one hundredfold when the helo monster devoured small rats.
So this study found helo monsters they eat little rats,
and then if you check out their blood. They have
(43:16):
a lot of extend and for circulating in their own blood,
So that's sort of a clue that it may be
going from the venom down with the meal into the
lizard'szone digestive system and then not just being digested, but
being absorbed into the bloodstream and affecting the lizard's oone metabolism.
So these authors argue that apart from the possible effects
(43:38):
on the bite victim, there's good reason for thinking that
the extend and four in helo monster saliva plays a
role in preparing the lizard's body to handle this huge
incoming meal, especially given this feast or famine lifestyle. However,
I did find some stuff that made it look like
I don't know, maybe the research picture is more complicated
(44:00):
because I found an older study, for example, from the
year two thousand and seven in the Journal of Comparative
Physiology by Carolyn Crystal and Dale DeNardo called absence of
extend and four effects on post prandial meaning after a
meal glucose and lipids in the heel monster Heloderma suspectum. Again,
this was the year two thousand and seven. They did
(44:22):
some experiments and they write quote our results demonstrate that
plasma nutrient levels in helo monsters respond relatively slowly to feeding,
and that extend in four does not have the same
effect on circulating glucose in helo monsters as it does
in mammals. Now, they do not rule out that extended
(44:43):
for plays some kind of role. They say there could
be an alternate role in regulating energy metabolism within the
lizards themselves. They say, quote such as nutrient uptake rate
in the small intestine. But they did not find that
the extended for levels in the heel monsters blood mitigated
(45:05):
like the blood sugar spike that you would see after
a meal. It didn't mitigate the blood sugar spike or
a triglyceride levels which did still increase in the blood
after the heel monster had a meal in their experiments.
But they say, you know, further experiments could show that
maybe it still plays a role in helo monster metabolism somehow.
(45:26):
So from what I can tell, there's still a somewhat
mixed picture on the research here, and we don't fully
understand exactly what the extending for is primarily supposed to
be doing in the lizard saliva. But there is a
good reason for thinking it's doing something metabolically for the
lizard itself, even though there are clearly complications to exactly
(45:49):
what that mechanism would be.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, that hypothesis is the one that I mentioned this
in the first episode that I went to the Denver
Museum of Nature and Science several week back, which again
is tremendous world class museum, Highly recommend it. But they
had a wonderful volunteer let exhibit titled Nature's Medicine Cabinet
about some of these topics we're discussing in this episode. Yeah,
(46:11):
and they lean towards some version of this metabolic explanation
for the substance's presence in the saliva, in the toxin
in the venom of the HeLa monster.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Another really interesting thing that maybe we could explore on
the show someday is that, you know, GLP one and
related metabolic peptides are weird. They appear to have this
complex cascade of effects within the body. Just one example
people may have come across before is that apparently GLP ones,
(46:58):
while they're originally meant these GLP one drugs sorry, well,
they're originally meant to treat diabetes and obesity, they appear
to have effects in controlling certain behaviors, like they have
been linked to greater ability to control compulsive gambling behaviors
and other things like this. So it seems like it's
(47:18):
more than just metabolism. It's not just insulin. It's also
doing things to our brains and having cognitive and behavioral effects.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
The general weirdness and kind of multi potency of this
whole class of medications is something that is fascinating and
I think, I don't know, might be worth coming back
and talking about again on the show sometime.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, So yeah, I want to stress again that, yeah,
these medications seem to be doing doing a lot of
good for a lot of people out there. But if
you have any any idea in your head right now,
well maybe I should find a helo monster. First of all,
(48:05):
do not, as we've been saying, leave the helo monsters alone.
They're doing their thing. They are not a danger to you.
If you go looking for them, that's where the danger
becomes apparent. And they're generally protected in the ranges that
they call home. Leave the Helo monsters alone. And yeah,
and you do know.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Not worth it to milk a helo monster's venom glands
to try to make some homemade agoviy or something, and
that doesn't work anyway. It's a different that's based on
it's not the same thing, and it's not worth it.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Just don't just do not do it. Yeah, yeah, and
you don't want to risk being bitten by a helo monster.
As we've mentioned, this can be fatal. The one exception
I'm going to make is if you have access to
a Brundle telepod, or technically you need two of these,
You need two Brundle telepods, and you would like to
(48:57):
merge your genes with that the helo monster to gain
these benefits. You absolutely can. However, I do want to
warn you that there are there are a number of
possible side effects to merging your DNA with a helo
monster via a pair of Brundle telepods. These side effects
include lizard dreams, egg cravings, bloat, tail repneck sand lung,
(49:24):
ear loss, and of course of course burrow. But yeah, so,
but if you have the technology, and only if you
have the technology, you can pursue this avenue of treatment.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
All right, Does that do it for helo monsters?
Speaker 2 (49:37):
For now I think so. Yeah, fascinating organisms and it's
just yeah, it's it's amazing how how important the learnings
the lizard wisdom that we have drawn from them has
actually become in modern medicine.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Can you imagine this, This wasteful research on heelo monster venom?
Why would anybody need to do that?
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I mean it is a a great example of that.
You know, people, they're always studies out there, like why
aren't we studying this? Why aren't we studying that? And yeah,
this is a This is a great example of the
sort of thing that can come out of attempting to
fully understand what's going on inside of another animal's physiology.
You could find this key, and this key that could
(50:19):
be very useful when it's been adapted for use in
the human body.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Yeah, we don't know what keys lie in nature until
we look. Yeah, try and figure it out.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah, and then you've got to try all the doors.
It's like Zelda or something, right, Yeah, all right, or
maybe it's like Silent Hill. Some of those doors just
don't know, they just they're just there for decoration. Yeah,
we're going to go and close it out here, though,
But again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Certainly if you have field experiences observing healo monsters, if
(50:51):
you have you know, observed them at zoos and you
have some thoughts, or you're just helo monster fans, if
you have sports mascot reports to me, do so. I
want to hear about all your local sports teams that
have helo monsters as mascots. What did the mascots get
up to on the iconography for the team, or is
there a costumed helo monster that's out there on the
(51:14):
ball field running around with antics. Let us know about
that and anything we talked about in this episode as well.
It's all fair game. I just want to remind everyone
out there that's stuff to blow your mind. Is, of
course a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays,
we do Weird House Cinema. That's when we set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a strange film.
(51:35):
Let's see what else to mention. Yeah, we appreciate anybody
out there who takes time out of their day to
listen to the show and or watch the show if
you want the audio version. You can get us wherever
you get your audio podcast. If you want the video
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(51:57):
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(52:19):
to join the discord server, email us and we'll send
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you know, a little more, you know, close knit, but
it's a fun community if you want to be a
part of it.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
(52:53):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the
third part in our series on HeLa monsters and their
close relatives, the beaded lizards, the lizards of the genus Heloderma.
If you haven't heard the other two parts of this series,
I would recommend you go back and listen to those.
First we in the first episode talked about general HeLa
(00:36):
monster biology. We talked a lot about their venom and
the excruciating effects of the Helo monster bite. In the
second episode, we talked about the HeLa monster, the kind
of living fossil, a bit about its evolutionary history, and
then also human beliefs about HeLa monsters that may or
may not be rooted in fact. And then today we're
(00:58):
back to talk talks more especially about heala monsters and medicine.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
That's right, and before we get into Heala monster related
medicine specifically, I wanted to back up just a little
bit and sort of set the stage. In fact, going
back far enough, they're just talking about the use of
animals in medicine in general, So humans have long turn
to other organisms from medicine, obviously, to the extent that
(01:26):
you might not even think about it all that much.
And it makes perfect sense that we would have stumbled
onto this pretty early early on, because we consume other
living things in order to live, and these various organism
derived substances offer an array of effects, short term and
long term, beneficial, life threatening, mind expanding, religious experiences, psychedelic experiences,
(01:51):
whatever you want to call them. The things that we
eat have all sorts of effects, and we are what
we eat, and that covers a lot of ground in
the human experience. Now, when it comes to what we
can more specifically define as metis and thinking of it again,
not as anything overtly spiritual, but more curative or preventative,
(02:13):
plants are the most straightforward example. In some ways, I'm
reminded of a Chinese mythological figure that we've mentioned on
the show multiple times, the figure of Shinong, the divine farmer,
who samples all the plants in the world to determine
which your food, which are poison and which are beneficial.
It's obviously a mythological simplification, but this is also it
(02:37):
is also somewhat true like this is how humans work
their way through the properties of local flora over the
course of generations and generations, figuring out you know, what
is good for us, what is not good for us,
and all the little spaces in between. Because this is
obviously the case, some things in nature have evolved as
some sort of a weapon, a poison, at offensive chemical,
(03:01):
and taken in small doses, we can find uses for them,
ways that they can be used as medicine, for example.
Now the floor connection is also an easy one to
look at because a number of well known modern medications
stem from botanical sources. Aspirin is probably one of the
best examples of this. It has roots in the ancient
(03:23):
use of sal isolate rich plants like the willow, dating
back to the ancient world and even before. There's evidence
that Neanderthals chewed poplar tree bark, for example, and traditional
medicine stemming from animal components go way back as well.
We've discussed the ancient Egyptian use of honey, for example,
(03:44):
and various ancient traditional medicinal systems, from traditional Chinese medicine
to aravedic medicine have made use of such components as
snake venom or tarantulas and various other animal components of
both old and re incorporation. So, for instance, last year's
manta ray episodes, which we recently re aired, in that
(04:06):
we touched on the fact that you know, you have
a traditional Chinese medicine which is quite old, but then
very recently parts of manta rays were incorporated into some
of these traditions and it has no like real deep
historical background nor any scientifically proven benefit.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, That's a good point. As we talked about, then
just because something is called traditional doesn't mean it's actually
an ancient tradition or a long running tradition. Some things
are I think more called traditional because of the general
milieu of behaviors they fit into, not necessarily because they
go way back in history.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah. Yeah, And we've touched to on some of the
ways that things that don't actually work can seem to work.
You have everything from the blucebo effect or to that
sort of something is happening effect where I don't know,
you take something and it causes your in to tinkle.
You're not treating something that is even a dermatological issue,
So you're treating something intestinal in nature. But your skin
(05:08):
is tingling, something is happening. The medicine is doing something,
and then that, combined with the placebo effect, can create
this idea that something is being cured.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, it made me vomit, therefore it does something. It's
not nothing.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, yeah, vomiting ain't nothing. You feel different afterwards or
the other. So, yeah, many of these animal components that
were used traditionally are not scientifically backed up today. They
have no provable effect. And again we're dealing with a
lot of pre scientific medicine here, you know. So not
everything is an example of somebody like trying to con
somebody that I think is typically more of a modern scenario.
(05:45):
You know, a lot of times people were doing the
best they could with what tools they had, making educated guesses,
and you know, some of these practices end up being
picked up even if they don't work. And it's important
to note that, especially when we start talking about some
of thecientific tools we have today, there is to a
certain degree a reevaluation of some of these long standing
(06:09):
animal based or even plant based ingredients. Trying to figure out, okay,
what if there is something here in this that works.
Maybe there's a way that we can really laser focus
on it today with our modern scientific tools and figure
out what it is. But and I guess this comes
down to the fact that at the end of the day,
the idea of taking something from the process of another
(06:32):
animal's body and somehow incorporating it in a meaningful way
as medicine into our own body is perfectly reasonable. We
just didn't really have the science to do it until
the twentieth century. And these advancements hinge in large part
on the manipulation of peptides. I'm going to try and
do like a broader description of what peptides are and
(06:54):
how we use them. I might miss some of the
nuances of it here, or certainly some of the the
medical technical detail, but here it goes.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Peptides are chains of amino acid smaller than proteins. Organisms
naturally produce peptides like endorphins, oxytocin, and insulin to regulate
all manner of things in the body. You can think
of them as as keys to do very specific things
inside the cellular locks of particular organisms, and to limited
(07:27):
extents those keys can work in other organisms. But when
you take this peptide key from one animal, plug it
into another animal, turn it. Yet you might get some benefits,
but you could also end up with some complications rejection
as well as allergies and so forth, and things can
(07:48):
go wrong because ultimately that key was not meant for
this lock. The breakthrough of the twentieth century was figuring
out how to make a fully human peptide key based
on the peptides found in another organide, So taking the
key from this organism and not just sticking it into
the next, but changing it, creating kind of almost a
hybrid key, one will work without rejection in the target organism.
(08:15):
So the successful synthesis of the first therapeutic peptide insulin
in nineteen twenty one sets the stage for a number
of medical breakthroughs. The production of human insulin couldn't keep
up with demand for a while, and this required the
use of animal derived insulin until the successful development of
recombinant insulin in nineteen seventy eight. And we have a
(08:37):
key peptide advancement related to snake venom in the nineteen
seventies as well. At this point, obviously we're getting into
into reptile venom and how we might take the reptile
venom as a key in one organism and reuse it
as a key in another organism to do something ultimately
rather different than was intended. And this has to do
(09:00):
with the synthesis of captapril from Brazilian pit viper venom
to treat hypertension in some types of congestive heart failure.
So we mentioned in the one of the previous episodes
in a tangent about other venoms and other reptiles, notably
in snakes, how different venoms target different parts of the
(09:22):
victim's body. So some you know, are aimed at the heart,
others of nervous systems. Other times it's tissue destruction. Well,
in this case, it was taking the cardiac toxin elements
of the venom, the parts of the venom that are
targeting the cardiac system a cardiotoxin, and then retooling it
(09:44):
into a medicine to treat cardiac conditions. So, before we
come back and start really looking more at heala monsters
in general, I just want to point out that, yeah,
this sort of peptide based synthesis approach has become a
major mover in pharmacology, and just a handful of other
examples of note include the non opiate pain medication ziconotide,
(10:08):
which is derived from the toxin of the magician cone snail.
You know, I can't remember if we've talked about cone
snails on the show before. Maybe we have and it's
just been a long time, but these recently, Yeah, these
are fascinating creatures in their own ride. So they they
they're mollusks with a shell and they hunt using a
(10:30):
toxic dart or harpoon, which is itself a modified radular
tooth that they fire from their proboscis at prey to
deliver one of the strongest venoms in nature, and then
they reel the prey in via unattached tether. Get over here,
pretty much. Yeah, kind of like a yeah, toxic scorpion
(10:53):
slug or a snail rather it does have a does
have a shell. But yeah, these are amazing high powered
tox and one of the most high powered toxins. But
then gets reutilized into this pain medication. Let's see. Another
one is and I may get some of these pronunciation
wrongs because we're getting in these medication names, but there's
(11:14):
aptifa battaitide. This is derived from the venom of the
pygmy rattlesnake. And this is another cardiotoxin reutilized to prevent
clotting during heart heart attacks. And then another one that
has no connection to snakes is or even really a
venom of any kind, is bi valid rudin. This is
(11:34):
a synthetic take on the anti blood clotting properties of
the medicinal leeches saliva. So the medicinal leech, of course
long used in medicine. This was a way to figure out, Okay,
what are we getting out of this leach that's useful
when dealing you know, when we want to prevent clotting.
Let's go ahead and get that out turn it into
(11:55):
a medication via this peptide process.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Is the leech wants to keep blood flowing.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so let's and you know, for a
long time we have manipulated that to our favor, like
get in there, leech, keep the blood flowing around this
vital area. But then we can just cut the leech
out of it entirely, all right, Before we get heavy
into peptides and helo monsters here, I wanted to take
(12:22):
just a few minutes to talk about older uses of
the HeLa monster in medicine and in some cases indigenous medicine.
And for this we turn once more to Daniel D.
Beck's book Biology of HeLa Monsters and Beaded Lizards from
the University of California Press. This is the book we've
turned to throughout these episodes. So Beck profiles a number
(12:45):
of different practices involving either the HeLa monster or beaded
lizards in general. First, from different indigenous practices, he mentions
that the Aqua people of Sonora, Mexico believed that the
skin of these lizards had healing proper and you could
place them over a wound and the wound would sort
of leech out the sickness or leach out the poison
(13:06):
in some manner. The Siri people who've mentioned before in
these episodes used Helo monster tails to treat psychosomatic illnesses
and would place Helo monster skin on the head to
treat headaches. And then there are Navajo traditions of the
Helo monster as a healer or tied to this idea
(13:28):
of old man Helo monster the great healer. And this
seems to connect in large part to comparisons to be
made with the sort of between the sort of trembling
nature of a helo monster's gait or observations that a
helo monsters kind of trembling, and the so called hand
trembling practices of traditional healers in Navajo culture. So there's
(13:51):
a lot to this, but hand trembling is part of
a traditional diagnostic ritual practice among the Navajo, where by
the healer, in the midst of a ritual that has
other major components, holds a hand over the body of
a sick person and the trembling of the hand reveals
where in the body the sickness is centered. And then
(14:14):
the person once they've determined where the sickness is located,
then they're referred out to an herbalist or more a
singer for proper treatment of that condition. And so again
there's mythic connection, let's see. Additionally, Beck mentions that early
settlers in Mexico claimed that the Mexican beaded lizard's tail
was an aphrodisiac. This, of course is often the case
(14:37):
with different animal parts and cultures around the world. Oftentimes
there's generally nothing to it. It's just it's tied up
in ideas right of and certainly imagine benefits and then
he points out that during the eighteen nineties, different doctors,
(14:58):
you know, colonial doctors Westerners, started experimenting with HeLa monster venom,
and he profiles one in particular that was somewhat amusing
and frightening depending on how you look at it, and
that is one R. Boocock, who experimented with giving small
doses or provings to patients and apparently did a lot
(15:18):
of experiments on himself. And I just want to read
a fragment here from Beck's book, because he summarizes it
rather amusingly quote using only himself as a subject. Boocock
published a painfully detailed, if not well replicated, set of
trials describing how small dosages of heloderma venom taken with
(15:41):
quote sugar of milk, produced a number of symptoms. These
symptoms ranged from lethargy, headaches, dizziness, and running nose, to
erection and enhanced sexual performance. The most striking system noted
by Boocock was quote uninternal coldness from my heart, as
if I was being frozen to death internally and I
(16:04):
had no way of warming myself.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Oh yeah, we talked last time about or in the
first episode, about one of the effects of helo monster
venom being being hypothermia.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah. Yeah, so you know it sounds like I don't
know this is this is touching on a number of
the problems with understanding the helo monster's venom that we
discussed already, you know, like what is the dositure that
is being administered and then you know, how does it
feel in one body versus another? But yeah, it does
seem like he is, at least at least in that case,
he's tapping into the real power of the venom. And
(16:39):
then anyway, back continues and says Boucock used the remedy
on a number of his patients, claiming to have successfully
treated a quote patient with a staggering gait and another
with skin infections and swollen legs who was near death.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Okay, I got my doubts.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
So Bookock is just dosing himself daily with tiny heat
monster potions and then taking stock of what his body
is doing. And you know, maybe in some cases it's
less it's less what the the it's less helo monster
related and just something else going on in his body.
Other times, I think maybe a stronger case to be made,
like oh yeah, maybe you took a little too much
(17:18):
or enough. That's the thing that's kind of the always
been the balance with various naturally occurring properties from other organisms. Right,
if it's it's a chemical weapon in a plant or
an animal, we're trying to use it for a different source.
We don't actually want our heart to blow up, but
we want to feel it enough that we wake up
in the morning, right, that sort of thing. So he
(17:40):
notes here that other doctors look for ways that heloder
dermo venom might be used to treat paralysis and neurological problems,
including some tied to late stage syphilis. He says that
during the First World War, the Germans actually had HeLa
monsters harvested and shipped over for possible use in the
treatment of different degenerative diseases of the nervous system. I'm
(18:05):
not sure how. I'm assuming they didn't travel in comfort.
I'm imagining that these were dead bodies, but I'm not
sure on the details there. But generally, once we get
into the twentieth century, he points out that scientific inquiry
becomes a lot more rigorous. Though heloderma venom was still
used in some homeopathic practices and still was as of
(18:26):
this book's writing, Beck rides quote. Because homeopathic remedies are
often given at doses below levels that might be expected
to have significant physiological effects. The mechanism of homeopathic cures
beyond the placebo effect has so far eluded science.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I'll go on the record and say that I don't
think homeopathic medicines have an effect other than the placebo effect,
because they are based on this dilution concept, the idea
that you can dilute the active ingredient to levels where
it basically no longer exists and it's still supposed to
have some effect.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah. Like this kind of reminds me a lot of
the discussions around micro doosing in our culture today. Like
if you take such a small dosage of something that
at a larger dosage has a more pronounced and or
meaningful effect, what happens if you take it at a
very small dose and it's maybe not even perceivable, Like
is it doing anything or is it just the idea
(19:23):
of it? Is it again just placebo effect and the
idea of it doing something in you?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:30):
So yeah, So you know, going back to Bukock, micro
dosing HeLa monster venom, and a case could be made
that maybe that's the case with these homeopathic practices as well.
(19:50):
But any rate, by the time we get to the
nineteen eighties, that's when the peptide breakthroughs really really come
into play regarding he monster venom.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I would say, especially in the early nineteen nineties, that's
when we really start to see the relevance of I mean,
this is not the only potentially medically interesting component of
helo monster venom, because, as we talked about, helo monster
venom is a very complex cocktail with tons of different
(20:21):
toxins in it that do different things. But the main
and most interesting element of helo monster venom is, at
least in a medical sense, is one that is known
as exendin four. So the extending four peptide found in
helo monsters is in fact very similar to a hormone
(20:46):
that occurs naturally in human bodies called GLP one. Listeners
will probably have heard this phrase a lot lately. This
stands for a glucagon like peptide one. So what does
does GLP one do, and thus why is the functional
similarity of extendin four to GLP one relevant. I'm going
(21:09):
to explain that, but to do so, we kind of
have to take a few steps back and go over
some of the basics of vertebrate metabolism, including the concepts
of glucose and insulin. So starting with glucose. Glucose is
one of the body's primary sources of energy. So when
you eat carbs eat carbohydrates, your digestive system breaks down
(21:32):
complex carbohydrates into simple sugars, which enter the blood stream
as glucose. Then also some amino acids from proteins get
converted into glucose by the liver in a process known
as glucooneogenesis, So making glucose out of these other constituents
out of amino acids from proteins. So after a meal,
(21:57):
the amount of glucose in the blood stream goes up.
This is the blood sugar spike, the post prandial blood
sugar spike from eating. But this glucose is not helpful
to the body just floating around in your blood. The
body needs to take some extra steps to make use
of it or store it, and this is where insulin
(22:18):
comes in. So insulin is a hormone that allows tissues
such as the muscles to take in glucose from the
blood and do something with it in a commonly used metaphor.
Insulin chemically opens the gate in muscle cells to allow
glucose to enter and then provide power to the muscles. Meanwhile,
(22:41):
in the liver, insulin stimulates the organ to convert glucose
into glycogen, which is a more complex carbohydrate that is
stored in the liver and in the muscles for use
in the near future. This is something that's you know,
you might need soon, so we're gonna store it in
this other molecular form it can be used later. And
(23:03):
also insulin signals to the liver to stop making synthetic
glucose from other nutrients. It's like we've already got glucose
in the blood liver. You could stop synthesizing glucose. We
don't need that right now. You can stop turning amino
acids from protein into glucose. Instead, We're ready to make
(23:23):
use of the glucose we have from food, so insulin
to review. It enables the body to do several things.
Convert glucose into cellular energy to be used immediately, to
store glucose for use in the medium term by converting
it into glycogen, or it stimulates the body to convert
glucose into fat for long term energy storage, and then
(23:47):
insulin can also stimulate the building of proteins to grow muscle,
tissue or repair the body. So insulin gets glucose out
of the blood stream and puts it to use somewhere
in the body in various ways. Here's where GLP one
comes in. When you eat a meal, your body detects
(24:08):
that food is entering the gut, and the gut reacts
by producing this hormone GLP one. So the GLP one
in the blood stream in turn triggers the pancreas to
release more insulin, so it says, hey, you know, blood
glucose is going to spike. We've got food coming in.
We need to create insulin. We need to release insulin rather.
(24:30):
So the idea is when the blood sugar spikes after
the meal, the glucose can be cleared and put to use.
GLP one also slows down gastric emptying. This means it
reduces the speed at which the stomach passes along its
contents into the small intestine, and the result of this
(24:52):
is that glucose from the meal just eaten will enter
the bloodstream more gradually. GLP one also communicates with the brain,
stimulating the feeling that we know as satiety or fullness.
So when you feel full after eating a bunch of food,
that sensation is not completely but in part due to
(25:16):
naturally occurring GLP one. That feeling in the brain. I
am full comes in part from GLP one, but there
are other signals as well. One fact that I really
like like thinking about sometimes is that the body literally
detects stretching of the stomach via dedicated Mechana receptors. So
when the stomach is crammed full of food that can
(25:37):
also make you feel full, you literally feel your stomach stretching.
But the GLP one contributes as well to the feeling
of fullness. GLP one also signals the liver to stop
releasing extra glucose into the bloodstream from stored glycogen. So
in multiple ways, GLP one helps the body deal with
(25:58):
incoming energy food. It's a regulator hormone. It's kind of
like a traffic cop for food energy in a way.
It tries to slow things down and make sure that
the body can properly use and store the food energy
entering the system. Now, there are some human diseases that
(26:19):
affect these metabolic pathways we've just been talking about, most
notably diabetes. Type one diabetes occurs when the body's immune
system attacks the pancreas, destroying the body's ability to create insulin.
Type two diabetes happens when the body develops resistance to insulin,
so that insulin no longer works as well to clear
(26:41):
glucose from the bloodstream and put it to use in cells.
And both of these conditions can lead to persistent high
levels of glucose in the blood, which has all kinds
of negative health consequences over time if that condition is
not treated. This brings us back to the HeLa monster.
So decades ago, researchers were isolating and studying the individual
(27:05):
toxins and helo monster venom and realized that one particular
component of the venom or the saliva, a peptide called
exendin four, was, though structurally pretty different, it was functionally
very similar to GLP one in the body binding to
(27:26):
our cells GLP one receptors, except with one very important difference.
While natural GLP one that is made in our bodies
gets broken down within minutes, exendin four remains active for
several hours because it is resistant to the enzymes in
(27:46):
our body that normally break the GLP one hormone apart.
So because it lasts so much longer in the blood stream,
xendin four is kind of like super GLP one like
it behaves like GILP one, but it lasts way way longer.
When this functionality was discovered, it led researchers to put
(28:08):
some facts together. So diabetes is characterized by dysfunction in
how the body makes and responds to insulin. GLP one
stimulates and regulates the body's insulin response. Exendin four behaves
like GLP one, except with a much longer half life
in the blood. So could this toxin from heal monster
(28:31):
venom help play a role in treating metabolic disorders like diabetes?
And the answer turned out to be yes. So this
line of research gave us initially drugs like eccentotide, which
is synthetic extend in four, which has been used for
years now to treat type two diabetes, very effective treatment.
(28:53):
But it is also what led not directly but conceptually
to the development of humor and GLP one mimicking drugs
based on semaglutide, and these would include you've heard the
common trade names now like ozimpic and wagovi, which are
used to treat type two diabetes and to promote weight loss, respectively.
(29:14):
So the research history kind of goes like. The study
of HeLa monster venom led to the isolation of toxins,
including exendin four, which led to research discovering the functional
similarities between exendin four and GLP one, which led to
development of treatments for diabetes based on the HeLa monster toxin,
(29:39):
which led to the concept of GLP one mimicking drugs
to promote general weight loss in humans. Now, there have
been a lot of important scientists involved in these streams
of research over the years, too many dimension here, but
one of the major figures often singled out in the
history of this research program is a guy named doctor
(30:00):
John ng a doctor who worked at the us VA
Hospital who in the early nineteen nineties was doing research
on helo monster venom, was isolating toxins from it, trying
to figure out what they did if they might have
some medical relevance, and he isolated the toxin extend in
four and discovered its functional similarity to human GLP one,
(30:23):
which had already been discovered earlier, I think in the
nineteen eighties, so we already knew about GLP one, but
doctor Ing discovered, Hey, this toxin in helo monster venom,
it has this functional similarity. And he also discovered its
most important difference from GLP one, which was again that
it took much much longer to break down in the body,
(30:45):
which is useful for multiple reasons. I mean, that is
directly useful in a way in its function in the body,
but that also makes it easier to study in the laboratory.
So it really is amazing to think about how this
revolution tionary whole new field of metabolic medicine can be
traced back to research on heal a monster venom. Yeah,
(31:09):
like this lizard that lives in the desert and has
an excruciating bite and carries this potent cocktail of venoms.
That isolating the parts of the venom could lead through
all of these steps to such an amazing, uh you know,
step change in human medicine.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, this thing that we couldn't even agree agree that
the creature had for a while and then had all
these disagreements about what its properties are. Yeah, it turns
out to be a part of you know, one of
the biggest medicine breakthroughs of the modern era, you know,
because it's these medicines are everywhere. We have listeners who
(31:48):
are using these medications, and certainly listeners know people who
are using these medications in real life and certainly in
the like the larger media sphere.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I mean it's like at this point we did not
have to introduce the idea of brand names like Ozebic
and Wagovi. Everybody listening has already heard of these at
this point.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, But anyway, I wanted to come back to another
interesting question. So we know the usefulness of extending for
in creating drugs to treat diabetes, and then also in
(32:32):
inspiring these subsequent research programs that lead to weight loss drugs,
But what does it do for the HeLa monster? As
far as I can tell, the answer is, we don't
know for sure exactly what it does for the HeLa monster.
We have some ideas, there are a number of ideas
that researchers have been kicking around to answer this question
(32:55):
for decades now, but we don't fully know exactly what
it's primary role for the HeLa monster is. I'm happy
to be corrected on this, by the way, if you're
a heel a Monster researcher out there and you have
more confidence in the research than I do. But I've
been reading around and I think it's still somewhat unsettled.
(33:15):
The ideas about what it might do fall into two
major categories. One category is effects on the bite victim.
So extending for could play a role strictly as a toxin.
Like the other toxins in the hel monster's venom, which
have a range of effects, they're designed to cause extreme
pain or around where the bite is, to lead to
(33:37):
these drops in blood pressure to you know, generally have
effects that are supposed to drive an attacking animal away,
to make it desist from trying to eat the heal
a monster.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, and as we've discussed chemical weapons like this that
the animals or plants use, there are death ways that
we can adjust the dosages or in this case, you know,
manipulate them in other ways to hone in on the
things we like about those weapons and make them work
for us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, So this would be an effect on an attacking
animal or potentially on a prey animal. Though, as we
talked about last time, a lot of helo monster research
has sort of deemphasized the role of venom in subduing prey,
especially because helo monsters don't really they don't usually attack
large prey that needs to be subdued by venom. They
(34:26):
tend to eat small, helpless prey in nests.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Like you can't fight back now, baby rabbits or egg
because I have poisoned you.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, so that's one stream of hypotheses. It might have
some effect on the thing that gets bitten, But the
other tying of this fork is effects on the HeLa
monster itself. And while most of the stuff in the
venom is designed to work on the creature that gets bitten,
(34:56):
it is true that in plenty of creatures there are
things in the saliva that do something for the creature itself.
So it could be an internal regulatory peptide that is
meant to have effects on the HeLa monster's own digestion
and metabolism. On that second idea that extended for does
something for the HeLa monster itself. The research picture here
(35:20):
also seems mixed to me, but one publication I found
somewhat supporting this idea is a letter published in the
journal Diabetes obesity and metabolism, and this was by Galina Graham,
Chris McLaughlin and Peter Flatt called Roll of Extending for
(35:40):
in the HeLa Monster Further Lessons regarding human oral glucagon
like peptide one for Therapy, and this was published in
the year twenty twenty. So the authors point out that
despite the importance of Helo monster venom in the last
thirty years of advancements in the treatment of diabetes quote,
we have not fully appreciated the contribution of the Helo
(36:03):
monster and address the obvious question of why such a
metabolically active peptide is present in its saliva. They point
out that it's not unusual for a self effective regulatory
peptide to be found in the saliva of an animal.
They say humans have regulatory peptides in our own saliva,
but in low concentrations. They say, the relative concentration of
(36:26):
extending four in Helo monster saliva is huge, and they
reason that there would not be this much of an
active peptide in the saliva by chance. It has to
serve some kind of biological purpose, and they write, quote interestingly,
this is not the creature's own form of GLP one.
(36:47):
Extending four is not the Helo monster's own GLP one quote,
which can be found in its intestinal l cells, with
a structure very similar to mammalian GLP one, including susceptibility
to degradation by DPP four. This is the common This
is the agent in the body that typically breaks down
GLP one quickly, the thing that extending four is more
(37:11):
resistant to. This is why it can last so much
longer in the blood. So they ask does extending for
play a role in immobilization of the Helo monster's prey.
The thinking would go that helo monster bites a small
mammal and then quote as a result of insulinotropic action
(37:32):
action promoting the flooding of the blood with insulin, it
induces hypoglycemia and allows the prey to be overcome and devoured.
They say, no, this is very unlikely because you would
need a very high dose to do this. They say,
the insulin stimulating effect of extending for, just like the
(37:52):
insulin stimulating effect of GLP one, is dependent on the
presence of glucose in the blood. Fortunately, it does like
GLP one, doesn't overstimulate insulin when there's no blood glucose
to process. There's kind of a natural safety valve there.
There's got to be glucose there for it to work.
(38:13):
And then the third thing they say is this, if
it were supposed to function this way, like inducing hypoglycemia
in the bite victim, this would take some time, they say, Quote,
some considerable time would be required to incapacitate the prey.
But this is in fact mediated very rapidly by toxins
targeting the nervous and cardiovascular systems. So I can imagine,
(38:38):
of course, this time objection would be true whether you're
talking about having an effect on prey though they eat
their prey very quickly, but also whether you're talking about
having an effect on a larger bite victim, because you know, like,
how long is this encounter between the attacker and the
helo monster supposed to last? Like the helo monster does
(38:58):
have to clamp on and choose venom in, but it
still doesn't want to be hanging out around this attacking
animal for a long time.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, So, yeah, it would be an expensive thing to
include in the venom if it's ultimately not playing a
role in the immediate takedown of the prey.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, unlikely to be effective by causing hypoglycemia in the
bite victim within a relevant amount of time, so they say,
quote in view of the above, we should consider an
alternative possibility based on the fact that the heel Monster
produces copious amounts of saliva when eating meals, which can
(39:37):
be up to one third of its own body weight.
This connects to something we talked about in part one
of this series that the heel Monster is going to
be living a feast or famine kind of lifestyle. It's
not getting regular small meals throughout the day, throughout the
whole year. Instead, it is going long, long periods of
(39:59):
time probably eat nothing at all, and then getting suddenly
huge meals at very infrequent times.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, I think the estimates that we discussed before was
as few as maybe five times a year as the
heat Monster actually eating, and those are not going to
be evenly spread out right.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
So an animal that only eats several relatively gigantic meals
influxes of food energy per year and the rest of
the time needs to carefully manage its reserves of stored
energy from food. That seems like an ideal candidate for
an animal that would benefit from a kind of super
(40:36):
GLP one A super version of this peptide that acts
like the metabolic traffic cop to help slow things down,
make sure everything gets where it needs to go, that
it's used efficiently, gets stored if it needs to get stored,
gets used if it needs to get used, and so anyway,
the authors continue. They say, quote, the saliva containing extended
(40:59):
four would pass into the alimentary tract, enabling the peptide
to be absorbed across the mucosa, passing into the circulation
to powerfully potentiate meal induced insulin secretion and other extra
pancreatic actions through the activation of both insulin and GLP
one rs. Such a mechanism would significantly augment the actions
(41:21):
of the creature's own enteroinsular pathway and enhance its ability
to store nutrient excess, again making good use of the
food that it takes in storing efficiently what needs to
be stored for later, They say quote. However, this scenario
would require extendin for to escape digestion in the gastrointestinal
tract pass into the blood in amount sufficient to stimulate
(41:45):
glucose dependent insulin release and trigger a powerful anabolic response,
so the authors decided to experiment. They explained that they
that experimenting with heela monsters would be very difficult, so
they're doing some preliminary research here. They first tried this
with mice to see what would happen if you administer
(42:06):
oral extend in four along with a glucose meal to
mice non diabetic mice that had been fasting fasted mice.
They say, does this extend and four have any anything
like the effect they hypothesize that it might have with
the lizards. They found somewhat surprisingly, yes, it required a
high dose, but oral extended four did stimulate insulin release
(42:31):
and it did moderate the expected blood sugar spike from
the glucose. Now, they say that they did not have
a chance to monitor circulating extend in four in the
blood of the mice because the amount of blood was limited,
But they they point to another study actually in heal monsters,
(42:53):
saying quote, one remarkable study has demonstrated that circulating extend
and four levels measured by immunoinsymmetric assay increased rapidly by
more than one hundredfold when the helo monster devoured small rats.
So this study found helo monsters they eat little rats,
and then if you check out their blood. They have
(43:16):
a lot of extend and for circulating in their own blood,
So that's sort of a clue that it may be
going from the venom down with the meal into the
lizard'szone digestive system and then not just being digested, but
being absorbed into the bloodstream and affecting the lizard's oone metabolism.
So these authors argue that apart from the possible effects
(43:38):
on the bite victim, there's good reason for thinking that
the extend and four in helo monster saliva plays a
role in preparing the lizard's body to handle this huge
incoming meal, especially given this feast or famine lifestyle. However,
I did find some stuff that made it look like
I don't know, maybe the research picture is more complicated
(44:00):
because I found an older study, for example, from the
year two thousand and seven in the Journal of Comparative
Physiology by Carolyn Crystal and Dale DeNardo called absence of
extend and four effects on post prandial meaning after a
meal glucose and lipids in the heel monster Heloderma suspectum. Again,
this was the year two thousand and seven. They did
(44:22):
some experiments and they write quote our results demonstrate that
plasma nutrient levels in helo monsters respond relatively slowly to feeding,
and that extend in four does not have the same
effect on circulating glucose in helo monsters as it does
in mammals. Now, they do not rule out that extended
(44:43):
for plays some kind of role. They say there could
be an alternate role in regulating energy metabolism within the
lizards themselves. They say, quote such as nutrient uptake rate
in the small intestine. But they did not find that
the extended for levels in the heel monsters blood mitigated
(45:05):
like the blood sugar spike that you would see after
a meal. It didn't mitigate the blood sugar spike or
a triglyceride levels which did still increase in the blood
after the heel monster had a meal in their experiments.
But they say, you know, further experiments could show that
maybe it still plays a role in helo monster metabolism somehow.
(45:26):
So from what I can tell, there's still a somewhat
mixed picture on the research here, and we don't fully
understand exactly what the extending for is primarily supposed to
be doing in the lizard saliva. But there is a
good reason for thinking it's doing something metabolically for the
lizard itself, even though there are clearly complications to exactly
(45:49):
what that mechanism would be.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yeah, that hypothesis is the one that I mentioned this
in the first episode that I went to the Denver
Museum of Nature and Science several week back, which again
is tremendous world class museum, Highly recommend it. But they
had a wonderful volunteer let exhibit titled Nature's Medicine Cabinet
about some of these topics we're discussing in this episode. Yeah,
(46:11):
and they lean towards some version of this metabolic explanation
for the substance's presence in the saliva, in the toxin
in the venom of the HeLa monster.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Another really interesting thing that maybe we could explore on
the show someday is that, you know, GLP one and
related metabolic peptides are weird. They appear to have this
complex cascade of effects within the body. Just one example
people may have come across before is that apparently GLP ones,
(46:58):
while they're originally meant these GLP one drugs sorry, well,
they're originally meant to treat diabetes and obesity, they appear
to have effects in controlling certain behaviors, like they have
been linked to greater ability to control compulsive gambling behaviors
and other things like this. So it seems like it's
(47:18):
more than just metabolism. It's not just insulin. It's also
doing things to our brains and having cognitive and behavioral effects.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
The general weirdness and kind of multi potency of this
whole class of medications is something that is fascinating and
I think, I don't know, might be worth coming back
and talking about again on the show sometime.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, So yeah, I want to stress again that, yeah,
these medications seem to be doing doing a lot of
good for a lot of people out there. But if
you have any any idea in your head right now,
well maybe I should find a helo monster. First of all,
(48:05):
do not, as we've been saying, leave the helo monsters alone.
They're doing their thing. They are not a danger to you.
If you go looking for them, that's where the danger
becomes apparent. And they're generally protected in the ranges that
they call home. Leave the Helo monsters alone. And yeah,
and you do know.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Not worth it to milk a helo monster's venom glands
to try to make some homemade agoviy or something, and
that doesn't work anyway. It's a different that's based on
it's not the same thing, and it's not worth it.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Just don't just do not do it. Yeah, yeah, and
you don't want to risk being bitten by a helo monster.
As we've mentioned, this can be fatal. The one exception
I'm going to make is if you have access to
a Brundle telepod, or technically you need two of these,
You need two Brundle telepods, and you would like to
(48:57):
merge your genes with that the helo monster to gain
these benefits. You absolutely can. However, I do want to
warn you that there are there are a number of
possible side effects to merging your DNA with a helo
monster via a pair of Brundle telepods. These side effects
include lizard dreams, egg cravings, bloat, tail repneck sand lung,
(49:24):
ear loss, and of course of course burrow. But yeah, so,
but if you have the technology, and only if you
have the technology, you can pursue this avenue of treatment.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
All right, Does that do it for helo monsters?
Speaker 2 (49:37):
For now I think so. Yeah, fascinating organisms and it's
just yeah, it's it's amazing how how important the learnings
the lizard wisdom that we have drawn from them has
actually become in modern medicine.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Can you imagine this, This wasteful research on heelo monster venom?
Why would anybody need to do that?
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I mean it is a a great example of that.
You know, people, they're always studies out there, like why
aren't we studying this? Why aren't we studying that? And yeah,
this is a This is a great example of the
sort of thing that can come out of attempting to
fully understand what's going on inside of another animal's physiology.
You could find this key, and this key that could
(50:19):
be very useful when it's been adapted for use in
the human body.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Yeah, we don't know what keys lie in nature until
we look. Yeah, try and figure it out.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah, and then you've got to try all the doors.
It's like Zelda or something, right, Yeah, all right, or
maybe it's like Silent Hill. Some of those doors just
don't know, they just they're just there for decoration. Yeah,
we're going to go and close it out here, though,
But again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Certainly if you have field experiences observing healo monsters, if
(50:51):
you have you know, observed them at zoos and you
have some thoughts, or you're just helo monster fans, if
you have sports mascot reports to me, do so. I
want to hear about all your local sports teams that
have helo monsters as mascots. What did the mascots get
up to on the iconography for the team, or is
there a costumed helo monster that's out there on the
(51:14):
ball field running around with antics. Let us know about
that and anything we talked about in this episode as well.
It's all fair game. I just want to remind everyone
out there that's stuff to blow your mind. Is, of
course a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays,
we do Weird House Cinema. That's when we set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a strange film.
(51:35):
Let's see what else to mention. Yeah, we appreciate anybody
out there who takes time out of their day to
listen to the show and or watch the show if
you want the audio version. You can get us wherever
you get your audio podcast. If you want the video
version of our show, the audio video version, go to
Netflix look up Stuff to Blow your Mind. You'll find
(51:57):
us there. You can rate us on this platform, give
us a couple of thumbs up and ask to be
reminded about future episodes. And if you get us anywhere
else in audio format, just rate, review, subscribe. All of
these things really help us out. On top of that,
I would say, yeah, find us on social media. We
are on Instagram, and also if you want to want
(52:19):
to join the discord server, email us and we'll send
to the link for that. It's a much smaller audience,
you know, a little more, you know, close knit, but
it's a fun community if you want to be a
part of it.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
(52:53):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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