Does acupuncture work?

Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese practice rooted in the precepts of Taoism, and for thousands of years it has been used to treat a range of ailments. The western world has historically dismissed this treatment -- but why? Tune in and learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant's
two thousand and eleven and this is Stuff you Should

(00:22):
Know two thousand eleven, our first one. Man. We've been
doing this for years, like four seven, eight years something
like that. I think it's our twelfth year. Yeah. Overall,
we've been doing it since ninety there, since everybody's worried
about black helicopters. Yeah, and that was our our second podcast,
I think was on the Y two K bug, wasn't it?

(00:43):
It was? Didn't that pan out to be almost nothing?
You know? The iPhone has a bug like a Y
two K bug that's left over if Yeah, apparently that's
a a Y two K grandkid. Well, I think if
you're depending on your iPhone to wake you up, and
I don't know, I don't use anything, but we'll look

(01:04):
at you. So two thousand eleven Man Future Man Omega
Man Chuck. Yes, have you ever heard of a little
condition called amblyopia? No, Amblyopia is also unfortunately referred to
as lazy eye. Yes, yes, and um. I used to

(01:25):
have a friend in college named Grant, and Grant Um
did not have amblyopia unless he had been drinking. And like,
you could tell how much Grant had drunk depending on
how pronounced this amblyopia was. And I didn't know. I
knew Grant for a while before I finally noticed this,
and it was surprising when I finally did, and he's like, yeah,

(01:47):
it happened sometimes. Did you ever take English from that
guy at Georgia that had the Michael Jordan's It wasn't.
There was an English teacher named Michael Jordan and he
had a lazy eye, and like on the first day
of class he said, this is the eye that's looking
at you, just to clear it up, because his was like,
as my friend Guy called it, a disco eye. It
was way out of whack. Yah. See, I have a

(02:08):
soft spot for people with strab SMUs, which is any
kind of um, you know, walleye, lazy eye, cross eyed, disco.
I've never heard that one before, but the same thing, right.
I actually wrote a pretty cool blog post on it once.
You should check it out. Strab SMUs Blogs at house.
Stuff works, it should bring it up, right, but chuck. Um.
I recently ran across an article that showed a study

(02:33):
of kids age seven to twelve years with amblyopia, right,
were cured of their lazy eye through acupuncture. Yeah, and
this is a This is an accredited article in the
Archives of Optimology, which is a publication of the American
Medical Association. And basically they had a control group, which

(02:55):
was kids who had their eye patched their I guess
dominant or good eye, non lazy eye patched for two
hours a day, which I guess kind of forces the
lazy eye to correct itself. That's the pretty standard treatment.
Or the other group, Um, we're given acupuncture five times
a week. What a cruel study. We're gonna fix you kids,

(03:18):
but we're hoping you don't show any improvement. You you
would think so, but get this. The kids who had
their eye patched, Um, sixteen point seven percent had their
ambiliopia resolved. Forty one point five percent had their ambiliopia
resolved in the acupuncture alone group. What was it again,
sixteen percent? That is huge, huge, um. But you'll know

(03:42):
my my incredulousness. Yeah. Um, when I was saying, no,
this was published in a respectable journal. Right. That's because
this podcast was recorded in the West. Eastern medicine is
still poo pooed in many circles around here, it is,
but with acupuncture specifically, this is one of those um
those things that has made the crossover largely into the West,

(04:05):
and it kind of has you know, Western thought puzzle
a little bit, like what's going on with this um
And there's what let's talk about both approaches to acupuncture,
like explaining what's going on because one of the um
the predominant thoughts about uh acupunctures that it works somehow. Right, So,

(04:27):
if you're Chinese, Chuck, how does acupuncture work? If you're Chinese, Josh,
you believe that your body has the Yen and the end,
a couple of opposing forces, and that your body has
a an energy uh running through it called Chi even
though it's spelled q i, and that when your body
is in balance, and we've talked about balance and homeostasis

(04:47):
and all that and in the East, then you have
good chi energy is flowing. When things get blocked up,
that means your che is blocked. That means the end
and the Yang fall out of balance. And that means
you get to right and your energy flows along pathways
in the body called meridians. Right, Yeah, you've got to
think a dozen of them from point to point. We'll
get to the acupoints later. But uh so they well,

(05:10):
let's get to him now. The acupoints are there's two
thousand of them later, Okay, I'm just kidding. Along these
fifteen meridians, there's I think twelve meridians. I'm sorry, there's
a total of two thousand little points. And these are acupoints.
And someone correspond to like that part of your body,
and others correspond to others. And like you said, we'll

(05:30):
get into a little a little more later on. But
the point being, energy flows along these meridians. It can
get blocked at these points. If you manipulate these points,
the chief flows freely and yin and yang are balanced.
And you may have a bad tattoo as a stimulate
stimulate these points, and there's lots of ways to do that.
Well wait, wait, what happens if you are in the West.

(05:52):
How does acupuncture work well in the West, They would
say that it's uh stimulates the central nervous system releases hormones,
arrow transmitters boost the immune system, dull's pain, stuff like that.
So you know, the same thing, the same result, two
ways of explaining it, isn't it. Yeah, Yeah, that's what
I think. So, Chuck Um, you mentioned that this is Chinese,

(06:15):
didn't you ancient Chinese? Right? Where did it come from?
How long has it been around? Well more than years
in China. And it's rooted in Taoism, which is all
about harmony between the humans and nature and the earth
and stuff like that. The yin and yang again, can't
have good without bad, light without dark, all that, all
that good stuff. And if you have too much of

(06:36):
one or the other, you either can't see or you
can't see. Yeah, too bright or too dark, either way
you can't see. Right, It's true. I think that they said.
The first place it appeared in text was in uh
the Nijing, which is the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal
Medicine by Hwangdi. I like, how to sink the Chinese

(06:57):
are in their language? Yeah, me too. Two words for
Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal medic to one syllable words,
and that's at a three hundred BC, And he described
Hwang describes diseases, and it was, from what I can tell,
one of the first medical books to actually be written.
And he described various acupuncture points in this book, so

(07:18):
boom there it is. Then about five hundred years later,
um acupuncture is completely laid out in this twelve volume
text called the um zen U g Xing, The Comprehensive
Manual of Acupuncture and Maxibustion. Yeah. I didn't know about maxibustion.
We're getting into that. That's kind of cool. But this

(07:40):
Comprehensive manuals like I said, it's twelve volumes and it
basically says like this point here will do all of this.
You've got this problem right right here, right, and but
there's only three d sixty five ACU points early on,
one for each day of the year. Yeah, and then
eventually like this just stupid, there's two thousand. Let's just
come out and say there's two thousand. Right. I wonder

(08:01):
if the twelve Meridians had something to do with the
twelve months, maybe so, or the twelve days of Christmas,
or the twelve signs of the zodiac perhaps early on.
Instead of needle while they were needles, but they were
made from stone and bone, which probably wasn't want of fun,
so they decided we should probably use metal like bronze
and gold and silver, and that worked for a little

(08:23):
while these days of stainless steel, thankfully. And now that
you mentioned that, it occurred to me that we never
defined acupuncture. Oh, everyone knows what it is, right. I
thought everyone knew a roller Derby was all right. Acupuncture
is a a Eastern medicine where they're small needles are
stuck into various points of the body and manipulated in

(08:44):
certain ways or not. And because you're living today, those
are a little tiny stainless steel, hair hair thin needles,
not like knitting needles or anything, not like a bone. No,
but it was at a time I already said that. Yeah.
Uh so in the nineteenth century, early nineteenth century, uh,
people started going to China and were introduced to acupuncture,

(09:07):
brought it back to the West in Europe to a
certain degree in the course of doctors in Europe, probably
before the doctors in the United States were like, hey,
this is kind of neat, let me experiment around, especially
in France with George Soule de Moron. Yeah, he was
like the champion of acupuncture in the West. He went
to China. He's a scholar. Um, he went to China

(09:29):
at the turn of the twentieth century, which means the
eight hundreds of the nineteen hundreds. And he saw firsthand
that acupuncture worked, and um, he brought it back in
championed it in France. In France actually came up with
their own type of acupuncture. I bet us because of him, Actually,
I would think so, because he was probably the first

(09:50):
dude to get it going. Are we gonna we're gonna
talk about that now. You want to skip on to
that later, We'll get to it in a second. Uh.
Then it eventually, like all things made tway to the
United States. Um. And the article that said President Nixon's
visit to China was a big deal as far as
introducing a lot of Chinese ways to the States, it's
like China fever. Yeah, in the first blast of China fever. Right.

(10:14):
And then in the U s. There's a guy named
James Reston who um writes for the New York Times
where he did and he had a appendix to me, Well,
he had appendix surgery, which I'd take to be appendix
to me right. Um, and uh, he he got acupuncture
to treat um his pain and it worked, and he
wrote about it, and this is the first mention. Now

(10:36):
here we are today, right here we are. Um, it
is viewed as a legitimate medicine. Right. Yeah, I've got
a stat that says, uh, twenty million Americans have undergone acupuncture,
which is a lot higher than the article, but it
may just be more recent, right because that was the
two thousand two National Health Survey. Yeah, and the FDA
said that Americans spent a half a billion dollars in

(10:57):
the nineties alone on acupuncture. That was the nineties. You know.
Now people are all cookie for this kind of stuff,
so it's probably even more I would think so, not
the cynical nineties. It was also legitimized six um when
the f d A decided that UM acupuncture needles should
be considered uh medical instruments. Yeah that was a good thing. Yeah.

(11:19):
It makes the whole process a lot safer now because
you have to use sterile needles, right, um or or
they have to be sterilized somehow, Like you're not gonna
get an infection, and if you are, you're really going
to the wrong acupuncture, you know, I would say so, Um,
and uh, like you said, how many how many billions
of dollars did we spend on a chuck half a billion,

(11:40):
five million in the nineties. I know that's sort of
an old stat, but you know, the f d A,
I don't even know what that means. I don't either. Yeah,
that's the stat they give me, so chuck. We've been
focusing just on the Chinese version, although we did foreshadow
that there's a French version to Yeah, TCM traditional Chinese medicine. Yes,
let's talk about the different kinds of acupuncture. Well, that's

(12:03):
the Chinese kind, Okay, it comes out of t c M.
And uh, there's the Japanese counterparts, a little more subtle.
Needles are generally a little shorter, a little thinner, Uh,
don't pierce the skin as much. And there are two
kinds root in local obviously root if you treat the
whole body for something. And then local. Yeah, local is

(12:25):
when they you know, get like I'll stick in the
ear to fix your foot. Um, you may live in
Japan for a little while. And she told me that
there were two couples in her um, little province, little town,
um that performed acupuncture and both couples were blind. Really
can that crazy? I would trust that. Yeah, it seems

(12:47):
like it, because you know, you know the body feel around?
Sure for the points. What's the touchy Like if I
need a doctor to have eyes to know where my
kneecap is, then I don't want to be at that doctor.
You should be able to feel your way around to
the kneecap. Sure, sure, alright, So the five element in

(13:07):
Debt crack area for some reason. Five element acupuncture is
Chinese as well, and that treats the body and mine
and that's based on the idea that the earth and
body and everything in nature is governed by the five elements.
Water would fire, earthen metal. So that's kind of neat, yes,
And apparently you can um manipulate the balance of these

(13:31):
elements through acupuncture within yourself. And then here finally, everyone
who's been hanging on for this one. This is the
French one auricular, right, Oh, yeah, that is the French one. Yeah.
The French um apparently decided that the ear is all
you need to do. Yeah, there's um two hundred ACU

(13:53):
points located on the ear that correspond to different parts
of the body and by manipulating these ACU points. You
can do the same thing that um can be done
with traditional Chinese acupuncture, right um. And apparently that's kosher
in China because it's viewed the ear is viewed as

(14:13):
a sensitive spot for manipulating chi the flow of che,
isn't it well? Yeah, and with all the accup points
on the ear, and wonders how piercing affects that. You know,
if there's one thing if I could spend like to
do something to my body, it would be to cover
up these old ear piercing holes. Yeah, I got one too,
but mine's looks so stupid. And I think about the

(14:35):
dudes with the gauges. It's cool now, kids, but and
of course you don't want to be the old guy
saying just wait till you're older. But it's one thing
to have a tattoo you're not proud of. Another thing
to have like a big hole in your ear. Yeah,
or both? Yeah, I think it's generally both, isn't it. Yeah?
Those kids? Uh? Korean hand acupuncture is is is the

(14:57):
last one listed here, and that's essentially the same thing,
is the auricular accept It all goes through the hands, right,
and then Chuck, You mentioned moxibustion, right, So maxibustion is
um acupuncture with these are we just mentioned the different
types of acupuncture. There's also different things you can do
while you have needles sticking out of your body. Yeah,

(15:19):
these are related, sure things that you can do, and
moxibustion is one of those things. So um, this is
the the stimulation of acupoints using heat. Right, And Moxa
is an herb that comes from the mugwarp plant and
traditionally in Chinese medicine, UM, you take about a rice
grain size piece of moxa, put it on an acupoint

(15:43):
and set that thing on fire and then let it
burn and create pain and leave a scar. Now, this
can be done in conjunction with the needle treatment as well.
Is that right now? I think this is in lieu
of it unless you're doing indirect that's direct moxibustion. Unsurprisingly,
then there's indirect ox in busting, which is UM basically
wrapping mox in paper, lighting the paper which you know

(16:05):
makes the mocks of smolder, and then holding it near
an acupoint or wrapping moxa around an occupied lighting that thing. Yes,
you can also use electro acupuncture or saw no acupuncture
to either move an electrical current through the needles or
in the case of saw no, it's there are no needles,

(16:27):
but you use sound to affect your acupoints. When I went,
they put a heat lamp over the needles to heat
up the needles. While acupuncture once just kind of it
is not the point when you're supposed to go like
a chiropractor and get it, you know, until you're fixed.
But yeah, I think I mentioned it once before. I

(16:49):
found a cheap place in l a that it was
like a school you can get for like tin bucks,
you can get acupuncture. It was awesome. What was it?
It was real? Why didn't you go back? Um? I
wanted to, and then you know, like some big job
came up and I got distracted. It was one of
those deals. It wasn't there. I didn't believe in there.
She set up like huh and ran out with all
these needles speaking out of your back, So chuck. You

(17:10):
then know what to expect right if you go get acupuncture,
at least from this one lady. Okay did it follow
kind of with the article details the dim lights and
uh soothing heat lamp. She left me alone, close the
door and the on the CD player on low. It
was very relaxing. I think there was music actually, so

(17:32):
you're well, yeah, sure, deep purple. I mean that was
my experience. I've never been locally here. Well, we were
talking about UM the ACU points right and how they
correspond to different parts of the body. UM, and they're
actually mapped right, it's not just like this sounds like this,
So let's try your cornea. It's not like that. It's

(17:54):
numbered out and charted. It's a standardized absolutely. So the
twelve maridi as we talked about, are they relate to
different parts of the body. Right, So you've got like
the bladder, you have the kidney, the large intestin, the spleen,
the gall bladder, um, the liver, the parcardium, which is
what is that it's over your heart, right, I think

(18:16):
that's the covering of your heart. It scott cardio in there.
It's got to be stomach heart Okay, man, now I'm
second guessing myself. In the parcardium long small intestine and
the triple heater, which that's that's the closer. Yeah, So
you've got you've got these different these are the twelve meridians,
and then uh, there's you know, different numbers corresponded to

(18:38):
the different accu points along that meridian. So, for example,
you have g B one is a certain accupoint on
the gall bladder merdian. Okay, yeah, but that's how it's
spelled out. But that doesn't necessarily mean if I want
to fix the gall bladder I'm gonna stick you in
the gallbladder meridian. Precisely, you could stick stick in the shoulder.
Who knows an acupuncturist, but now exactly so. Um, when

(19:03):
you go to an acupuncturist when you have a malady,
you're going to tell him or her what's going on here.
She's gonna take a history, um, get an idea of
what your problem is, like a regular doctor doctor, right,
and then consult this map and say, okay, well, this
guy's having lower back pain. So I'm gonna go stick
some needles around um the ub some alcohol. That's a

(19:28):
big part of it. Yeah, if you're not swabbed with alcohol,
get out of there, and you take the needle out
of the package so you know it's nice and new,
then I'm gonna stick anywhere from two, three, five, to
fifty needles in some area that will correspond to that meridian,
right and that pain. These needles are going to be
stuck in anywhere from a quarter of an inch to
three inches, which brings up a potential danger. With acupuncture,

(19:55):
you have organs that are closer to your skin than
three inches, so you couldn't conceivably have a kidney punctured
a lung punctured. This is why you want to go
to a certified acupunctuous. Yeah, and I want to say
it's very rare. So don't let something like that scare you,
because we could tell you American surgical stories that are

(20:17):
equally as horrifying, like they remove my kidney and they
weren't supposed to that kind of thing. So don't think,
oh my gosh, I'm gonna get stabbed through the lung
with a needle. You know. That's called a big, big mistake,
and it happens in all medicine. Everybody stabs people through
the long with the needle. Uh, it's it's it's not.
You might feel a little bit of pain with the

(20:37):
initial prick of the needle, but after that, it's not
like you feel the needle inside your body. You said
it was relaxing, right, it's very relaxing. I didn't en
feel the needles going in, to be honest, just a
little tap and they're really tiny, the ones that used
on me very very thin. Uh. They'll leave it in
there five to twenty minutes for me, it was about
twenty minutes, I think. And they can stimulate them while

(20:58):
they're in your skin, like it said, with the various
ways like heat, electricity, or they might even twirl them
with their fingers if they're feeling saucy, if they want
to do it by hand. Um. You said that you're
supposed to go more than once. I think the the
average is something like, um, twelve weeks, once a week
for twelve weeks. It all depends on your issue, which

(21:18):
if you're on Medicare, you're probably not gonna do because
it costs anywhere from sixty bucks to twenty bucks probably
more than that um for an acupuncture session, right. Um,
And if you have to go to twelve times, you
want insurance that's going to cover. Unfortunately, Medicare doesn't. Even
though the federal government recognizes acupuncture needles as medical instruments. Right.

(21:39):
Sounds like a bit of a double standard. Our insurance
covers it actually, which is good, and a lot of
major insurance carriers cover it. I'm gonna give it a try,
all right. I've been meaning to. I've got this. Um.
I have a muscle in my neck right here that
has turned into you know those um metal ables that

(22:01):
are braided. I have one of those in my neck. Man,
I need to see if they can do something about that.
You need to walk around on that thing she does.
But I mean it's kind of like, oh, traffic or
oh this dozen eggs has one broken in it something.
You know, you need to relax. My friends. Oh you
know how that they have that tiger Heart place and

(22:23):
sort of emin park Old fourth Ward. It's on Edgewood.
You should go there. It's an acupunctu tiger heart acupuncture.
You're getting kickbacks from no, of course not. It's all
my way to work though. So, UM, is it safe, Josh?
I know you mentioned the one, the one issue with
the stabbing through the organs, But other than that, well,
like you said, for the most part, it is very safe,

(22:44):
especially now that it's more regulated. Um. I think forty
states have some sort of standard and require that acupunctures
be certified for the most part um and this was
news to me. There are any of Western physicians who,
um who practice acupuncture. Yeah, you can be a med

(23:05):
school doctor and practice acupuncture, or you can go through
an acupuncture only program. The cool thing about that is
is it requires a lot more hours to get accredited
without the medical degree. So it's like to two to
three hundred, two hundred, three hundred hours if you're a
doctor to become an accredited acupuncturist. If you're just doing

(23:26):
the acupuncture thing, it's like two thousand to three thousand hours. Yeah,
so that's I mean, I would trust that for sure.
There is a lot of hours and you have to
do it within a certified masters program. Yes, so you
have to be a smart person to be an acupuncturist. Apparently,
I would say. So, Uh, you might bleed a little bit,
don't worry too bad. But if you do have a
bleeding disorder, if you're on blood dinners, they recommend you

(23:49):
probably shouldn't do it. Or if you have like a
pacemaker or anything else regulating your heartbeat electronically, it's probably
not a good idea either, because accidental electro acupuncture is
not good now. Um, so Chuck, we've we've shown that
it is becoming more and more accepted in the West.
But as far as hard science goes Western hard science,

(24:11):
the well, I guess hard science is Western hard science
isn't a uh, the jury is still out right. But
there's been a lot of studies, um that show well,
kind of mixed results. But there's been plenty of that
show like this this, um, the one with the lazy eye,
lazy eye study, the famous landmark lazy I study that

(24:31):
just happened, um. And there's been plenty of others that
have shown that acupuncture definitely does work. Right, yesod we
talk about those Yes. Osteo Arthritis two thousand four and
the Annals of Internal Medicine. They found that acupuncture significantly
reduced pain and improve function. And they studied two four
patients and this was in the knee, people with knee pain.

(24:54):
And these were people that couldn't get helped through regular medicine,
and after eight weeks they had far less pain that
affective knee. Yeah, so that's one pains one that's an
easy one because it's pain. What about chemotherapy induced nausea? Yeah,
nausea period. Yeah, it turns out, as we said, nausea
in general is supposedly supposed to be has been shown

(25:18):
to be aided by acupuncture. There's a two thousand study
in UH the J. A. M. A. Right, UM, the
Journal of the American Medical Association UM that that studied
electro acupuncture in people while a hundred and four women
with breast cancer who had received UM high dose chemotherapy, right,
and they found that, um, the women with the acupuncture

(25:44):
had about a third of the vomiting episodes of women
who did not receive acupuncture for treatment. And they're both
on nausea reducing medicine. But anyone who's ever had chemo
can tell you that a lot of times it stuff
does not work. And then a meta analysis of eleven
different studies found that nausea in general like similar results

(26:04):
for any kind of study of acupuncture re leaving nausea.
Al right, that's right. And fertility, fertility, if you're undergoing
in vitro fertilization, there was a study in oh six
and ought six and the Fertility and Sterility Journal, which
is a hoot to read, and they said that women
undergoing acupuncture had an eight. Uh, more likelihood, better chances

(26:28):
of getting pregnant. Not bad. The problem is they also
were slightly more likely to miscarry than the non acupuncture group.
I want a percentage there. They didn't give one that
bothered me slightly mean to like point one or something
or one or two? Slightly is journalism for for I
don't have the numbers in front of me. Uh, fibro mayalgia, yeah,

(26:51):
fiber myalgia mayo clinic buddy. Yeah. Two thousand six, they
did a study of fifty patients um and found that
the stems of fiber miles are that include muscle pain, fatigue,
joint stiffness were significantly helped. It's another journalism, right. What
is significant significant is it's a lot greater than one.

(27:14):
I've got a couple of more quickie graph stats here. Um.
They did some um asking of questions, pulling of people
who had acupuncture. Boy, it is twenty eleven and that
we've been off. This is a rough one. Um. They
asked people how satisfied they were with their acupuncture treatment
and very satisfied. Yeah, exactly, uh, somewhat satisfied lead with

(27:37):
thirty four percent were extremely satisfied and only eight percent
were not at all satisfied. Those people are never satisfied.
That should have been the last question. Are you ever
satisfied with anything? Or are you a jerk? Are you
satisfied with this question? Besides acupuncture, have you ever utilized
any other treatment based on traditional Chinese medicine? And said no, So,

(28:02):
even if you don't believe in it, you know, doesn't
mean you won't go lay down on the table and
get stuck with needles. And that's really the only interesting
ones on here. Actually. So we've got this um well,
all this information, all these studies that show that it works.
Poles Journal, the American Michael says, you should all this stuff.
But the problem is people still poo poo it. There's

(28:23):
still a lot of um, a lot of skeptics who
view acupuncture the way others may view hypnosis, and that
the underlying mechanism isn't g or hormones or neurotransmitters, it's
the placebo effect, right, Yeah, And that's tough because with

(28:44):
placebo in uh, like a pill, you just get a
pill that probably looks like the other pills. For acupuncture,
they're gonna stick you with needles, but they're not gonna
stick you in the acupoints. They're gonna they're gonna skip
your acupoints purposefully, so you know, you get these needles
stuck in. You might think I'm getting better, but that's
the same as any placebo effect of because you have

(29:05):
you're still getting a pill that you don't know whether
or not it's gonna work. The I think the larger
point rather than pooh pooing medicine in the placebo effect,
is investigating how to manipulate the placebo effect. Because if
we can heal our own bodies without drugs or sticking
ourselves needles, doing whatever, um, then why not you know

(29:26):
it still has the same effect. Good point. Can we
end this now? Yeah? That's all I got acupuncture is
give it, give it a shot if you want to
give it a try, and I'm definitely gonna do it.
I was talking to everyone, but I know you are specifically, Josh,
give it a try. Um. We want to go ahead
and apologize for this one is the first one that

(29:46):
we've recorded. Is bad. I'm sure Jerry'll wash it out.
I can't pronounce it. Um. If you want to learn
more about acupuncture and see one really super a fluids chart.
You should type in acupuncture. That's one ce UH in
the handy search part how stuff works dot Com, which

(30:07):
means it's time for listener mail. Yes, Josh, this is
a homelessness email. And we got a lot of response
for the Homelessness Show, ranging from I'm homeless to you
guys are great. Thank you for highlighting this too. Hey,

(30:27):
it's not my responsibility to care for veterans on the street.
And a guy actually say that to me in one
of his replies that I had engaged him in. Regardless
of what you believe, if you're saying it's not my
responsibility to care for homeless vets on the street, then
but I did go off. I just want to say
one thing. I went off on CEOs at the end

(30:48):
pretty harshly, and I should have been more specific. I
was referencing a story i'd read that day about UH,
and I wish I would have looked it up, but
I didn't have time. These certain CEOs are in the
news that day for taking these huge bonus, record bonus
payouts in the middle of the UH financial crisis while
their employees were being laid off. I read this, I
come in and sit down and read about talk about

(31:10):
homeless people on the streets. I got a little hot
under the collar, which I should have been more specific
in what I was criticizing, because I'm certainly not criticizing
all c e o s, and I'm not saying that
they're to blame for homelessness or it's their job to
fix homelessness. It's everybody's job to fix homelessness. And I
wasn't clear enough in that. So one to clear that up,
we'll put chuckers. Thank you. That's great? Was that it?

(31:33):
Lat CEOs do a lot of, you know, big time donating.
There's one guy who runs a carpet carpet manufacturer, Dalton
Carpets in Georgia. I can't remember his name, but he's
like the greatest CEO of all time. Really, he's a
good guy. I have to be a CEO one day. Really,
were you kidding me? Not? Get out for hi? Man?
I gotta hire and fire. I couldn't do any in

(31:55):
no way. All right, So with that, I'm gonna read
up a letter from a homeless person. Hello, guys, my
name is Blank. I told her I wouldn't read it.
The podcast on homelessness really hit home with me. I'm
a single mother of two. I've been homeless on and
off for the past three or four years. I've always
had a job, but my divorce basically bankrupted me, and
I've had to start all over again. I think she's

(32:16):
married to the CEO UM. I became homeless again back
in March, and by June I was finally selected from
about eight hundred people in the city of Tulsa to
be approved for Section eight. So I feel like now
I'm finally on my way to permanence. Uh. This whole
thing has affected my kids greatly, but we're managing to

(32:36):
stick it out. I believe there is stress of divorce
in the stress of being homeless. It's caused my son
to have lower test scores in school. My daughters don't okay,
but most likely because she was only one when her
father and I divorced. My son was three. Anyway, I
just thought you might like to hear from one of
your fans. It is true that getting assistance is very difficult.
There just aren't enough funds to go around. And I

(32:57):
know how it feels to be invisible. Uh. People at
my work have no idea that one of their own
employees was homeless, and they still don't. And it's not
something I like to broadcast. It's really very embarrassing. Just
know that homeless people may be working, but they won't
say they're homeless because of embarrassment. Better get back to work,
I would say so too, so you can keep that child.

(33:18):
Thanks for your great podcast, and thanks for listening to
me as well. So that's a great example of one
of the many emails we got. It is it is
very thank you very much, Blank, And I had to say,
I'm conflicted because we've spent a large part of the
Homelessness podcast like railing about how they shouldn't be treated
as anonymous or invisible and grow and said, don't use
my name. Let's see if you have a I don't

(33:42):
want to hear about acupuncture. I don't want to hear
about what do you want to hear about? Chuck something,
keep us something good. It's been so long since we
had something good. What about I was talking about American
surgery horror stories. If you've ever known anyone that had
like the wrong organ removed, Yeah, let's hear about that.
That's good stuff. Uh, if you have a wrong ordinary

(34:05):
removal story and we know someone out there does. Because
we asked for sinking ship story got too plus a
plain one. Yeah, um, you want to send it in
an email? Right? Stuff podcast at how stuff works. We're
so sorry about this one dot com for more on

(34:26):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
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Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
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