April 26, 2023 • 13 mins
Botox can chase away the lines on your face, apparently it can chase away your depression, borderline personality disorder, and anxiety too.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and jar Jar Binks is here too, and
that makes this short stuff. She's sitting in for dave C.
Everybody say hi to dave C. He'll be glad to
hear that later on.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yes, and this is not about Pinky in the brain.
It's about Botox in the brain.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Because when I saw Botox in the brain, I was like,
that sounds like a TV show, but I was like, no,
I'm just thinking Pinky in the brain.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Now, Botox in the Brain is a cop show, not
a cartoon.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Big thanks to Helio and Live Science very well, health
study findes, Neuroscience News and other sources. Take it away, Josh.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
So we're talking about botox, right. Botox, I believe is
a brand name, but it's like Kleenex. It's become a
proprietary eponym, is it really, Yes for sure. Yeah. There's
all sorts of different brands of botox, like Disport and
there's plenty of others, but what they all are is
theinum toxin or BTX, and that is produced by Clostridium
(01:05):
boculinum and botulism. Anybody who's ever seen dead calm knows
what botulism is and how horrible it's supposed to be.
But it's a bacteria that grows in the absence of air,
typically on food. I think beef is like a real
big grower of botulism, which is why if you ever
have like a dented can of beef stew, just throw
it away because it could kill you. Because bochulin or yeah,
(01:28):
boculinum toxin is the most potent neurotoxin known to humans.
And the reason it's so potent, chuck is it goes
in there into your nerve cells and it binds to them,
and in particular, it binds to nerve cells where your
blood and your muscles meat, which is usually fairly close
to the skin, and it blocks the setylcholine from coming
(01:52):
and getting into those the ends of those nerve cells,
which means that those nerve cells just don't function, which
means that your muscle are paralyzed, which is bad enough
when it starts in your mouth, but then it goes
to your throat and eventually your lungs, and then you
die a really terrible death from botulism. So it's of
course totally unsurprising that somebody figured out that you could
(02:14):
use this incredibly potent neurotoxin to get rid of wrinkles.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, using botulism met I'm sorry, Well, I guess it
is bochlism. Using botox medically came around the seventies with
doctor Alan B. Scott, who went to the FDA and said, Hey,
I think I can treat strabismus, which is I guess wandering.
I could be a lazy way of saying that or
lazy eye. Sure, and said I think I can treat
(02:40):
strabismus with this. FDA said, have at it. He would
inject it locally in the face. One thing that did
was prove that it was safe to do relatively speaking,
and it could treat muscle disorders. And then starting in
the two thousands is when it really came on the
scene with setians doing what we all think of as
(03:03):
you know Botox's main function now, which is you get
these injections locally and very specific places in your face usually,
and it takes three or four days, and then all
of a sudden, for about three months, you will be
walking around with a forehead smooth as a shiny apple
and an expression that says nothing.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Right, you can really get a good poker face from
around a bowtox. Yeah, so, yeah, it just relaxes those
muscles that cause the wrinkles, say around your eyes, around
your mouth, and your forehead in between your brow in particular,
those are called your elevens, and by paralyzing those muscles,
it relaxes them and hence the wrinkles aren't there anymore.
And like you said, it lasts for about three to
(03:47):
four months. And because you can't, you have just like
a blank face in a lot of ways, depending on
where you get the botox injection. You can't really smile,
like you physically are incapable of smiling because the muscles
involved are paralyzed. More often, you can't really frown or
furrow your brow because those muscles are paralyzed. And so right,
(04:10):
like right off the bat, people started reporting that if
you saw somebody with boatox, they couldn't express emotion using
their faces anymore for that three to four month period.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, And to be clear, like you know, you can
make the shape of a smile with your mouth and
the shape of a smile or a frown with your mouth,
but what people you know, I think people realize this
is about say what people don't realize, but when you
think about it, is what I meant to say. You
express emotion with your faces. You smile and frown with
(04:42):
your face, not just your mouth. Sure, your mouth may
go up, your mouth may I guess, go down or
express upsettedness, But it's really you know, people smile with
their eyes and their faces and you know, like you said,
your brow gets furrowed. It's a whole face experience, which
is a great album title. Yeah, and botox. That's what
(05:05):
it cuts off. And that's what can be kind of
creepy looking, is when someone is smiling with their mouth
but the rest of their face is dead and it's
a little strange.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, played a great effect in Insidious, Right, I love
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Should we take a break because this is where things
get super interesting?
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes? I agree, Yes, all right, we'll be right back, so, Chuck.
(05:49):
It makes sense that you can't really read someone's emotions
through their face after they've gotten a pretty good round
of botox. But there was something stranger that stood to
come in as reports from people who got botox injections
or other kinds of bachulin injections that they weren't experiencing
(06:10):
emotions like they used to, and in particular, this showed
up most pronouncedly in people who suffered from depression. They
started to notice that after they got botox injections in
certain parts of their face, especially around their forehead and
their brows, called the glabular region, their depression symptoms, if
(06:33):
they didn't, if they weren't alleviated totally, they were certainly
less pronounced than they have been before. And this was
a little odd.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, definitely a little bit odd. But so again, we're
not talking about showing emotion, we're talking about actually feeling
the emotion. Right, But there's this thing and it all
kind of makes sense when you look at the big
picture called the facial feedback hypothesis. Yes, and a very
sh dumb down way of saying it is that the
(07:02):
idea of like, hey, if you're feeling depressed, maybe just
try smiling more because that can actually work, and they've
done research on stuff like this. One way it can,
you know, manifests itself is we have this tendency to
mimic expressions of other people near us. And it's and
it probably comes from just evolution of like wanting to
(07:27):
fit in in a group and like, maybe so you
won't be killed like everyone else here is smiling it
that guy's and laughing at his joke, so I'm gonna
do the same thing, so I just fit in better.
And it's that facial feedback hypothesis at work, where it's
sort of this feedback loop of smiling from someone else
will usually lend to a smile even if you're not
(07:49):
feeling it especially happy. I'm not saying like everyone's in
a good mood so they're smiling, but literally just smiling
because someone else in is smiling, and then that will
in turn and generally make your emotions pick up as well.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, and the opposite can be true too. If you're
scowling or you see someone else scowling, you mimic their
scowl unconsciously, it will have a depressed state on your mood, right.
And that's really interesting because people always thought that facial
expressions reflected what you felt inside, not vice versa. But
there's it definitely goes both ways, and that's the facial
feedback hypothesis. So when people started saying, like, my depression
(08:26):
symptoms are kind of alleviated when I get botox, they
chalked it up to facial feedback, and in particular, what
they suspected is that with your brow area, the glabular region,
so it's like the area right above the bridge of
your nose up to you know, and kind of spreading
out like a Jonathan Adler fan above your eyebrows for
(08:49):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Okay, yeah, that's the you cut me off in traffic
zone of my face exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Well, put chuck, that's the new name of it. I
would say, if you get injections in that area, it
actually has an effect on your amygdala. A migdala is
the seed of your fight or flight just famous friend
of the podcast Fight or Flight, yeah response early days. Yeah,
it's the seed of negative emotions like anger, fear, anxiety,
(09:17):
and if you have depression, your amygdala is overactive and
it causes you to develop a bias toward interpreting the
world negatively and yourself negatively. And what they posited was
that botox short circuited that feedback loop by paralyzing the
muscles that trigger your amygdala to experience negative emotions or
(09:39):
produce negative emotions.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, and not necessarily that it can completely take away
those emotions, but it tamps it down and makes things
less intense. And so they you know, they basically stumbled
upon this saying where they can actually treat depression through
botox and checktions.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yes, which is it's huge because it's not directly it's
not like they're injecting the needle into your amygdala and
inserting the botox. The botox is just acting on your muscles,
but it's indirectly acting on your amygdala, which makes it
a much safer treatment than save pharma that acts directly
on your amygdala chemically.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and they've co this isn't just from talking to
people and getting that kind of feedback. This has been
confirmed in the Wonder machine and the fMRI. They've confirmed
these findings. They basically the scan showed different kinds of
altered activity in the amygdala if you were a depressed
patient who got those injections. And you know, they basically
(10:40):
are saying this is like a real thing now.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yes, So yes, they've they've shown that it alters the
activity in the amygdala, and not just patients with depression,
but people who have borderline personality disorder as well.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I think they're amygdala is on hyperdrive and The thing
that makes it different from Russian is that it's also
coupled with lower impulsivity threshold, so they're much more likely
to lash out at people around them with those negative emotions,
which is what we talked about in our Emotional pain episode.
Why it's just such a terrible disorder to have. But
(11:16):
it's their amygdala being hyperactive as well. And so they've
found that botox injections in the right place can actually
reduce or eliminate BPD as well, at least for the
three to four months until your muscles come back online
and are able to trigger those emotions again.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and if you're an adherent of acupuncture and you think, hey,
this sounds kind of familiar, it's sort of along the
same lines. They did comparison group treatments with acupuncture patients.
In acupuncture, it did show improve clinical symptoms, but it
did not hold up under the Wonder machine examination.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
No, Like, it still had its effect, but it didn't
have a neurological EFFECTX has neurological effect. It's actually acting
on the amygdila. It's huge. It was a huge, huge
breakthrough when they figured this out, and then now that
they've proved it It can also be used to treat
anxiety if you injected in your head and neck muscles.
And you can use botox to treat migrains. Yeah, and
(12:19):
insurance has started to cover it for migrains, but they're
hoping that they'll start to cover it for things like
depression or borderline personality disorder or anxiety as well.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Cover it insurance if it helps people, cover it for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And my hat is off to my dear sweet wife.
You me who tipped me off to this one.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Oh nice, thanks yummy.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, thanks Jumy, since we both thanked Youmy chuck. Wouldn't
you say that short stuff is out? I would.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and jar Jar Binks is here too, and
that makes this short stuff. She's sitting in for dave C.
Everybody say hi to dave C. He'll be glad to
hear that later on.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yes, and this is not about Pinky in the brain.
It's about Botox in the brain.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Because when I saw Botox in the brain, I was like,
that sounds like a TV show, but I was like, no,
I'm just thinking Pinky in the brain.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Now, Botox in the Brain is a cop show, not
a cartoon.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Big thanks to Helio and Live Science very well, health
study findes, Neuroscience News and other sources. Take it away, Josh.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
So we're talking about botox, right. Botox, I believe is
a brand name, but it's like Kleenex. It's become a
proprietary eponym, is it really, Yes for sure. Yeah. There's
all sorts of different brands of botox, like Disport and
there's plenty of others, but what they all are is
theinum toxin or BTX, and that is produced by Clostridium
(01:05):
boculinum and botulism. Anybody who's ever seen dead calm knows
what botulism is and how horrible it's supposed to be.
But it's a bacteria that grows in the absence of air,
typically on food. I think beef is like a real
big grower of botulism, which is why if you ever
have like a dented can of beef stew, just throw
it away because it could kill you. Because bochulin or yeah,
(01:28):
boculinum toxin is the most potent neurotoxin known to humans.
And the reason it's so potent, chuck is it goes
in there into your nerve cells and it binds to them,
and in particular, it binds to nerve cells where your
blood and your muscles meat, which is usually fairly close
to the skin, and it blocks the setylcholine from coming
(01:52):
and getting into those the ends of those nerve cells,
which means that those nerve cells just don't function, which
means that your muscle are paralyzed, which is bad enough
when it starts in your mouth, but then it goes
to your throat and eventually your lungs, and then you
die a really terrible death from botulism. So it's of
course totally unsurprising that somebody figured out that you could
(02:14):
use this incredibly potent neurotoxin to get rid of wrinkles.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, using botulism met I'm sorry, Well, I guess it
is bochlism. Using botox medically came around the seventies with
doctor Alan B. Scott, who went to the FDA and said, Hey,
I think I can treat strabismus, which is I guess wandering.
I could be a lazy way of saying that or
lazy eye. Sure, and said I think I can treat
(02:40):
strabismus with this. FDA said, have at it. He would
inject it locally in the face. One thing that did
was prove that it was safe to do relatively speaking,
and it could treat muscle disorders. And then starting in
the two thousands is when it really came on the
scene with setians doing what we all think of as
(03:03):
you know Botox's main function now, which is you get
these injections locally and very specific places in your face usually,
and it takes three or four days, and then all
of a sudden, for about three months, you will be
walking around with a forehead smooth as a shiny apple
and an expression that says nothing.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Right, you can really get a good poker face from
around a bowtox. Yeah, so, yeah, it just relaxes those
muscles that cause the wrinkles, say around your eyes, around
your mouth, and your forehead in between your brow in particular,
those are called your elevens, and by paralyzing those muscles,
it relaxes them and hence the wrinkles aren't there anymore.
And like you said, it lasts for about three to
(03:47):
four months. And because you can't, you have just like
a blank face in a lot of ways, depending on
where you get the botox injection. You can't really smile,
like you physically are incapable of smiling because the muscles
involved are paralyzed. More often, you can't really frown or
furrow your brow because those muscles are paralyzed. And so right,
(04:10):
like right off the bat, people started reporting that if
you saw somebody with boatox, they couldn't express emotion using
their faces anymore for that three to four month period.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, And to be clear, like you know, you can
make the shape of a smile with your mouth and
the shape of a smile or a frown with your mouth,
but what people you know, I think people realize this
is about say what people don't realize, but when you
think about it, is what I meant to say. You
express emotion with your faces. You smile and frown with
(04:42):
your face, not just your mouth. Sure, your mouth may
go up, your mouth may I guess, go down or
express upsettedness, But it's really you know, people smile with
their eyes and their faces and you know, like you said,
your brow gets furrowed. It's a whole face experience, which
is a great album title. Yeah, and botox. That's what
(05:05):
it cuts off. And that's what can be kind of
creepy looking, is when someone is smiling with their mouth
but the rest of their face is dead and it's
a little strange.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, played a great effect in Insidious, Right, I love
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Should we take a break because this is where things
get super interesting?
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yes? I agree, Yes, all right, we'll be right back, so, Chuck.
(05:49):
It makes sense that you can't really read someone's emotions
through their face after they've gotten a pretty good round
of botox. But there was something stranger that stood to
come in as reports from people who got botox injections
or other kinds of bachulin injections that they weren't experiencing
(06:10):
emotions like they used to, and in particular, this showed
up most pronouncedly in people who suffered from depression. They
started to notice that after they got botox injections in
certain parts of their face, especially around their forehead and
their brows, called the glabular region, their depression symptoms, if
(06:33):
they didn't, if they weren't alleviated totally, they were certainly
less pronounced than they have been before. And this was
a little odd.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, definitely a little bit odd. But so again, we're
not talking about showing emotion, we're talking about actually feeling
the emotion. Right, But there's this thing and it all
kind of makes sense when you look at the big
picture called the facial feedback hypothesis. Yes, and a very
sh dumb down way of saying it is that the
(07:02):
idea of like, hey, if you're feeling depressed, maybe just
try smiling more because that can actually work, and they've
done research on stuff like this. One way it can,
you know, manifests itself is we have this tendency to
mimic expressions of other people near us. And it's and
it probably comes from just evolution of like wanting to
(07:27):
fit in in a group and like, maybe so you
won't be killed like everyone else here is smiling it
that guy's and laughing at his joke, so I'm gonna
do the same thing, so I just fit in better.
And it's that facial feedback hypothesis at work, where it's
sort of this feedback loop of smiling from someone else
will usually lend to a smile even if you're not
(07:49):
feeling it especially happy. I'm not saying like everyone's in
a good mood so they're smiling, but literally just smiling
because someone else in is smiling, and then that will
in turn and generally make your emotions pick up as well.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah, and the opposite can be true too. If you're
scowling or you see someone else scowling, you mimic their
scowl unconsciously, it will have a depressed state on your mood, right.
And that's really interesting because people always thought that facial
expressions reflected what you felt inside, not vice versa. But
there's it definitely goes both ways, and that's the facial
feedback hypothesis. So when people started saying, like, my depression
(08:26):
symptoms are kind of alleviated when I get botox, they
chalked it up to facial feedback, and in particular, what
they suspected is that with your brow area, the glabular region,
so it's like the area right above the bridge of
your nose up to you know, and kind of spreading
out like a Jonathan Adler fan above your eyebrows for
(08:49):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Okay, yeah, that's the you cut me off in traffic
zone of my face exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Well, put chuck, that's the new name of it. I
would say, if you get injections in that area, it
actually has an effect on your amygdala. A migdala is
the seed of your fight or flight just famous friend
of the podcast Fight or Flight, yeah response early days. Yeah,
it's the seed of negative emotions like anger, fear, anxiety,
(09:17):
and if you have depression, your amygdala is overactive and
it causes you to develop a bias toward interpreting the
world negatively and yourself negatively. And what they posited was
that botox short circuited that feedback loop by paralyzing the
muscles that trigger your amygdala to experience negative emotions or
(09:39):
produce negative emotions.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, and not necessarily that it can completely take away
those emotions, but it tamps it down and makes things
less intense. And so they you know, they basically stumbled
upon this saying where they can actually treat depression through
botox and checktions.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yes, which is it's huge because it's not directly it's
not like they're injecting the needle into your amygdala and
inserting the botox. The botox is just acting on your muscles,
but it's indirectly acting on your amygdala, which makes it
a much safer treatment than save pharma that acts directly
on your amygdala chemically.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and they've co this isn't just from talking to
people and getting that kind of feedback. This has been
confirmed in the Wonder machine and the fMRI. They've confirmed
these findings. They basically the scan showed different kinds of
altered activity in the amygdala if you were a depressed
patient who got those injections. And you know, they basically
(10:40):
are saying this is like a real thing now.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yes, So yes, they've they've shown that it alters the
activity in the amygdala, and not just patients with depression,
but people who have borderline personality disorder as well.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I think they're amygdala is on hyperdrive and The thing
that makes it different from Russian is that it's also
coupled with lower impulsivity threshold, so they're much more likely
to lash out at people around them with those negative emotions,
which is what we talked about in our Emotional pain episode.
Why it's just such a terrible disorder to have. But
(11:16):
it's their amygdala being hyperactive as well. And so they've
found that botox injections in the right place can actually
reduce or eliminate BPD as well, at least for the
three to four months until your muscles come back online
and are able to trigger those emotions again.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and if you're an adherent of acupuncture and you think, hey,
this sounds kind of familiar, it's sort of along the
same lines. They did comparison group treatments with acupuncture patients.
In acupuncture, it did show improve clinical symptoms, but it
did not hold up under the Wonder machine examination.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
No, Like, it still had its effect, but it didn't
have a neurological EFFECTX has neurological effect. It's actually acting
on the amygdila. It's huge. It was a huge, huge
breakthrough when they figured this out, and then now that
they've proved it It can also be used to treat
anxiety if you injected in your head and neck muscles.
And you can use botox to treat migrains. Yeah, and
(12:19):
insurance has started to cover it for migrains, but they're
hoping that they'll start to cover it for things like
depression or borderline personality disorder or anxiety as well.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Cover it insurance if it helps people, cover it for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And my hat is off to my dear sweet wife.
You me who tipped me off to this one.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Oh nice, thanks yummy.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, thanks Jumy, since we both thanked Youmy chuck. Wouldn't
you say that short stuff is out? I would.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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