October 8, 2025 • 24 mins
(October 08, 2025)
The 2025 Ig Nobel prizes honor garlicky babies, drunk bats, and more. Wild horses are trampling Mono Lake landscape… the feds are planning a roundup. Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about 1 in 10 Americans taking an antidepressant, flesh eating parasite warning, common cause of liver disease, and ‘Monkeypox.’
The 2025 Ig Nobel prizes honor garlicky babies, drunk bats, and more. Wild horses are trampling Mono Lake landscape… the feds are planning a roundup. Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about 1 in 10 Americans taking an antidepressant, flesh eating parasite warning, common cause of liver disease, and ‘Monkeypox.’
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty Fantastic bots KFI AM six forty. You don't
handle here on.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A as I cough Wednesday, October eighth. Some of the
stories we're looking at. The shutdown still continues, a lot
of delays at major airports. Air traffic controllers are not
getting paid and they're calling in summer, calling in sick,
and it's way understaff. So it's a mess there. And
(00:33):
Komy was a rain on criminal charges this morning. Pled
guilty has waived. Everything wants to go to trial straight out,
and the trial data set for January fifth. Okay, A
lot going on now. This is the week of Nobel Prizes,
and we've already had I think the Physics Prize and
(00:55):
the Price for Medicine, and these Nobel Prizes now are
really obscure stuff. I mean they're minute scientific discoveries, proteins
and within the body. I mean it used to be
where you could understand Nobel prizes. For example, whoever invented
flying that got the Nobel Prize. That's easy to understand,
(01:17):
right X rays where Marie Currey got the Nobel Prize
at the shur in the last century.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
She received two.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
By the way, very very few people have ever received two,
and she certainly was the only woman to.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Ever do that.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So we're gonna the big one is coming up on Friday,
the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what everybody looks at.
And there's been some weird ones on that one too. Now,
the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm or is it Oslo?
And then the Peace Prizes awarded in Stockholm?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Is one or the other. It's on it's it's very different.
It's on itself.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Okay, So you've got the Nobel Prizes and they're extraordinary
discoveries and they're given well once a year and sometimes
not at all, to very important findings and usually issues
that affect mankind in a positive way. Well, there's also
(02:15):
called the Ignobel Prizes and they've been going on for
thirty five years.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And what they do is.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
They celebrate science's more unusual contributions. They honor the imaginative,
maybe spur people's interests in science, medicine, technology. Now, these
are real studies done by real researchers, as crazy as
it may sound. So let's go through this year's winners
(02:48):
of the Ignobel Prizes. Okay, let's do it for the
Nutrition Prize, which the ignobil Prize is awarded, not the
Nobel Prize, but the Ignobel Prize. This is a study
that was done by I can't even go through the
(03:10):
names Daniellie dand Gabriel Seganatia Betto and it goes on
and on, and they were awarded the Nutrition Prize for
studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard
chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Real study.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So the team spotted a rainbow lizard stealing a slice
of pizza at a resort, and then the scientist said
they wanted to know if the rainbow lizards, who usually
eat insects, had a taste for pizza hm. And they
had a do they do the lizers have a preferred topping.
So they followed nine lizards who had a choice between
(03:52):
the four cheese pizza and a plate of four seasons
pizza a lot of meat on it, you know, pepperoni
and such, etc. Now, the lizards found the pizza and
ate it, but only the four cheese pizza. They didn't
eat the rest of them. Why because it could be
easier for them to digest the cheese pizza. It could
(04:14):
be some cues attract them to the cheesier pizza. So
they discovered why, well, we really don't know, but it
was one of the winners.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Then another winner of.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
This was the Physics Prize and went to a bunch
of people Italian people, and it honors and basically studies
pasta sauce. HM So they were given the Ignobel Prize
for discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the
phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can cause
(04:54):
unpleasantness because so many of us suffer from pasta sauce
that clumps. So if you're making kaccio epeppi, I think
that's one of the sauces. If the water is too
hot or you don't have the right ratio of cheese
to starch, the sauce turns into a thin liquid filled
with these congealed globs of kurds. And earlier this year
(05:17):
these physicists developed a way to prevent clumping. You use
corn starch in the cheese and pepper sauce instead of
just relying on how much starch gets into the boiling
water while the pasta cooks and why they got that
prize is because pasta sauce is so important to those
of us who eat pasta, and that's around the world,
(05:40):
and there was and there.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Is physics to it. This is fine.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
So here's another one, and this is the Pediatrics Prize
goes to Julie Manella and Gary Bouchamp. They were awarded
the Pediatric Prize for studying what a nursing baby experience
experiences when the baby's whether eats garlic basically vampire babies. Now,
(06:06):
garlic has a history of warding off the undead. It
produces flavors and cow's milk and does can affect body
odors in humans. Sounds like a Zelman's commercial, doesn't it.
In this study, they had mothers who ingested garlic capsules
and then produce milk that had a more intense odor.
(06:26):
Peaked at about two hours, and the infants whose mother
ingested the garlic remained attached to the breasts for longer
periods of time.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
So there is the study.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
If you think your baby is not feeding enough and
you want your child to suckle on your breast a
longer period of time, you suckle up garlic better. Understanding
of how sensory experiences during breastfeedings.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay, fair enough, Then you have the literature prize. This
is a good one.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
This is the late doctor William Bean for persistently recording
and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his
fingernails over a period of thirty five years.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
There's an ignoble prize. And he kept very detailed records.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And were written in all kinds of flowery pros, referencing
everything from Moby Dick to medieval astrology. And his final report,
the nail provides a slowly moving keratin chemograph that measures
age on the inexorable obsesssa of time. In other words,
(07:37):
you look at someone's nail over thirty five years, and
it's like rings on a tree. You can tell how
old someone is. This is a scientific, very scientific endeavor.
Here one of my favorites. And this was given to
a group of Japanese scientists and this is the Biology Prize,
(08:00):
and it went to them for their experiments to learn
whether cows painted with zebra like striping can afford can
avoid being bitten by flies. Now is there a method
to this madness? Yes, because they noticed that zebras are
surprisingly unfazed and unbothered by flies, unlike cows that are
(08:24):
bothered by flies. They have to constantly swat the flies
away with their tails, shake around their ears. So the
question is do zebra stripes have power over flies? So
to find out, the team painted cows with black and
white stripes like a zebra.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
That's a visual.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The fake zebra stripes actually did decrease the number of
biting flies. So to make cows feel better and not
deal with flies, let's say dairy herds and then that
now the extrapolation is going to happen.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Does that mean that you are going to get more.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Milk cows that are less stressed because they're dealing with
flies and all you have to do is paint zebra
stripes on the cows.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Okay, not bad. That, by the way, was the Peace prize? No? No,
the Peace prize went no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Um.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Well, I don't know what that prize was. I think
it was the physics prize.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Now, the Peace Prize went to Fritz Renner and a
few other people for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves
a person's ability to speak in a foreign language. Now,
how does that work? Here was a test. The idea
was that alcohol improves language fluency. So the team recruits
(09:55):
fifty natives speaking German, Native German speaking undergrads in the
Netherlands who were also fluent in Dutch. They were bilingual,
and they divided into two groups. One group had vodka
with lemon, the other one received playing water, and then
the group that had the vodka became drunk and then
engage in conversation in Dutch, and then they were asked
(10:17):
to rate how well they thought. It turns out that
being drunk did not increase the inability to speak the
other tongue. It made it easier. So if you want
to speak a foreign tongue, if you're learning to speak
another language, get drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
That's what that study shows.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
And then aviation prize went to a group studying whether
alcohol can impair a bat's ability to fly and also
their ability to echolocate. You know they use that sonar business. Now,
alcohol in the animal kingdom happens all the time. Some
mammals were insects, they eat fruit full of ethanol and
(11:02):
they get drunk. So in this study, the team looked
at Egyptian fruit. Bats are known to avoid fruits with ethanol.
But they were given alcohol laden fruits. And yes, the
bats were slower. They echolocation faltered, much like human speech
becomes slurred. And the bottom line is don't drink and
(11:26):
fly if you're a bat. It's pretty impressive stuff. The
ig Nobel Prizes, I think we're gonna do that on
an annual basis. You know, we have to bring back
the Darwin Prizes too. We haven't done that in years.
The Darwin Awards, you've got honorable mentions where people don't die,
(11:48):
and then you have finalists where people do die. One year,
the best Darwin Prize came out of Egypt where a
chicken fell into a well and then the kid who
owned the chicken jumped into the well to save the chicken.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And then the.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Father saw her, his son thrashing about in the well.
He dived. He dove in to save his son. Both
of them died and the chicken survived. That was the
Darwin winner the Darwin Award that year. To remove these
folks from the gene pool, all right, it is time
for medical news. Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical Officer for
(12:26):
Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, Good morning,
Jim Bill.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Okay, there we go. Good for you. Now.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We had lunch a few days ago and we talked
about this. It came up in twenty twenty two, the
name monkey pox for the monkey pox was changed. It
became m pox, and I guess, I guess for political
correctness purposes. Well, it's a monkey pox again, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yeah, that's it's just a weird one. That's why we
were talking about. It's just so weird. Nobody, nobody asked
to change the name back. There was no political pressure.
There's no like researchers weren't saying this is incorrect. In fact,
you know, monkey pox is incorrect itself. It's there's monkeys
have nothing to do with this disease. Uh, it's it's streads.
The animal vector is squirrels, so you know, And then
(13:26):
what happened was, you know, because there's this these rumors
and and you know, conspiracy theories that that the reason
AIDS spread is because of people having sex with monkeys,
it just creates kind of a big problem and a
stigma that doesn't need to be there because number one,
the AIDS thing isn't true, and that now we have
(13:48):
monkey pocks, which adds on to it, so you know,
it's getting People were being stigmatized by it, and that
was one of the reasons that the World Health Organization
wanted to change the name. But apparently, you know, anything
that the World Health Organization suggests at this point is
going to be not taken under consideration here.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I mean, it's just completely crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And the myth we talked about that, the myth of
people in Africa having sex with the chimpanzees and somehow
AIDS was transmitted to humans. Big question was how do
you hold the chimpanzee still long enough to have sex
with it. That's one of the big issues. The other
issue is the political correctness part. And my high school
(14:33):
I went to high school at Birmingham High School in
Vance and we were the Birmingham Braves. No one complained
about it, not a word was said. Now, a few
schools that had Indian names were hit pretty badly in
terms of the accusation of political correctness. Nobody complained about
(14:55):
the Birmingham Braves. Guess what now, the Birmingham Tumors. No,
that would that would be great. But they're the patriots. Now,
Oh give me a break, all right, that's just ridiculous.
Now let's get serious. One in ten Americans are taking
(15:17):
an antidepressant.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So are you ready for this? And my family?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I am, My kids are, my wife is? Our dog
is taking prozac? I am serious. Little Izzy is taking
prozac every single day. When you get your dog to
take it, boy, what does that tell you about your family?
One in ten Americans are taking an antidepressant. So what
(15:46):
does that mean, Jim.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Oh, I means, so we've got mental health issues in
the United States, and I don't know. To me, it's
I guess it's not surprising because I treat patients in
the emergency apartment. I get to see their medication list,
and it is extremely common. I would have guessed a
little bit higher actually than ten percent, but and probably
it should be higher if you know that there may
(16:10):
be more people that are undertreated for mental illness and
depression that so not I know that it comes as
surprise to most people, but I'm not super surprised by
that number. And I can't understand why a lot of
people would be surprised. But I mean, what happened was
you know, in the past, we would treat with drugs
that had significant and serious side effects like MAO inhibitors
(16:34):
and things like tristicly antidepressant. Those are still good drugs
and there's there's a place for them to be used.
But at this point, all the newer drugs, the SSRI
I type drugs, those are so safe with you know,
minimal side effects. There is weight gain, you know, the
bother suns are You can have weight gain, you can
have some sexual dysfunction, there's ways to overcome those, but
(16:59):
they're just safe. People don't die from them, but they
die from depression. So it's a pretty easy you risk
benefit analysis.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
And used to be well you could just go to
your doctor and say I'm depressed and the doctor would
just boom right there, issue or give you a prescription.
So that's pretty easy to do, at least I found it.
Kaiser is a little bit more careful. I'm a member
of Kaiser, as everybody knows, and now they switch at
my interns can't do it. It takes a psychiatrist to
actually issue those drugs or to write prescriptions for those drugs.
(17:32):
And I go in every six or every year for
fifteen minutes just to you know, everything, okay, everything's flying.
Anything change, No, nothing has changed. Do you have any
problems now, I still want to run over kittens?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Really, No, of course not.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, people do mistake simple you know, sadness or grieving
process for depression. It's not depression, that's just a normal
human experience. But depression is something altogether different, and it
does take somebody to you know, have a serious conversation
with you to decide is this real depression or are
you just going through, you know, a difficult time.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
And how does an interness know?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Doesn't it take a mental health professional to really be
able to determine which one is which?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
No, I mean, you can just sit and talk to somebody.
But the problem is, right, most internets have fifteen minutes
with you. How are we going to get into your
life story and really understand the difference in fifteen minutes
where when Kaiser sends you to a psychiatrist, they block
out a much longer period of time for that they
keep their internests cranking at you one appointment every ten
to fifteen minutes while they, you know, their specialists can
(18:38):
get a little more time with you. So it kind
of makes sense.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Okay, before we get to the flesh eating parasite story, Jim,
which is always a delight and brought this up. And
this is something that is affects a lot of us.
Sugary drinks raise common liver disease, and diet drinks raise
common liver disease by sixty percent. So because of my
(19:03):
diet coke issue, I'm assuming my liver now looks like
a Jackson Pollock painting.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I really didn't think you would do this story based
on that alone. That you know you don't want me
disparaging your diet coke.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Oh, sure you you do well? No, actually you don't.
I have my lifetime of this from everybody else. But
you don't need much of this, do you. Well.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
I mean, that's the problem is that our bodies were
never made to take in all these chemicals, right, and
especially highly refined sugar and highly processed foods ultra processed foods.
And we're seeing this in people's livers. The liver is
where all of this has to pass through, and it's
called first pass. A lot of your blood flows straight
from your stomach through your liver, and that's to try
(19:49):
and clean out any toxins right away. And so your
liver takes a beating when you don't eat well and
so if you add that to metabolic disorders like diabetes
or even hypelood pressure, high cholesterol, you add that on top,
what you're getting is fatty liver, and that makes your
liver dysfunctional. It doesn't work correctly, and it can cause
(20:10):
scarring over time and eventually can cause liver failure. So
we're talking like thirty percent of the population has these
fatty liver changes when you look at it, and about
five percent or one out of twenty actually have this
severe form of it called MASH, which is metabolic associated
dietosis hepatitis. And so it's just that's fancy for fatty liver.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
So let me ask this in terms of knowing if
your liver is fatty? Is that just done through a
simple blood test where you look at liver function.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
If it shows up in the liver function, it's probably
a bit too late. There's a way to do an
ultrasound that measures elasticity in the liver. That's a new test.
It's not a lot of places don't have it. It's
not done regularly. But if you're at risk those risk factors,
those metabolic conditions, it's probably reasonable to look into getting
(21:05):
this specialized ultrasound that looks for fatty liver disease, and
that's what it does. It looks for the elasticity of
the liver, and that's what determines how far along you
are in this process.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
How can you tell elasticity without pushing it, without pulling
it apart?
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Well, a lubber band, they.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Are pushing it. Yeah. Yeah, the sound waves bounce off
of it and they're pushing and pulling and they can tell.
But it's not a normal ultra sell machine that's specialized.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Got it all right, real quickly.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
We have to get into the flesh eating parasite warning
California health officials how much flesh is being eaten?
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, so, I mean right now, it's just in Mexico,
but it's coming north, right, So it started at the
southern border of Mexico and it's been working its way north.
There's been about a little over seven hundred cases in Mexico.
But people who travel to Mexico now are at risk,
and then when you come back home, there's a risk
that you could spread this. So these are the burrowing
(22:00):
worms that will get into if you have an open wound,
especially they can bite and bite and get in there
and then they burrow into your skin. It's kind of cool.
And then you know, and then all of a sudden,
it looks like an abscess, but what comes out are flies.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Now I'm assuming the Trump administration is able to stop
them at the border. And because it's, uh, that sounds
absolutely disgusting if I look at if I'm looking at
an abscess and outcomes flies or a worm or something
that is very distressing. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, it's it's cool in a in a way that
you don't want to be involved with.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Hey, when you when you pull a worm, like a
tapeworm or whatever out of a human being, Uh, do
you you know, you go to the doctor's lounge and
hang out, and do you go to the other docks.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Hey, let me show you what I pulled out today.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah. Absolutely, we take pictures. We yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
That's fantastic and that's real.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Right, Okay, I mean most of the time patients bring it
in either they fish it out of a toilet or
you know, somewhere, and then they bring it in in
a little plastic bag and then we get it in
a bucket, clean it up so we can take some
good pictures.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
That's fantastic. Now I told you about a friend of
mine who was an er doctor. I went to high
school with her. And at there we are, they had
their display, the little museum of things they pulled out
of people's rear ends usually guys. But okay, we're done, Jim.
We'll talk again next week and I'll probably see you
(23:32):
over the next few days.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
All right, yeah, go kill someone.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
All Right, we're done, guys, We are finished again.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
We start all over again tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Wake up call with Amy and who's ever doing the weather?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
And then well I do the weather, Bill.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Traffic, I'm sorry you do the weather? Yeah, I know
you do Dodgers and yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Catch My show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty Fantastic bots KFI AM six forty. You don't
handle here on.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A as I cough Wednesday, October eighth. Some of the
stories we're looking at. The shutdown still continues, a lot
of delays at major airports. Air traffic controllers are not
getting paid and they're calling in summer, calling in sick,
and it's way understaff. So it's a mess there. And
(00:33):
Komy was a rain on criminal charges this morning. Pled
guilty has waived. Everything wants to go to trial straight out,
and the trial data set for January fifth. Okay, A
lot going on now. This is the week of Nobel Prizes,
and we've already had I think the Physics Prize and
(00:55):
the Price for Medicine, and these Nobel Prizes now are
really obscure stuff. I mean they're minute scientific discoveries, proteins
and within the body. I mean it used to be
where you could understand Nobel prizes. For example, whoever invented
flying that got the Nobel Prize. That's easy to understand,
(01:17):
right X rays where Marie Currey got the Nobel Prize
at the shur in the last century.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
She received two.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
By the way, very very few people have ever received two,
and she certainly was the only woman to.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Ever do that.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So we're gonna the big one is coming up on Friday,
the Nobel Peace Prize. This is what everybody looks at.
And there's been some weird ones on that one too. Now,
the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm or is it Oslo?
And then the Peace Prizes awarded in Stockholm?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Is one or the other. It's on it's it's very different.
It's on itself.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Okay, So you've got the Nobel Prizes and they're extraordinary
discoveries and they're given well once a year and sometimes
not at all, to very important findings and usually issues
that affect mankind in a positive way. Well, there's also
(02:15):
called the Ignobel Prizes and they've been going on for
thirty five years.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And what they do is.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
They celebrate science's more unusual contributions. They honor the imaginative,
maybe spur people's interests in science, medicine, technology. Now, these
are real studies done by real researchers, as crazy as
it may sound. So let's go through this year's winners
(02:48):
of the Ignobel Prizes. Okay, let's do it for the
Nutrition Prize, which the ignobil Prize is awarded, not the
Nobel Prize, but the Ignobel Prize. This is a study
that was done by I can't even go through the
(03:10):
names Daniellie dand Gabriel Seganatia Betto and it goes on
and on, and they were awarded the Nutrition Prize for
studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard
chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Real study.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
So the team spotted a rainbow lizard stealing a slice
of pizza at a resort, and then the scientist said
they wanted to know if the rainbow lizards, who usually
eat insects, had a taste for pizza hm. And they
had a do they do the lizers have a preferred topping.
So they followed nine lizards who had a choice between
(03:52):
the four cheese pizza and a plate of four seasons
pizza a lot of meat on it, you know, pepperoni
and such, etc. Now, the lizards found the pizza and
ate it, but only the four cheese pizza. They didn't
eat the rest of them. Why because it could be
easier for them to digest the cheese pizza. It could
(04:14):
be some cues attract them to the cheesier pizza. So
they discovered why, well, we really don't know, but it
was one of the winners.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Then another winner of.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
This was the Physics Prize and went to a bunch
of people Italian people, and it honors and basically studies
pasta sauce. HM So they were given the Ignobel Prize
for discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the
phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can cause
(04:54):
unpleasantness because so many of us suffer from pasta sauce
that clumps. So if you're making kaccio epeppi, I think
that's one of the sauces. If the water is too
hot or you don't have the right ratio of cheese
to starch, the sauce turns into a thin liquid filled
with these congealed globs of kurds. And earlier this year
(05:17):
these physicists developed a way to prevent clumping. You use
corn starch in the cheese and pepper sauce instead of
just relying on how much starch gets into the boiling
water while the pasta cooks and why they got that
prize is because pasta sauce is so important to those
of us who eat pasta, and that's around the world,
(05:40):
and there was and there.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Is physics to it. This is fine.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
So here's another one, and this is the Pediatrics Prize
goes to Julie Manella and Gary Bouchamp. They were awarded
the Pediatric Prize for studying what a nursing baby experience
experiences when the baby's whether eats garlic basically vampire babies. Now,
(06:06):
garlic has a history of warding off the undead. It
produces flavors and cow's milk and does can affect body
odors in humans. Sounds like a Zelman's commercial, doesn't it.
In this study, they had mothers who ingested garlic capsules
and then produce milk that had a more intense odor.
(06:26):
Peaked at about two hours, and the infants whose mother
ingested the garlic remained attached to the breasts for longer
periods of time.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
So there is the study.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
If you think your baby is not feeding enough and
you want your child to suckle on your breast a
longer period of time, you suckle up garlic better. Understanding
of how sensory experiences during breastfeedings.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay, fair enough, Then you have the literature prize. This
is a good one.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
This is the late doctor William Bean for persistently recording
and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his
fingernails over a period of thirty five years.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
There's an ignoble prize. And he kept very detailed records.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And were written in all kinds of flowery pros, referencing
everything from Moby Dick to medieval astrology. And his final report,
the nail provides a slowly moving keratin chemograph that measures
age on the inexorable obsesssa of time. In other words,
(07:37):
you look at someone's nail over thirty five years, and
it's like rings on a tree. You can tell how
old someone is. This is a scientific, very scientific endeavor.
Here one of my favorites. And this was given to
a group of Japanese scientists and this is the Biology Prize,
(08:00):
and it went to them for their experiments to learn
whether cows painted with zebra like striping can afford can
avoid being bitten by flies. Now is there a method
to this madness? Yes, because they noticed that zebras are
surprisingly unfazed and unbothered by flies, unlike cows that are
(08:24):
bothered by flies. They have to constantly swat the flies
away with their tails, shake around their ears. So the
question is do zebra stripes have power over flies? So
to find out, the team painted cows with black and
white stripes like a zebra.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
That's a visual.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The fake zebra stripes actually did decrease the number of
biting flies. So to make cows feel better and not
deal with flies, let's say dairy herds and then that
now the extrapolation is going to happen.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Does that mean that you are going to get more.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Milk cows that are less stressed because they're dealing with
flies and all you have to do is paint zebra
stripes on the cows.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Okay, not bad. That, by the way, was the Peace prize? No? No,
the Peace prize went no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Um.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Well, I don't know what that prize was. I think
it was the physics prize.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Now, the Peace Prize went to Fritz Renner and a
few other people for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves
a person's ability to speak in a foreign language. Now,
how does that work? Here was a test. The idea
was that alcohol improves language fluency. So the team recruits
(09:55):
fifty natives speaking German, Native German speaking undergrads in the
Netherlands who were also fluent in Dutch. They were bilingual,
and they divided into two groups. One group had vodka
with lemon, the other one received playing water, and then
the group that had the vodka became drunk and then
engage in conversation in Dutch, and then they were asked
(10:17):
to rate how well they thought. It turns out that
being drunk did not increase the inability to speak the
other tongue. It made it easier. So if you want
to speak a foreign tongue, if you're learning to speak
another language, get drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
That's what that study shows.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
And then aviation prize went to a group studying whether
alcohol can impair a bat's ability to fly and also
their ability to echolocate. You know they use that sonar business. Now,
alcohol in the animal kingdom happens all the time. Some
mammals were insects, they eat fruit full of ethanol and
(11:02):
they get drunk. So in this study, the team looked
at Egyptian fruit. Bats are known to avoid fruits with ethanol.
But they were given alcohol laden fruits. And yes, the
bats were slower. They echolocation faltered, much like human speech
becomes slurred. And the bottom line is don't drink and
(11:26):
fly if you're a bat. It's pretty impressive stuff. The
ig Nobel Prizes, I think we're gonna do that on
an annual basis. You know, we have to bring back
the Darwin Prizes too. We haven't done that in years.
The Darwin Awards, you've got honorable mentions where people don't die,
(11:48):
and then you have finalists where people do die. One year,
the best Darwin Prize came out of Egypt where a
chicken fell into a well and then the kid who
owned the chicken jumped into the well to save the chicken.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
And then the.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Father saw her, his son thrashing about in the well.
He dived. He dove in to save his son. Both
of them died and the chicken survived. That was the
Darwin winner the Darwin Award that year. To remove these
folks from the gene pool, all right, it is time
for medical news. Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical Officer for
(12:26):
Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, Good morning,
Jim Bill.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Okay, there we go. Good for you. Now.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We had lunch a few days ago and we talked
about this. It came up in twenty twenty two, the
name monkey pox for the monkey pox was changed. It
became m pox, and I guess, I guess for political
correctness purposes. Well, it's a monkey pox again, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yeah, that's it's just a weird one. That's why we
were talking about. It's just so weird. Nobody, nobody asked
to change the name back. There was no political pressure.
There's no like researchers weren't saying this is incorrect. In fact,
you know, monkey pox is incorrect itself. It's there's monkeys
have nothing to do with this disease. Uh, it's it's streads.
The animal vector is squirrels, so you know, And then
(13:26):
what happened was, you know, because there's this these rumors
and and you know, conspiracy theories that that the reason
AIDS spread is because of people having sex with monkeys,
it just creates kind of a big problem and a
stigma that doesn't need to be there because number one,
the AIDS thing isn't true, and that now we have
(13:48):
monkey pocks, which adds on to it, so you know,
it's getting People were being stigmatized by it, and that
was one of the reasons that the World Health Organization
wanted to change the name. But apparently, you know, anything
that the World Health Organization suggests at this point is
going to be not taken under consideration here.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I mean, it's just completely crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And the myth we talked about that, the myth of
people in Africa having sex with the chimpanzees and somehow
AIDS was transmitted to humans. Big question was how do
you hold the chimpanzee still long enough to have sex
with it. That's one of the big issues. The other
issue is the political correctness part. And my high school
(14:33):
I went to high school at Birmingham High School in
Vance and we were the Birmingham Braves. No one complained
about it, not a word was said. Now, a few
schools that had Indian names were hit pretty badly in
terms of the accusation of political correctness. Nobody complained about
(14:55):
the Birmingham Braves. Guess what now, the Birmingham Tumors. No,
that would that would be great. But they're the patriots. Now,
Oh give me a break, all right, that's just ridiculous.
Now let's get serious. One in ten Americans are taking
(15:17):
an antidepressant.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So are you ready for this? And my family?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I am, My kids are, my wife is? Our dog
is taking prozac? I am serious. Little Izzy is taking
prozac every single day. When you get your dog to
take it, boy, what does that tell you about your family?
One in ten Americans are taking an antidepressant. So what
(15:46):
does that mean, Jim.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Oh, I means, so we've got mental health issues in
the United States, and I don't know. To me, it's
I guess it's not surprising because I treat patients in
the emergency apartment. I get to see their medication list,
and it is extremely common. I would have guessed a
little bit higher actually than ten percent, but and probably
it should be higher if you know that there may
(16:10):
be more people that are undertreated for mental illness and
depression that so not I know that it comes as
surprise to most people, but I'm not super surprised by
that number. And I can't understand why a lot of
people would be surprised. But I mean, what happened was
you know, in the past, we would treat with drugs
that had significant and serious side effects like MAO inhibitors
(16:34):
and things like tristicly antidepressant. Those are still good drugs
and there's there's a place for them to be used.
But at this point, all the newer drugs, the SSRI
I type drugs, those are so safe with you know,
minimal side effects. There is weight gain, you know, the
bother suns are You can have weight gain, you can
have some sexual dysfunction, there's ways to overcome those, but
(16:59):
they're just safe. People don't die from them, but they
die from depression. So it's a pretty easy you risk
benefit analysis.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
And used to be well you could just go to
your doctor and say I'm depressed and the doctor would
just boom right there, issue or give you a prescription.
So that's pretty easy to do, at least I found it.
Kaiser is a little bit more careful. I'm a member
of Kaiser, as everybody knows, and now they switch at
my interns can't do it. It takes a psychiatrist to
actually issue those drugs or to write prescriptions for those drugs.
(17:32):
And I go in every six or every year for
fifteen minutes just to you know, everything, okay, everything's flying.
Anything change, No, nothing has changed. Do you have any
problems now, I still want to run over kittens?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Really, No, of course not.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, people do mistake simple you know, sadness or grieving
process for depression. It's not depression, that's just a normal
human experience. But depression is something altogether different, and it
does take somebody to you know, have a serious conversation
with you to decide is this real depression or are
you just going through, you know, a difficult time.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
And how does an interness know?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Doesn't it take a mental health professional to really be
able to determine which one is which?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
No, I mean, you can just sit and talk to somebody.
But the problem is, right, most internets have fifteen minutes
with you. How are we going to get into your
life story and really understand the difference in fifteen minutes
where when Kaiser sends you to a psychiatrist, they block
out a much longer period of time for that they
keep their internests cranking at you one appointment every ten
to fifteen minutes while they, you know, their specialists can
(18:38):
get a little more time with you. So it kind
of makes sense.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Okay, before we get to the flesh eating parasite story, Jim,
which is always a delight and brought this up. And
this is something that is affects a lot of us.
Sugary drinks raise common liver disease, and diet drinks raise
common liver disease by sixty percent. So because of my
(19:03):
diet coke issue, I'm assuming my liver now looks like
a Jackson Pollock painting.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
I really didn't think you would do this story based
on that alone. That you know you don't want me
disparaging your diet coke.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Oh, sure you you do well? No, actually you don't.
I have my lifetime of this from everybody else. But
you don't need much of this, do you. Well.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
I mean, that's the problem is that our bodies were
never made to take in all these chemicals, right, and
especially highly refined sugar and highly processed foods ultra processed foods.
And we're seeing this in people's livers. The liver is
where all of this has to pass through, and it's
called first pass. A lot of your blood flows straight
from your stomach through your liver, and that's to try
(19:49):
and clean out any toxins right away. And so your
liver takes a beating when you don't eat well and
so if you add that to metabolic disorders like diabetes
or even hypelood pressure, high cholesterol, you add that on top,
what you're getting is fatty liver, and that makes your
liver dysfunctional. It doesn't work correctly, and it can cause
(20:10):
scarring over time and eventually can cause liver failure. So
we're talking like thirty percent of the population has these
fatty liver changes when you look at it, and about
five percent or one out of twenty actually have this
severe form of it called MASH, which is metabolic associated
dietosis hepatitis. And so it's just that's fancy for fatty liver.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
So let me ask this in terms of knowing if
your liver is fatty? Is that just done through a
simple blood test where you look at liver function.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
If it shows up in the liver function, it's probably
a bit too late. There's a way to do an
ultrasound that measures elasticity in the liver. That's a new test.
It's not a lot of places don't have it. It's
not done regularly. But if you're at risk those risk factors,
those metabolic conditions, it's probably reasonable to look into getting
(21:05):
this specialized ultrasound that looks for fatty liver disease, and
that's what it does. It looks for the elasticity of
the liver, and that's what determines how far along you
are in this process.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
How can you tell elasticity without pushing it, without pulling
it apart?
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Well, a lubber band, they.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Are pushing it. Yeah. Yeah, the sound waves bounce off
of it and they're pushing and pulling and they can tell.
But it's not a normal ultra sell machine that's specialized.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Got it all right, real quickly.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
We have to get into the flesh eating parasite warning
California health officials how much flesh is being eaten?
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, so, I mean right now, it's just in Mexico,
but it's coming north, right, So it started at the
southern border of Mexico and it's been working its way north.
There's been about a little over seven hundred cases in Mexico.
But people who travel to Mexico now are at risk,
and then when you come back home, there's a risk
that you could spread this. So these are the burrowing
(22:00):
worms that will get into if you have an open wound,
especially they can bite and bite and get in there
and then they burrow into your skin. It's kind of cool.
And then you know, and then all of a sudden,
it looks like an abscess, but what comes out are flies.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Now I'm assuming the Trump administration is able to stop
them at the border. And because it's, uh, that sounds
absolutely disgusting if I look at if I'm looking at
an abscess and outcomes flies or a worm or something
that is very distressing. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, it's it's cool in a in a way that
you don't want to be involved with.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Hey, when you when you pull a worm, like a
tapeworm or whatever out of a human being, Uh, do
you you know, you go to the doctor's lounge and
hang out, and do you go to the other docks.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Hey, let me show you what I pulled out today.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah. Absolutely, we take pictures. We yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
That's fantastic and that's real.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Right, Okay, I mean most of the time patients bring it
in either they fish it out of a toilet or
you know, somewhere, and then they bring it in in
a little plastic bag and then we get it in
a bucket, clean it up so we can take some
good pictures.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
That's fantastic. Now I told you about a friend of
mine who was an er doctor. I went to high
school with her. And at there we are, they had
their display, the little museum of things they pulled out
of people's rear ends usually guys. But okay, we're done, Jim.
We'll talk again next week and I'll probably see you
(23:32):
over the next few days.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
All right, yeah, go kill someone.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
All Right, we're done, guys, We are finished again.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
We start all over again tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Wake up call with Amy and who's ever doing the weather?
Speaker 1 (23:47):
And then well I do the weather, Bill.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Traffic, I'm sorry you do the weather? Yeah, I know
you do Dodgers and yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Catch My show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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