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It's All Balls
26 Plays1 month ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to This Might Sting. My name is Julie McCrossan and my comrade is Dr Aidan and we bring you evidence-based information about health issues in our weekly news items to help you make good decisions about your health.
00:00:13
Speaker
And this week we're talking about how your testicles could save your life if you're lucky enough to have testicles. what your farts do not tell you about toxins, iron deficiency in young women, and something I'm excited about because I'm in the older age bracket, how my shingles vaccine, which I get regularly from my GP, may be able to boost my brain power.
Testicular Cancer Awareness and Self-Examination
00:00:39
Speaker
Dr Aydin, will we start with the balls, with the testicular cancer awareness that we're raising today? Welcome again. Thanks so much, Julie. Hi, everyone. So, look, let's start off with one of my favorite topics, bowls.
00:00:53
Speaker
um Testicular cancer is one of the most common cancers amongst young men. It can be a killer, but it's also incredibly responsive to treatment.
00:01:05
Speaker
And it's one of those cancers that if you get in early, you do really, really well. The key is detecting it early. And just like breast cancer, for decades, we've been telling women to self-examine their breasts.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's time for guys to cop a feel of their balls. And so we've got some great guidelines on this. I want you to get into the shower, get steamed up, take your index finger and thumb and gently roll your testicle, if you have one, between your two fingers.
00:01:35
Speaker
You should have a round surface. There's a bit of a squishy connection bit at the top of the testicle where it connects to your body. And what you're looking for is not that today or tomorrow going find something, but that if you do this once a month, you're going to notice a change.
00:01:52
Speaker
If you suddenly notice that there's a new lump or a bump that's new, potentially that's painful, something that's growing in size that wasn't there last month or the month before, that's the time to go and see a doctor.
00:02:04
Speaker
Now, a lot of guys are going to go, Aiden, I don't have time to you know examine my testicles once a month in the shower. And to that, I would say, rubbish. We both know most guys are spending a lot more time doing a lot more of something else in the bathroom.
00:02:19
Speaker
You have 10 seconds to cup a feel of your own balls.
Role of Partners and GP in Testicular Health
00:02:22
Speaker
I promise you, this could save your life. Index finger, thumb, it takes 10 seconds for both testicles, gently roll them between your finger, have a feel of the smooth surface.
00:02:34
Speaker
A lot of guys will find that they have small pockets of fluid here and there. That's perfectly normal to get checked out by your GP and confirm that's okay. Cop a feel, it could save your life. And if you do go to your GP, will your GP examine you?
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So your GP will be asking you a bunch of questions and then probably examining you. They might also shine a light next to your testicles to see if they can see something that lights up or whether it goes dark to differentiate between different kinds of structures in your testicles.
00:03:04
Speaker
It's perfectly uh normal as doctors for us to be examining people's private parts all the time but it's often not normal for you and you're totally welcome to ask for a chaperone or to bring someone with you if you feel more comfortable we love it when you bring someone with you as a chaperone as doctors we think it's great we encourage it we feel fantastic about it we're very used to it and we will often ask people to come into the room as a chaperone and when we're doing private exams if you feel uncomfortable So feel totally free to bring a mate or a trusted person with you.
00:03:35
Speaker
If you think that you might need a private part exam, we as doctors love that we are super supportive of it. And we will always be totally on board with that. Can I just say it before we move on, I've got doctors in the family and their view, and not tell me what your view is Aiden, obviously, but certainly in perhaps older generations is that often the partner of a man, and commonly that's a woman, but not obviously not always, the partner of a man is crucial in often dragging the man to the medical appointment to look after their health. And so in a way, this is a message as much to people who love men to be aware of testicular cancer and the need, like all cancers, for early intervention. And I'm sure wives or or partners could be in that room as well, couldn't they, when the examination is happening, if that makes the bloke more comfortable.
Listener Engagement and Future Topics
00:04:29
Speaker
100%, whatever you feel comfortable with. And you can turn it into fun. You can have your partner examine your testicles every so often as well. If that floats your boat, go for it. And in fact, we laugh, but it's often a sexual partner who discovers something different or abnormal or that something's changed in a person's testicles and who first raises the alarm goes, hey, this is different.
00:04:53
Speaker
Countless stories of that being the case and men or people with testicles going to the doctorate and getting that checked out. I've heard that in relation to breast cancer. The partner notices something that's different.
00:05:04
Speaker
So look, that's amazing. Perhaps another time we'll do something on testicular cancer and treatment and so on. And if you're listening, and you'd like us to address testicular cancer or indeed any topic. And you can see in the show notes.
00:05:17
Speaker
how you can contact us because we want to hear your feedback and get your questions.
Shingles Vaccine and Dementia Risk
00:05:22
Speaker
Look, let's turn to the shingles vaccine and some new research that indicates it may reduce the risk of dementia. And I'm not joking when I say I'm excited, i you as well as I often mention, I'm 70, I'm over 70.
00:05:37
Speaker
And shingles vaccines are part of my routine care now with a general practitioner and anything that is a modifiable risk to reduce dementia, in other words, something you can do about it, it's great because poor old dementia, it's so common.
00:05:53
Speaker
So what's this new research telling us, Aidan? So it's really exciting actually, because this is one of the first things we've found that actually makes a difference to dementia risk.
00:06:03
Speaker
um The researchers in Wales found that using a shingles virus vaccine, they were able to drop the risk of dementia by almost 20%. that's two out of 10, which is huge, absolutely massive.
00:06:20
Speaker
And the actual reason that's happening is really cool. We don't quite know. We're not really sure exactly why it's happening. It's probably got something to do with this evolving understanding we have about the relationship between viruses and dementia.
00:06:34
Speaker
And there's a whole host of different kinds of dementia. Essentially, dementia is this disease of aging that causes cognitive decline. things like memory loss, forgetfulness, and it's progressive. There's Alzheimer's dementia, there's vascular dementia, there's a lot of different dementias.
00:06:51
Speaker
But our understanding is essentially that over time, inflammation, which means your immune system reacting to a pathogen or a virus or an outsider attacking us, causes little bits of scarring and builds up of plaque and builds up of yucky things, essentially, little scars and little clumps of we'll call it dead tissue in the brain. And over time, that sort of gets in the way of signals. And as those plaques or proteins or tangles, whichever disease you're talking about, however you want to think about them build up, they progressively lead to dementia.
00:07:27
Speaker
The thing is, this is about getting in early. So by the time you're already in the sort of 75 to 85 bracket, it's probably too late to experience the benefit of this.
00:07:39
Speaker
We have to get in much, much earlier. We're talking early 70s, 60s, 50s, and that's the time where we think this probably has benefit because it's about- This the shingles vaccine has benefit.
00:07:50
Speaker
This is the shingles vaccine has benefit. It's a long-term thing. And if we should probably talk about what the shingles vaccine is and what shingles is. Herpes zoster is essentially what- a breakout of shingles. It comes from the varicella zoster virus, which is the same virus that causes chickenpox.
00:08:08
Speaker
And most kids, when I was growing up, got infected with chickenpox. Nowadays, there's a fantastic vaccine. If you ever get chickenpox as an adult, it absolutely sucks. ah High fevers, painful, itchy breakouts over your body.
00:08:20
Speaker
What we know about this varicella zoster virus is that after you get it, It hides inside your nerves and your nerves have sort of roots. They're like a tree.
00:08:31
Speaker
If you can imagine that the trunk of the tree is your spinal cord and you have roots coming out from your spinal cord, going around your body and each layer of your body has a layer ah of roots wrapping around you. And every now and again, you can get an outbreak of shingles. And this tends to happen when your immune system is down, when you're under stress.
00:08:48
Speaker
when you're getting a bit older. And along one of those roots of the nerve, you'll get this breakout of these fluid-filled, painful blisters, and that shingles.
00:08:59
Speaker
Now, if it just happens on your body and you're otherwise healthy, it's painful. It lasts about 10 to 15 days. It's not life-threatening. The problem is when you get it on parts of your body, like your eyes, your mouth, and if you're immune compromised, it can be really problematic.
00:09:17
Speaker
And in general, if you told me that I could take a vaccine that would prevent me from getting a really painful blistery rash on a part of my body, I'd say, hell yeah. And we know that the government in Australia has been recommending shingles vaccines. We use Shingrix in
Access and Cost of Shingles Vaccine in Australia
00:09:33
Speaker
Australia. It's the only vaccine approved in Australia. It's a non-live virus, which means we killed off the virus.
00:09:38
Speaker
We chopped it up into little chunks so your body can recognize it. And we chucked it in some sterile water with a few things to help your body react appropriately and not overreact to it.
00:09:49
Speaker
And we give you that virus and it teaches your body to recognize and detect that varicella zoster virus. And so over the age of 50, is when it's recommended. At the moment, the government gives it for free to anyone over the age of 65 or 50 if they're Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, or over the age of 18 if you are particularly immune compromised, i.e. you're on chemotherapy or you have specific serious medical conditions.
00:10:15
Speaker
However, And this is the cool part. Anyone over the age of 50 can access this vaccine. It just costs a little bit of money. I think the chair of the Royal Australian College of GPs special working group for this suggested it was probably approximately $300 for the two vaccines because you get one vaccine and then you get another one, either one to two months later, depending on what your GP feels is appropriate. And that's it. The average person doesn't need boosters after that. It's a two vaccine combo.
00:10:45
Speaker
And for most people, that's it, unless you've got specific health needs. Now, if we go back to why we think this has benefit, it comes back to talking about that shingles and the fact that varicella zoster virus lives deep in your nerve and can break out every now and again.
00:11:00
Speaker
It's probably creeping into your nerve and creeping around your nervous system and causing microscopic little levels of inflammation here and there. And instead of having a full breakout of shingles, you're getting little tiny, tiny, you can't even tell it's happening, microscopic bits of inflammation and reaction of your immune system to that virus hiding in your nerve here and there, causing a buildup of those
Interactive Platforms and Engagement
00:11:21
Speaker
plaques.
00:11:21
Speaker
And again, this is a basic understanding. I'm by no means an expert in this. It's far more complicated than I'm actually explaining. but that's probably how it's leading to dementia. And so this vaccine, teaching your body to find this virus, attack it and neutralize it early, is probably gonna reduce that level of micro little inflammation happening here and there.
00:11:44
Speaker
If I could just say i did pay to get the two vaccines before I was eligible for the free vaccine and the reason I did it was because I've had several friends get shingles and people can I think it varies as I understand it from person to person but people can have very severe pain it can be a oh yeah and my elderly mum had a an attack of it and that was the big motivator for me when I was told you could get these double dose early. Thank you for that explanation. I just want to say to anybody who's listening to this might sting, but who hasn't yet looked at it on YouTube, is that where they go? Someone nod and tell me where you can see it, because this is being filmed as well, and you can see it on YouTube, and it turns up on Instagram and so on.
00:12:29
Speaker
But why I mentioned this, not only is Aidan, I think, a gifted clinician in giving us metaphors to describe what's happening inside our body, He also does funny little things with his hands.
00:12:42
Speaker
And so have a comment on YouTube so you can see the pictures. Now, look, we're going on to another topic and I'm going to be honest with you. I consider myself a mature person.
00:12:54
Speaker
oddly repressed person. And so I find saying the word fart just a little bit challenging, but I'm going hand over it to you, Dr. Aidan, because you deal with the full complexity of life.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I'm going to ask you to introduce farts, toxins, and what we need to know.
Debunking Fart Detox Myths
00:13:14
Speaker
Look, I saw this video on TikTok and I instantly shared it with our producer, Josh, because I simply cannot deal with this absolute CRAP.
00:13:24
Speaker
Let's have a look at the video. If you ate something and you have stinky farts, that means you're making toxins just unequivocally. So what should you do? Well, you should always have adequate glutathione in the liver. You might also take activated charcoal away from supplements when you have bad smelling farts because it's going to bind to the toxins in the gut. And you know they're there because you can smell them. So when that happens, well, you'll fart less, which is good for the holidays unless you don't like your in-laws or something.
00:13:50
Speaker
That also though means less brain fog because it means less of these toxins could cross the blood brain barrier. So this idea of eat less toxins, produce less toxins. If you're going to eat toxins or you are producing toxins, block them and increase your ability to get them out of the body. And that leads to more consciousness, happiness, less pain in the body, less risk of dying from all the different ways you could die. And then maybe you'll live longer.
00:14:16
Speaker
Oh my goodness me. You look like you're suffering listening to this, Dr. Aidan. Just before you go into the fart story, can I just, I want to reassure the listeners that I am a grandmother and I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old in my life and they never stop talking about farts.
00:14:34
Speaker
So this is going to kill me of my repression. But my God, man, what was that crazy TikTok thing all about? know... it It pains me. I'm physically hurting, Julie.
00:14:46
Speaker
It's just BS. There's so many things we have to tackle here. First of all, the word toxin in and of itself, I find incredibly frustrating.
00:14:58
Speaker
As ah someone who's medically trained, who's scientifically trained, ah There's a fame, the father of toxicology, Paracelsus famously said, the dose defines the poison, the dose defines the toxin.
00:15:13
Speaker
Everything is toxic in too high quantity and very few things are toxic in very tiny doses. It's totally up to the dose, right?
00:15:24
Speaker
Sugar, you die without it, but we know that if all you eat all day is unrefined sugar, you're far more likely to get diabetes, dental caries, and die younger because you need other things, right? So it's, is sugar a toxin? No, you need glucose to survive. Your body is powered by glucose.
00:15:43
Speaker
Your cells can't survive without it, but you shouldn't eat glucose all day. So that's my bugbear with the word toxin. Now we actually get to what he's talking about, which is just crap.
00:15:55
Speaker
You're not smelling toxins in farts. What you're smelling is methane and other gases, which are the byproduct of the bacteria in our gut, breaking down the food we eat and producing different chemicals that we fart out.
00:16:08
Speaker
It's not a toxin, it's gases. It might smell toxic. particularly if you eat some beans, we we are made up of bacteria. Half of the cells in our body are the sort of result of integrating with bacteria over our evolution of millions and millions of years, our tummies, gut has to have bacteria in it to function properly.
00:16:31
Speaker
And the bacteria help break down the foods we eat into things that we can digest. Some of them work symbiotically with us. They break things down that we can then use. Others, not so much. They just exist in us. They break things down and they make gas and we fart that gas out.
00:16:45
Speaker
You will notice that your farts change smell based on what you eat because that produces different gases based on what the bacteria eat and break down and turn into gas. That's totally normal. That's supposed to happen.
00:16:56
Speaker
It's not a toxin. If you are eating something that doesn't sit well with you, don't eat that again. That's the medical side of things. The idea then that you need to somehow put glutathione into your liver and eat activated charcoal to to neutralize these toxins is also crap. And we've discussed activated charcoal before.
00:17:17
Speaker
And activated charcoal is not something that you should be eating unless you have been specifically prescribed it. And we very, very, very rarely prescribe activated charcoal because what it does is it acts as a sink.
00:17:29
Speaker
And by sink, I mean that it goes into your tummy and it it basically absorbs all the useful stuff that you've just put in your stomach. It absorbs fats, it absorbs medications, it neutralizes a lot of medications that we give.
00:17:43
Speaker
We might use activated charcoal if someone's taken a lethal overdose of a medication that can be absorbed by it. We'll get them to eat some activated charcoal to absorb some of that medication and and lessen the impact on the body.
00:17:54
Speaker
That's about the only time I can think of that we use activated charcoal on a semi-routine basis. It's you're not supposed to eat it. It's, it's not good for you. It has no health benefits except for reducing the amount of nutrition that your tummy can absorb, that your gut can absorb.
00:18:09
Speaker
Notwithstanding that Professor Matt Hopcroft talked about how terrible charcoal is for your teeth, the fact that it rubs away your dentin. So that debunked, don't do it. Crap. The second thing.
00:18:20
Speaker
That second word, can you say it slowly and explain what it is? I'm just not catching what that second thing is. Oh, glutathione. yeah Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Glutathione is fascinating.
00:18:33
Speaker
Glutathione is a chemical that your body makes. And it's not even that your body makes it each and every one of the cells inside our body synthesize, which means that they produce glutathione.
00:18:46
Speaker
Glutathione is this incredible chemical. And what it does is it turns out that our bodies use oxygen to break things apart. Oxygen is like dynamite at a cellular level.
00:18:58
Speaker
That's how we sort of use oxygen. Our body uses oxygen to break things apart. And in breaking them apart, it creates this sort of mini explosion. that energy allows us to power ourselves. We're all little car machines, car engines on a cellular level, right? You cause it a bit of an explosion.
00:19:14
Speaker
It drives the pistons and things go on a cellular level. We break apart things with oxygen and that energy helps the cell to be powered. And again, this is a sort of a model that we're talking about. I'm reducing the concept here to to something that's accessible.
00:19:29
Speaker
When we do that, oxygen becomes You can almost think of it like this acid that latches on and burns things. It's not, but part of the problem is when we use oxygen to break things apart and create energy on a cellular level, it attacks things like DNA and causes damage to the cells if we don't mop that extra oxygen up.
00:19:50
Speaker
And so what glutathione does is it is in the cell and it neutralizes all the angry little free oxygen species in the cell. And it helps us to regulate a lot of the chemical processes that actually do act as detoxifying processes in our liver.
00:20:09
Speaker
So our liver is the ultimate detox agent. It is the mastermind detoxifier of the body. You do not need to help your liver. Your liver is brilliant. It is a genius. It is powerful. It can regrow itself. It can heal.
00:20:23
Speaker
It is an awesome, bloody awesome organ. Your liver does not need your help. Stop trying to help your liver by taking all these extra supplements and creating more work for it.
00:20:35
Speaker
Glutathione is something that our body can produce itself unless you have a specific disease, in which case your doctor will tell you because you will likely be in hospital with it. It's very rare to have diseases involving glutathione. Very, very, very rare.
00:20:50
Speaker
Your body makes it itself. Glutathione is produced by combining glutamate and cysteine. and your body makes glutamate from glucose and cysteine from protein.
00:21:02
Speaker
And what that means is you actually cannot take glutathione supplements to give yourself more glutathione. It doesn't work like that. If you swallow glutathione, you pee and poo out glutathione.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's just expensive piss. You can't use that glutathione the way you want it to detoxify things. It's not how it works. Your body makes the glutathione it needs in the cell, uses it in the cell, and then recycles it.
Iron Deficiency in Women
00:21:29
Speaker
Now, Aidan, your passion on this topic is absolutely fantastic. We do need to do one more topic before we finish, but I just want to say just one little comment about the liver. I understand everything. Well, I don't say I fully understand, but I comprehend the broad brush of what you've just said about extra things and the liver's doing a great job. But we can help our liver by not...
00:21:51
Speaker
drinking too much by not smoking. I worry I've hit it too hard with a very strong coffee, but maybe that's another topic. But I'm just mentioning there are things in terms of exercise, not smoking, and what we eat that can help all our organs, aren't they?
00:22:06
Speaker
Totally. Totally. So there's a few common things. Coffee is probably not going to pose in your liver is the truth of it. you're You're probably fine to drink your cup of coffee. You're not doing any damage to your liver.
00:22:18
Speaker
I wouldn't advise the six to 10 coffees that I see some my colleagues drinking. That's probably not good for you, for your blood pressure, for your heart. But coffee doesn't offend the liver. Alcohol is a toxin.
00:22:29
Speaker
Alcohol is toxic and it's your liver's job to break that down. And it's only got a finite ability to do that. And after a while it causes damage and scarring to your liver. The other thing is that if you find you have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or you have other liver diseases, there are certain dietary modifications like reducing fast because fat can build up in the liver.
00:22:50
Speaker
That's really important as well. But one drink every so often is perfectly fine. Your liver has the ability to break that down. It's the daily alcohol, the high levels of alcohol on the weekend on a regular basis that really makes your liver struggle.
00:23:07
Speaker
But if there's one takeaway point, it's you do not need to detoxify your farts. You do not need activated charcoal. You do not need to eat glutathione. Your farts are natural. They're fine. And your liver is doing a great job.
00:23:18
Speaker
I love how energised you become by misleading misinformation on TikTok. Only a couple of minutes left, but iron deficiency in younger women. What is our critical message? It's been in the news. What's our critical message to younger women about iron deficiency?
00:23:36
Speaker
This is a big one. And there's this beautiful study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that came out recently looking at 12 to 21 year olds in the United States. And they looked at this group of young women and they looked at them over a period of time between 2003 and 2020, and two thousand and twenty ah quite a few thousand young women.
00:23:54
Speaker
And they looked at their levels of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia. And those are two different things. So iron deficiency is defined as low levels of ferritin.
00:24:06
Speaker
And you'll often hear doctors talking about ferritin. And the reason for that is because it's actually quite difficult to measure the level of iron in our bodies because our body doesn't just have this cache of iron hanging around. We don't just store a bunch of steel bars in ah somewhere in the corner and use it when we need.
00:24:21
Speaker
We actually store iron in this protein called ferritin. And that allows us to store it and use it when we want because actually it's quite hard to get rid of iron if it builds up in our body as a metal.
00:24:33
Speaker
So we use ferritin levels to tell how high or low someone's iron is. And if you have a really low level of iron, it starts to impact how you produce red blood cells, because we know that red blood cells use iron in hemoglobin.
00:24:50
Speaker
And hemoglobin is the thing that lets us carry oxygen and CO2 around our bodies. It's the thing that gives red blood cells their red color. Now, if you've got really low levels of iron, and you develop anemia.
00:25:02
Speaker
A in medical Greek means the lack of, and aemia is blood. So anemia is a lack of blood. And anemia is iron deficiency. Anemia is when you have such a low level iron, it starts to impact on your body's production of red blood cells.
00:25:20
Speaker
That's quite severe. And we know that in this study, 6% of young women between 12 and 21 had iron deficiency anemia and almost 40%.
00:25:34
Speaker
So four out of 10 young women between the ages of 12 and 21 had levels of iron deficiency, which is wild, wild. and And we know that they had a higher risk of iron deficiency when they came from ethnic backgrounds where they were people of color, where they were socioeconomically deprived, where they had poor nutrition.
00:25:57
Speaker
There are a host of different factors that cause iron deficiency in young women. One of which is, of course, that we know that a lot of people experience a period, um which is a monthly menstrual cycle and they bleed.
00:26:14
Speaker
The other thing is our diet just doesn't have enough red meat or iron in it as we used to. So we're not eating a lot of red meat. We're not eating a lot of spinach or strawberries or green leafy vegetables with iron in it.
00:26:30
Speaker
And so we're probably not getting enough iron to compensate for the massive growth spurts we have between 12 and 21, where we use a lot of iron and we also start bleeding.
00:26:41
Speaker
So the symptoms of iron deficiency are varied, but if you're feeling tired, fatigued, low energy, you're waking up tired, it's time to go to the doctor.
00:26:55
Speaker
It's one of the first things that we're gonna check when someone tells us that they're tired is their iron levels. And it's really easy to fix. It's really easy to fix because all you have to do for most people is just supplement your dietary iron, which means taking an iron tablet.
00:27:14
Speaker
Can I just say thank you very much for that. That was fascinating, particularly if you're a person like myself who cooks for several generations at times.
00:27:24
Speaker
It just makes me, at my age, I'm encouraged like mad to have Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, to pile up the green. And one of the things often remember is when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, meat and three veg was the common thing. Now, some people really want to reduce meat, and that's perhaps another discussion. But if you're lucky enough to be able to afford a small bit of fillet steak, good healthy meat,
00:27:50
Speaker
It's a fantastic source of iron, but you can get it through a whole lot of green leafy vegetables, as you've said. But it strikes me, that this is about the the drop in home cooking, healthy home cooking and sitting around a table and eating meals together.
00:28:10
Speaker
You know, that cultural, as I understand it, there has been a huge shift in that culture because young women should not be having these problems. And I'm assuming iron deficiencies, if not dealt with, could have a ah kick on negative effects later in life, that it's fundamental to healthy ageing process.
00:28:29
Speaker
Totally. We need iron. Our bodies need iron and it needs the right level of iron. We don't want too little and we don't want too much. We need a healthy amount and our body's intestine is very clever at regulating the amount of iron we need.
00:28:43
Speaker
If the body doesn't need more iron, it won't take more from the diet and you'll poo it out. But if it does, it will take more from your diet. Our intestines have incredibly clever transport mechanisms to take in just enough iron that we need and not too much because it's quite hard to get rid of it if you've got too much of it yeah it's multifactorial i don't want to come out and say that the reason that women have iron deficiency anemia is because they're not sitting around the table having dinner together and they're not eating well i think there's more to it than that there's multiple factors that lead to it it's menstruation it's dietary changes it's growth it's
00:29:19
Speaker
A whole host of things. Yes, society has changed, but it's also possible that for thousands of years, women have had low iron. And what we do know is that in pregnancy in particular, having the right level
Iron and Folate in Pregnancy
00:29:33
Speaker
of iron is very important. And a lot of women who go into pregnancy don't have enough iron in their diet and iron and folate are incredibly important in the diet during pregnancy to make sure that the baby gets enough of the nutrients it needs and that you as a mom have enough nutrition to support you and a little parasite living inside you.
00:29:51
Speaker
Not parasite. So if you're...
00:29:57
Speaker
You know, pregnancy is a parasitic disease. You've got a little thing living inside you, sucking off all your nutrients, making you feel sick and tired. and This is a moment where the community member, the patient factor in our podcast is reaching out to help you because even calling pregnancy a disease has just caused the blood pressure of some of our female listeners to rise.
00:30:21
Speaker
But perhaps we can deal with that at a future date because I think we are going to talk about We'll have to tackle that another day. There's a saying, life is a sexually transmissible disease for which there is no cure. No, I want to be very clear that pregnancy is awesome. It's not a disease.
00:30:36
Speaker
But we in medicine, we often conceive, ah we we discuss the parasitic nature of babies to make sure that we focus on mothers' needs, pregnant people's needs.
Language Sensitivity in Medicine
00:30:47
Speaker
I understand, but just trust me because I'm old enough to have seen how we use language change and I would be strongly advising those committed to the medical model to modify the use of parasitic and find a more neutral term to explain that important relationship between the growing child within a mother and the mother and what that means in terms of care for the mother.
00:31:14
Speaker
Parasitic is a problematic word. Trust me on this. I'm reaching out through the screen to help you. And feminists but have been ah arguing well since the late 60s, early 70s to argue for pregnancy as a normal part of life, not to be seen as part of the disease model.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:31:31
Speaker
But these are conceptual issues we can take up at length. Again, in one of our one-hour interviews, it is part of This Might Sting, or as ah part of our news items, because we're going to look at some very interesting research, I think, in our next news segment today.
00:31:46
Speaker
looking at safety and birth so there'll be an opportunity for it. But before we say farewell, is there anything you'd like to emphasise? I want you to go straight to a shower and feel all your private bits below the belt in order to be really intervening earlier if you have any signs of testicular cancer.
00:32:06
Speaker
I'm sure you want me to make sure I have my shingles vaccine so that I can be okay enough by the end of the year to still do this podcast with you. What would you like to emphasise from what we've talked about today?
00:32:23
Speaker
I think it's don't trust everything on TikTok. You don't need to detoxify yourself. If you're over the age of 50, speak to your GP about a shingles vaccine. If you're feeling tired and fatigued and you're already sleeping enough, it's time to go see your GP.
00:32:38
Speaker
Iron deficiency is one of many causes of tiredness. So you've got to figure out what's going on and discuss that with your doctor. And I'm so excited to talk about pregnancy and this incredible research that's come out that we're going to chat about next week on the podcast.
00:32:53
Speaker
That's all from me. So this might sting. Please share this and with people. Please subscribe and also email us with your questions, comments or corrections if you think we've got anything wrong. But it's just fantastic that you're listening and we'll see you next time. So it's bye-bye from Julie and Dr Aidan.
00:33:13
Speaker
This Might Sting is hosted by Aidan Barron and Julie McCrossin. Executive produced by Joshua Kirsch. While we always work to give you the best information and tips, nothing in This Might Sting should be construed as personal healthcare care advice.
00:33:28
Speaker
You should always make health decisions in consultation with your general practitioner and specialists. If you'd like to hear us talk about a topic on the show, or if you think we've made a mistake and want to request a correction, please contact us at questions at thismightsting.com.au.