Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Metamucil

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Hank Green in 2018 joked that everyone should take Metamucil, the fiber-rich powder that is supposed to help with your BMs. But is he right? Well . . . “should” is a strong word. Dr. Sydnee goes through the history of the supplement itself, made of psyllium, as well as our understanding of fiber and its use in human nutrition. And yeah, you probably aren’t getting enough of it.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/ 

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Sal Bones, a marital tour of Miss Guy to Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. I'm Sydney McAroy. Been a little bit said. July was a wild month. It was. I know we missed a week in there did we? We did miss a week and we

had to we've actually been away from the microphones for three weeks at this point because we had tour and we had to, we've actually been away from the microphones for three weeks at this point because we had tour and we had a tour. You had tour. I had a tour. Yes. Thanks to our fans.

You're sharing for our children. Thanks to the fans. You really make it special. And thanks to the people at home watching the kids, whoever that may be, to make it possible for me to go out there and make my magic. Yeah. But we Uh-huh. But we're here now. I have my own life, you know. I know.

I know. Anyway. You're doing real work here on the home front. I do my best. I, uh, in the interim, um, I was sent a video from Alex. Thank you, Alex. Um, from one of our from one of our friends. Friends, you're using that loosely, I assume.

Well, a friend's, for now. He's a friend, I consider, I mean, he's a friend, but I also consider a friend, he's a fellow science communicator. You, I assume, consider him a friend because all media producing teams of brothers know each other. Our friends and know each other right? We have we have a fantasy football league. We have.

That seems unlikely. I know. No, we have a ball league. We have a cigar. I can't. I'm just saying. Yeah, yeah, we know. We know the greens.

Yeah, it's you all the greens, the property brothers. Property brothers. Jonas Brothers. I don't know if Jake and Amir are brothers. Who else? Who are other brothers? I mean, Car Talk, RIP. I don't know.

Mark's brothers. Yeah. I mean, they're gone, they're gone, but you get it. Sorry, my dad only watched old stuff. Hanson. That only went to old stuff going up. So I only know old things. The Hanson apparently.

This is an older video actually. When I watched it, I was like, oh, this is a new video. No, it's not, it's from 2018. But I still think it's a funny thing for us to talk about because Hank Green, who is wonderful, by the way, this is good-natured ribbing, this is in no way, like contentious. I'm hoping that comes through,

but I also just wanna say it bluntly. I love the greens. They're a couple of best people I know. They put in work and actually do like a lot of good stuff rather than trying to benefit themselves. They're fantastic human beings. So I like, no, I like Hank a lot. And I love his science communication and his videos.

And obviously like that's a whole thing. I don't know how to do videos. I only do voice stuff. So, you know, impressive. But he did a video in 2018 that Alex shared with me just recently. So I only know about it now. Telling everybody about his love for metamusel.

And I would say making the, I would not say it's medical advice because he is not a physician. So I don't think you can call it medical advice. That basically everybody should take metamusel. So I thought we should do an episode on like, but should we Hank? Should we all take metam and I have- Take met a me as all. You and I have talked about fiber before, casually, in our day to day lives.

As old people do. You were told me that we just disagreed. I kind of thought from some of my studies, and my own personal health journey, and personal health education, that like everybody should be having fiber just to keep everything going good. Well now when you say that, it makes it sound like

I didn't want everyone to eat fiber. I think what the confusion is, do we all need a supplement? That's different than the conversation of, do you need to eat fiber? I don't think anybody is denying that, yes, we do need to eat fiber. Okay.

Right. Yes. Like that, we can all agree upon. Yes. I got recommended values in here. I'm going to talk about and everything. I got it. The question is, do we all need a fiber supplement?

I have a very clear memory of being very unclear about what Meta Muscle was. As a child, Meta Muscle was sort of, specifically Meta Muscle was. As a child, Meta Muscle was sort of specifically Meta Muscle was sort of like a shorthand for like old person. You know what I mean? It's like I knew it was a powder that old people got that they got for themselves and like they didn't get. And I used to watch because it's like an orange flavored drink that that it, the ones that are flavored, you can get unflavered. But I used to watch adults mix up this orange drink.

Like, dang, I love to get me some of this orange drink. Look at this beauty. I love it. It's just a weird powder for all. Now, Hank says in his video that even people with quote unquote good poops should take metamusel. Like, don't feel like you're already getting enough fiber in your poops are so good that you don't eat metamusel, you should still take metamusel. Yeah, don't go around thinking you're better than metamusel.

So do you know what metamusel is? Yes, it's psyllium husks. That's good. That's a good start. Yeah. So have you like researched metamutile yourself? If you ever had a point in your life when you were on a way of eating where you're not taking carbohydrates. You were constipated.

Listen, this is a family shot. I'm wearing a diaper kit. This is the whole thing. It's about metamutile. That's what we're talking about. The teens already think little enough of me without thinking that I'd need old man powder for my boobs. So, Cillium is a form of fiber that comes from seed husks from the Plantego genus.

No, it is not the genus that is something I've learned today. Plantego ovata is responsible for the Cillium that we consume. For the most part, that is the species that we know as metamethyl. There are a couple other species that produces it as well, but the vast majority comes from India. The vast majority of the psyllium that we... There's not to get too technical with it, because I want to talk about the medical part, but there's different grades to how pure the psyllium is. The stuff that we use for medical purposes is like the highest grade.

It's like 95 to 99%. We get higher like, if you like, if you like, Metamusile X, it's the one in the gold jar, and it's like, pop shelf. It's like, I think it's Metamusile X-O. It's like, been aged for a while. It's a really premium stuff. It'll rip through you like a great train. I feel like people would come out with that eventually. But now that the lower grade stuff

is just used for other purposes, industrial purposes, like veterinary purposes. There's some other things you can do with the lower grade cilium, but the higher grade is when you need it. That's the medical stuff. The name, by the way, so the word for a psyllium in India is a spaggala, there are a couple different iterations

of that word, but it comes from a Persian for horse ear because of the way the seed looks. And I mentioned that because the history of the medicinal use of psyllium or a spaggala in India is much longer than our understanding. Like our sort of Western use of psyllium, it has a lot of uses in Ayurvedic medicine and so that predates kind of our concept of it.

The Greeks came up with the word psyllium for solar, for flea, which is a reference to the way the seed looks again. It may just really into the way the seed looks. Right, and it's kind of weird. I think it's just an interesting psychological study on two different people. Look at a seed and come up with either... A horse is here, no, no, no, no.

A flea. It looks like a flea. Look at it. It's very small. So I want to get a microscope. A microscope? No, it's... Actually, I don't know what it is. I just said the word. That's weird. I said microscope. I don't know what that is. So it's a naturally occurring material. We have a it from seeds, we use it as fiber, that's

nice. We don't have to make it, it's just there. Right. Like you take it off the seed, it's leftover. The way that Sillium works is it has this musulaginous polysacride. Oh. Yeah. That's. Muselage-ness polysaccharide. Oh! Yeah.

That's... That's made of some stuff. Yeah, let me break this down and lay this serves. It's got a muselage to the list of polysaccharide. So basically this muselage. Nope. So you're gonna get... Well, okay, this substance that it means is like a clear gel like substance.

Okay, this is good. Yes, yes, yes. It's going to absorb water. Okay. Okay. This is a soluble fiber. Oh, that means it absorbs water. Yes. So it's going to absorb water. So this mucilage and this polysaccharide will absorb water and increase in volume by 10 fold when it does so. So it gets much, much, much bigger. Okay. So the way that it works is you ingest the sodium increase in volume by 10 fold when it does so. So it gets much, much, much bigger. Okay.

So the way that it works is you ingest the selium, this mucilage is in your, you know, in what your stool will be in the mixture of stuff that's going to become your stool. And it's going to absorb and absorb and absorb water, which will make your stool softer and pass more easily. Okay. Give it a better consistency and form on its way. Where is it? And also combined other things as we'll talk about. This is different, by the way, than from insoluble fiber, I think that's an important.

That just rocks right on through. It does. It doesn't go raw. It's like a brush for your colon. A colon blow. They don't absorb anything. They just move through and brush everything on their way. We have talked about constipation, laxatives, making people poop. We talk about this a lot on this show.

Too much by some people's recognize. Well, because throughout human history, we have had this sort of, I don't wanna say obsession, but it has been very important to the human animal that poops happen with regularity. And- There's how important it is to us. We have a word regular that means the way things ought to be. And then we literally use that exact word

to mean that I'm pooping well. Like here's the two means of regular. That and my boobs are normal. That's how important it is to me. I've made the word for the entire concept of regularity refer to pooping. It really, well, and you can look back through history and across cultures and you see this concept of if you're not pooping regularly then the stool that is in your body, because we knew it was in there. We knew it had to come out, so we knew that until it came out, it was still in there.

It's in there somewhere. And there was a concern with what that could do. And we see that as far back as like, you know, papyri from the ancient Egyptians writing about the concept that if stool just sits in your body, it will like, putrify and poison you and release toxins. And that concept is still echoed in things you will read today. The idea that part of the problem with constipation is that the stool in

there is going to do all sorts of terrible things and like make you sick from the inside. This auto intoxication is the word they use a lot. It's going to make you toxic from the inside out. You will still hear this echo today. So all throughout human history, we've been very worried that if we don't go to the bathroom, it's gonna make us super sick. Which it does, I mean, you're wrong. You don't go to the bathroom, it's going to make us super sick.

Which it does. You're not wrong. You don't want to be here. You're not wrong. Who's been very constipated at socks? You do. You feel really sick. It's awful.

But what about fiber and psyllium specifically? Now, hypocrite is noticed a link between that. So we've known, the idea that fiber has something to do with going number two, old, old idea. And he advised that if somebody has constipation, they should eat wheat bran. Yeah. Wow. Good one.

Yeah. So, I mean, the use of fiber in our diet is from a nutritional standpoint, at less a medicine, although for a long time, medicine and nutrition were sort of one. I mean, if you look at like the ancient Greek approach to medicine, it was very much lifestyle, diet, sleep, you know, activity, those sorts of things. Here's what I'll say about this. And I always think it's interesting to think about like it this system is what I feel like we understand at this point in history, like early before we have

a lot of like tools. We understand systems that have, but we have a better understanding of systems that have a direct input and output where you can like a, b test, right? So I think without harming or injuring the person, right? So I think like it makes sense that we would figure this one out fairly early because it's one where we can run daily experiments on without any sort of tools or anything, right? We can each day try different foods and like, oh, this is a direct, I can directly

resolve the, observe the result of taking in this stuff. Sure, well, and it makes sense that we would figure out things that would make us poop, make us puke, make us pee, observable reactions, long before we would figure out things that would make us poop, make us puke, make us pee, observable reactions, long before we would figure out things that would lower our cholesterol or blood pressure, which are things that we didn't know how to measure at this point. Right. So, the use of fiber specifically as some sort of treatment may have been known, but in

all honesty, if you look through, when did this become popular? Because I'd say today, fiber, intake of fiber is not just known to be beneficial, but it's like a cornerstone of a lot of wellness concepts. That's one of the first things, like are you eating a fiber? That's one of the first things people say.

Sleep hydration fiber. Yes. So when did that sort of movement begin? Many, many years later, I would say probably it started in the early 1900s when there was a British physician, Sir William Arbathnott Lane, who began to promote this theory that constipation is kind of like the central scourge of humanity.

Like it's like the main, and again, we're seeing the echoes of this idea that if you don't go to the bathroom regularly, that you're getting toxins from the inside, the same thing that ancient cultures were talking about. And he said, you know, the cause of all the hideous sequence of maladies, peculiar to civilization, constipation. Constipation. Constipation. And that also begins our tying of constipation and diet and all of that to like why there are sort of population

differences in specific diseases, which is also something that we will begin to talk about more and more. Why do some areas of the world get this more? And is it our diet? And what is it in the diet? And oh my gosh, how many things does this apply to? You know, why were we all drinking red wine and eating olive oil for a while in the 80s? So I want to talk about how that became sort of a cultural idea. Before I do that, we got to go to the billing department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled in my car before the mouth.

Hey, it's John Moe, host of Dupresh Mode, a podcast about people's mental health journeys. Guess who we got? Guess who? It's Jamie Lee Curtis. I look at life now as the game of Guess Who, which is simply the process of elimination. I know what I don't like. That's how I found out who I am. Jamie Lee Curtis on addiction, show business, and fooling people.

All on Dupresh Mode for Maximum Fun. Wherever you get your podcasts Well, Manolo, we have a show to promote. It's called Back to Game Show. It's a family-friendly podcast where listeners submit games and we play them with colors from around the world. Oh, sounds good. New episodes happen every other Wednesday on MaximumFun.org. It's a fast and loose oasis of absurd innocence and naivete. Are you writing a poem? No, it's just saying things from my memory.

And it's a nice break from reality. Is that a real idea to say that? I don't know, it sounds bad. It comes with a 100% happiness guarantee. It does not. Come for the game and stay for the chaos. I said, fiber, the modern era, the next generation. So by the 20s, people were less convinced that constipation was the root of all disease.

All disease. Like that. And like I said, that idea that it does make you sick to be constipated, it exists today. So I'm not saying that that fell out of favor. But the idea that we could blame everything on not pooping regularly was not as popular. But the theory from Lane that this was sort of that constipation was also like a modern disease or what he would he would call like an urban disease and industrial disease. It is a disease of cities.

It is also what a lot of these writers of this time would have talked about as like a disease of the civilized person. Just to I mean, I am, for example, liking LaCroix. Same, same idea, right? It is a disease that only plagues the city folk. Yeah. They were, well, I mean, if you read the writings, you're going to see really horrible, as no centric, things said about other cultures. That might mean my passing reference to a croix seem insensitive in hindsight. Well, no. I mean, I, that is maybe the way you use the word civilized. Okay. These gentlemen from the 1920s were not being so kind. Okay, I got you.

So, I mean, and it's very much to their mind, like the result of civilization is this bad eating habit and if we return to a more, what they would call primitive state. I'm not making that by the way, when you're gonna like a, like an office of a company at like a city, you open the fridge, it's just all a croit.

It's like, wow, you guys really like this stuff? I don't get it. I don't know, I don't like La Croix. I mean, that's fine if you do. I have no problem with La Croix. I'm here. Go for it. I'm a diet doctor pepper fan. I like a claw, I don't know.

Do you think I would like La Croix now more now that I've had to meet Clause? I don't know, because it's just, then they take the alcohol out. Yeah, that's true. I think they're less sweet, but maybe I've attuned my taste buds to Le Croix. I tried it one time and just went, now.

No, I'm good at it. No, I mean, I just, it's water for me, and then my diet doctor pepper that I treat myself to. I'm good. I don't need new drinks at this point in my life. Yeah, we'll fall up on new drinks. I'm very old. I don't need new drinks at this point. I'm very old. I don't need new drinks. No, thank you. All right. Sorry. I got an awful lot of protein.

So anyway, as I was saying, there was this argument that there are parts of the human population where they're eating better. And so they're not getting all these diseases because where they're eating better. And so they're not getting all these diseases because they eat better. And the way we know is constipation. Okay. The wider your bread, the sooner you're dead. He's so yeah. So more whole grains less refined carbohydrates. This observation was built on from another British physician, Sir Robert Mcarrison, who had noticed specifically the difference in diets in people in northern India who ate a lot of grains, and he noticed that they had lower rates of like colon cancer and ulcers and appendicitis and things like that. So again, we're tying

this diet to specific diseases that were developing this theory. It's interesting that as early as the 1920s, we were like, white, red guys, I don't know. I don't think that we need to be doing it. Does that predate sliced bread? No, they probably had sliced bread at that point. But that's wild that already that early were like, this seems off. We shouldn't, I don't think this is right. It is interesting when you think about it feels like such a modern idea.

Yeah. I mean, I guess in the grand scope of medical history, it's modern, but not in the sense of our lifetime. So his work also inspired British naval surgeon. We have all these guys who kind of come to the same conclusions around the same time and they're building off the same work, but then they'll argue like, I didn't know that other guy was doing it. It was my idea. So there's brittle British naval surgeon T. L. Cleve who came up with what was called the saccharin disease theory.

You can download, by the way, the entire like PDF of the saccharin disease, like his whole book, his whole treatise on it. Wait, for free? I did. I read some of it. I didn't read the entire thing. You're so full of pleasure. You're so full of pleasure. You can't just say that. You're so full of it. I didn't read the entire thing full of the pleasure. You're a real sad. You can't just say that. You

want to let us know where you can get it. It's you set up a file sharing thing or something. So you don't think no. The fashion disease conditions caused by the taking of refined carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour by Tio cleave. I wish you guys seen it. She just closed your eyes and did it for memory. She loves this document, so I watched. So he published this in 1974.

And like I said, you can find it all. But the idea was that the consumption of refined carbohydrates, like white flour and sugar, were causing issues in many parts of the body. And you were having many negative health effects. And that, again, this is based on like observations of differences in diets from different parts of the world. So physicians who for some reason had traveled

to different parts of the world, lived there, saw the way people, you know, took care of them so knew what kind of diagnoses they had, and then built this theory. All of this went on to inspire. And this is probably the physician that is most responsible for our current ideas is Dr. Dennis Berket.

Now, I had heard of Dr. Berket in medical school because there's kind of lymphoma called Berket's lymphoma. I'm sorry. I saw the name, yeah same guy. So he was the first one to diagnose that and therefore have it bear his name. But what Dr. Berketett also talked about again, was fiber and health.

So he was originally from Ireland. He was stationed in parts of Africa during World War II, and because of his experiences, he decided to settle in Uganda. So he lived in Uganda for quite a while, obviously being a doctor, taking care of people, and we can assume eating. Right, because you know, you got to.

And he eventually moved to England and began talking about the differences, again, that he observed between Western and these Ugandan diets and the diseases that he would diagnose in these different populations. And he echoed the same thing that all of these other physicians had sort of been talking about and writing about and publishing about, which is that there's more fiber in Ugandan diets than the diets of people, you know, where he was from in Ireland and when he went back to England. And he thought it was responsible for the lower rates of various gastrointestinal issues, things like colon cancer.

Now, you know, it's interesting. I'm sorry to get up on another tangent. I was just thinking about it. I've heard this same line of reasoning applied to a lot of different. There should be a name, like in this case, it may be on the money, but there should be a name for the fallacy of

like this culture lives longer, so it must be this thing. Because I've heard like, I remember listening to something when I was a kid, it was like a some tape about colloidal minerals that I got for free because I was in this phase where I would try to get as much free stuff online as I could. I got this tape about colloidal minerals. There was this guy talking about this village that lives like downstream from rock salt or something and there's like minerals in their water and they live

rock salt or something and there's like minerals in their water and they live Bajillion years or whatever and he's using that as justification like when there's You know a thousand different Shar you know to mean that like differentiate our culture from their culture could be a bajillion different things But like that is used as like justification for like this is this is a good stuff It's hard to because I know it works out sometimes for sure. Well, well, I mean, yeah, it can work out, but like what we recognize now is that to compare completely different like populations,

two different parts of the world, two different like food, sort of traditions, two different like, their entire lifestyle, especially if we're talking about like urban, verse, rural, or like, what sort of jobs do people do? How active are they? What are they? I mean, the genetics, then, that's a whole other thing. We know that there are a lot of things you're at higher risk for just baked in your genes and it has nothing to do with what you ate.

And all of that, we understand now. It makes it so much more complex. And so something like this is very seductive. Right. Right. Because, oh, if I just ate more fiber, we just had that one thing when, you know, a lot of this stuff is a lot more complex. So he wrote the book, don't forget fiber in your diet. And that became an international bestseller. And it's probably, like, this was, this is in the 70s is where we're up to now. And the 70s is where you really see this push, right? That's when people start going, oh, maybe we should all eat whole grains. Oh, and alongside him, I should mention a researcher, Hugh Trow, who went on to like define

what we think of as dietary fiber. What are what is that? Okay. He was the one who wrote it all down and figured it out. Now as this evolution was happening, so you see all of these doctors and scientists, a lot of them British, but it's drifting across the Atlantic so that Americans are paying attention to. You see them like talking about fiber, talking about bad refined carbs, all this stuff, more fiber in your diet,

and people who sell things catch on to this. So one of the first people to catch on to this was actually Kellogg, who started selling a brand cereal for constipation way back in the 20s, right? And you saw food products, especially cereals, like there were lots of cereals that were marketed for that. Yeah, with whole grain. For there. And I mean, the understanding is that this will help with your constipation, right? Even if it wasn't being, now Kellogg would have said it, because, you know, he was nasty,

but he's a bad guy. He's a bad guy. He's a really bad guy. He's a really bad guy. And many other cereal and bread producers followed suit. And in the 20s and 30s, you also have this time where like, laxatives were really popular. He's not the Kellogg from Kellogg's, by the way.

It's important to always draw this distinction. The Kellogg from Kellogg's is his brother. Yes. The real, the real. But they did like come up with cereals. Like some of the cereals. Yes, but I don't think we're faulting Kellogg for the cereals he came in.

I'm just saying that like, I don't want you to get killed. We did a whole, if you haven't listened to it, we did a whole episode on the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Probably a chapter in the book. There's a chapter in the book about it. And I mean, there's lots, he was famously a bad dude. Just a bad dude. Yeah, this is not a sub-un. This is an easier one, right?

This isn't like real. We have accepted that the things he did at the Battle Creek Sanitarium were not. OK. So in the 20s and 30s, there were lots of laxatives being sold, too. There was a big push on like, oh, everybody needs to poop more.

So you see this sort of like, there's interest in laxatives. There's interest in fiber. All of that resulted in all the way back in 1934. We have the introduction of psyllium as a possible treatment for constipation in the form of metamusil. That's how old metamusil is. That's how old one. 1934. And like I said, psyllium had a long history of being used for medicinal purposes, especially in Ayurvedic medicine Now when it was first introduced to the public in 1934, it was what was called a behind-the-counter brand. So it was not something What's having?

Like it was it was you'd have to ask for it I ask for it. I'll take that point of graphic magazine and it wasn't and the point. Even if it wasn't like he's an old man. Obviously, I've already said like people were talking about laxatives. People were talking about going to the bathroom. No, I mean, I would say people probably male people could talk about that. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, like this was not the thing, I would think in the 20s and 30s as a woman, you would want to discuss it openly,

would be my assumption, I don't know. But also it just wasn't heavily marketed. My point is like it's back there, you know it's back there, you can ask for it, but it's not out on the shelves where people are gonna be buying it in droves, right? So like it exists, but it's not a huge product, and there's not a huge push behind it. The company that had it at the time was not making a giant effort to push it out to the public.

Okay. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha You don't need a dragon ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you hate talking about this. So much. I'm getting better at it. The name that a mussel, do you want to know where it comes from? Oh, absolutely. Then the meta part is from the Greek for change. Meta change.

Right. The mussel is just a reference to musilage. Oh, okay. The stuff that makes it work. Okay. The musilage, which it's interesting that it's become as popular. It's what? No, part of its name is derived from the, I mean, let's all agree, kind of grody word,

musilage. Yeah. And then met it is weird that they got to that one. They're like, this sounds good. People will be able to do it. What this running is. Um, so fiber con. There, there you go. Fiber for constipation fiber con. So metamus already says like a robot that keeps here regular people are interested in pooping. Yeah. Fiber is on the grow. Everybody's excited about it. right? Yeah. And so now we're in the 70s and they start marketing Meta Muso a little more.

They start pushing it a little more because they're like, well, okay, people seem to like fiber now. Right. Silly him. This is great. This is a good moment for us. And then really when things took off was in 1985 when Proctor and Gamble bought Meta Muso. And they were like, we've got to get this stuff out there. And they came up with the not all fibers created equally line and all the TV commercials about Meta Musil. And probably because of Procter and Gamble, I mean 1985, we're alive by now. Now we're at the point we're sitting in Justin or both.

And our concept growing up of metamusel being this thing that all old people took, that's where it comes from. So where are we with all that now? So now like metamusel's everywhere, there's lots of different kinds of flavors. And it's usually like there's a powder you can dissolve and something. The classic is like an orange powder that dissolves in drinks.

Although they do have capsules too. The capsules are like honestly, that probably more popular is the unflavered at this point, which makes it into one. You can put it in anything. Yeah. And you really can't detect, I mean, like I don't think it makes a little finger.

The main thing is make sure you're checking your proportions and that you put the appropriate, that it's dissolved in the appropriate amount of liquid. Oh yeah. Because that is one of the, I'm gonna talk about like the risks. One of the, I would say less common problems would be if you tried to just like swallow it.

Mm-hmm. Or if you just put it in like a teeny bit of water and threw it back, that can be really dangerous because as I have said, its purpose is to absorb water and expand. Right. You don't want it doing that in your esophagus. Right, that would be bad.

Right. It's right there on the can. You just look at it. It's just follow the directions. Studies do support that Cylium helps your cholesterol. Oh, really? Yeah. It binds it in the body. like it binds a lot of things. So it absorbs stuff, it binds stuff. So it can lower your, what we call, quote unquote, bad cholesterol, typically your LDL. So it's mainly effective in people

who actually have elevated cholesterol, like the studies for if someone's cholesterol is already okay, the idea that it would lower it further or keep it low. I can't really necessarily say, but it does have an effect on people who have mild to moderate elevations in their LDL. It can lower that to an extent. The long-term effects aren't like, we don't know exactly what that means. Like, you've got to play that out for years, years, and years, and years and do big studies to say, so does that decrease your risk of a heart attack or stroke, right? Right. You would assume that that's true, that if you lower cholesterol,

but it may not be enough to move the needle. So, yeah, so you can't assume one from the other, but so it does lower cholesterol. We know that as a soluble fiber, it's going to increase your bowel movements. Any soluble fiber will. If your constipation is being caused by a lack of fiber, adding fiber or a fiber supplement like Cillium would help, right? Right. And it will increase your BMS. If it's not caused, if it's not caused by a lack of fiber though, it's hard to say that it actually will fix the problem.

There have been studies that even suggested adding more fiber to your diet if your problem isn't a lack of fiber may actually backfire and cause more constipation. Now, that being said, that's usually, silly, I'm usually not the problem, we're usually talking about insoluble fiber at that point, because you can imagine since insoluble fiber doesn't absorb water, it just kind of sits in there as a big bulk thing that scrapes out the colon. If you're already constipated and the issue isn't fiber and you put more insoluble fiber in there, you can cause more problems.

And the other thing about psyllium, so it is soluble, you're not going to have that problem, it also doesn't ferment and that can be an issue. It's a good thing in a bath, it's like a double-edged sword. So, Sillium is probably the least risky of all these fiber supplements, you know, in that sense. Like if you're not sure what the problem is and you're just sort of taking a swing and trying to fix your constipation, Sillium is probably one of the least risky things

you could do for sure. It's generally safe. It can cause flatulence, bloating, pain, in some people. And again, it won't necessarily relieve constipation if that isn't your problem, although it does increase the frequency of bowel movements, like pretty reliably. But that doesn't necessarily mean it'll get rid of like gas or bloating or pain or that kind of thing. But it can. And the only risk, I would say, it can bind certain medications as well. So if you're on medications like prescription meds, I would really talk to your provider

before you, you know, because I mean, this is probably not going to be an issue for most people unless you're're taking it all together. But some people might, for simplicity, take their metamusel and take all their meds, and it could bind those meds and then decrease the levels of them in your body as a result. As a supplement, it is something, and I advise this with any supplement. It's hard to say that there are any that are no risk. And so even one that is pretty low risk, it's still worth a chat with your provider to say like, hey, I take medicines xyz, is it still okay if I take metamusule? That's never a bad idea.

Rare patients, like I said, do get more constipation, although Cylium is least likely to cause it. And if you have some sort of medical cause for constipation, something like irritable bowel syndrome or something, again, I would talk to somebody. Fire truck up there. Fire truck happens. I mean, it happens. And fiber might help with. So other things that fiber has been studied in, in some cases, psyllium specifically are things like type 2 diabetes and heart disease and colon cancer. And the evidence keeps going back and forth, like specifically colon cancer, a new meta

analysis that tells us whether or not fiber can prevent colon cancer comes out like every other year, I feel like, and says something slightly different. Obviously, fiber is good for you for a variety of reasons. And so I would endorse eating plenty of fiber. I cannot tell you right now that definitively eating fiber is going to keep you from getting colon can. It might, it might reduce your risk of colon cancer. But it might not.

But it does, it does all these other things. So fiber's good. The recommendations for fiber are 38 grams a day and 25 for men and for women, unless you're over 50 and then it drops to 30 and 21. You just don't need as much fiber, which I guess maybe that's why everybody thinks they should take met a musul. I will say this and Hank is right about this. Generally speaking, Americans don't need enough fiber. We don't.

We don't hit those markers. So the idea that you'll need a fiber supplement is not a wild suggestion because you're statistically, if you're listening, you're probably not eating enough fiber. Just in you and I are probably not eating enough fiber. Yeah, I'll do better. But a lot of people would point out the best way to get anything that comes from food is to eat the food.

Assuming you can and you don't have some sort of, you know, dietary restrictions, medical restrictions. It's good to just eat, you get all the other good stuff from the food, not just the fiber, whereas with the supplement, you just get the fiber. Right. So I don't know, I mean, the assertion should everyone take metamusel. I am, and you probably know this, if you listen to the show, I am of the opinion that there's not anything

like supplement-wise, medicinal-wise, that everyone should take. Water. Well, I mean, that's not a supplement. No, water and air, and food. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to like actual like medicinal things, or supplemental things, or vitamins, or things like that, I am, it would be hard for me to come up with anything

that I think everyone should take. And I think there's a little bit of hyperbole play here. I also think. I do think that the reminder that fiber is important and that you should be eating plenty of it and that if you're not considering a fiber supplement and if you're going to consider a fiber supplement, psyllium is probably a really good way to go.

And there are other things, by the way, I'm also not a brand ambassador for Metamusel. There are lots of other ways you can get Silium. There are other fiber supplements that are just Silium. Yeah, I mean, you don't have to take that brand. There are other brands of Silium out there. You can just look on the container and see what it has. But it's like with anything,

I would say that if you're considering adding something to your daily regimen That's a product like that I Would I would talk to your to your provider if you have any other you would like it if a patient of yours is like Hey, I'm sorry to bother you on the phone because you gave me your personal home number But like I'm thinking about taking a minute of use every day. Where are you? I would that I think I think that if you have,

you wouldn't be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good, good, good. I think that if you have no underlying chronic medical conditions and you're on no other medications, this would be a very low risk thing to try. I think that if those other statements apply to you, it's always important to check to make sure there aren't interactions with the other things you're doing, because if things are going well, and especially if you are quote-unquote having good poops

Before you throw something else in the mix You know, yeah, that's true and sometimes constipation is caused by other conditions that we can diagnose and treat in other ways That's the other thing like just as an example people with hypothyroidism thing. Like, just as an example, people with hypothyroidism often have constipation. And if they go and get tested and diagnosed with hypothyroidism and treated for hypothyroidism, that is very important for a variety of other symptoms they may be having. And so don't just take Cilium, you know, go, go get diagnosed. This is not me saying, see, we've gone down this whole rabbit hole. This is not me saying that everybody with constipation has some sort of medical condition. Should I step in and some

boy to your shoulders can't kind of let you go and just keep taking it. I'm just saying I think it's important if you're ever worried to ask somebody in the healthcare profession before you add something new to your healthcare regimen. Right. So. Is that fair? To your dentist, anybody in the healthcare center? No, stop! No, stop! What's up with fiber doc?

Come on, Dr. Woodruff, what's up? It's always good to eat fiber and drink water and get plenty of sleep. All right, so hang in there. Closing, Hank was right. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Thanks to the taxpayers for using the song Medicines is the intro and outro of our podcast. Thanks to the taxpayers for using the song medicines is the intro and outro. Our program we have a book. It's anywhere fine books are sold. It's called the Solbenz book. City sibling tailored to the illustrations and we did the words.

We did the words. We did the words. I do the rock. If you heard that, the Tim Curry's like one pop hit. I do the rock as well. Anyway,, Tim Curry's like one pop hit. I do the rock as well. Anyway, that is gonna do it for us. Oh, thanks to MaxFundatwork for having us to part of their extended podcasting family. Thanks to you. For listening, that's gonna do it for us.

Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Orc. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned? Audience-supported.