Health
Halloween Scaries
In this final episode of the Medgeek's podcast, Dr. Niket Sonpal reflects on the journey of the show while sharing eerie medical facts related to Halloween. From historical beauty trends that tur...
Halloween Scaries
Health •
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Interactive Transcript
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Now if you haven't watched any Marvel movies, you're gonna get a couple of spoilers,
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but by this point you kind of deserve them if you haven't seen it.
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When Tony Stark, after having a fight with Thanos up in space, was lost forever,
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he said, part of the journey is the end. And on today's podcast, that statement rings very
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true. This episode that you're listening to is the 151st episode of the Medgeek's podcast
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after I took over as the host. But as Tony said, all good things must come to an end,
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and so must the show. As a company, we are taking a new approach with brand new projects,
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excellent ideas, and a whole new host of great things for you. But with that comes the conclusion
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of this podcast. Now last week was the 150th episode, but in the culture I'm from from India,
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we don't celebrate on things that end with zeros. We celebrate with a one. So join me for this
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concluding episode of the Medgeek's podcast. I'm Dr. Niket Sondpal, your friend-in-nabred
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internist, gastroenterologist, and podcast host. It has been my pleasure, so let's kick it off
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with some scary Halloween medical facts.
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Jane Austen in Pride and Precious said that vanity is a weakness indeed, and it is very often
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nothing but our own vanity that deceives us, but vanity in pride are different things,
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though the words are used synonymous. And vanity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century,
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led a lot of people to do some very, very dangerous things with some very, very dangerous chemicals.
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The first such example was back in the Renaissance period of women would use Beladonna
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eyedrops to achieve a dilated eye to enhance their beauty. Now Beladonna doesn't sound like a bad
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thing in Italian, it means beautiful women, but it came at a cost. And now there's actually
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even famous paintings of it. There's a famous painting called Woman with a Mirror who depicts a
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woman who used Beladonna to enhance the beauty of her eyes. But we have to remember that Beladonna
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is derived from deadly nightshade and an herbal poison. The entire plant is very, very dangerous,
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and the overdose is only about 600 milligrams. Yes, they may have thought their eyes look beautiful,
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but they were immediately blurry and they couldn't focus on objects. Now that would wear off,
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but there was a prolonged damage to vision with distortion and even blindness. It also carried
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the risk of increasing the heart rate, and of course, it was basically poison. To give you an
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idea of how strong it is, one drop of atropine is really necessary with about 130,000 parts of
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water to dilate the pupils. So you can see that Beladonna was pretty dangerous, but again, vanity.
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Now if that wasn't bad enough in the 16th and 17th centuries, having a pale complexion
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was considered desirable, especially amongst the English nobility. People, including men and women,
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would use makeup using white lead painting to lighten their skin. This caused serious damage,
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but the lead was also absorbed and led to all kinds of complications of lead poisoning,
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including lead abdominal pains, and of course, growth, retardation, and himalosis. Now sometimes
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vanity comes at the cost from some behaviors. The tutor dynasty, Henry VIII, and of course,
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a great historical story, and Recavel was in that entire TV show as well, had some weird stuff.
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You realize that at that time there was no penicillin, and a lot of them suffered from syphilis,
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and it's because of this. They actually had to wear wooden and metal noses, because of the fact
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that their noses fell clean off due to widespread syphilitic infections. The condition now is known
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as saddle-nose, and it's associated with trauma, syphilis, and of course breakdown along with
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cocaine abuse and even leprosy. Now what's worse than this case of vanity and Halloween
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scaries? The fact that they would actually use mercury to try and treat the syphilis.
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You know what else they use mercury for? Well, let's talk about it. In the 16th and 17th century,
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in Victorian beauty trends didn't have a Sephora that you could walk right into and pick up
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the new Pat McGrap or Fenty-P styling pencils. Yes, I know some things. They had nothing,
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and all these trends were as bad as these TikTok trends you see now. You can see that history
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repeats itself. One of them was to go ahead and use mercury. They would use mercury for all kinds
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of skin ailments, and for those of you who are working in dermatology, you must be horrified.
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One of the places they used it for were for freckles and blemishes. You see freckles were considered
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undesirable, and so they would use this highly toxic mercury to see if the skin damage caused by it
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could get rid of the actual blemishes and of course the freckles. What it ended up doing was
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causing long-term neurologic and if by chance inhaled, lung issues as well. But hey, don't get me
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wrong, I'm not just dogging on the Victorian era. In the early 1900s, tampons were actually
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soaked in opium and belladonna to relieve pain and relax the vaginal vault. Unfortunately, opium
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dosing wasn't quite well known then, and you did have some mortalities due to it. Now it wasn't
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just health trends back in the day that's scary. What if I told you those cute little caterpillars
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you see could cause a heart attack? It actually almost happened to a very famous actor, Jamie Dornan.
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You know him, he acted in 50 shades of gray, well he came in contact with a toxic hairy caterpillar
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and almost gave himself 50 shades of morbidity. He ended up getting sick from this. It turns out he
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was in Portugal, came into contact with one of these different types of caterpillars, and yes,
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it can turn into a butterfly, but until then it was hanging out on golf courses and giving people's
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dogs heart attack and men in their 40s and 50s also cardiac arrhythmias. It turns out they have
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these tiny hairs that have toxic proteins that can trigger things like itching, rashes,
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eye irritation, sore throats, and even difficulty breathing. Turns out he must have come in contact
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with one of these caterpillars and very lucky that he came out alive, so I'm happy for him,
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but the only unfortunate thing is they made three of those movies. That's the real tragedy in
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the story. Now our last scary thing brings us to current day. It turns out there are some fish
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that'll eat your dead skin cells, and a lot of people when they go on holiday to places like
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Thailand will have these starved garupha fish try to eat the dead skin cells off their feet
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and get a nice little pedicure. But you have to be careful, there are many times when open wounds
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and lesions can lead to actual skin cells being eaten off, but bacteria coming in. And for many,
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that bacteria can be something known as chihuonella. It's a facultative anaerobic gram negative rod,
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and for a young 29 year old female recently she lost several toes to amputation because this bug
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got in and started causing all kinds of problems. But don't think that it could just be this rare bug.
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We can also get strep and different forms of micro bacterium as well, which could add even more risk
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to this little simple experiment. And what's worse, some of these fly-by-night salesmen who set up
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these stalls free to get your feet niggled and tibbled and nibbled can actually use a fish called
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the chin-chin fish, and this will actually bite and draw blood and cause even more infections.
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So the rule of thumb here, just wash your feet yourself and cut your own nails.
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And with that ladies and gentlemen brings us to the end of some very scary things for this Halloween
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episode and our 151st episode. Now we've talked about a lot of other scary things including
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Chipotle and of course all the food recalls at Trader Joe's, but like I said earlier,
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it has been my utmost pleasure to be hosting your podcast series for the last three years and
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151 episodes. It has been truly the best part of my week and I hope that all of you have learned
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a great deal and that we've gotten to know each other through some medical knowledge. I wish you
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the best in all of your endeavors and remember, you'll be able to get more of me and all of my
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quirky little facts, always at Medgeeks, wishing you all well. I'm Dr. Niket Sonpal, your friendly
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neighborhood internist, gastroenterologist and very faithful podcast host, signing off for the last time.