Hulking Out With Hysterical Strength

and I popped it open like that. Is that what you're talking about? More or less? You know, Holking out like tends to of course imply a you've got the Incredible Hulk Bruce Bruce Banner due to get my shirt tour and everything. Yeah, Twin Green, did you okay? Was that after you ate the sauce? This wine? It was so easy to open it expired? But of course the incredible Hulk comic character, due to radiation, he gets angry.

He muta into this genormous green muscle man who just goes on a rampage in destroy right, and he's usually angry or stressed. I mean, he's he's an agitated state, right right, And then of course there's Huole Cogan who also hulks out. Are you familiar with this? Yes I am, Yes, So you've seen a Whole Cogan match? I have, yeah, how on the TV and I turned it on once and I admired his his wonderful mustache and how could I not sit there and be riveted by his blonde

sheen of hair. Well, the man was a consinate performer, it's true. But he would do this thing where he would get beat down at last by the bad guy, by the enemy, by the heel, and then he starts hulking out. He's he starts getting up like he's he's shakes his arms, there's a lot of shaking of the body. But but what is implied is that he has been beaten down to the point where the rage is building

and he's hulking out his superhuman strength is kicking. Yeah. Yeah, And that's what we're talking about, what not Whole Cogan, of course, but we're talking or like I don't know, a hundred pound moms who are lifting pound cars off

of their kid who's pinned underneath. Yes, that's the yeah, yeah, I think we've seen this motif pop up in any number things where it's the idea that the average person, you don't have to be Hulk Cogan or Bruce Banner, but the average person can somehow tap into the strength and and suddenly someone in human strength to save somebody

or to get out of some sort of um bad situation. Yeah, And it's it's an intriguing idea because I know we've talked about this idea before about how we only use tempercent of our brain, which we know is a myth, right, but it's sort of similar like, oh, well, we only use perhaps of our muscle fibers, and that there's a super human strength available to us. And that's sort of right. Yeah, I mean, under the right circumstances, this could be a

a possible condition. Now, of course, medical science doesn't actually recognize something called hysterical strength, which is what we're talking right, because for I mean, for one thing, how do you study it? Um? Yeah? Do you you'd be like, all right, we need um, you know, eighteen moms and their beloved children to participate in the study. Um. Just warning, fair warning, we may have to stick your toddler under a buick you know, fall down on the kid um, you will

sign right here, right, it's not gonna fly. And in most studies so it's difficult to to to study. But we do know some I mean, we've know a lot about how the human body works, so we are able to to say, yeah, some version of this exists, and adrenaline is the key player, right, and we again, this has been observed over and over again, and and you know, we've got anecdotal evidence of it. I've got a few here.

Two Lawrence Pille, Georgia. Right around the corner. Right around the corner, Angela Cavallo lifted a Chevrolet and Paula from her son Tony after it fell off the jacks that it held it up while he worked underneath the car. She lifted the car high enough and long enough for two neighbors to replace the jacks uh and pull Tony from beneath the car, but she didn't actually hold it up long enough for them to finish working on it. Yeah,

here's another. In two thousand six Tuson, Arizona, Tim Boyle watched as a Chevrolet Camaro hit an eighteen year old by the name of Kyle. The car pinned tile to the ground. He's still alive right underneath it. So Boyle runs out to the scene of the accident and lifts the car up while the driver of the car pull and pulled the kid to safety. So again a situation where cars pinning somebody. Somebody sees it happen, runs out, hulks out, Yeah, you don't have to be a mom.

You can be a concerned citizen, which which I kind of like because you know, we recently did the podcast about how people behave in crowds, and so I feel like this is a nice little panacea too, like, well, okay, people can be jerks sometimes, but they can also be um terribly great. And there are some there are also some phenomenal videos of of multiple people coming to the ascue of of individuals that are trapped in or under vehicles. There's one recent one who that was, you know, a

huge success on YouTube. Whar It's like an entire town coming out to help. So it's pinned um and and that also was a nice counterweight to the crowd apathy we were talking about before. UM. But let's talk about why this could happen. What you know, again, medical science doesn't necessarily recognize it that we don't we can't really study it, but we know in theory that it's very

possible and adrenaline has a lot to do with it. Yeah. Basically, I have one thing you have to do is just think about, like the last time you were afraid or stressed, and think about how your body felt, all right, because generally what we're talking about here is adrenaline's effect on the body all part of the flight or light situation where there's some sort of danger, so you need to be able to run towards it and run away from it, run away from it, and adrenaline put your body through

a number of changes to facilitate either of those, because you're gonna want to run fast or you're gonna you're gonna want to be able to hit heart. Yeah, and let's talk about the nuts and bolts about this, okay. Um. Basically, you've got stressors engaging the hypothalamus. There is the region of the brain that's responsible for maintaining the balance between stress and relaxation. Right, it's the homeostasis part. Right, keeps

everything nice and calm unless it needs to to hook out. Um. And that is so when you are hooking out, that that hypothalamus then says to your adrenal glands, hey, you need to go ahead and tell the sympathetic nervous system that you've just hit defcon for you know, and adonlin and nora adrenaline are then released and they just completely

flood your body. So the heart rate rises, increasing, respiration dilation with the pupils, digestion slows down, and then the most important part, it allows your muscles to contract more than normal. This is if we could, you know, underline with our voices, this is the most important part that muscles contracting. Right, Yeah, I think of it. It's kind of like the government of your nervous system is temporarily

giving increased power to the muscles. It's it's like putting your body under martial law and saying, all right, armed forces of the muscles. Normally you don't have this much power. But but since we're in a pretty dire situation, I'm temporarily authorizing you the use of additional force, which I am I'm hoping you will use to run away from the enemy or leg drop it. Right, We're taking resources away from digestion and give them to you muscle fibers.

The lucky ducks. Um. So yeah, they adrenal and just completely acts on the muscles. It allows them to contract more. And then when the body is in a calm um allowing them to contract more than if the body is in a calm or neutral state. And um, it allows for blood to flow more easily to your muscles and more oxygen is carried to your muscles. So that results in a muscle activation at a much higher level. And you're also converting gluck again uh into glucose, which gives

muscles a sudden burst of energy. And again, this is what is happening when you're lifting a really heavy object, or you're running for your life or uh, you're running to something or if if I hope this is an up and you're electrocuted. Yeah, now this this is really mind blowing. Here is an example of how we we think this works with with the hulking out. You could in theory hulk out if if a live wire, we're struck,

we're stuck to your body. Or he was struck by lightning, which explains why whole Cogan when he's walking out does kind of look like he's being shocked by He does kind of look like tesla like undergoing the currents. Yes, I mean, anyone who's ever touched a live electrical connection on on accident, of course, knows that it's quite possible to be blown clear across the room. And I cannot stress how little we want you to try this at home. Do not touch a live wire just to experience muscle.

And we'll talk about why you would never want to do that in a moment um because sometimes, I mean, the best case scenarios that you get blown across the room, right to survive that. And the reason that you're blown across the room isn't because the electrical current pushed you.

The force is actually coming from your own muscles. Yeah, and that's that's just crazy to think about, because we've seen this is one of those things that like hulking out just shows up again and again and TV shows, movies and and it's and it's generally um, you know, done with like they do the effect by attaching a wire to somebody's back and jerking them back, and so it creates this uh, this this idea that that the blast of the shock or something, you know, it's like

thrown away from an explosion or something. But it's really a situation where your your limbs just suddenly just spasm out with this strength, and you it's kind of like a cat being startled and leaping off its feet step instead of just going up into the air, you're across the room and through the coffee table. And think of it this way too. It's it's the same extreme stress right like your body is just getting it instantaneously, just like it would in another instance. But you know, you

just don't normally put the two together. Electrical current and child trapped under car. It's the same. Your body as undergoing the same response. And this is from a New Scientist article. It says the electric current typically flows into one arm, through the abdomen, and out one or both legs, which can cause mos to the muscles and the body

to contract at once. The results are unpredictable, but given the strength of the leg and buck muscles um this can often send the victims flying across the room with no voluntary action on their part. Combined with the unexpected shock of an electrocution, this feels as if you are flung rather than flinging yourself. Wow. Now imagine that we could manipulate this, and we took all our nb NBA players and I had like some sort of electrical device and planet so that at just the right time when

they're about to go put a layoup. I don't know, I'll go up, you know, when they're about to score a basketball goal on the basketball hole. Um they they yeah, the fish net on the circle. Yeah. So so like you know, the basketball player will hit a button on his wrist and then wham, he starts flying through the

air and just massive slam dunk. I'm just saying that maybe we'll get there with science, yeah, yeah, or we could harness the power of lightning, yes, and just make them play into Yeah, so you just able to have random bursts of incredible strength throughout. Can you imagine Michael Jordan's like lightning, like just flying through the air and dunking. Yeah. I mean I'm not a big basketball person, but that is exciting. Yeah, although I wouldn't want any harm to

come to them. More lightning and super strength in my team's sports place. Yes, then I'll watch. So. Yeah, being thrown across the room can save your life, you know, by breaking the electrical contact that you are holding onto. Right, So this is actually a good thing. But there are other cases, particularly where the source of the current is something that the person is holding. The victims arms and hand muscles may actually lock onto it. Yeah, and this

is where it gets deadly. They're unable to let go, and if nobody intervenes, or nothing else intervenes, then they could die through heart up fibrillation or electrocution. Yeah, this is where we get the whole idea of life. If somebody's being shocked, you're supposed to hit them away from it with a broom handle or something. I've never heard that, but it's good to know. Yeah, I don't know. I

can't remember the origin of that. Maybe it's a story from like my family's history, like somebody who's being shocked and somebody had to hit sixty four. And yeah, sometimes it's an individual shocked and they don't fly away. They're stuck there is getting more and more electrocuted, more and more a power coursing through their body, and the only way to get them off is to knock them away

with something that is not going to conduct electricity. Yeah, because again remember that this is a massive skeletal muscle contraction, and yeah, they're they're not going to be able to you know, let go of this themselves. So that's good to know in case I'll always have a broom nearby in my house. Well that's because of you're a witch. Yeah, more than that in a future episode. Yeah yeah, I mean Halloween's coming up. We can talk about that more later.

Um that, I did want to mention that that I'm sure a lot of people have. You know, everybody actually has had some sort of um dalliance with adrenaline, right, I mean, whether it's you know that you picked up a thirty pound car, or you just felt fearful, you've something in the middle of the night and you know, you just your your body is just flooded with energy, or even something like an EpiPen for people who have allergies, you know what I'm talking about, or albuter all the inhaler.

It's like you get that feeling like you just run a marathon. Also, if you ever go to Thailand, a tie red bull kind of feels like this. Yeah, it's like it's different than normal. I don't know the exactly people, because it's like back in the day when Coca Cola actually contained cocaine, that this red bull, this tie red bull has some sort of like crystalline. I wouldn't. I don't know if it actually contains um, you know, anything nefarious,

but it is. It's like sweeter tasting, definitely like blows you up in terms of energy. And it also comes in like a little bottle that looks kind of like a medicine bottle. Wow, this is just getting atter. And and it's red Bull. Yeah, it's red Bull. It's branded red Bull, or at least the bottle I I purchased from a street vendor had red Bull on the side of it. So now I know what you did. The

our time you're in Thailand. I only had the one, but ever since I've kind of every now and then I'll be like, I could order some thy red Bull online. That's somebody's got to be sold it on eBay. But if you've ever been if anyone listening to this has ever been to Thailand and and or lives in Thailand and uh and has access to Thai red Bull, I'm not asking you to send it to me, but do you send us I would be very curious to see

if everybody else has had the same same experience. It is actually a different, different kind of chemical things and just out of nowhere, like you know, months later thinking oh I should really get some of this online. Yeah, okay, I'm just here amazing because it's possibly I had an isolated incident where I'm just kind of like, oh wow, this is an amazing it's all in my head. But anyway,

I'm digressing away from our hulking here. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, right after this break, we are going to talk more about adrenaline and what it has to do with cherry Trees in Washington, d C. This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers

to life's questions. All right, now we're back, and before we get back, I do want to mention that the hulking out that is experienced by UM wrestlers like Hulk Hogan in the United States in in Japanese pro wrestling, Uh, they have a very similar thing where it's like the individual summons their fighting spirit and I think it's tied very much in with like you know, old Bushito code stuff,

but it's a very similar situation. Where the individual has been beaten down, he's taken damage, and suddenly he's able to tap into this warrior spirit and fight back. So I'm just throwing it up, Okay, Yeah, I mean, and I'm sure that whole Cogan was legitimately hulking out to right like it wasn't just a show. Well, the warrior spirit was shining for take it till you make it right. But speaking of of the Japanese um um, an individual of Japanese descent actually plays the crucial role in the

isolation of adrenaline. Yeah, Jochici Takamini. Uh, he's a Japanese chemist who was actually in the United States, and well I believe he was between Japan and the United States of the time that he was looking into this. He actually brought it to the market. As you say, he isolated adrenaline and this was the first hormone to be obtained in pure form and called quote the blood pressure raising principle of the super renal glands. You may know it as US patent. Yes, and we're talking one made

interested in that. But before then, George Oliver and Edward Shaeffer had discovered that when the secretions of adrenal plans were extracted and injected into an experimental animal that could raise blood pressure, and a lot of people took interest

from that. Uh Takamini actually visited their lab at Johns Hopkins and he was welcomed there and he was shown the full scientific cur courtesy of you know how they did it, um, and then he took that knowledge with him m back to his own lab and crystallize the hormone and then filed a patent. He was incredibly savvy, and he had studied patent law, and some people would accuse him of sort of taking that technology and and

and um being a bit of a scoundrel. But the fact of the matter is is that he actually was taking it to another level and he did have the smarts, the patent lost smarts. So how's it used? Back in the day? Physicians carried it in their bags, and it's said that Gene Tunney, the champion boxer, always kept some on hand when he went into the ring. Yeah, so you know, it wasn't just our our current day UH

sports stars trying to bulk themselves up or hold themselves up. Now, I also know there is there is an adrenaline concoction that's used when the you know, when when they're doing the whole cut me thing with the boxer, you know, and they're they're like touching up their face. There was something Oh yeah, yeah, I'm thinking Rocky right now, exactly what you're talking about. One of the things that they

smear on their faces. So like, is uh some is some sort of topical Yeah, topical thing to cut down on bleeding. Huh, but yeah, not the kind of makes that part of their face whole coat. Yeah yeah, but but I mean it's it's not not the kind of reaction we're talking about here. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. But the drug transformed surgery at that time, where it was

usually used to control hemorrhages you just pointed out. Um. It also found uses in cardiology and the treatment of asthma and other allergies, and of course it was the wonder drug touted to help everything, although it could not. But it was prescribed for conditions like deafness, um in Addison's disease, which it actually didn't do anything. In the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, some kids injected to stay awake so that Freddie doesn't get them. It seems like

that would just go terribly awry. Well I think it. Well it did. Yeah, that didn't really work out for everybody because now now you're you're all pumped up on adrenaline and Freddy's coming after you, so you're like, your heart's got to be bursting. Yeah, but the thing is he comes for your in your dreams. So it's like they're keeping from Yeah, but somehow, I'm gonna guess they still fell asleep even though they were pumped up with adrenaline. Right,

I haven't seen it, but that's how those kids go. Yeah. Yeah, it's just that's how the cookie crumbles. Um. So cherry Trees, Yeah, what does adrenaline have to do with cherry trees? Exactly? Tack Amine just he did great with this drug, right, He just got all sorts of riches and jewels from it, and he used the royalties from it to create diff like three new companies, and he got very interested in

Japanese American relations, right yeah. So, so as a token of goodwill from the Japanese people to the United States, cherry Trees. Yeah. First, Lady Helen Herron Taft was working to beautify the title basin around the Potomac River in Washington, d C. And he gave them two thousand cherry trees, so, which I thought was fascinating because you don't mean, you know of DC is you know cherry tree blossoms. That's when the finding things physical features of Washington, d C.

But but there you go. It's all has its ties back to adrenaline. Huh. Now, now do these trees hulk out? I don't know. I doubt it. I'm not going to hazard to guess. Yeah, alright, so we mentioned about before the hype of aalmus is the region of the brain that's responsible for maintaining the balance between stress and relaxation, between pulk Cogan and like the dude, between between being chill and being out of control. Um and of course you know, it's it's kind of like the yoga of

the brain. It's all about like maintaining that balance because in in the the you know, extremes are bad. You don't want to be chilled out all the time because you're going to forget to eat or you know, or something I don't know, You're just gonna you're not gonna get anything done or and if you're agitated all the time, Um,

you you may die. Well, we talked about this before, particularly with nightmares, right right, Um, when we talked about the ocean refugees who I think within like a four year span of eighteen of them had died in their sleep. They had sudden death. And the reason for this, we know are part of part of the reason is that they're under a great stress at that time they were they were escaping some just really brutal conditions in their

home country. And uh, and yes, so they're under a lot of stress, and a lot of stress, like we're saying, produces adrenaline, and this can have a rather detrimental effect on your health. That's right. Adrenaline is toxic in large amounts. It damages the visceral internal organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. And it's believed that, as you know, as we talked about, that almost all sudden deaths are caused

by damage to the heart. Um. There's almost no other organ that would fail so fast as to cause sudden death. Kidney failure, liver failure, those things don't kill you suddenly, right, Um. Adrenaline from the nervous system lands on receptors of cardiac misa sietes okay, and those are the heart muscle cells, and this causes calcium channels and the membranes of those

cells to open, making the heart muscles contract. And if it's a massive overwhelming storm of adrenaline, calcium keeps pouring into the cells and then your muscles just can't relax. This is why we go into cardiac arrest, right, So it's really interesting. Neurologist Martin A. Samuel says that it's not just fear that can cause us. According to him, any strong positive or negative emotions such as happiness or

sadness could also cause it. And he says there are people who have died in intercourse or in religious passion. And there's one case of a golfer who hit a hole in one turned to his partner and said, I can die now and then drop dead. I have to say that seems all dubious to me, but he said a study in Germany found an increase in sudden cardiac deaths on the days that the German soccer teams were

playing in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're they're getting the ideas that these individuals are kind of on the edge anyway through a really exciting soccer game at him and that's all she wrote. Boom right, So it's not just us fear sometimes it just you know, I guess it could be fair. I suppose if you're a fan and you're you're frightened that your team might not,

you know, pull through, and yeah, if you have. If there's someone in your life as a sports fan who has a delicate heart, try and get them to support teams that that pretty much consistently stuck because because is gonna be the less likelihood of their team killing them. Yeah, lower the bar they are for them, do my favor. But yeah, I mean, prolonged state of stress can lead to complications, and it doesn't you don't have to be

like a raving sports fan. It can just be that you have workplace stress, and you have it, uh for a long period of time. Your body is in constant go mode and it's misinterpreting what's a threat and what's not right false threats. As a result, your immune system suffers and your cortosol levels can shoot up. And as we know, cortosol levels are really important in regulating our sleep too. So if your levels are or nuts, at night, then you're probably not getting the kind of sleep you need.

So it's unfortunately, it's just kind of um, sort of the vortex fall fall into, right, a sleep vortex or no, an awakeness vortex. I think an anxiety vortex. I'll go with that. Yeah, yeah, So it's the moral of the story. The moral of the story is that adrenaline is a precious commodity that's really powerful. Uh, and your nervous system tries to use good judgment about win and how it

is used. That's right. Yeah, And that if you beat whole Cogan down enough, he is going to hulk out and probably to thee and don't make Bruce Fanner angry. I'll go with that. Yeah, you wouldn't like him, he's ancred. Um nice. But let's let's uh, let's go ahead and reach into the basket of listener mail. Here a few here to read. We continue to hear a lot from

listeners about our Misophonia and Pet Peeves podcast. You dealt with the sounds that drive people crazy, um, other little perks that annoy We've heard from a listener by the name of Hunter. Hunter says, I listened to your Mesophonia podcast and I wanted to tell you this. My misophonia is the sound of a wooden pencil writing on paper. I use the mechanical pencils due to this. I'm a big fan of the show and I would love it to have one of you great podcasters would email me

back smile, I face. Um, and you did email I did, You're back? Um? And am I correct? Unless you share this with Hunter, you you don't like the sound of a pencil on paper. Oh no, no, actually that Um. What I was saying to Hunter is that that we've got a couple of email from people who have a pencil paper issue. Um, similar like but but interesting really enough, some people can't stand the sound of the mechanical pencil

because it's the metal hitting the paper. Just to show as you can't please everybody, yeah yeah, But then we had another person to who was like, I can't stand a mechanical so I went to the wooden So it's really interesting to see that there's there's someone of a pad and here emerging. I'm still kind of firmed by the socks though. The socks when you know, the listener who was irritated by the sound of socks on carpet, right. Yeah, well,

just for the sake of fun. Um socks on hardwood is the best because you get a running start and then you put it on the brakes and you can you can go like can I tell you that I did at least once a week. Oh that's awesome. It's a great joy of mine. It's why I look forward to winter yoga because I can come into the yoga room with my socks on. You skid right in like like like Tom Cruise in Brisky Business. Yeah, except with pants,

you know, but pretty good test. Let's see. We also heard from Jeremy Jeremy Writston, and he was talking about the first of all the Lewis Black quote that I alluded to about in our Pet Peeves episode, talking about the annoyance of hearing like half a conversation. And he's straightened this out and says that the quote was I never would have gotten into college if it weren't for my horse. And then he goes on to say, I

can attest to the winding child. I have a two point five year old and he's getting into the defiant stage. We're choosing not to call it the terrible twos, where he loves to wine. The worst part about it is knowing that it's not even real. The whinding that I've encountered fake. I'll catch him off guard at times when he's distracted by something bright and shiny and he stops, realizes that he did stop, and goes right back into winding mode. Fortunately, I have a terrible listening problem, and

I'm able to drown it out with little problems. Keep up with fun podcast. Yeah, I have to say my I have a two and a half year old too, same thing. Yeahs constant winding. Yeah, but she starts laughing because she I think hicly because she's like ha ha, well kinda. I don't know what she's doing there, but but sometimes I think she knows that she's such a faker that she starts laughing because she's not really pulling at all. And we have one more email here from Mike.

Mike writes in and says, I just got to finished listening to your Decision Fatigue podcast, and I have an interesting story related to this as you that you brought up. I just got married on Congratulations and was very aware that the week leading up to my wedding I was doing a very poor job at work and was for getting all sorts of things at home. I've been back to work a week now and I found things are slowly getting better. Also noted that doing our registry it

was a very stressful time. At some point in this time, I zoned out and started scanning random things around the store. And this is of course of its referring to the fact that they give you a scanner these days and a lot of these stores, and they're like, here, take this scan the items that that you would like to put on your registry. And as we discussed in the podcast, picking out things through your registry, it's just one decision after another, and after a while it adds up in

your your brain is just for the day. Yeah, and so so I love this example because it's like you're making careful choices early on, and by the end of the process you're just like scanning random objects just to be done with it, which is a great example of

really how decision fatigue works. The problem, as we discussed in that podcast, being that instead of it just being a situation where your later decisions are just the scanning of random objects, that you end up dealing with bigger decisions and more weighty decisions with that kind of apathy, right, Like, you wouldn't want to make have to make a really important decision later on in that day, if you had to register that morning, it would be awful. Whatever choice

you made would be wrong probably. So there you have it. If you have us some interesting factoids to share with us, there are multiple ways to get in touch with us, two of which are Facebook and Twitter, which are two new social media sites that people are really getting into. I think I think they're going to take off if you can find us on both of those as blow the Mind. That's one word, blows on mind, and uh,

I think there's another way. Oh yeah, if you're feeling old fashioned, you can always drop us a line at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.