Does acupuncture work?

like that. I think it's our twelfth year. Yeah. Overall, we've been doing it since ninety there, since everybody's worried about black helicopters. Yeah, and that was our our second podcast, I think was on the Y two K bug, wasn't it? It was? Didn't that pan out to be almost nothing? You know? The iPhone has a bug like a Y two K bug that's left over if Yeah, apparently that's

a a Y two K grandkid. Well, I think if you're depending on your iPhone to wake you up, and I don't know, I don't use anything, but we'll look at you. So two thousand eleven Man Future Man Omega Man Chuck. Yes, have you ever heard of a little condition called amblyopia? No, Amblyopia is also unfortunately referred to as lazy eye. Yes, yes, and um. I used to have a friend in college named Grant, and Grant Um

did not have amblyopia unless he had been drinking. And like, you could tell how much Grant had drunk depending on how pronounced this amblyopia was. And I didn't know. I knew Grant for a while before I finally noticed this, and it was surprising when I finally did, and he's like, yeah, it happened sometimes. Did you ever take English from that guy at Georgia that had the Michael Jordan's It wasn't.

There was an English teacher named Michael Jordan and he had a lazy eye, and like on the first day of class he said, this is the eye that's looking at you, just to clear it up, because his was like, as my friend Guy called it, a disco eye. It was way out of whack. Yah. See, I have a soft spot for people with strab SMUs, which is any kind of um, you know, walleye, lazy eye, cross eyed, disco. I've never heard that one before, but the same thing, right.

I actually wrote a pretty cool blog post on it once. You should check it out. Strab SMUs Blogs at house. Stuff works, it should bring it up, right, but chuck. Um. I recently ran across an article that showed a study of kids age seven to twelve years with amblyopia, right, were cured of their lazy eye through acupuncture. Yeah, and this is a This is an accredited article in the Archives of Optimology, which is a publication of the American

Medical Association. And basically they had a control group, which was kids who had their eye patched their I guess dominant or good eye, non lazy eye patched for two hours a day, which I guess kind of forces the lazy eye to correct itself. That's the pretty standard treatment. Or the other group, Um, we're given acupuncture five times a week. What a cruel study. We're gonna fix you kids, but we're hoping you don't show any improvement. You you

would think so, but get this. The kids who had their eye patched, Um, sixteen point seven percent had their ambiliopia resolved. Forty one point five percent had their ambiliopia resolved in the acupuncture alone group. What was it again, sixteen percent? That is huge, huge, um. But you'll know my my incredulousness. Yeah. Um, when I was saying, no, this was published in a respectable journal. Right. That's because

this podcast was recorded in the West. Eastern medicine is still poo pooed in many circles around here, it is, but with acupuncture specifically, this is one of those um those things that has made the crossover largely into the West, and it kind of has you know, Western thought puzzle a little bit, like what's going on with this um And there's what let's talk about both approaches to acupuncture, like explaining what's going on because one of the um

the predominant thoughts about uh acupunctures that it works somehow. Right, So, if you're Chinese, Chuck, how does acupuncture work? If you're Chinese, Josh, you believe that your body has the Yen and the end, a couple of opposing forces, and that your body has a an energy uh running through it called Chi even though it's spelled q i, and that when your body is in balance, and we've talked about balance and homeostasis and all that and in the East, then you have

good chi energy is flowing. When things get blocked up, that means your che is blocked. That means the end and the Yang fall out of balance. And that means you get to right and your energy flows along pathways in the body called meridians. Right, Yeah, you've got to think a dozen of them from point to point. We'll get to the acupoints later. But uh so they well, let's get to him now. The acupoints are there's two thousand of them later, Okay, I'm just kidding. Along these

fifteen meridians, there's I think twelve meridians. I'm sorry, there's a total of two thousand little points. And these are acupoints. And someone correspond to like that part of your body, and others correspond to others. And like you said, we'll get into a little a little more later on. But the point being, energy flows along these meridians. It can get blocked at these points. If you manipulate these points, the chief flows freely and yin and yang are balanced.

And you may have a bad tattoo as a stimulate stimulate these points, and there's lots of ways to do that. Well wait, wait, what happens if you are in the West. How does acupuncture work well in the West, They would say that it's uh stimulates the central nervous system releases hormones, arrow transmitters boost the immune system, dull's pain, stuff like that. So you know, the same thing, the same result, two ways of explaining it, isn't it. Yeah, Yeah, that's what

I think. So, Chuck Um, you mentioned that this is Chinese, didn't you ancient Chinese? Right? Where did it come from? How long has it been around? Well more than years in China. And it's rooted in Taoism, which is all about harmony between the humans and nature and the earth and stuff like that. The yin and yang again, can't have good without bad, light without dark, all that, all that good stuff. And if you have too much of one or the other, you either can't see or you

can't see. Yeah, too bright or too dark, either way you can't see. Right, It's true. I think that they said. The first place it appeared in text was in uh the Nijing, which is the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine by Hwangdi. I like, how to sink the Chinese

are in their language? Yeah, me too. Two words for Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal medic to one syllable words, and that's at a three hundred BC, And he described Hwang describes diseases, and it was, from what I can tell, one of the first medical books to actually be written. And he described various acupuncture points in this book, so

boom there it is. Then about five hundred years later, um acupuncture is completely laid out in this twelve volume text called the um zen U g Xing, The Comprehensive Manual of Acupuncture and Maxibustion. Yeah. I didn't know about maxibustion. We're getting into that. That's kind of cool. But this Comprehensive manuals like I said, it's twelve volumes and it basically says like this point here will do all of this.

You've got this problem right right here, right, and but there's only three d sixty five ACU points early on, one for each day of the year. Yeah, and then eventually like this just stupid, there's two thousand. Let's just come out and say there's two thousand. Right. I wonder if the twelve Meridians had something to do with the twelve months, maybe so, or the twelve days of Christmas, or the twelve signs of the zodiac perhaps early on.

Instead of needle while they were needles, but they were made from stone and bone, which probably wasn't want of fun, so they decided we should probably use metal like bronze and gold and silver, and that worked for a little while these days of stainless steel, thankfully. And now that you mentioned that, it occurred to me that we never defined acupuncture. Oh, everyone knows what it is, right. I

thought everyone knew a roller Derby was all right. Acupuncture is a a Eastern medicine where they're small needles are stuck into various points of the body and manipulated in certain ways or not. And because you're living today, those are a little tiny stainless steel, hair hair thin needles, not like knitting needles or anything, not like a bone. No, but it was at a time I already said that. Yeah.

Uh so in the nineteenth century, early nineteenth century, uh, people started going to China and were introduced to acupuncture, brought it back to the West in Europe to a certain degree in the course of doctors in Europe, probably before the doctors in the United States were like, hey, this is kind of neat, let me experiment around, especially in France with George Soule de Moron. Yeah, he was like the champion of acupuncture in the West. He went

to China. He's a scholar. Um, he went to China at the turn of the twentieth century, which means the eight hundreds of the nineteen hundreds. And he saw firsthand that acupuncture worked, and um, he brought it back in championed it in France. In France actually came up with their own type of acupuncture. I bet us because of him, Actually, I would think so, because he was probably the first dude to get it going. Are we gonna we're gonna talk about that now. You want to skip on to

that later, We'll get to it in a second. Uh. Then it eventually, like all things made tway to the United States. Um. And the article that said President Nixon's visit to China was a big deal as far as introducing a lot of Chinese ways to the States, it's like China fever. Yeah, in the first blast of China fever. Right.

And then in the U s. There's a guy named James Reston who um writes for the New York Times where he did and he had a appendix to me, Well, he had appendix surgery, which I'd take to be appendix to me right. Um, and uh, he he got acupuncture to treat um his pain and it worked, and he wrote about it, and this is the first mention. Now here we are today, right here we are. Um, it

is viewed as a legitimate medicine. Right. Yeah, I've got a stat that says, uh, twenty million Americans have undergone acupuncture, which is a lot higher than the article, but it may just be more recent, right because that was the two thousand two National Health Survey. Yeah, and the FDA said that Americans spent a half a billion dollars in the nineties alone on acupuncture. That was the nineties. You know.

Now people are all cookie for this kind of stuff, so it's probably even more I would think so, not the cynical nineties. It was also legitimized six um when the f d A decided that UM acupuncture needles should be considered uh medical instruments. Yeah that was a good thing. Yeah.

It makes the whole process a lot safer now because you have to use sterile needles, right, um or or they have to be sterilized somehow, Like you're not gonna get an infection, and if you are, you're really going to the wrong acupuncture, you know, I would say so, Um, and uh, like you said, how many how many billions of dollars did we spend on a chuck half a billion, five million in the nineties. I know that's sort of an old stat, but you know, the f d A,

I don't even know what that means. I don't either. Yeah, that's the stat they give me, so chuck. We've been focusing just on the Chinese version, although we did foreshadow that there's a French version to Yeah, TCM traditional Chinese medicine. Yes, let's talk about the different kinds of acupuncture. Well, that's the Chinese kind, Okay, it comes out of t c M. And uh, there's the Japanese counterparts, a little more subtle. Needles are generally a little shorter, a little thinner, Uh,

don't pierce the skin as much. And there are two kinds root in local obviously root if you treat the whole body for something. And then local. Yeah, local is when they you know, get like I'll stick in the ear to fix your foot. Um, you may live in Japan for a little while. And she told me that there were two couples in her um, little province, little town, um that performed acupuncture and both couples were blind. Really

can that crazy? I would trust that. Yeah, it seems like it, because you know, you know the body feel around? Sure for the points. What's the touchy Like if I need a doctor to have eyes to know where my kneecap is, then I don't want to be at that doctor. You should be able to feel your way around to the kneecap. Sure, sure, alright, So the five element in

Debt crack area for some reason. Five element acupuncture is Chinese as well, and that treats the body and mine and that's based on the idea that the earth and body and everything in nature is governed by the five elements. Water would fire, earthen metal. So that's kind of neat, yes, And apparently you can um manipulate the balance of these elements through acupuncture within yourself. And then here finally, everyone who's been hanging on for this one. This is the

French one auricular, right, Oh, yeah, that is the French one. Yeah. The French um apparently decided that the ear is all you need to do. Yeah, there's um two hundred ACU points located on the ear that correspond to different parts of the body and by manipulating these ACU points. You can do the same thing that um can be done

with traditional Chinese acupuncture, right um. And apparently that's kosher in China because it's viewed the ear is viewed as a sensitive spot for manipulating chi the flow of che, isn't it well? Yeah, and with all the accup points on the ear, and wonders how piercing affects that. You know, if there's one thing if I could spend like to do something to my body, it would be to cover up these old ear piercing holes. Yeah, I got one too, but mine's looks so stupid. And I think about the

dudes with the gauges. It's cool now, kids, but and of course you don't want to be the old guy saying just wait till you're older. But it's one thing to have a tattoo you're not proud of. Another thing to have like a big hole in your ear. Yeah, or both? Yeah, I think it's generally both, isn't it. Yeah?

Those kids? Uh? Korean hand acupuncture is is is the last one listed here, and that's essentially the same thing, is the auricular accept It all goes through the hands, right, and then Chuck, You mentioned moxibustion, right, So maxibustion is um acupuncture with these are we just mentioned the different types of acupuncture. There's also different things you can do while you have needles sticking out of your body. Yeah, these are related, sure things that you can do, and

moxibustion is one of those things. So um, this is the the stimulation of acupoints using heat. Right, And Moxa is an herb that comes from the mugwarp plant and traditionally in Chinese medicine, UM, you take about a rice grain size piece of moxa, put it on an acupoint and set that thing on fire and then let it burn and create pain and leave a scar. Now, this can be done in conjunction with the needle treatment as well. Is that right now? I think this is in lieu

of it unless you're doing indirect that's direct moxibustion. Unsurprisingly, then there's indirect ox in busting, which is UM basically wrapping mox in paper, lighting the paper which you know makes the mocks of smolder, and then holding it near an acupoint or wrapping moxa around an occupied lighting that thing. Yes, you can also use electro acupuncture or saw no acupuncture to either move an electrical current through the needles or in the case of saw no, it's there are no needles,

but you use sound to affect your acupoints. When I went, they put a heat lamp over the needles to heat up the needles. While acupuncture once just kind of it is not the point when you're supposed to go like a chiropractor and get it, you know, until you're fixed. But yeah, I think I mentioned it once before. I found a cheap place in l a that it was like a school you can get for like tin bucks, you can get acupuncture. It was awesome. What was it?

It was real? Why didn't you go back? Um? I wanted to, and then you know, like some big job came up and I got distracted. It was one of those deals. It wasn't there. I didn't believe in there. She set up like huh and ran out with all these needles speaking out of your back, So chuck. You then know what to expect right if you go get acupuncture, at least from this one lady. Okay did it follow kind of with the article details the dim lights and uh soothing heat lamp. She left me alone, close the

door and the on the CD player on low. It was very relaxing. I think there was music actually, so you're well, yeah, sure, deep purple. I mean that was my experience. I've never been locally here. Well, we were talking about UM the ACU points right and how they correspond to different parts of the body. UM, and they're actually mapped right, it's not just like this sounds like this, So let's try your cornea. It's not like that. It's

numbered out and charted. It's a standardized absolutely. So the twelve maridi as we talked about, are they relate to different parts of the body. Right, So you've got like the bladder, you have the kidney, the large intestin, the spleen, the gall bladder, um, the liver, the parcardium, which is what is that it's over your heart, right, I think that's the covering of your heart. It scott cardio in there. It's got to be stomach heart Okay, man, now I'm

second guessing myself. In the parcardium long small intestine and the triple heater, which that's that's the closer. Yeah, So you've got you've got these different these are the twelve meridians, and then uh, there's you know, different numbers corresponded to the different accu points along that meridian. So, for example, you have g B one is a certain accupoint on the gall bladder merdian. Okay, yeah, but that's how it's

spelled out. But that doesn't necessarily mean if I want to fix the gall bladder I'm gonna stick you in the gallbladder meridian. Precisely, you could stick stick in the shoulder. Who knows an acupuncturist, but now exactly so. Um, when you go to an acupuncturist when you have a malady, you're going to tell him or her what's going on here. She's gonna take a history, um, get an idea of what your problem is, like a regular doctor doctor, right, and then consult this map and say, okay, well, this

guy's having lower back pain. So I'm gonna go stick some needles around um the ub some alcohol. That's a big part of it. Yeah, if you're not swabbed with alcohol, get out of there, and you take the needle out of the package so you know it's nice and new, then I'm gonna stick anywhere from two, three, five, to fifty needles in some area that will correspond to that meridian, right and that pain. These needles are going to be stuck in anywhere from a quarter of an inch to

three inches, which brings up a potential danger. With acupuncture, you have organs that are closer to your skin than three inches, so you couldn't conceivably have a kidney punctured a lung punctured. This is why you want to go to a certified acupunctuous. Yeah, and I want to say it's very rare. So don't let something like that scare you, because we could tell you American surgical stories that are equally as horrifying, like they remove my kidney and they

weren't supposed to that kind of thing. So don't think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get stabbed through the lung with a needle. You know. That's called a big, big mistake, and it happens in all medicine. Everybody stabs people through the long with the needle. Uh, it's it's it's not. You might feel a little bit of pain with the initial prick of the needle, but after that, it's not like you feel the needle inside your body. You said

it was relaxing, right, it's very relaxing. I didn't en feel the needles going in, to be honest, just a little tap and they're really tiny, the ones that used on me very very thin. Uh. They'll leave it in there five to twenty minutes for me, it was about twenty minutes, I think. And they can stimulate them while they're in your skin, like it said, with the various ways like heat, electricity, or they might even twirl them with their fingers if they're feeling saucy, if they want

to do it by hand. Um. You said that you're supposed to go more than once. I think the the average is something like, um, twelve weeks, once a week for twelve weeks. It all depends on your issue, which if you're on Medicare, you're probably not gonna do because it costs anywhere from sixty bucks to twenty bucks probably more than that um for an acupuncture session, right. Um, And if you have to go to twelve times, you want insurance that's going to cover. Unfortunately, Medicare doesn't. Even

though the federal government recognizes acupuncture needles as medical instruments. Right. Sounds like a bit of a double standard. Our insurance covers it actually, which is good, and a lot of major insurance carriers cover it. I'm gonna give it a try, all right. I've been meaning to. I've got this. Um. I have a muscle in my neck right here that has turned into you know those um metal ables that are braided. I have one of those in my neck. Man, I need to see if they can do something about that.

You need to walk around on that thing she does. But I mean it's kind of like, oh, traffic or oh this dozen eggs has one broken in it something. You know, you need to relax. My friends. Oh you know how that they have that tiger Heart place and sort of emin park Old fourth Ward. It's on Edgewood. You should go there. It's an acupunctu tiger heart acupuncture. You're getting kickbacks from no, of course not. It's all my way to work though. So, UM, is it safe, Josh?

I know you mentioned the one, the one issue with the stabbing through the organs, But other than that, well, like you said, for the most part, it is very safe, especially now that it's more regulated. Um. I think forty states have some sort of standard and require that acupunctures be certified for the most part um and this was news to me. There are any of Western physicians who, um who practice acupuncture. Yeah, you can be a med school doctor and practice acupuncture, or you can go through

an acupuncture only program. The cool thing about that is is it requires a lot more hours to get accredited without the medical degree. So it's like to two to three hundred, two hundred, three hundred hours if you're a doctor to become an accredited acupuncturist. If you're just doing the acupuncture thing, it's like two thousand to three thousand hours. Yeah, so that's I mean, I would trust that for sure. There is a lot of hours and you have to

do it within a certified masters program. Yes, so you have to be a smart person to be an acupuncturist. Apparently, I would say. So, Uh, you might bleed a little bit, don't worry too bad. But if you do have a bleeding disorder, if you're on blood dinners, they recommend you probably shouldn't do it. Or if you have like a pacemaker or anything else regulating your heartbeat electronically, it's probably not a good idea either, because accidental electro acupuncture is

not good now. Um, so Chuck, we've we've shown that it is becoming more and more accepted in the West. But as far as hard science goes Western hard science, the well, I guess hard science is Western hard science isn't a uh, the jury is still out right. But there's been a lot of studies, um that show well, kind of mixed results. But there's been plenty of that show like this this, um, the one with the lazy eye, lazy eye study, the famous landmark lazy I study that

just happened, um. And there's been plenty of others that have shown that acupuncture definitely does work. Right, yesod we talk about those Yes. Osteo Arthritis two thousand four and the Annals of Internal Medicine. They found that acupuncture significantly reduced pain and improve function. And they studied two four patients and this was in the knee, people with knee pain. And these were people that couldn't get helped through regular medicine, and after eight weeks they had far less pain that

affective knee. Yeah, so that's one pains one that's an easy one because it's pain. What about chemotherapy induced nausea? Yeah, nausea period. Yeah, it turns out, as we said, nausea in general is supposedly supposed to be has been shown

to be aided by acupuncture. There's a two thousand study in UH the J. A. M. A. Right, UM, the Journal of the American Medical Association UM that that studied electro acupuncture in people while a hundred and four women with breast cancer who had received UM high dose chemotherapy, right, and they found that, um, the women with the acupuncture had about a third of the vomiting episodes of women who did not receive acupuncture for treatment. And they're both

on nausea reducing medicine. But anyone who's ever had chemo can tell you that a lot of times it stuff does not work. And then a meta analysis of eleven different studies found that nausea in general like similar results for any kind of study of acupuncture re leaving nausea.

Al right, that's right. And fertility, fertility, if you're undergoing in vitro fertilization, there was a study in oh six and ought six and the Fertility and Sterility Journal, which is a hoot to read, and they said that women undergoing acupuncture had an eight. Uh, more likelihood, better chances of getting pregnant. Not bad. The problem is they also were slightly more likely to miscarry than the non acupuncture group.

I want a percentage there. They didn't give one that bothered me slightly mean to like point one or something or one or two? Slightly is journalism for for I don't have the numbers in front of me. Uh, fibro mayalgia, yeah, fiber myalgia mayo clinic buddy. Yeah. Two thousand six, they did a study of fifty patients um and found that the stems of fiber miles are that include muscle pain, fatigue,

joint stiffness were significantly helped. It's another journalism, right. What is significant significant is it's a lot greater than one. I've got a couple of more quickie graph stats here. Um. They did some um asking of questions, pulling of people who had acupuncture. Boy, it is twenty eleven and that we've been off. This is a rough one. Um. They asked people how satisfied they were with their acupuncture treatment

and very satisfied. Yeah, exactly, uh, somewhat satisfied lead with thirty four percent were extremely satisfied and only eight percent were not at all satisfied. Those people are never satisfied. That should have been the last question. Are you ever satisfied with anything? Or are you a jerk? Are you satisfied with this question? Besides acupuncture, have you ever utilized

any other treatment based on traditional Chinese medicine? And said no, So, even if you don't believe in it, you know, doesn't mean you won't go lay down on the table and get stuck with needles. And that's really the only interesting ones on here. Actually. So we've got this um well, all this information, all these studies that show that it works. Poles Journal, the American Michael says, you should all this stuff.

But the problem is people still poo poo it. There's still a lot of um, a lot of skeptics who view acupuncture the way others may view hypnosis, and that the underlying mechanism isn't g or hormones or neurotransmitters, it's the placebo effect, right, Yeah, And that's tough because with placebo in uh, like a pill, you just get a pill that probably looks like the other pills. For acupuncture, they're gonna stick you with needles, but they're not gonna

stick you in the acupoints. They're gonna they're gonna skip your acupoints purposefully, so you know, you get these needles stuck in. You might think I'm getting better, but that's the same as any placebo effect of because you have you're still getting a pill that you don't know whether or not it's gonna work. The I think the larger point rather than pooh pooing medicine in the placebo effect,

is investigating how to manipulate the placebo effect. Because if we can heal our own bodies without drugs or sticking ourselves needles, doing whatever, um, then why not you know it still has the same effect. Good point. Can we end this now? Yeah? That's all I got acupuncture is give it, give it a shot if you want to give it a try, and I'm definitely gonna do it. I was talking to everyone, but I know you are specifically, Josh,

give it a try. Um. We want to go ahead and apologize for this one is the first one that we've recorded. Is bad. I'm sure Jerry'll wash it out. I can't pronounce it. Um. If you want to learn more about acupuncture and see one really super a fluids chart. You should type in acupuncture. That's one ce UH in the handy search part how stuff works dot Com, which means it's time for listener mail. Yes, Josh, this is

a homelessness email. And we got a lot of response for the Homelessness Show, ranging from I'm homeless to you guys are great. Thank you for highlighting this too. Hey, it's not my responsibility to care for veterans on the street. And a guy actually say that to me in one of his replies that I had engaged him in. Regardless of what you believe, if you're saying it's not my responsibility to care for homeless vets on the street, then but I did go off. I just want to say

one thing. I went off on CEOs at the end pretty harshly, and I should have been more specific. I was referencing a story i'd read that day about UH, and I wish I would have looked it up, but I didn't have time. These certain CEOs are in the news that day for taking these huge bonus, record bonus payouts in the middle of the UH financial crisis while their employees were being laid off. I read this, I come in and sit down and read about talk about

homeless people on the streets. I got a little hot under the collar, which I should have been more specific in what I was criticizing, because I'm certainly not criticizing all c e o s, and I'm not saying that they're to blame for homelessness or it's their job to fix homelessness. It's everybody's job to fix homelessness. And I wasn't clear enough in that. So one to clear that up, we'll put chuckers. Thank you. That's great? Was that it? Lat CEOs do a lot of, you know, big time donating.

There's one guy who runs a carpet carpet manufacturer, Dalton Carpets in Georgia. I can't remember his name, but he's like the greatest CEO of all time. Really, he's a good guy. I have to be a CEO one day. Really, were you kidding me? Not? Get out for hi? Man? I gotta hire and fire. I couldn't do any in no way. All right, So with that, I'm gonna read up a letter from a homeless person. Hello, guys, my name is Blank. I told her I wouldn't read it.

The podcast on homelessness really hit home with me. I'm a single mother of two. I've been homeless on and off for the past three or four years. I've always had a job, but my divorce basically bankrupted me, and I've had to start all over again. I think she's married to the CEO UM. I became homeless again back in March, and by June I was finally selected from about eight hundred people in the city of Tulsa to be approved for Section eight. So I feel like now

I'm finally on my way to permanence. Uh. This whole thing has affected my kids greatly, but we're managing to stick it out. I believe there is stress of divorce in the stress of being homeless. It's caused my son to have lower test scores in school. My daughters don't okay, but most likely because she was only one when her father and I divorced. My son was three. Anyway, I just thought you might like to hear from one of your fans. It is true that getting assistance is very difficult.

There just aren't enough funds to go around. And I know how it feels to be invisible. Uh. People at my work have no idea that one of their own employees was homeless, and they still don't. And it's not something I like to broadcast. It's really very embarrassing. Just know that homeless people may be working, but they won't say they're homeless because of embarrassment. Better get back to work, I would say so too, so you can keep that child.

Thanks for your great podcast, and thanks for listening to me as well. So that's a great example of one of the many emails we got. It is it is very thank you very much, Blank, And I had to say, I'm conflicted because we've spent a large part of the Homelessness podcast like railing about how they shouldn't be treated as anonymous or invisible and grow and said, don't use my name. Let's see if you have a I don't want to hear about acupuncture. I don't want to hear

about what do you want to hear about? Chuck something, keep us something good. It's been so long since we had something good. What about I was talking about American surgery horror stories. If you've ever known anyone that had like the wrong organ removed, Yeah, let's hear about that. That's good stuff. Uh, if you have a wrong ordinary removal story and we know someone out there does. Because we asked for sinking ship story got too plus a plain one. Yeah, um, you want to send it in

an email? Right? Stuff podcast at how stuff works. We're so sorry about this one dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you