Does Whole-Body Cryotherapy Work?

are talking too much. But you like square space and we like square space, so we appreciate you getting on our podcast to help us plug one of our great sponsors. Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. So that stuff you hi rolls and body. That's the second time I've been able to do that on this show. Do you remember the first one? Cryonics colon high Frozen Body

Exclamation August two thousand eleven. But cryonics is not the same thing as cryotherapy. So if you think you guys are doubling up already, nope, Well they could even toss out medically induced hypothermia. We did that one to all different, totally different, mostly different. Um No, we're talking cryotherapy. It's um specifically whole body cryotherapy because cryo therapy has been around for a really long time. Have you ever had a wart? No? Oh, you never had this happen to you. Well,

actually I did have. Um I forgot, I had the planner warts on my feet. You get them burned off? Um? I did not? Pleasant. Yeah, and those are a bugger. I used to get warts here there when I was a kid. I would go to the doctor and it would open a freezer and take out like a this crazy metal thervice not a jar, boards that they collected. Yeah. I thought they feed them to you and that's how you get rid of your words. Yeah, I think it is.

When my mom would take me to the witch, and that's how I would get rid of my um No. They would just take it, take a little swab of this stuff and like put the swab onto your wart and it would just burn it off, like they burned it by freezing it. Yeah, because they're using liquid nitrogen. It was so cold that it burns it basically just burns tissue. You know what I actually have at home

right now? I have a spray can of medical freezing spray because I used to go to the doctor to get my skin tags removed because my body is just lousy with them here in my old age. And then you just finally just stole the can so you can do it yourself. Didn't steal a can. I bought a can. You can buy the bo yeah on the Amazon bought okay, And I got a little uh, the little sharp clipper, not nail clippers, but like um scissors, No, not scissors.

It's sort of been between the nail clipper and a scissor. It looks like something you get out a hardware store. Is it like scissors? But then the ends bent at like a forty five degree angle. No, they look like just a pair of dykes, like in a toolbox. But there for your toe and fingernail kit. I don't know what those are. I'll just show them to you, Okay. So anyway, I'm gonna start blasting them and cutting them off myself, or I'm gonna have Emily do it. Yeah,

please take a video of this or Facebook live it. Yeah. Yeah, that's the new thing. Yeah, look out for that people's book. It's uh, it's their version of periscope. Yeah, I'm sure they don't really like that, but that's exactly what we're gonna try it out. That's medical uh burning of Moleska. Bring your little clippers and your medical freezing spray on tour and I will film it and we'll just see what happened. I don't know if I could get that

through security. You just have to throw it over the detector and as you go through and catch it on the other I think. So that's what I learned in Boondocks Saints. Oh man, what a movie man, that guy I wanted. I've never seen the documentary about Tony Duffy. I can't remember. I think it was the bar Owner turned um like Hollywood wonder Kin for guy who blew it? All right, Troy Duffy, great documentary. That's his name is Troy Duffy. I want to see it, alright. So movie

sidetracked already. Oh, carylo therapy. I'm sorry. So when you take liquid nitrogen UM, that's really how sidetracked. I just got like I forgot what we were talking about for a second. When you take liquid nitrogen and put it on your tissue, that's um local cryotherapy. That's like, that's there's no question that that actually works and what it does, we understand it. The whole body crowd therapy is different.

It's kind of this trendy new thing in the health and metas spots where you basically get into what they call a cold sauna and are exposed to liquid nitrogen gas and they're supposedly has a whole range of health benefits, which should immediately set off your skeptical antenna. Yeah, if something like Cure's ten ailments, it sounds a lot like snake old, especially when the ailments are very vague. Yeah, you want to I want is I want something that cures the one ailment I have? Right? Not, Hey, it

will help with these eight things. Yeah, And I'm not faulting anybody who's saying like, well, we don't know that this how it works. We just know it works, because a lot of Western medicine has no idea how their effective treatments work. They just know they do work. So there's there's I have no issue with that. The problem with cryotherapy is we should just say right off the bat is there's really no scientific evidence that this works at all. Um it has maybe a little bit of

um an impact done inflammation. But well, we'll get to all that. I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Don't spoil it, Sorry he did. Should we edit that part out? No, let's leave it in there. But first, let's go back to Japan in the nineteen seventies. Let's take the way back machine, which I bet Japan in the seventies was a pretty fun place to be. Yes to the office

of Dr Toshima. Is it Yama Yamauchi, and he was supposedly the first guy, the first doctor to actually use cryotherapy, and in his case, he used it to help treat rheumatoid arthritis patients. Still doing it. Oh, I'm sure he has a clinic on an island called I believe Kyushu. I thought it was gonna be Yamauchi Island. It might as well be. I'm sure that guy is getting loaded these days. Money not well maybe both Oka Hi hi high end Japanese Scotch and money. Yeah, Japanese scott just

good stuff. But yes it is. Did you know seriously? Um uh Crown Royal rye one like world's best whiskey. Recently, this is the second time he told everybody, just so astounded by it I have yet to try it, actually I have, you know, but we'll try it on the road maybe if we can get our hands on some. So Yamauchi was trying it with the rumatroid arthritis patients and then it's spread through Europe and eventually made its way over here where it became has become a very

trendy thing. And of course celebrities, if they're in on it, then you know it's the latest in Yeah, maybe not greatest treatment because celebrities they're just like us, yeah, except that more money to waste on frivolous things. So um, I love how you just kind of glossed over it. But how it got here Apparently in the Soviet block they picked up on this treatment that was being used for rumor troid arthritis in Japan Soviet athletes, and you know,

it probably wasn't by choice back then. They were forced into these things, right, you know, like the all Drug Olympics guy like get down off the uh the balance beam and get in that get in that cold saunta cold sauna. Yeah. But the whole idea um that this is that this there's some sort of benefit health benefit the cold. It doesn't lie with Yamauchi. Um, there's it goes back quite a long way. Um, there's this whole idea that taking a cold plunge, cold water immersion like

the Polar Bear clubs. Yeah, and Finland they call it of a two in Ti. So they get in the sauna and then they run out and their bear skin underwear. Yes is this Finland, and they jump in the cold, icy waters of the nearby lake. And uh, it's supposed to rejuvenate them and make them gasp for air their body heels. It's it's supposed to improve mood, well, increase your metabolism, do all sorts of crazy stuff. But this whole idea, um, that that has health benefits. I was

very surprised. I figured I would find like, oh, the Finns were the ones who started this, or may be in Iceland or something like that. Um. I couldn't find anything that talked about the history of ice swimming. UM. Further back than what this article comes up with, which is a guy in New York named Professor Sugarman Sugarman. Yeah,

surely Sugarman sugar Man. Yeah, what was that in the eight hundreds when he was the human polar bear and he would get into the icy rivers in New York and um, he was a help guy and so he said, this is helping my body out. You should do it. You know, you think I'm crazy. And by the way, Graham Cracker's cure masturbation, is that a thing? Oh yeah, really, dude, We've got to do like that whole road Dwellville sometimes. That was such an interesting Yeah, believe so from the

serial Kellogg Kellogg. But there was a doctor Graham who came up with Graham Crackers. Um, like there was a whole bunch of crazy thinking at that time. That was really interesting. I saw that movie way back when. But it's been a while, Anthony Hopkins, right, yeah, and I think I wasn't Matthew Broderick in it. I feel like it's been a while. It wasn't made in the late eighties. Yeah, Matthew Broderick. It was the one that he was in The Freshman. Did you ever see that with Bruno Kirby

and part of that just the other day? Actually? Yeah? Yeah? And I thought how odd that Brando would agree to reprise his role from the Godfather in a comedic way, kind of like de Niro has done to lesser success. You know what else? Was a good Brando movie? Um don Juan DeMarco. Yeah, not bad. Yeah, I liked it, although I'm speaking from like when you saw it back then. Yeah, I haven't seen it in a long time. I bet it holds up. I bet it's very relevant timely in

top cool. I'll chopo all over the so. Uh, like you said, they have done some studies that found it doing the ice swims helps reduce chronic pain. But I'll just go ahead and say this about all these studies, We're gonna talk about a lot of them. They're just all over the map, and none of them are very controlled or very good. Yeah, so it's hard to really make a judgment call when you're not doing the good research.

So the jumping in a lake um as part of a polar Bear club to make yourself guess have you already done that? Not jumping in a lake, but gone into like a cold water bath? Well we jump we Yeah I did it in high school and a frozen lake. Oh, so you have done that. Yeah, there was a church camp that had a big, like fifty ft slide into the lake and in the summer it's a lovely thing and in the winter, you know, the guys were like, well, we're gonna do it, right, and we did it. And

did you go Jesus No, I didn't know. Were you like, oh this is I mean, how long were you in there? Spill? I had no idea. Well, I slid in and then quickly swammed ashore and got out and got warm and ended up on the cover of guide posts shivering in

your little um polar bear skin bathing suits. Yeah. And by the way, people who sent in that cover of guide posts that they thought might have been me good investigative skills, because the way I described it, it it could have very well have been me, but it was not me. That one's yet to be found. So um, this idea of jumping in the lake, it's it kind of it's somehow, not sure how made its way into sports medicine, where

it became very big cold water immersion. Yeah. Like you see the NFL player sitting in like an ice tub after a game. He likes his ice paths um. And the whole, the whole idea behind it is that you just exerted your muscles, right, and when you exert your muscles, um, they become basically infused and swollen with blood. Right, So one of the reasons your muscles ache after exercises because they're swollen like their their tissue is is just larger

than normal and it causes this ache. When you immerse yourself in water, the thinking goes, the hydrostatic pressure outside of your body draws the fluid toward your skin, so it draws it out of the muscles and eventually back into the blood vessels, so it creates or it lessens

that aching thing. The problem is, if you're using cold water immersion for that kind of thing, it doesn't really make any sense because cold water immersion creates vaso constriction, which means it makes your blood vessels smaller, which would make them less apt to accept the blood from the muscles. Well, there's some people that think it's actually has the reverse effect and it's not doing what it says that it's doing.

But like I said, the opposite. Did you see that study that I sent you, which one the one that had like it was the discussion part had just like

a couple of different I don't think so. Well. There's this one study I came across, and it was basically a survey of studies and it it showed like this study found that these people's um cycling ability after a cold water immersion, like after not you jump in an ice bath and then jump on a cycle like the day after, their cycling ability dropped from like you know to just and the only the only factor involved was cold water immersion. Uh. There's another guy named Joseph Costello.

He's an exercise physiologist from the University of Portsmouth in the UK, and he said that there's more evidence coming out that inflammation, uh is actually part of the recovery process. So you don't want to stop your inflammation, Uh, you want to embrace it. I guess right. Well, one of the ways that your muscles adapt is by basically being

torn and rebuilding themselves, and they do that through inflammation. Yeah, and that was by the way, I read an article from wash Post called the Big Chill Cryotherapy Maybe trendy, but does it work? It doesn't sound the way. Not only does it not work like you were saying, like Costello's finding, there seems to be more and more evidence that it actually has a detrimental effect where if you're an elite athlete, you do not want to do cold

water immersion. Yeah, all right, Well let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about kind of the cost and what's going on today with this stuff. All right, josh U, a little bit of the nuts and bolts on cryotherapy these days. You will go. If you're in a big city, you probably already have a cryo spa. Um, it's probably just some some spa bought one of these machines. Yeah, yeah,

I don't mean it's dedicated to cry out spotting. Well maybe there's some in the biggest of cities cities, but you know, look it up on your internet machine and if you want to go check it out, you can. It will cost you about forty or fifty bucks. Or you can get like a monthly membership. I saw one and um Minnesota, which I don't know why, they just don't go outside in the winter and accomplished the same thing.

But it was four and fifty dollars a month. But you're unlimited cryotherapy and you don't want to use it more than once a day. So I did the math, and that's still the savings of about six hundred bucks if you went every day. Yeah, I wonder how much it costs to buy one of those. I'm sure it would pay for itself in ten years. And I wonder if you can eventually just put a tabletop on it and double it as a dining table once you inevitably

quit using it to put a lamp on it. Uh so four to your fifty bucks a pop, um, and you will be in the it's really really cold, and um, it's I think that's an understatement. Yeah, and it's gas. We need to be really clear. You're not in cold water. It's dry gas, and that's what saves you from things like frost bite or freezing to death or getting hypothermia, because that's right, it's gas. That liquid nitrogen, when it's exposed to the warmer temperatures of the air and it's

released into that thing, immediately gasifies. Yeah. And we're talking negative two hundred and fifty six degrees fahrenheit or hundred and sixty degrees celsius right negative. That is colder than anything on planet Earth. Right. So if you could find liquid that remained liquid at those low temperatures, right, um, you would basically immediately die when you immerse yourself in it.

And the reason why gas you can expose yourself to temperatures of gas like that rather than liquid, because liquid is UM has a higher heat capacity, which means it absorbs heat more readily, and it's a great conductor of heat, so it wits that heat away from your body. UM I think twenty five times faster than air does. So you can withstand this this cold cold temperatures again negative

two d and fifty six degrees fahrenheit. Right, that's the coldest temperature on Earth right there in that little cryo sauna. There's nowhere else on Earth that's even remotely close to that. UM. But you can withstand it for a certain amount of time, Like I think three minutes is the maximum time that they suggest. They say two to three minutes is, which I guess that's a plus. You pop in there, you're

gone five minutes later. Oh yeah, If you want one of these things, it's like printing your own money aside from the lawsuit payoff UM. And you will, like I said, two to three minutes at the most, and it penetrates no more than a half millimeter below the surface of the skin UM in the case of the gas. And here are some of the things they say will help with UM anytime. The first one is destroys toxins, and my radar is up. Yeah, because that's such a broad claim.

You know, uh, increases metabolism, that's another one that so you'll actually lose weight, right, boost your immune system, and slow aging. Like all of these sounds like something you'd see on the subway at in New York. What are the four broadest health concerns you have? Human? Yeah, well, that happens to take care of all of them. I'm surprised it doesn't say like, helps you get sleep or helps you if you're getting too much sleep. Right, there's

probably a spot advertises that. Probably so. And the reason that they can do this is because, chuck, it's unregulated. Yeah, there are some states that now offer suggestions on I believe one state, just one, Nevada, the one where a lady died doing it. Well, let's go ahead and talk about her, because we're not laughing at her a tragic accident, because it was awful. We're laughing at the ridiculous lack of oversight on this extraordinarily dangerous machine. Exactly. This was

in the July, a place called Rejuvenile rejuven Ice. But think for real with that, Yeah, I think so maybe that's an all cryospa. It's a med spa and Henderson, Nevada, and um, this lady who worked there when in one day and notice that the machine was already on, and then on the floor next to the machine, she's oh, she was still in the machine with it on. Oh. I didn't think you could lay down in this thing. I thought it just set you up with your next

sticking out. I think she crumpled. Okay, Yeah, so this thing is kind of shaped like a barrel. Um. It's not like a bed that you laid down in. No, it's like you remember that one um or onlike old timey cartoons where like a guy's taking a Schwitz like they go into that machine and like their head sticks out, but inside it's basically like a wet sauna. I don't know what you speak, I can picture it. Okay, say you got into an iron lung and then they stood

you up. Okay, looks like that. Well, at any rate, she found her coworker, um Chelsea, I have no idea how to bring a akey Selbassian found her frozen solid dead obviously, And what they think might have happened was that because this lady knew how to work in machine. She used the machine for herself, worked there and was

an advocate, so she knew the dangers. Um. So they're thinking is that maybe she bent down to pick something up, got too much nitrogen in her body because you need that proper mix of oxygen, and UH just passed out and then froze. Because they found that she died from afphixiation,

not from being frozen, right, and she was. Had she taken one, maybe even two breaths, it would have been virtually pure nitrogen and at that concentration or that lack of oxygen um in the air she was breathing, it would just take one or two breaths for her to immediately lose consciousness. Once she lost consciousness, she was using this thing alone. There was no one to see her, which is why she didn't die of being frozen. To us, she died from asphyxiation. It's that inert gas asphyxiation that

we talked about in the lethal injection episode. Like it just takes one or two breaths and that's it. Yeah, And now Um stated in the Nevada has Um some recommended Uh. They basically said, hey, why don't you just say you've got to be over eighteen, you gotta be taller than five ft. Uh, no history of stroke, seizure or high blood pressure. It's almost like to write a roller coaster. Yeah, except for the age thing. Not be pregnant, and not have a pacemaker. And these are just suggested

guidelines in Nevada at this point. Uh. And they also said it'd also be good if in your office you knew CPR and you had defibrillators and um, a working phone that could call a nine one one. But again all just recommendations at this point. They also Nevada also recommended that um spas who offer crowd therapy post signs that say, um, there's no scientific evidence that this does anything, so let's we'll talk about You to sign a waiver too that says I could die. You want to talk

about the science after a break, so chuckers. Um, there's again there's a lot of people who are like, this is all whui, which is weird that it doesn't do anything beneficial. But the only thing that it's been shown to even remotely have an e act on is inflammation. There's very little um discussion about whether it affects inflammation. UM, and that's why Yamauchi originally was using this stuff too, to decrease the inflammation in uh rheumatoid arthritis suffers. Right, Yeah,

so it definitely does decrease inflammation. But other than that, everything else is UM kind of a bogus claim, or at the very least, it's a claim that's not backed up by any real science. Yeah, and again there UM supposedly is mounting evidence that inflammation you don't want to reduce necessarily as an athlete, and that could be a

vital part of the process of healing and regenerating. Uh So, in two thousand fifteen, there was one study UM that only had sixty four participants, And what I found was that they basically picked like young, fit, white dudes for the study, and you just can't do that if you're going to get an accurate uh result. And I think

that's what happened. They got a result that most legit scientists have just had to throw out basically, Right, Well, the two thousand fifteen study was a survey, and it pooled all of the like all of the available studies, and all the available studies together only came to a population size of sixty four and Yeah, like you said, they were homogeneous basically, So that's not good. There's not a lot of investigation about this stuff. There's not a

lot of oversight. Yeah. They found another two thousand twelve study that said they found no difference between cryotherapy and just the regular ice bath that um, like an athlete might take in the locker room. So why pay all this money to go to a cryotherapy session? So the people who say that say, well, your chances of hypothermia are a lot less because you're wet, Yeah, which makes sense. Yeah, Well you're not wet in the cryoson all right, So you're gonna your body is going to um maintain it's

it's temperature a lot longer. It's not gonna lose its temperature heat as quickly. So it's not as dangerous as what some proponents would say, unless you're wet going in. Yeah, which has happened. This this story just is mind boggling to me. Which one the guy, um, the sprinter Yeah, who who really should have known better? Right? His name

is um Justin Gatlin. He's an American sprinter for Team USA, world famous world class sprinter, right, um, And he was training down in Orlando for Korea, the World Games, I think the World Championships, and it was hot because it's almost always hot in Orlando, right, and he goes straight from his workout to the cry o sauna. Yeah, Like, what I want to know is why don't they have people with towels saying the one thing you don't want to do is get in here wet. Yeah, I just

don't understand. I don't understand it either, But it's difference between oversight and just being dumb, right, And but you can make the case that he was very dumb. He walked right into the cryo um sauna wearing his wet socks still and I think possibly is wet. Shoot, and

then he immediately got frostbite. Yeah, his feet froze and he ended up getting he was hobble basically couldn't even put on his running spikes, so I think he had to withdraw or no, he actually ran and got and lost the Usine bolt of Yeah, it lost big time.

But apparently he's back to form according to this. But the problem was he got frostbite from wearing his socks and his shoes, and the blisters and the scars that formed after them were perfectly lined up with the tops of his socks and his running spikes because that's what he was wearing wet in the cryosana. So that's what what. At least one person has died. You can get hobbled from it, even if you're an elite athlete, if you're

not using your noodle. Yeah. What else, Well, this one lady sued a company because, um, she got frostbite on her hands because they recommended she wear wet gloves. I have no idea why they would say this, but the recommendation was to wear wet gloves, and she ended up getting frost bite in her hands wet gloves, so that was it wasn't like accidental. They said you should wear wet gloves. So here's in this article. It's pretty great

what the spas reply was to this lawsuit. They said that, um, hey, she signed a liability waiver and she wasn't ensuring her own safety. So apparently she should have been smart enough to not listen to them when they told her to wear wet gloves, is what the spas UM reply to the lawsuit was. One of the thoughts on why this might help is that it might just be a placebo effect. Well, okay, yes, so now we really I I it's I've been kind of obvious. We're both a little skeptical of this. I

think it's fair to say, right, that's right. I'm not being judgment although, like, if you um want to try this and you feel like you're getting some sort of benefit from it, knock yourself out. Just do it safely and smartly, please um. But there the skepticism is largely centered around the idea that this is a placebo effect, especially with things like pain relief. Anything that goes beyond inflammation, uh is probably a placebo. Yeah. They did a study

in Australian two thousand fourteen. They had thirty young men put them through what they call it high intensity workout. I said, they get sore, and then they divided them up. They had um fifteen minutes in one of three tubs very cold water and nothing like the cryotherapy, even just cold water. I think it said fifty degrees um, one body temperature water, and then one tub with body temperature

water with magic soap. They basically said this soap will be beneficial for your recovery, and the results showed that they all had equal benefits. From the cold bath and the magic soap bath. Uh, and they reported you know, they all reported less soreness, basically equal between the cold and the magic soap bath and the magic so yeah, all three baths basically being equal. No, I think the normal bath didn't show as much improvement as the cold bath and the cold bath and magic soap bath. But

regular warm, non magic soap bath was whatever. But that strongly suggests that there's a placebo effect in effect. Yeah, I kind of bungled. That's you get it. Everybody still loves the chuck. Okay, so um, yeah, this one, this was a this is weird. Do you have anything else? One more study from a lady named Dane Laroche from the University of New Hampshire two thousand thirteen study. He found no difference in soreness, of strength or strength between

runners who iced and who didn't. Um, and like you said, there was a slight drop in inflammation, but muscular benefits were actually they what they did was what ice one leg and not the other, And the actually found muscular benefits from exercise were rader in the leg that didn't get iced, right, So maybe having the opposite effect, right, which makes sense. Again, Like number one, they're finding out

that inflammation in the muscles is part of recovery. It's something you want, like you said, right, and to to work against that seems like that would reduce recovery and hence reduce performance afterwards. Like it might make your muscles ache less because they're not inflamed or engorged with blood, but it's not helping your performance, right, And that's ultimately what all the elite athletes are after they're they're looking to be better the next day rather than you know, like,

oh my muscles ache, I don't want to feel them anymore. Yeah. I wonder how many things we were going to look back on today, Like we look back on ancient medicine. This is just like that road dwell Ville stuff. Yeah, and think can you believe that in the people would get into nitrogen gas chambers yea and freeze themselves. That's why it's kind of like, what like this this? I thought this was behind us by like a hundred years or something, but we're still doing it. You know why?

Because I think as long as there are humans on the earth, they're going to be looking for that fountain of youth. And you're gonna pay and try things that seems silly, but I will continue to keep an open mind about the possibility that this does have some sort of overlooked effect that we're not we don't understand yet, because it is pretty serious exposing yourself to that, Like that's just too pronounced of a difference than our norm. But that at the very least it sucks to go through.

I'm never gonna try it. I don't even mind being cold. Yeah, I think even if you don't mind being cold, you would mind us. It's probably like torture maybe so it looks like it. Yeah. Uh, if you want to know more about cryotherapy, you can type that word into the search bar how stepworks dot com. And since I said search far as time, go listen to Mayo, I'm gonna call this painful shot. Hey guys, my name is Emily. Recently discovered your show and have been binge listening walking

around campus. I'm a freshman at Harvard University. And she drops the H bomb. I recently listened to anesthesia and loved it, but one thing stuck out. One of you, I believe it was me, said something along the lines of getting an injection into your gums is the worst experience, but I think I can debunk this. When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I broke my

nose in a high jumping accident during track practice. I'm definitely afraid of needles, but when I went went in and to get it reset, I got five injections right up my nose. You imagine a needle in your nose, dude. I had to be pinned down because I couldn't control my hysteria. Not only that they didn't even numb it high enough in the nasal bridge, and I still felt my nose being reset. Plus my nose is still crooked. I think he gives my face and character. Um, Emily,

I haven't seen you, but I bet it does. I think the listen here is no high jumping. Yeah, she says, I think this feature gums thing. Sorry if it made you swarm, but I've heard you cover enough things that made my skin crawl to convince be convinced that you two are not squeamish. Not true. No, that one was pretty bad. That is from Emily with a hy Well, thanks a lot, Emily with the why we well, I guess we kind of appreciate that yes we do. Let's just go ahead and come out and say it. That

was awesome. If you want to see if you can make our skin crawl, give us your best shot. You can try it on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. You can tweet to us at s why sk podcast dot com, and you can go type whatever you want into the homepage of Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.