Hey, everybody, Chuck here, we're moving forward in time in twenty twenty for this select the year of COVID with our February twentieth episode birth Marks Colin probably not the Mark.
Of the Devil.
Honestly, don't remember much about this one, but when I was looking through our twenty twenty list it maybe I want to go listen to it. And so that's what I'm going to do, and I think you should too. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and there's Jerry. Jerry's back. Everybody that's right. And all the listeners said, what happened to Josh TV? What are we doing? Did we decide? Yeah, we're going to do birth one? Okay? Great? Check the title?
Chuck, Oh may I have two things in front of me.
How you doing?
I'm great?
How are you? I'm good? You got any birthmarks? I do what you got? I've got something under my right armpit. You're like, it looks like Richard Nixon. Close, it looks like Spiro Agnes. Do you remember when Mad Magazine used to make fun of Spiau Agnew and you're like, I have no idea who that.
Was the name.
Maybe no, it's because like they hated his politics. Yeah. Well, but then there was a Simpsons where Millhouse is like, they're making fun of Spiro Agnew again. He must work there or something, and I remember specifically thinking that he referenced Mad magazine. Oh that's funny.
Yeah, so you've got a under your armpit birthmark?
Yeah, how about you.
I don't think I do. Actually, what I have a lot of now because I'm an old man speeding toward death are skin tags. Oh yeah, like those they're not around the neck and armpit. That's where they like tend to gather.
That's just your skin, you know, really going at it.
I used to have them clipped, and I did. I did that for a while, but it's been a while, but now I went in recently. It was so annoying. It was one of these our medical system is just broken. It was one of those reminders because I went in to get it taken care of like I usually do. When I got in there and the guy was like, oh, well, we don't do this now unless you make another kind of appointment. I was like, well, can I just make this that since I'm here sitting in your office, right,
He's like, no, no, no, those take much longer. These are just ten minute appointments and that'll take like an hour. And some of them have their own vascular systems so they need to be cauterized. And I was like, oh, okay, so I'm just leaving and he was like yes, He's like, if you want to make that other appointment. And then they refunded the money for that appointment, which, yeah, that was nice a cope, but then he said, make the longer appointment if you want to come back.
Huh.
So which are yeah, you know, I mean they're not like medically danger or anything, but their brother unsightly. It's fine when they get long and big.
Well long, sure, I mean how long are we talking like?
I mean some of the ones are like, you know, quarter inch.
So okay, I was just about to say how big that one? Let me see if we can figure it out in the metric. It's a few centimeters, I think, is what you just.
Yeah, I want to get them clipped again. So you're going to make that longer appointment, right, I think it will be painful.
Is it painful? I've never had one clipped.
The regular clipping. The small ones aren't a big deal because they just hit it with a little quick shot and then clip it and this no big deal.
But what kind of a shot like.
A you know, needle, like a little numbing numbing thing. Okay, I got youa like with a needle, like light, a cane whatever, I don't know. They don't spray it with the freezy stuff.
No, you're thinking of this stuff for athlete's foot. This is like a shot light a cane.
But anyway, the ones that are big that require cauterizing, I'm sure that doesn't feel great, even if they've numbed it up.
You just get the acetylene torch out.
And imagine, don't have to shave my armpits because if you're torching something near armpit.
Hair, plus you just want to look good. Maybe I've never shaved my pits. Might start that I used to Why not? I'll bet that's itchy though. Yeah maybe anytime you shaved something it starts to grow out. It's itchy, you know what I'm saying. So I used to get warts actually when I was a kid. Oh yeah, And I remember going into the dermatologists and they go into the freezer, put on these huge rubber gloves and pull out like this thermos of I want to say, nitro glysterm.
That's not it. No, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the cold stuff. Yeah, and it would freeze, Yeah, my wart basically right off right there. Yeah, you just kind of sting for a second. And that was it.
I never really had warts.
Believe me, buddy, you lucked out because if you're a little kid in sure grade school and you have like it wasn't like I wasn't coated with them, but you know, i'd get one like here between my forefinger and my thumb, or I had one on my elbow or something like that. Zero in on that. Yeah, and you're you're the little weird kid who is already the fat kid now with warts new and improved.
I had freckles a lot more than I do now, because freckles tend to fade as you get older, and freckles are I guess the kind of well, they're not a kind of birthmark because you're not born with freckles, but I did look into it. Freckles are just an abundance of melanin, like collected together.
Well, that's basically what a mole is, which is a type of birthmark if you're born with it.
That's right.
So I love freckles, though, are super cute. Freckles are great. Moles are great. Birth Marks, especially interesting ones are great.
Warts are great. That's why the term warts and all came about it. That's how you should love. It's true, Chuck Man, quit making fun of people. Kids.
Well, that's the thing. So mean, birthmarks have been around since the dawn of humanity, I'm guessing, and people have probably been ostracized because their birthmarks since the dawn of humanity. And you know, for a very long time people were ostracized for their birthmarks because of some really stupid ideas, like that it meant you were a witch, right, or it meant you were touched by Satan, all sorts of stuff like that. And then over time it got a
little more innocuous. But even still today there are parts of the world where you can find people who are ostracized because they're birth marks. And then even in the developed world, the Western world, which is rational and based more on science, you can still find yourself, you know, at the receiving end of being ostracized. Maybe not because you're a witch, but just because you have a birth marker you look different. And so I've seen.
Parents react to it if their baby has like a strawberry mark on their head, yes like that, seeing them feel the need to say like, oh, you know this is you know, will go away or something like that.
I was reading this birthmark support group from Great Britain and they were saying this One mom had cards printed up explaining what her child's birthmark was because sometimes she just couldn't. She just didn't have it together enough to have a conversation with a stranger who'd walked up and
been like, what's up with your kid's face? And rather than belt them, she would just give them a card and then just probably go home and weep or something like that, knowing not for herself but the life that her kid was gonna have to face, not because her kid has a birthmark, but because the rest of the world are schmucks. Yes, that's the that's the long and short of it. That's right, all right, children. I bet I managed to find a soapbox even in the Birthmarks episode.
I bet a kid probably a collection of kids could still make you cry. If they started on, I'd.
Just start kicking, throw at elbows. I just hold my arms out and start twirling around really fast, and whatever got hit got hit.
People would be like, is Josh fighting a bunch of children and be like, yeah, they made fun of them.
Yeah, they'd be like, I shoved one in a grosser restore ones.
Oh man, I'll never forget that, lady.
So let's talk birthmarks, Chuck. It turns out there's a lot to know.
Yeah, they're usually not a big deal. They aren't painful, they're usually harmless. A lot of times that go away. We're going to detail the ones that do and that don't go away, and the ones that are of more concern. But generally speaking, science doesn't really know why they come about to begin with, but they are something that doctors will sometimes want to keep an eye on. And that's the intro.
That's Intro number seven.
Yeah, there's a couple of big categories, vascular and pigmented, and let's talk about some of these. Vascular are usually reddish because they have to do with blood vessels.
Yeah, I think reddish is a very common When you think birth marks, you think reddish typically I think brownish. Apparently they can come in a whole rainbow of colors blue, brown, black, pink, white, although I take issue with that purplish or tan, and I take issue with white because I think white is like a reverse birthmark, although technically it would still count as a birthmark.
So the whole rest of your body is a birthmark, and that right, Okay.
That's right. Birthmarks tend to be an aggregation of either pigment or blood, as we'll see, and white is like an area where pigment is absent, So I guess it still counts as a birthmark, but it's not really a birthmark. If you go into a dermatologist's office, they'll be like, he got this all wrong.
And like we said, the skin tags and freckles and things like that, they come later in life, although freckles can start out very early. But it's still not a birth mark because you're not born with that mark.
Yeah, and even as we'll see, some types of moles don't technically qualify as birthmarks, even though they typically fall under the banner of birth marks. You have to be born with something for it to count as a birthmark, that's right. So that's not even fully true. As we'll see, this is just full of lies. Everybody who studies birth marks needs to get their stuff together.
So the macular they're called flat sometimes macular stains.
And we're in the vascular category right.
This is the non pigmented. These are usually caused by blood and large blood vessels. These have some cute names that go along with them. The angel kisses great. I think some of these can be because of where they're found, although I've heard people cross referencing, like I think an angel kiss is usually on the forehead, oh really, but not always. A stork bite is usually on the back of the neck.
Oh, that makes sense.
But I've also when you google stork bite there are some like right on the tip of the nose, and people call them that.
I took it to me more like that those those names were derived from the age that they're like kids who are born with this and then it tends to go away at an early age. That's what it's associated with, you know, like the stork brings the baby, and the angels, well, everybody angels love babies. What about the salmon patch, I don't understand it at all.
They are usually above the neck, they usually or a lot of times they'll disappear and fade away by the time they're two three years old, but not always sometimes the last.
Yeah, but for the most part, if you have a macular flat vascular birthmark on your kid, they're probably going to outgrow. It is just really no other way to But they outgrow that birthmark eventually, that's right. Most often, port wine stains are a whole different ballgame. Yes, they look like kind of what they sound like. They're usually kind of a purplish red where it looks like, well port or wine has been spilled.
I would know nothing about what a wine's looks like.
Sure, right, because you never ever spill all your wine. It all makes it into your mouth. That's right. I've seen it, so port Weinstein. I say that it's like a whole different kettle of fish. It's in the same category as macular because they're vascular. It's like an aggregation of overdeveloped blood vessels kind of close to the skin. But they seem to come from like a whole different place. There's a whole different reason. And in fact we should
say this, chuck, because this is really important. If you go up to a dermatologist or anybody who would know what they're talking about. And you say, hey, where did birth marks come from? What causes birth marks? They would say, we actually don't know. The closest that they've come is with port winstains. From what I can tell, they figured out that there's a gene where this molecular switch that's supposed to go on and off is locked in the on position. That they think that this is what causes
port wine stains. And the reason that they found it is because about six percent of kids who are born with the port wine stain birthmark develops something called sturge Weber syndrome, which is a neurological condition. Oh interesting, and it's if you have a port wine stain birth mark. It does not mean you have sturge Weber, but if you have sturge Weber, you have a port wine birthmark. Gotcha. Six percent of port wine birthmarks cases have sturge Weber. It's actually a symptom.
But one hundred percent of people with that condition have right the port wind stain.
Yeah, and so in investigating the syndrome and the link between it and the port wine stain birthmark, they found this gene that they think is the culprit.
All right, Well, they never go away. A lot of times they'll get darker as you become older. And these are not a big deal health wise either, unless it's something near your eyes that can affect your vision, and then they might want to take.
A look at it. I also saw that in some cases they can start to get lumpy and actually become disfiguring as you age two. I did see those, and they can also just once they lump, they can scar too, So a lot of people seek treatment for port Weinstein birth marks. As we'll see.
Yeah, strawberry marks is what I referenced at the beginning. You might see these on little bebies. They are hamanngiomas.
Is that right?
Yeahah, and these most of the times I saw even less than thirty percent. But it says your thirty percent are visible at birth most of the times though, they'll develop between four and six weeks, and I think by the time you hit six months, if you're going to have one, it will be visible by that point. You won't develop one of these at like the one year mark.
No, but again there's that one. There's the loophole where it's like you it still counts as a birthmark, even though you weren't technically born with it. Me up the wall, right, And these are a little more reddish, and you've probably seen these, like I said, on babies before, because they're you know, they're pretty common. They will they have they're raised off the skin. That's kind of one of the
differentiators is they're not flat. Right, So like hamagiom Homagie, I've said it like five times in my head, Hamagioma's fifty times probably yes, and I can't say it out loud. Hamagioma's macular import wine scenes. Like we said, these are all over developed blood vessels, clusters of blood vessels. They're from blood vessels, which is like sixth time we said that, Which is why they have that that reddish pigment is because the blood is close enough to the skin and
it's clustered together. It's kind of almost pooled right there, right, that's right. But it's not like a bruise or anything like that. It's the blood hasn't escaped the vessel. There's just a lot of vessels or big vessels all clumped in together near the skin. What's interesting about Himagioma's I did it chuck Hmagioma's nice work. Thanks hemangiomas oh Man, did I miss it twice? I think there's an inn
in there that is being forgotten. What's interesting about what you just mentioned is that in some cases they can extend down into the body, and the further they extend down, they won't be reddish, they'll be bluish.
Yeah, and they can even be on the organs. It's pretty rare, but it happens.
It is, and they can be threatening on the organs. You don't want to have a cluster of blood vessels on your organs. But back to the blue part. So the reason that they look blue is because, as everybody knows, blood on its way back to the lungs to be oxygenated is blue. That's right, that's not true. I'm sorry to set you up like that. I thought it was true.
Up, that's are not. And as soon as you get cut and it hits that sweet sweet oxygen, right, that just transforms into red. That's what you thought, right, Not what I thought as an adult, but that's what I thought as a small child.
That's what I thought until this morning. No, come on, you knew that.
No? Really? Yes, you thought blood was blue?
Yes, I thought deoxygenated blood was blue. Wow. Well okay, well do you understand why it appears blue?
Well, I mean no, but I just knew that that was like a playground falsehood.
Well, I was too busy thinking about how we're fighting off. I was covered with to learn this.
You're like, I'm going to draw some sweet blue blood out of that jerney, right, So with my fists.
The reason it's blue is because the deeper it is, the less blue light is able to penetrate, so the less that can be absorbed, and so the light that's reflected tends to be blue more than say like red, which penetrates deeper and is absorbed.
That has to do with blue foods too, which is a bit for the next episode.
Thank you, just put a pin in that. Yeah.
These strawberry marks though, back to those, they will disappear usually by the time a kid is like into double digits. If they're large, sometimes you might see a scar. These are around the head and neck as well, and are most commonly found on Caucasian girls. Right, But they're not. They don't have a real impact on development either. But if they are really big and puffy, again, they could around the eyes or ears. They could interfere with hearing, envision and stuff like that.
Right, Yeah, and if they're on the on your internal organs, it's a problem. Yes. Yeah, So I think we should take a break because astoundingly we're twenty minutes in and we have not taken a break. Wow. So we'll be back to birth marks right after this.
Okay, to recap, Remember, vascular blood birth marks are reddish because of blood vessels. Precisely, if anyone misses that question on the quiz tomorrow, your toast is not our fault.
So the other kind of birth marks are pigmented birth.
Marks, nothing to do with blood vessels.
I don't know. There could be a blood vessel or two involved, but no, not really. No, this is because like freckles, like I was talking about, it is just a collection of melanin that's brought out by sun exposure. Yeah, and you have melanocytes, melanin cells, melatonin cells or melanin one of the two all over your body. It gives you like the color to your skin. Some people have more,
some people have less, but everybody has them. But like you were saying, when they kind of congregate together, that's when they form these pigmented spots that we know as birthmarks.
Right, we are in our house. My daughter's at the age now where she has started to notice skin color. Oh yeah, which is something that you know every parent has to deal with at some point. Sure, and that's how it was recommended to us to talk about it with scientifically, being like, hey, everyone's the same, She's got different skin tones because of science. Some people have more melanine than other people.
Is that why you had me over to dinner and started asking me about that? Yeah, you just wound me up and knew it. Go huh, that's right.
So, but I mean that is tricky stuff for parents because what you're really talking about is the first talks of.
Race, right you know. Yeah, and you just you have to do it in such a way that diffuses it almost towards just like you. No, everyone's the same, right, Some people are lighter skinned, some people are darker skinned. Yeah.
Both of her best friends, though, are multiracial, which helps. Oh yeah, I'm sure because we can say, you know, your friend Blank. I'm not going to say names, Jerry Blank. She has two friends that are both named Blank.
We need to say, you know, her skin is a little darker than yours, because you know, when you see her parents and try to explain on that and kids are like, oh okay, yeah, how does this matter? What does this have to do with big bird? Can I please get big bird yellow? That's a great question.
But these have some cute names too, and they are almost well that's not true. I was going to say they aren't. They're named because of what they look like, but really just the one is.
Well, yeah, there's really just two types of pigment in birthmarks, or broad categories of it.
Yes, the very Parisian cafe latte cafela, Oh, Cafe.
La Sorry I misread that.
It's all right, a latte is different.
This has nothing to do with vascular aggregations of blood vessels.
No, And do you get confused on coffee orders or do you know all that stuff?
I'm pretty pretty good with it.
I don't know what any of them are, Like any time someone.
It's all just a differing amounts of milk, steamed milk.
Yeah, but like when I hear like a machiato or an Americano American even know what these things.
Are a shot of espresso or multiple shots of espresso with ultra hot water. Right, that's an Americana.
I think that's what our friend Chad Crowley drinks.
It's it's just a really really really hot black coffee.
Okay, that's all interesting.
Machiato, you got me. I don't know, like cappuccino, there's a lot. There's like more foam than milk.
Milk foam, Yeah, yeah, I know those two.
It's all just milk or foam or coffee. What's a cafe la cafela is simply coffee with milk. That's it, really, that's what that's literally, what it means in French.
Is that like the what's it called in in Spanish?
Cafe conley?
Okay, that's the same thing.
Then coffee with milk.
Okay, I am a dummy. I haven't been drinking.
It's not it's not that. It's just it's not that.
As you can see, I'm still drinking my Cafe lat from this morning.
Those are great, aren't they?
And it's still hot thanks to And I'll go ahead and plug it the zoji rushi. And I've plugged this on our page before. Like, if you like your coffee hot all day, get one of these little thermoss. This thing keeps the thing hot for ten hours.
It really does.
Yeah, so much.
So I have the same one you mean, has a little pinkuin. It's cute when I pour coffee in. I have to like pour the coffee into a mug to let it cool off, right, to put it in there, because you won't be able to drink it. No, like maybe the next day you could. It keeps it that hot, for sure.
We need to get them as a sponsor.
Man. They also make out of this world rice cookers too.
Uh yeah, I've got Well, now, I'm not sure if that's the one I have or another one I think Tiger.
Those are the two best ones in my opinion.
I can't remember. I'll have to look, But all I know is the one I have is very forgiving. Yeah, you can be off with your measurements and it still makes perfect rice.
You can use like buttermilk and somehow it still comes out just cret.
Oh man, buttermilk buttermilk ice.
That could be all right. Well, here's a little tip for you. You make sushi rice, okay, Usually you just do a one to one rice to water ratio. Yeah, then go in and just put like half like a tea spoon half teaspoon, even depending on how tiny you want to be of rice vinegar.
Oh, well sure, I usually add that after No, No, you want to make it together? Yeah, so you want to cook it with it?
Yes? Okay.
I used to make my own sushi rolls, and then I just got to the point where I was like, it's not worth it. It's just a lot easier to get sushi.
Where did you get your your seafoodashimi? Sorry?
I would get that at the decab Farmer's market. I would get the tuna there and the crab sticks, which that's easy. You can get that at Kroger's and the seaweed there. But then there's also a Japanese market by where I would get the eel nice to bake in the oven. Nice, but that's kind of as you know, you could do spicy tuna tuna right, eel and crabstick.
Yeah, California Roles, I really want some sushi right now.
I I mean we both eat a lot of sushi. Yeah, it's good.
Okay. So cafe ol a birth marks.
So that is the cafe ola. They are the color of a cafel a kind of a light brown.
Which means coffee with milk.
Yep, there And this is to me was when I think birthmark, I think of these because it's just a little brown spot anywhere on the body.
Yeah, and that's I think. One of the things we didn't say is with some of the birthmarks there is kind of specific places that they'll appear, yeah, or they're tied to specific places usually, But with cafeol A birthmarks in particular, they're just they got no rules forehead, butt, cheek, wherever, wherever, and they apparently don't. There's nothing, there's no problem with them.
But very much like the the port wine staying birthmark, the caf Ala spots are tied to a neurological actually a nerve condition where if you have six or more of these kinds of cafe Ala birthmarks, especially if they're larger than like a dime in an older kid, you want to go to see a doctor. Yeah, because that could mean that you have something called neurofibromatosis. I said that a million times in my head too. You got
to start saying things out loud, also known as NF one. Yeah, it's easier, but n F one is not even necessarily it could it could be asymptomatic. Like if you if you're like, oh my gosh, I've got six or more caf al a birthmarks on me, maybe I have neuro fibromatosis. That's It's not like a death sentence or anything like that. It's just go see a doctor, right.
The Mongolian spot us are these look like bruises to me? They can if you don't know what you're looking at. It can be alarming because you see these pictures of babies that look like they're heavily bruised, kind of at the lower back upper buttocks area. Yeah, but it is not bruising. They're bluish gray though, And like I said, usually on the lower back. I think African Americans, African Asian and Hispanic kids usually with darker skin have more
of them, or more commonly have them. And these are the ones that fade out by the time they're like you know, six or seven.
Usually, Yeah, And they're usually a bluish green because they're clusters of pigment cells together deep under the skin. And so you've got that same thing going on like you have with the hemangiomas. Nice, I got it, you got it.
There's a good old fashioned mole. This is a pigmented ear mark. Multiple of them are Nevy, Brown, Nevi, and e v I because a nevis is a single mole.
Are any of these like band names?
I don't think so, but very fortuitous mentioning of that because of listener mail later. It is Latin for spot and there are three categoryles. Yes, okay, no, nev I think mole is Latin for spot. Oh is it?
Oh? Yeah?
Yeah, wow, I was just about to make fun of you too.
I'm glad I didn't.
I'm glad you have mole sounds real Latin sport boy. So there are three categories of moles, congenital, acquired, and atypical. The congenital About one percent of babies are born with these, and these are kind of all over the map as far as color and size. Some of them are hairy, some of them are not hairy.
I saw that basically every congenital mole has a little hair, a hair of some sort. It can be very very fine, It can be thick, it can be coarse, it can be very dark. Yeah, usually they're very dark because they're growing out of pigment cells that are like just pigment away. That's right, and I learned that on the Dollar Shave Club blog. Oh and they say also to just kind of pluck because shaving, if you're a man like say you have one on your face or whatever, it can
nick very very frequently. Yeah.
Well, I've got some of the skin tags that obviously don't shave, so it's not a problem now.
But well, maybe that's why you have skin tags. If you shave, you just shave them off all the time, trim them down.
I don't think that's why.
No. Now, the skin.
Tags come from like clothing rubbing against the skin. That's why they're around the neckline a lot of times, or sometimes around the waistline, so you know. But again, those aren't birthmarks. Okay, those are old man marks I got you acquired moles. They come around later in life as well. And this is not the same as the skin tags. Still, it is still a mole. And a lot of doctors think that this is from sun damage.
Yes, but not necessarily cancerous, which leads us into the third type of mole, atypical moles. These aren't necessarily cancerous either, but they're the kind you definitely want to keep an eye on. There'll be multiple colors or have some sort of color gradient in them. Their shape will be just kind of amorphous, irregular. Yeah, they'll be just kind of you'll be like that don't look quite right. That's that
kind of mole. And those are the kind that you definitely want to have a doctor check out because a lot of people don't know this, but an atypical mole is associated with melanoma, and melanoma is no joke. I think a lot of people are like, melonima's nothing. You just go, you know, get it removed at the doctor. No, melanoma can spread like lightning through your body and it can be a real problem. It's a very serious thing to keep up with.
Yeah, I've got a pretty sad situation with a family member with melanoma. Yeah that I think the treatment is going really well, but it is. It has definitely opened my eyes to the fact that it's no joke.
Yeah, I had no idea, you me open my eyes. She had somebody that she lost to melanomas. She saw the same thing like melanoma. Then no, that's not at all how it is, which is really weird because somebody's dropping the ball because most people just think it's nothing.
Yeah.
On messaging. Yeah, yeah, I agree with myself.
Apparently it's interesting that different kinds of cancer have better or worse PR.
Yeah, great product, terrible marketing, right, Yeah, it's kind of what we're dealing with here. But I know that.
Prostate cancer has often lagged behind breast cancer, Like breast cancer does a bang up job of marketing and press and PR and awareness. So these, like you said, the doctors will want to monitor these over time. What I couldn't figure out was what is the quote unquote beauty mark? Is that an acquired mole?
I think a beauty mark is any kind of mole that's just like, I'm living with this and I'm loving every minute of it.
It's so interesting how that has become a thing.
I was trying to figure out where it went back to. Obviously, Marilyn Monroe like really kind of popularized that, right, I think it predated her, Like Liz Taylor is at least contemporary, if not pre dating. Yeah, he's very famous for one. And then like even still today, Cindy Crawford, Scargo, who else, Oh, Natalie Portman apparently has them like on her her face. Interesting. I went over this list of CELEBRITI I was like, celebrity birthmarks. The only one that comes up though, is moles.
Could not I couldn't find any like well known celebrities with birthmarks like birthmarks, birthmarks like facial birthmarks. You just I couldn't think of one either. I couldn't find any.
Well, that's probably because of the prejudice against.
Them, I would guess, so, yeah, which is sad. Yeah, it reminded me though, Chuck. Didn't one of the Fat Albert gang have a birthmark on his face? I don't know.
Was he the guy that had the pulled his toboggan cap over his face? No, I think that was mushmouth, because you never see his face at all. Well, then how would you know if he had a birthmark?
I don't know.
I just thought that might have been a like a backstory or something.
I think this just went off the rails enough for a message break, don't you sure?
Yeah, we'll be back right after this and we'll talk about treatment and what I think is a pretty interesting thing, superstitions throughout history about birthmark's greed. All right, So, like we said about most of these birthmarks, usually medical treatment
is not necessary, but some are monitored over time. And what doctors will do, obviously is examine them, take some pictures, and then just sort of follow that over time, that same routine to see if they're changing, and to see if they're getting bigger or changing shape or anything unusual.
It's a wait and see, yes, exactly if you have hamangiomas, they will frequently use. Like a port wine stain is something that a lot of people go seek treatment for because it's often on the face, the neck, and it actually responds pretty well to a laser treatment, something called a pulsed dye laser.
Is this like the same tattoo treatment or no? Probably because that's pretty painful, right. Oh, yes, Like I can't amat because it says children a lot of times can be treated with this laser treatment.
But man, I know it's sad. It feels a lot like having like a hot bacon grease splashing on your skin. That's what if getting a laser or tattoo remove with a laser.
But without the knowledge that like in a couple of minutes, I'm gonna be eating some sweet bacon.
More like if the only silver lining to it is that a pig didn't die for you to be in that situation, you know what I mean, right, or.
I won't have whatever tattoo I obviously don't want on my body anymore. That's the reward.
There, right. So if that is the case, then if it is the same feeling as that, then yeah, I feel bad for the little kids who get that. But that's the best time to start this treatment is when the child is young, because again, what you're what you're doing is you're using a pulse dye laser, which uses a certain frequency or spectrum wavelength of light that is targeted so that that birthmark will absorb that light. The surrounding skin is a different pigment, so it won't absorb
that light like the birthmark. Well, and that energy, that light energy is translated into heat energy in the birthmark and there go the cells or the blood vessels that make up the cells. And after enough treatments you've hopefully broken up the hamangioma or the port wine stain and like the birthmark will go away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that? That was me? I think the No,
it was me, No, that was mine. Well, then we just had a simultaneous stomach growl because my stomach just growled at the same time, Wow, are we like yeah, after twelve years of podcasting together.
So if you are getting something removed, it's usually a vascular birthmark. Generally they don't try and get rid of pigmented birth marks, although it's possible, I think, but usually doctors don't treat that.
No. But if you if you have a child with say a cafe Ola birthmark on their on their face, the doctor's not going to be like, no, we're not doing that. They'll they'll probably try to work it out, but the results are not nearly as reliable as with vascular birth marks, which have to do with blood vessels beneath the skin clustered together, overdeveloped, that kind of thing.
Or what your doctor might say is you know what, this thing's on your forehead, grow your bangs out until you get old enough to where you accept this as an individual trait that you're proud of.
There's something called the British Association of Skin Camouflage that is dedicated to helping people actually training makeup artists on how to cover birthmarks because for some people they'll just never get used to it. They don't want to have to get used to it. They just rather cover it up, and that's their right, that's their prerogative. Yes, they're birth mark. They can do whatever they want with it. And so the average makeup artists doesn't know how to do that.
It actually takes special skills apparently, and so there's groups who train people so interesting to do that. Yeah, we should do I don't know, I don't.
Know if it's a short stuff for full length, but we should do something on vital igo.
Yeah.
I had a friend in La who who had vidal igo. And again, like just same with some of this stuff. It's such a forward facing thing if it's on your face, and it's a big deal to people. It's an important it's important issue because like the bullying like we were talking about, were just kids and adults remaining self conscious about that kind of thing, right, It's it's sad.
It is sad. Agreed. I think we could all do a lot better at accepting people with facial differences. What it's called.
Yeah, there's something on facial differences.
I don't remember what it was, but I know I've mentioned this group before, Changingfaces dot Org.
Yeah, it's awesome.
They're just there. Their whole thing is like, hey, actually it's funny they are. They promote skinned camouflage if you want it, but they're also they're big pushes. Like, hey, rest of society, there's nothing different about these people except for their face. Like they're not cognitively challenged. They're they're not disabled in any way or differently able to their face is different for any number of reasons, and it's really kind of on the rest of you to get
over it. Yeah, you know, which I think is the healthiest approach if you ask me.
So the superstitions we were talking about, I know we mentioned a couple early on, like that you were touched by the devil, like that was real stuff. In some cultures in China, there were some quirky ones like if you have a right foot birthmark means you're adventurous. It's on the left foot, it means you're really smart. If it's on your tom Tom's that means you're greedy. And this is just sort of you know, culture and.
Folklore sure the world around so because we can't explain what birthmarks are where they come from all over the world, people's societies. So it's something the mom did while she was pregnant, of course, and so we came up with all sorts of dipstick ideas for exactly what the mom did wrong to explain birthmarks.
Yeah.
One of my favorites is that the mom was startled and touched her face.
Oh so the baby, and at.
The exact same moment, the baby's blood vessels at that point in the baby's face formed a birthmark. It's very scientific.
Or how about this, If you have a strawberry mark as a baby, it's because mom ate too many red things.
Yeah, or can't lay off the strawberries.
Or port wine staining. They couldn't lay off the wine, yeah, Or coffee cafel a coffee that's so on the nose, Like, come on, people.
It is. There's this thing called the doctrine of signs, where like if a food looked like a body part, it was associated with helping to heal that body part. Like beats are good for the for the blood or something like that.
Or avocados are good for the testicles.
Exactly. I was hoping you would bring that up.
Let me see what else. In Japan, if a pregnant woman looked at a fire or into a flame of some kind, they thought that might cause a burn mark.
On the baby skin. Yep.
And I think some of these carry forward a little bit even today.
Well, the x ray one is obviously fairly modern.
Oh sure.
Like the explanation is that the mom got an X ray while she was pregnant and it basically left a mark on the baby. Yeah, that's not true. That is not true. The one that really is always stuck out to me, and it reminded me of this case I want to tell you about. Is this idea that a birthmark is actually a mark left over from a past life.
This is pretty neat, Like if you have a birthmark that looks like a bullet hole in your back, that means you were shot in the back right in.
A past life, and not just like that's what that means. Like there are there are I really hesitate to use this where they're documented cases of this happening. And supposedly there was this kid in Syria who was born with like a kind of like a slash like birthmark I think, on the back of his head, and apparently from a very early age, when the kid was able to start to talk, started recounting being murdered with an axe. Oh interesting, and then started talking about the village where he used
to live and who is what his name was? And then the guy that killed him, and it was enough allegedly that the village elders where this kid lived were like, we need to go check this out. So they traveled to that other village and they said, does so and so live here? And they're like, yeah, he lives over there. And it's like, well, did somebody else name this live here? Once they're like, yes, he died, he vanished mysteriously, and they went and talked to it. They went and talked
to the accuser. He broke down and confessed and showed him where they buried the body that this kid supposedly was in the past life. Wow, who was murdered by an axe? There's just no way that that happened. But I love reading about stuff like that. The part of me that's like, yeah, that subscribed to that time life books of like paranormal phenomena, Yeah, still loves stories like that.
Yeah. I think you lost me when you said village elders. Oh yeah, yeah, because.
You know they're the same ones that are like, well you're a witch too because of that?
Right?
Yeah?
See if she floats?
Right? So what else you got any others let me see here.
While we talked about the Devil's mark, supposedly am Boleyn was accused of witch.
Craftory supposedly, I saw also that she most decidedly was not. Oh really, Yeah, I think that's the legend all.
Right, possession by the devil. Yeah, it could be another one.
And one thing that we did know was that definitely did happen historically, is from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, if you were Russian nobility, you proved it by displaying your birthmark.
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, what's what was the family of the Romanovs.
Yeah, pretty interesting, which actually holds water because they think that some birthmarks may be congenital. It's entirely possible that a family line, especially one that kind of kept them themselves, you know what I mean. I know what you mean, could conceivably pass down something like a birthmark. Yeah, and so unless you do you have anything else, No, I don't chuck take it away.
I think we just should close by really like stressing to any kids listening and parents of children.
That vascular birthmarks have to do with blood vessels under the skin.
No, just explain to your kids if there's another kid in their class, as you know, a pretty obvious birthmark that they're just the same. Yeah, and don't don't tease kids for that stuff. If you're a kid that's young and listening, we all look different, we all have different skin tones. Yeah, just don't be a jerk.
No, I think that's really great advice.
No, I think the golden rule. Think about how you might feel if somebody was making fun of something about your body.
That's a good one too. Yeah. If you want to know more about parenting, well you could just listen to all of our other episodes. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.
This is from Ryan and Lucy, the aforementioned band name ref. They have been to our shows at the Bell House a couple of times, a few times and let me see where are they from here? Road trips between New York and Providence, And then they've seen us at the Bell House and they said, we realize how much we get a kick out of the various band names, and we started to inventory them a few years ago. Since our wedding ends next week, we realize that now it's a perfect time to just go ahead and send you
the list. I'm not sure why that has anything to do any but Ryan and Lucy congratulations for what it's worth. Ryan's favorite is worm burden. Oh yeah, from the hookworm and Lucy's mouth parts. That's from a lot of episodes. But we'll just buzz through these really quickly, just for nostyalgia's sake, and aspiring bands jump in and take these.
And give us some money for him.
There's some real gold in here.
Are we doing all those?
Yeah?
Oh my god, that's right.
I'll go through them quickly. A fistful of neurons, warm burden, tub of pulp. I know you want to comment on everyone, don't you just throw in what you think is really good threat simulation theory. Poor Fred Noonan, I remember that one, yea sweet give me the teat. I don't remember that one. It was from Uncanny Valley, but I don't remember saying that was a band.
Or even how it would relate to it.
This is for movie crush. Sick vandalism that's a good one, flesh on the chunks, hot plastic injection, pyrocastic flow, that's a good one. Flaming death bolts, pintos that is a legendary one, conceptual walls, framing him cohort.
Offspring cohort, omnikohort, third generation cohort offspring, spousal cohort.
I don't remember any of those.
All those were from that heart study.
Okay, oh that's right. Cortical homunculus. That's pretty good, medieval synthesis, magic bullet. Eh. I want to retract this next one because apparently I said Herbal Douches was a good man named.
I take that back. Okay, that's terrible.
Slaughtered narwaal peck lube, sex link, processive manhole incidents.
That's a good one. Graphic spew, gross nuclear bulge, love it. Local group. That's kind of dumb. Oh no, I can see that. It's kind of like Scrantonicity. Oh sure, yeah. The Electric Death Commission. I love that one.
Yeah, doctor Foss, bomb drop.
What was that one?
Michael Dylon, Huh, I don't remember exactly what that referenced, death Master file, mouth fart, the of course, the classic frozen poop knife. Yeah, sloth moths, radioactive cats, that one's dumb.
Static crush. I like that one.
Damage Night not bad. The descriptivists, Eh, that's a little haughty.
I think sure, but I could be kind of like Mumferge and Suns kind of music, right, yeah, exactly, Yeah, Oh gotcha, it.
Sounds too much like Decembrists.
I think that is exactly right.
Bathtub Jin Wasted on Excitement. That's an album title, he says, But that's pretty good as a band, Mother Culture, Jungle x Ray very recent, wet record the album from Jungle x Ray, two, Whale Bolt from Corduroy, and then Going Postal, which he says is a lot of bands are called that.
Yeah, I think you look that up, even didnto it?
I think so those are good.
We always, always, anytime we talk about great band names from episodes, have to give a shout out, especially when Frozen Poop Knife comes up to Diarrhea Planet.
Well, he had that on the list. I think he didn't quite understand that that is a real.
Band, old band that pre dates Frozen Poop Knife. I know.
I'd like to think that they've been tweeted at over the years.
Oh they've tweeted to us.
Oh that's right, they have, right, they said, they.
Said, hey, sorry, we're gonna stick with our thanks for thinking of it. Yeah. In other words, shut up. Maybe I don't know. I think it depends on how you look at the world. Yeah, okay, so I think that's it everybody. I don't remember what's going on anymore. But this is the end of the episode. So if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com if you want, and you can also send us an emails you stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You Know, Stuff you Should
Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.