What's the deal with blood types?

gonna say the joke. Jerry said that her blood type was a positive, which she thought was the most optimistic of blood types. It doesn't even make sense, Sure it does, that doesn't She's a positive person. Oh, I see. I think of a positive is like a plus. So like you were the star stum. Yeah, the star student of the blood type. That makes sense. Though. That's not a bad joke, Jerry know that. I understand. It's the first joke she's given us in seven years. Way to go, Jeers,

that's gonna be a trivia question. You're down the roads just knocking up with Jerry's one joke. How are you, sir? I'm doing good. I'm feeling a positive myself. I'm feeling oh negative. Wow, this joke just keep I don't even know my blood type. I don't know mine neither. Is that crazy? Yeah, that's great. And I've never had to I mean, I've given blood IVY, but I don't. I don't. I've never received blood. Get the records. Don't they test your blood type? I guess, but I don't. Ever, I

don't know. It should be on your donor card. I think you know what I do have, and this is so silly. I have some dog tags that I made when I was in high school because I just thought it was cool to wear in shop. I didn't make it myself. I had them made. Oh I see, oh hey Richie. Richis like, I'm gonna get dog tag. That's neat and um, I don't know. I went through a

little phase. I guess the dog tag and it's your blood type on that it is and I actually know where they are are so I could go find that. I can wait, all right, I'll be back. Just give me a couple of hours. Well, I legitimately have no idea what my blood type is, um, because I didn't go through a dog tag face and it's not on my birth certificate. I went and looked, not there was your real name, your real name, I think, so, I'm

pretty sure I wasn't an abductive baby. I've always had this fear that, like I look at my birth certificate and find out I'm like three years older or something that I thought I was. This is a strange fear, which would explain a lot. Really, yeah, it's fine, okay if you were what now, If you're forty, yeah you are, happy birthday, thank you. If I was forty seven, you and Julius Caesar just celebrated a birthday that would be bad. Or was it his birthday or he just died that

was the death day. Yeah, that was the opposite of his birthday. Yeah, although some people have died on their birthday, some famous people. Oh really yeah. I don't remember who though, but at LEAs one famous person was at Ason or Alexander Graham, Bell somebody like that that did they die because of their birthday? Thomas Jefferson. Maybe No, it wasn't. Okay, it wasn't anything like that as far as I know, Like they didn't like a party, their last breath, blowing

out their candles, that'd be pretty neat. So blood types. Did you know much about this? Did not? I didn't either. I just suspected it was fascinating. They had a vague awareness of it because, um remember the ten scientists who were their own guinea pigs episode. Karl Landsteiner makes an appearance in that, yeah, which I think means uh, well, stein is Stone, So like land Stoner, he's a landstowner. Nice, good for him. He was quite a doctor though for

a landstowner. He uh he was fearless. Yeah, well, not really fearless. He was fearless about um needles, He didn't mind with drawing blood from himself. Um. But the reason we bring up carl An Stannard because he's the guy who finally discovered blood types way back in the d R. Yeah exactly. He got the Nobel for it in n Yeah, so it's pretty recent stuff here, you know. Yeah, but I thought the history, uh you did the research on this, which thanks man, hats off to you. I appreciate it. Um.

I thought the history of it was super interesting. Um. So yeah, carl Anstarner was the first guy, and we'll talk about him a little more in depth than what he did. Um, but he was the first guy to identify the A, B O blood types. Um. But prior to him, people were aware that there was some weirdness with blood and that you couldn't just mix the stuff willie nilly and expect good results. Because for a very long time, humans, thanks to horrible things like vivisection, knew

that we are blood was very, very vital. It was a vital life force. Yeah. And um, you know back in the day, I think we've talked about bleeding in barbers before, but they were real big on taking blood out of people. Um. And at some point, I guess some doctors must have, you know, taken some drugs and thought, I wonder what would happen if we put blood into a person? Right, Well, I mean, if you think about it,

if you're like, this is a vital life force. If you have somebody who's dying from bleeding out like a hemorrhage, which happened a lot like during childbirth, for example, then you would think maybe if I took some healthy blood and put it into a dying person who's bleeding to death, they'll come back. Yeah. And of course, uh, they had all sorts of like crazy notions back then, so they

thought it could like bleeding someone out. They thought putting blood back in someone could cure weird things like insanity, which we, of course we know now has nothing to do with that kind of thing, right, So they said, well, let's try this, let's see what we can do. Um. They didn't start with human blood, oddly enough, he went right to the animal blood. Uh. And it was not good when they started taking blood from animals like cows, calves and injecting it into human patients. Yeah. There was

a French doctor that put cast blood into a madman. Yeah, Jean Baptiste. Denise the doctor, okay, and he Um. The madman started to sweat and vomit and urinate the color of chimney soot, and I guess the doctor said, yep, he's a madman, and then he gave him another transfusion after that after Yeah, and then the guy died and actually Denise was charged with murder for that and he

was forced to quit medicine. Man, it was very very scandalous, um, even though he was experimenting on a madman, which you know at the time was pretty much fair game for anything.

I think the horrific accounts of the whole thing really kind of captured the national imagination and as a result, um, the Decree of Chalet was shoot by the French monarchy that basically said oh no, no, no no, no more transfusions and uh for a while, like basically a hundred and fifty years this it was banned in France and the effect that it had kind of extended over the continent.

It was basically de facto banned throughout Europe because these horrible experiments by Denny's and others that had these terrible results. It was like, you guys, this is mad science, and you can't do that anymore because it's a really bad news. France also banned ketchup when like three years ago the

band catch up, but chats up around still now. They didn't ban the spelling of ketchup, they banned the condiment in school cafeterias, and um, I think a lot of people were put it on like uh, French cuisine, like they don't want to catch up on their cuisine. But it had to do with the sugar, yeah, the sugar intake. But they said it's okay for French fries, which they just called fries over there, exactly Fritz. I think so they band catch up and then a long time ago

they banned blood transfusions. That's right, thank you, Franz. That's right. And it stayed that way for a long time. I mean there were doctors here and there in the nineteenth century that that experimented around a little bit, of course. Yeah. Well the Decree of shell it was sixty eight and it really was prohibitive until the mid nineteenth century, the

early nineteenth century. Well, and that's when the guy named, a physician in Britain named James Blendell was tired of seeing his patients died during childbirth bleeding out like you were talking about. Yeah, he's one of the heroes of the story, he is. And he said, you know what, there's got to be a better way, and let me try and and you know, let me try and put

blood that's not an animal into someone. Yeah. The thing that Blendell figured out was that the great error that the early French doctors were doing was using the blow out of a brute. As he put it, that don't mean a jerk, right right, means an animal. He guys, like, just let me watch my rugby. Um, the mixing like the blood of one species with another. Blendell decided was just a really bad move and that that's what it

caused these horrible reactions. Really good start, right, So human human blood, he decided would should work, it would possibly work, And he faced an immediate problem, which was, you have no means of getting blood out of somebody and into somebody else at this point, blood hell, what are you

gonna do? So he invented a contraption for it, like the first blood transfusing contraption was invented by James Blendell for this very recent Yeah, And he got some dogs and he practiced on them, and uh, I have a bad feeling that some of those dogs probably died. I would guess along the way. But um he he eventually got to a guy that was bleeding to death, and I guess. The guy was like, um, doctor, I'm bleeding a lot, and could you take some of that blood

and put it back into me? But because that might be a good idea, because I'm told it's important, like chimneys in the Yeah, let's just go for this, and he did. Then the guy died. Well yeah, but it was two days, which wasn't too bad. So I guess he was like, he didn't see vomit or charcoal sut urine, right, And the guy did say he was feeling less fainty. So it did revive him for two days. That's a

great prognosis, I think. But because he didn't see all those awful reactions immediately, he was sort of onto something. Even though the guy died, he was encouraged by the results, right, Yeah, so he went on to perform I believe ten more blood transfusions and um the result, says the the author of one of the articles we used for research, Carl Zimmer, who wrote a great article in Mosaic about blood types UM. As he put it, the results were dismal. Four out

of the ten survived. It's not too bad. I'm kind of like, if this guy is just shooting in the dark, mixing human blood together, and yeah, he's doing okay. But what he what he proved was that you can take human blood and transfer it from one human to another. But there's still something we don't know, like what it should be a hundred percent success rate? What's the problem here? And he never lived to see the answer to it.

But it was Carl land Steiner who who figured it out before them, because because blood Dell's success rate was still pretty low and he was working in the twenties something like that. In the mid nineteenth century, there was a weird little um sidetrack that took place the milk Yeah, in in North America and Canada. In the United States, doctors decided that milk would be a better substitute for

transfusions than blow. Yeah. Were they mixing milk into the blood or were they just injecting milk directly into the blood stream. Here is some sheep's milk, um goat. It looks or smells or taste nothing like human blood, but let's give it a shot. They're thinking was that the fats in the milk would be converted into white blood cells and then into red blood cells in the blood stream. So um, not even close. They tried with They tried with cow, they try with goat, and then eventually they

try with human milk. And they were doing like massive doses and stuff like twelve ounces a beer bottles worth of goat milk injected directly into the human blood stream, and the results were really really bad. Um. One patient suddenly experienced unstagamous, which is uncontrollable like eye movements and vertigo and spasms like immediately upon injected. And they're still

they're they're giving more injections. Some of them were like, Okay, this is gonna work too much, right, So people were slipping into comas and dying, and finally everyone was like, this is wrong, this is not good. Let's stop doing this, and they started using sailing. Yeah. You know who also used injected milk, oh, Michael Jackson. That was a totally different kind of milk based right, what's the name of

that stuff? We never get it right, but I think it is prop think you just got it right, man, So sad one. And it is a little side note. One of the patients was given milk and then does support that injection. They were injected with morphine and then whiskey. So they're just basically putting anything they wanted to into the blood streams of people back then. That's crazy. So the point is this, Chuck, There was a little sidetrack.

And the reason there was a sidetrack is because still even after Blundell's experiments were successful in some cases, blood

transmissions still had a really bad name. Yeah. Um, they started to kind of figure it out a little bit though, uh in at least what the problem him was when they started to mix blood from different people together in test tubes and they saw clumping, they saw red blood cell sticking together, and said, you know what, um, the reason why this is happening is because these are all

from sick people. That was their explanation at first, Like, we got a bunch of sick blood, we're mixing it with sick blood, so that's why it's doing all these funky things. And it wasn't until the Landstoner came around and said, you know what, maybe I should try to mix the blood of healthy people together and see what happens. Yeah,

see if that landmark idea? Yeah, because I mean they knew that blood clumped, that's one of the reasons they went to milk, but they just thought it was because well, you're stick already, there's nothing that could be done about that.

But yeah, when Landsteiner came along and thought that it was groundbreaking, and he did it with his own blood and with the blood of some of his lab assistants, and he just started taking blood samples and then just randomly mixing together people's blood to see if it clumped, and when it didn't clump, he started mapping his patterns and ultimately came up with what's now known as the

A B O blood typing group. Although initially he came up with type A, type B, and type C. Yeah, and then later on we found out about A B, right, and C was changed to Oh yeah, but it was. I mean, it's pretty crazy that he could even I mean, he separated his plasma from his red blood cells. It's it's nuts that he was even able to do that. Back then, I didn't know things with that advance. Oh, you just inject some morphine and whiskey into your blood

and man, it just kind of falls to the side. Uh. Plasma by the way, you hear that word a lot. You may not know what it is. It's just mostly water. It's the liquid portion of your blood. That's what it's the taxicab. Basically, it carries everything around. It carries the red blood cells, among other things, hormones, waste, nutrients, all sorts of stuff. So this is like a really really really big advancement in medical science. Yeah, but what did

he say? Oh, he had a great quote. Is my favorite, Like this landmark discovery and He's kind of like, well, you might just want to look at this, he goes it might be mentioned that the reported observations may assist in the explanation of various consequences of therapeutic blood transfusions. Like it's possible that this is what's been killing people all the time. There's blood types. I don't know his personality though, so I don't know how to read that.

It sounds a little smarmy. I I took it as he was being very humble. Oh that's how I took it. That's because you're a positive that's right. But what this did was um millions of millions and millions, I mean, I opened the door for everything to come when it comes to blood typing. And after this break, we're going to get a little bit into what these blood types aren't, what they mean. All right, we're back and we are talking about blood types and what this means. And it's

really pretty simple. It is. It's elegant on your red blood cells. Um you have you can have lots of things, but you can have sugars and proteins, and those sugars and proteins can be expressed as antigens and antigens are something that your immune system says, Hey, you got a

foreign invader coming, you might want to do something about it. Right, It's something that you're a body can take as a foreign invader, even if it's not a foreign invader, or even if it's not harmful, But it's something that's found on the surface of your red blood cells. Like pollen is an anergen. We talked about that in the Allergy podcast. So a blood type at its core is just a description of what kind of anergen is found on the surface of your red blood cells, right, which is just

a sugar or a protein, right, Penny. So if you're if you have A type blood, you have the A antigen present on your cells. If you have B type blood, you have the B antigen. If you have O type blood, you have neither A nor B. And then if you have a B you have both A and B antigens present on on the surface of your blood. Sounds pretty simple.

There's no real issues here except that blood types are also associated with the type of antibody your blood produces your body produces, right, that's right, And that's a protein that your immune system uses to attack antign invader or

what it thinks is a foreign invader. So, if you have type A blood, your body produces B antibodies, which means that when your body comes in contact with type BED antigens, which would be found on type B blood cells, right, your body goes crazy and launches an immune response and attacks those antigens, which is in the other way around in that case with A and B. Yeah, they don't like each other, No, they don't. So not only do

they have opposing and egens, they have opposing antibody. So if you make say and B blood together, bad bad things are going to happen. Yeah. And you know what, you can also be allergic to your own blood, which is not good. When we talked about mistaken identity, Uh, that is something called hemolytic anemia and um immune hemolytic anemia, and that's it sounds immediately like I thought, well, you're dead if you've got that because your blood is allergic

to itself. Yeah, apparently people live with it are able to almost everyone does. It's really rare to lead to death these days. UM. I did look it up though, and the first symptom it listed was feeling grumpy, which I thought was like, well, perhaps we all have it or he or has immune anemia. Um. So, like we said, A and B do not like each other at all. I think you said they're like the hat Fields and the McCoys of blood types. Yeah, I mean they're in

a complete opposition to one another. That's right. Type OH though is different so TYPO everybody it does. It doesn't have any anigens on it on the blood cell surface. So as far as blood transfusions go, you could take TYPO and give it to type B people, Type A people and TYPO people and even type A B people, which makes type O the universal donor, right, oh negative specifically,

But that sounds all great and it is. But because it doesn't have anigen's, it uh produces anybody's against A and B antigens I'm sorry, antibodies against and B anogens, okay, which means it can only accept oh transfusions, Yeah, which is said because it's they're the universal donor, they can give, but they can't. They can only get from other oaths because they have antibodies against everything. But ohs right, A B is the opposite of Oh. They're actually the universal recipient, right.

They have the A and B antigen on the surface of the red blood cells. But like you said, they are the universal recipient, so that's great. They don't have any anybody's at all. So they can they can take A they can be they can take oh, but they have the antigens A and B, so A B or OH can't take a B blood, so they just take take take to recap. I'm sure I have a B blood. I'm positive of it, you think, yeah, to recap. There's a handy little chart here which we do not have.

Um no, but it's from the American Red Cross. Webon like I think everyone that works at the Red Cross probably has is printed out, like in their wallet. I'm so everyone who's listening to this in the Red Cross share it with somebody. Group OH, though can donate red blood cells to anybody. Group A can donate red blood cells to ais and a B S. Group B can donate red blood cells to bees and a bees in Group A B can donate to other A B is but can receive it from all others. Take take take

pretty neat um, So there you go. That's the type A BO blood type and it's pretty. It was a sweeping discovery and that's it, right. No, more about blood types. No, this is the end, beautiful friend, it is not the end. Uh No, because it turns out the A, B O blood typing or blood groups are really one of many twenty two we're up to by now. Yeah. Remember earlier I was talking about UM positive or negative. Well that too, but I was talking about the dog tags. Yeah, I

was talking about that, sugars, booms, sugars. Yes, Sugars and proteins are the two different antigens that you can have on your red blood cells. We said that the A, B, O U grouping are the sugars, so that leaves the proteins, and that's where you get into the r h uh If you've ever heard your blood as negative or positive. That was named after the Reesus monkey spelled r H E s U s, which they were obviously the test subjects. It basically just says, if you're positive for that protein

or negative for that protein. Yeah, it's just it's another anogen and either you have it or you don't, so you can be oh negative, oh positive. So that would mean that you are in the O type blood group, so you have sugar anogens on or you know, you don't have A or B on your blood cell surface. But if you're positive, you would have neither A or B on your surface, but you would have the recess anogen on there. Right, And just like the A, B O types, the r H types don't mix either. Know.

As a matter of fact, there's a really terrible condition called mother fetus incompatibility, which the means the mother is RH negative and the baby is RH positive. So as the baby is developing, it's blood cells that carry the r H anogen are taken as foreign invaders by the mother's blood, so the baby, the fetus is attacked by the mother's immune system. Not a good position for a fetus to begin. But this is also very treatable these days. Yeah,

I got the impression. Yeah, I looked into what it used to be a really scary thing, obviously, but now they know how to treat it. And I think on the first your firstborn, it's not really a big deal at all. Oh yeah, and the reason why because the blood is not mixing right right. Well, No, that first exposure, your body is like, what the heck is this? It

gets caught off guard. Second one, it's kind of like, fool me once, Shame on you, fool me twice, I'm gonna get you, and it goes after the fetus and then it just gets this immune response gets more and more heightened with each pregnancy. I'm almost positive that's the case. I ran across it during UM during research for this, and if I'm not mistaken, that's what happens. Okay. Well, I know roughly of the population is r H positive, so you have much more likelihood to be RH positive

than negative. Okay in life, huh, I know that I would have guessed negative I would be more common. I don't know. I just guess that you need to improve your outlook my friends. UM. So, the r H blood groups, the A, B O blood groups. There two of UM I think twenty two at least total blood groups that have been identified. There's other ones like Diego, kid, kill, Duffy blood groups, and all of them are descriptors of anergens that can be found on the surface of a

person's red blood cells. So your blood type can go far beyond a positive or OH negative. It can be like a negative Duffy positive kill UM to the third power. Who knows why not, But it's just basically the presence or the absence of these different anigens and these combinations can form the thing is we now know and Landsteiner figured it out early on, but didn't didn't discover that actual mechanism. But we know that each one is is controlled by a different gene or a mutation on a

specific gene. And like I said, Landsteiner kind of figured it out early on that it was heritable, that blood types are heritable, and as a result blood typing where it was used in early paternity tests, like almost from

the outset of Landsteiner's research. Um. The other thing that they found out was that you can also be a that sounds a little gross, a secretor or a non secretor, which means that if you're a secretor, your antigens can be secreted into other fluids like saliba or mucus in your body toward off other infections, usually at the surface of the skin. Yeah, so you're I think are secretors in the United States And that's just another subclassification even

to rule people out. Um quickly, you're a secretor non secretor. Yeah, ah lois a secretor got us a great idea. He's secreting all over the place. Um. So like you said, land Uh, the Landstoner determined that you could test maternity and because of that in the ninet nineties, that led

to the discovery of that A B O gene. And basically, if you can have that A antigen be expressed, or if something is a little tweaked, you can have that B antrogen expressed, right, or if they're both tweaked, you can have both A B I think in that case you inherit the A mutation from one parent and the G mutation from another parent. Yeah, did you say G B the gene there's another blood type, the A G. I just came up with it. Uh. And then if it's completely shut off, then that is where you get

your OH blood type. Right. But we have to point out, um, that the A B O blood type isn't like the A is the presence of a egine. B is the presence of an engine, and OH is the presence of nothing. It's not the case. Um Again. Carl Zimmer in that mosaic article put it like, if the A antigen is like a two story home in one former fashion, and the B antigen is like a different type of two story home, the OH is like the single story ranch

that the second stories are built on top mid century modern. Yeah, to love. It's my preference in houses. I like those two. Um, I wonder what I wonder what blood type the double wide trailer is. I don't know. It's a single story, so technically would be oh as well, there's secretors for sure. So Chuck, um we talked. You said that RH positive was the most common for the r H blood type. Right,

that's right. What's the most common for A B O types? Uh? Well, you've got OH is the most OH positive is the most common H. Then you've got A, then you've got B. Then you've got a B as the least common, and um. Across ethnic groups, it's uh, it's pretty interesting. Hispanic folks have higher number of os. Asian folks have a higher higher number of bees. And there's reasons for this, which

we'll get into later. They're pretty interesting, I think. So, um, all the teaser we should say with when you do we've kind of touched on what happens when you mix blood, remember the chimney sit urine um. But the real on the molecular level, on the cellular level, what's going on when you mix blood types is that the antigens present in one blood type that doesn't mix with another one attracts the antibodies. Yeah, because it thinks it's some foreign invader. Yep.

So it's like the troops. You're coming into a house that has anybodies that are primed against the engines on your blood right right, and um, those anergens or those antibodies surround the anergens and just kind of collect and clump around the red blood cells. That's a glutination. Yeah. That Uh, that just sounded gross to me. It does. It's a gross word. I think medical. I think I

figured out medical terms that have gs and them and glug. Yeah, it just sounds kind of gross because what happens after a glutination is it coagulates. Yeah, and that thickened blood is tough to pump through your body. It's pretty simple, really. You give blood clots everywhere and you have trouble breathing, your lungs filled with blood and you drown in it. And again you're if if you're injected with cow milk, your eyes go crazy and you spas them in some

new coma and die. But if not, you're just gonna drown in your own turnal bleeding in your lungs. But what's going on is the result of a massive immune response launched by your body because of the presence of

what it takes as a foreign invader. If you take the blood of somebody with the same blood type as yours, even though it comes from another person, entirely your blood is used to the antigen present on that blood type because that's the one that produces itself, and it just thinks it's more of the same blood that it produced in your body. That's right, So this is all super interesting. Uh I guess after this break we're going to talk a little bit about why we have blood types and

where they came from to begin with. Al Right, before the break, my friend, we were talking about what are blood types come from? It's true, that was the title of the segment. Well, I had no I don't even know what that accident was or who that was supposed to be. It was the one group that you can make fun of now, which is this non existent when you just made the indefinable group thinking about that the other day, is there anybody Germans you can make fun

of Germans? Still, right? And you can make fun of white men? Oh yeah, because like the n asking for it for millennia totally. Yeah, there's nothing you can say to a white man that is, you know, truly offensive. It's true. Yeah, I guess it is, sad man. This just took a really surprising n I remember my sociology teacher in college that taught as that. Yeah, because they he was putting up bad words about different races and ethnic groups and sexes. And he's like, you might notice something.

He's a there's no word that you can call a white man that is truly truly offensive. And really there really isn't. I mean, a d bag, I guess, but that's not offensive. You're just either that or you're not. It's the truth or it's not. All right, So let's get back to blood types. Where did it come from? I know who it is. It's Balky bar taka mos. I can't make no. He was from an unknown country, right, yeah, yeah,

there you go. All right. So primate species, my friend, we found out that primate species had blood that you could make with human blood. It wasn't a cow, it wasn't a sheep, but primates because they're closer relatives than cows and sheeps does well, that's what that was the assumption, but it's still scientists were kind of scratching their heads. They're like, oh, wait a minute, and what are we

to make of this? Because it suggests two things. It suggests that either blood types are so old that they predate human and uh like chimps and girls, so we we share some sort of common ancestor that have blood types itself, or that blood types evolved independently in different species. Because it's like such a great idea, right right, Either way,

they still said, well, what are these things for? Yeah, And some people for a long time said that, oh, was the original the O G blood type, Yeah, which makes sense because it's the simplest one. Yeah. And they thought that, you know, our original ancestors in Africa had type. Other people thought A B might have been the original because um it evolved into a B and O, which that sort of makes sense to and one lens right and then is broken down into its constituent. But neither

one of them, it turns out, are probably true. Right. Well, we we honestly don't know. We just there's first of all, not all of the primates genes have been surveyed, so we can't really say, but they've looked into a lot of them. They have UM and the results are still just kind of baffling. Like guerrillas just have type by UM. I think chimps have type A and O. But that's it. Uh. We we don't quite know what to make of it. We do know that it's not just primates that have

blood types. Cats and dogs both too. Yeah, and I never thought about it that you can have your cat or dog if you want to feel really good about yourself. Yeah, but really piss off your animals. You can take them in and have them give blood. Yeah, there's animal dog like dog and cat blood banks. Yeah, there's one right here. Indicator.

Consult your vet. Huh yeah, consult your vet, piss off your cat, take them in to give blood, and explain to them what a great thing they're doing, right right, Just wear like leather falconry gloves while you're doing it. It is a great thing to do. But yeah, it just never occurred to me. Of course, that's what you need to do as a responsible pet owner, right, I guess maybe start with donating your human blood first, and then once you got that down, pat bring your dog

into the mix. Well, you have to go to a special dog and cat blood bank. Yeah, can tell your vet. And I think if I looked at a my all mine are too old, which is sad. I think you can't be over seven. Well at least did the one indicator. Maybe there's different looking for spry blood, I guess. So, yeah, it's very sad for me. My guys. Um, so here's a neat thing, though, Josh. Blood types aren't even said in stone necessarily they can change, and it's mind blowing

it is. And I found this really neat. Uh, well, a couple of neat things. One is not only can it change, We'll go and explain how it can change naturally. Well, our old friend epigenetics, Um, what was that episode we did, can your can my Grandfather's diet short in my Life? One of our best? Yes, it was, And no one has any ideas about epigenetics because of the title. But if you are looking for an epigenetics episode, go listen

to that one. But basically, because of changes in the way genes are expressed, if your say, a mutation on your gene is shut down epigenetically, then all of a sudden over time, because red blood cells have about a four month life span and bloods is constantly regenerating itself. Um, you will turn into an OH blood type person within your lifetime. You may not even notice, and until you

get a blood transfer, then you're gonna notice. But I imagine that are good friends at the Red Cross test blood type that kind of thing with each donation and just leave it to to presumption. I don't think we even pointed out they to test this. They still is a similar method of mixing blood and scene if it clumps, the same thing that the Landstoner did way back in the day. So I found another couple of cool things. Though, Um, this is from two years ago and I couldn't get

anything more recent. I think it is still under review. But they think now that they can actually not synthetically, but just not naturally change your blood type two oh to make you. And this would be great because if you could change blood type and this is in the body, this is in the blood bag, change it from a B two oh, then that means, all of a sudden you have a more valuable blood because it's more universally accepted. Uh. And what they've done is um, of course it was

the University of Copenhagen Professor Einrich Calaussen. They're always doing the best work, it seems like. Um. So they found they studied different types of fungi and bacteria and found, uh, they're looking for proteins that could help, and they found two that could help. One was called Elizabeth Kenya men in go specate them septicum. Nice. My guess is that Professor Erorich either has a daughter or a wife named Elizabeth. Yeah,

who's like, I got a bacteria or he's in big trouble. Uh. And then the other one is Bacteriosis fragilus and basically those two yielded enzymes that remove those A and B antigens. Yeah, they just sheered those sugars off. They go in and made it the O type. So I don't know where that's at now, but that was just from two years ago. Uh. And then this this case of this girl that doctor say is a one in six billion event. At nine

years old, she got a liver transplant. And everyone knows when you get an organ transplant, getting it to take is a big deal. Uh, not having it rejected. And what they do is they give you medication, usually for life, to make sure it stays not rejected. What they found with her was that when she got her new liver, the drugs actually made her sick, the ones to keep

her from rejecting it. And what they found when they tested her blood was that her body was changing its blood type and completely changed its blood type to where she didn't need those drugs anymore. It changed from OH negative to oh positive, right, and she completely went off those drugs. And I think she's like twenty years old now, and the doctors I don't think they have any explanation for it other than I guess this can happen. Her body was like like the kind of local tough that

fights with pool queues or something like that. You know. I was like, all right, just what I gotta do. I gotta do what I gotta do keep this liver. Uh. So that's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was super awesome. One in six billion. It's pretty nice to have that quantified for you. You know. I bet she feels like a

lucky lady. So, Chuck, we've kind of laid out by now that blood types are confounding science still um but there are some guests, some assumptions about why we have them, Although that is the that is still the question that plagues blood researchers. Why do we have blood types. Well, you'd think it was because, you know, because they're fighting off uh, blood born invaders. Like, that's why we have them. But that doesn't explain why we have different ones, right exactly.

And then what confounds that even further is the fact that apparently some blood types actually increase your susceptibility to some blood born invaders. Yes, so some blood types help certain fight certain diseases and not others. And like you said, then there are others that make you more susceptible. Yeah, and not only in the case of like where oh, not having this a antigen makes me more susceptible because the a antigen fights off say I think malaria more.

It's not even the case of that. In some cases, having an antigen proves to be food for certain kind of um germs and bacteria that cause illness actually binds easier. Yeah, it binds or they eat like the sugar of the protein and they just go attack your body. Like it's like food, Like your blood type is food to certain kinds of diseases that make you terribly sick. Right, So

from an evolutionary standpoint, those things should not exist. Yeah, the only thing to me that makes sense is when you included this word in here, which is variation, And that to me makes sense because variation is generally pretty good for a population, right, because it covers more bases. Uh. And in this case that maybe why I mean they

have found Kevin Kane, this guy. University of Toronto did a lot of investigating on this and found that, like you said, it was, Type OH protects against malaria better. Type A makes you more susceptible to pulp smallpox. Type B you're more likely to be infected by E. Coli. So it's just you should know what your blood type is and what you're more likely to get and not get. Yeah,

would think. And again remember we said that UM that some some anergin service binding sites for certain kinds of bacteria. Same thing with the neuro virus UM, which has nothing to do with your bloods seem to make any sense at first at first, until you find out that not only does UM do the does your body express your blood type anogens on the surface of your red blood cells, it also expresses them on the surface of the cells that line your gut. And neuro virus has had a

lot to do with your gut. So specifically, I think if you're Type OH, you UM have basically what accounts what amounts to a landing pad for UM neuro virus to bind too, and you are really going to be hating it compared to everybody else on the cruise ship that has Type A B or A B or if your type OH, you might get a ruptured Achilles tendon

or an ulcer a little more easily, and that weird. Yeah, they've linked a lot of a lot of susceptibilityy to illness is two different blood types, So infections, cancers, memory loss, heart disease get this. Type A blood types are most most susceptible to stress, which makes a lot of sense because the type of personality is like, I don't think those are l go go go, let's get things done kind of thing type. But that's not what you know.

We don't know. Uh. All this ignorance though lead to a discovery, while it didn't lead to but it's exemplified by the discovery in ninety two and Bombay UM patients that didn't have a B O blood type at all confounding. It's called the Bombay phenotype and it was discovered in the fifties, and basically it's um. It's really rare. It's again Carl Zimmer comes in to say, if owes that single story ranch and A is two story and b's a two story house, then this Bombay phenotype is an

empty vacant lot. Yeah, like these are the guys that have nothing there. Yeah, as far as goes and uh, in India, you're about one in ten thousand. You have one inten thousand chants of having this UM blood type, and one in four million in the world. But the thing that's confounding about is these people don't appear to be any more or less fit or healthy than people in the A B O blood group. Yeah, it's just

if you need that blood, you're in bad shape. Yeah, you have to get Bombay because I think uh, I think blood has a shelf life of about forty two days. So I mean imagine places like India and Bombay especially, they probably have a lot more of this on hand. But if you're traveling in the United States, maybe you might have a bit of a time if you're bleeding out.

It was also a general hospital subplot, wasn't really I was just poking around and it was like a leave it to the soap opera to make that like the rarest blood type a sub paternity subplot. That was how they proved out fraternity for one of the somebody had the Bombay phenixs. Yeah, they're like, it is you and you're a secretory fuzz uh. So we've talked about how the blood types are they make you more or less susceptible of the disease, right. They think that that's one

of the reasons why UM. Different blood types appear in different UM ethnic groups differently. They think that it's evidence that in the not too distant evolutionary past, certain UM, certain parasites or bacteria or germs or viruses that have some sort of preference for a certain blood type passed through an area and largely wiped out the people with

that blood type, left the other blood type standing. Yeah, we were talking earlier about in China UM, and actually in Russian and India two they have a lot more blood type b UM, and that is because the bubona plague and malaria outbreaks that swept through those countries not too long ago and basically wiped out a lot of the o's and a's. So you've got a lot more bees. Yeah, this isn't This hasn't been proven in science. Things aren't proven that there's more and more and more evidence that

backs it up. It seems to be a correlation. Yeah, there is. And it's not just China, Russia, and India. Africa has a lot of type uh oh people, which is less susceptible than malaria UM, and Africa has a lot of malaria. So it does make a lot of sense that that's that's what happened. So even if the reason we have blood types isn't because UM, it provides a defense against defend blood borne um illnesses or whatever.

It's a function for sure of blood types. If you want to not get teleological here, well who does teleologists? Oh we'll finish up here with two uh examples of well one example of HOKEM. One example that may or may not be HOKEM, but it's probably HOKEM at the very least. It's fun the blood type diet. There was a natural path named Peter damont at Adamo Adamo I actually funny enough. I was like, how do you pronounce that? I found an old Regis and Kathy Lee. I don't

know if I would trust that. Well, he was standing next to him, and he seemed to agree with it. So usually though, when it's a di apostrophe, is just dottamo and not diadamo. He didn't correct Regius. Well, who does Kathy Lee? Oh, this is pre Kelly Rippa. Yeah, it was Regis and Kathy Lee. Well, so she was drunk, and just as Regis, all right, this is he is a natural path with my wife calls a hokey pokey doctor.

And he published a very famous and popular book called Eat Right for Number four Your Type, Eat Right for Your Type UM seven million copies to date, sixty languages has been translated into and he postulated that um our blood types came along over the years, um as we evolved, and that we should eat according to win our blood type. What was going on when our blood type first came about? Right?

Like evolutionarily speaking exactly so like um the I think he's he decided that the type oh blood type came about during hunter gatherer era. Yeah, you're saying he decided it's very key here, Yeah, I mean I don't know what it was based on other than his guesses. Um, but he and then he said type A was the dawn of agriculture. Type B was from the Himalayan highlands ten thousand and fifteen thousand years ago. And then he said Type A B is a modern blending of Type

A and Type B. Pretty convenient. So if you, for example, or type A, your blood type came about during the hunter gather um days, and your your diet should consist mostly of like raw vegetarian foods. Now, that's during the dawn of agriculture. Hunter gatherer would be meat eaters. Oh sorry, yeah, yeah, so that would be type Oh, it would be the meat eaters, right. So Type A would be dawn of agriculture.

So you would eat um, Yeah, vegetables should he said, like you yeah, type oh meat rich, no grains and dairy type be lots of dairy um. Also called the death diet right, and to avoid foods that aren't suited to your blood type. And he did this. Um he said, it will reduce infections and you'll lose weight and you can fight cancer and I can sell books a lot

of books pretty much was the reason. And they've done testing over the years, the Red Cross of Belgium did a lot of people have and they've all said this is not true. No, the Red Cross of Belgium did a survey of a thousand studies and found no directive and it's supporting the health effects of the A B O blood type diet. End quote. But that's not to say that these diets aren't good for you. For example, that type A diet, it's basically vegetarianism. So of course

you're gonna lose weight, you're gonna lower your body mass index. Uh, you you may, whatever you're going to. You're going on a vegetarian diet. There, but none of these have to do a blood type. No, Like, if you're a type oh, go on the type A diet and you will see those same benefits, same effects, So don't go on the type B diet. So basically it seems like this guy um just took some some pretty good diets except for yeah, the type the type B diet is. Yeah, you'd a

bunch of fats and dairy. Although fats have gotten a bad rap. Yeah, I mean not all fats are bad, of course we know that. But but supposed diet is not the one to go with. So that was hokum. Allegedly, this I'm at the risk of respecting our friends in Asia. I'm not gonna call this complete hokum. Well, they they believe it pretty like like we believe it is. Actually it's gonna say, like we believe astrology. A lot of people here just have astrology is like a fun thing

to read. They really take it seriously in Japan apparently. Yeah, so, um, I don't know what you would compare it to over here. I don't even know that it has an analog astrology. I guess, um, I guess the but the but yeah, there's the distinction is is that like over there, more people definitely take it as as fact. Yes, I'm saying they take it way more seriously. But it's being born

with something that determines your personality type. So back in the seven two kg, fur Fura Kawa, who is a professor at Tokyo Women's Teachers School, he decided that blood types, and this is based on his observations, blood types and personality types were related somehow, and he started to do some studies and he decided, I've got this figured out. I I've got them mapped. I have type A, type B type baby and type OH personality types map And it actually caught on, uh, in the East big time

and still is today. And the Japanese actually have a word for a type of harassment, say basically getting passed over for a job or not getting into a certain school based on your blood type. Yeah, buddhah, Yeah, is that right? Is a good pronouncement. I think of pronunciation, I couldn't even frown that up, but blood type harassment. Yeah. And we'll go over these because it's, um, they're cute.

It's interesting. Um, if you're blood type A, you were going to be kind and compassionate and put others before yourself. You're calm on the outside, but you have a lot of inner turmoil. Um, but you're a good listener, and you're gonna have a lot of friends, and you get along with others well. But it's typically at the expense of your own sense of balance and happiness. You're just giving a little too much. Yeah, you're not speaking up

for yourself necessarily in order to keep the peace. That's right. That's type A. Yeah. Type B is the George Clooney of blood types. Smug. No, he's not smug. What I don't think he's smug. What it's like, it's defining characteristic. I don't think he smug at all. Oh my god, really, yes, I'm about a faint. No, I don't find him smug at all. I think if you agree with someone, then you probably don't find them smug. I agree with him

in a lot of ways. I think it's a really cool thing to do to spend your money the higher satellites to track war lords in Africa. That's about as cool a thing as you can do with your riches as anybody. Right, I still think he's smug. I don't think he smugging. I can't like. I don't think he can help it. I think we have different definitions of smug. If you mean handsome and winning and charming, then yes,

he's smug. And being a hundred and ten percent aware that you're handsome and charming and winning at any given moment, down to the molecular levels. That's my definition of smug. Awareness of your good looks. That yeah, over confident self awareness is smugness. I'm on team Cleaney. I'm not opposed George Claney. I just think I just can't imagine not thinking you smug. Well, imagine it, baby, like I don't

even know you right now. Well, that's because I'm a personality Type BE blood Type BE, like my buddy George, that means I'm outgoing, in friendly. I'm a people person, and I don't do that at the expense of my own feelings. It just comes naturally, too, yeah, George. Whereas like a Type A would like you're a people person, but you really expend a lot of energy being a people person. Type B. It's just like you said, it just comes naturally. You're very adjustable. Uh, you're good at

a job if you have to deal with people. I don't think we said that. Type A blood people don't like to have jobs where they deal with other people. Right. It gives examples of programmers, accountants, writers, librarians are good jobs for Type A. Uh, and Type BE like Mr Cliney, is not suitable for marriage because they're flirty and playful and sm YEA, so say Korean women, that's right. Um, you added the smug thing by the way at the end, Yes, of course I did. That was pretty smug. Type A

B though they are freedom loving. Yeah, they're strong and rational. They don't worry about the little things. Uh. They can look at life's challenges with emotion removed and say this is what I need to do to get past this. So their psychopaths, uh, not necessarily. They seem to not have issues with the relationships, and they're quite popular. They seem to be the winningest personality group. I'm gonna go a psychopath for that. I mean, I see what you're saying,

but yeah, I don't think so. Uh. And then finally we have personality. Oh blood type. Oh, you're responsible and practical and rule conscious. You're a great leader and very determined to achieve your goals. You're physically strong, so you might be a good athlete. Yeah, and they're most happy with other typeos or type abes, and that are the personality blood types. I've never heard of that. That's all we know about blood time. I thought that was pretty neat.

I never heard that that was a big thing. Yeah, you've me told me about that. I was like, we're doing blood type. She's like, oh, you know about like Japanese blood types, right, blood type personality type. Yeah, She's like, you know, like George Clooney, smuck. You're like, we're meant to be together. It's funny. We just hold hands and

watch monuments manners, just like, oh god, alright, Chuck. If people want to know more about blood types, I would steer clear how stuff works because it has one of the densest, most incomprehensible articles I've ever read in my life on this site about blood It really needs rewriting. UM. This this thing you put together was great, Thank you. I appreciate that. UM, and a lot of it was based on a mosaic article by Carl Zimmer about blood types,

which I strongly recommend you go read. Uh. And since I said Carl Zimmer, it's time for listener mail, UH gonna call this truck drive and chemist, Guys. I was a truck driver from O five to O eight and listen to your show back then I left trucking to go to college and I was taking chemistry. We had to do a research paper on a compound, and so I always want to know about diesel, so I looked into diesel. We should do one on diesel. He says,

it sounds pretty interesting. UM, I learned it's some really interesting thing about Rudolph Diesel's invention and about the man himself. The original diesel compound was actually made from peanuts, and he invented the engine for small plants. Uh was it George Washington Carver, No, it was Rudolph Diesel. Um. He uh invented it the engine UM for small plants that could power um, not you know, biological plants like a

power plant. Yeah. Uh yeah, you could power a warehouse to compete with the big industrial warehouses during the Industrial Revolution. So he was a man of the people. But here's the conspiracy theory part. Rudolph Diesel found out his diesel engine was going to be powering Germany's newest warships called Unta sea boots means under sea boats. Where are you gonna say? Not that? Uh? And he was really angry

that they would use his invention for war. So he told the German naval representative that if they were going to use his diesel for war, he would take his designs to England so they would have it too and could counter Germany, and that Germany might as well not use it. And they shot him on the spot. Basically, he's not a smart thing to announce, No, he he pushed all his chips in and lost. He told off. The government boarded a ferry to England in the evening

to arrive in the morning. Uh. He left word to wake him since he had an appointment with the Naval Office in Britain, and when the ferry ducked the next morning, he was gone. Eight days later, his body was found floating in the English Channel. And this all happened a few short years before World War One. Wow, I can't believe that, like government agents would fascinate somebody when they threatened to take a very important thing to another country. Yeah. Um,

so that sounds like a good podcast. He says. You have a man fighting for the common man, man that didn't like his Anvintioninis for war and engine we still used today and could be using more in the future. And that is from Russ Fortney. Russ, my friend, I think you just did a little mini podcast. Thanks a lot for that, man. I love I love history, me too, love history. Never knew about Rudolph Diesel, no no idea. I didn't even know somebody's last name. I just didn't.

It was a thing, you know, like Jimmy gasoline right, or that Elizabeth bacteria Elizabeth bacteria. Jimmy, guess if you want to tell us something that we don't know about that will blow our tops because it's so cool, Like Russ, you can tweet to us at s y s K Podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and, as always, joined us on the web at our lugg sarious home

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