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The Science Pawdcast
The Science Pawdcast breaks down the latest science happening in the human world AND the pet world.
Each episode will also bring you a guest to enthral you with their area of knowledge.
You'll learn, be captivated, and laugh along with host Jason Zackowski.
Pets and Science, it's the pawfect mix.
You'll also get episodes of PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
PetChat is a live community gathering updates about the animals in our life, but also the animals in the wonderful community that supports us!
Heart and Hope.
Science and Shenanigans.
The Science Pawdcast
Season 5 Episode 32: Wastewater, Cat Pain, and Health Hoaxes with Dr. Jen Gunter
Ever flushed a toilet and wondered where it all goes? Or how to rank your cat on a scale of 1 to 4 for pain?
Nothing escapes our gaze, from its fascinating use in tracking diseases like COVID-19 to its historical ties to the cholera outbreaks of the 1850s. Tread with us through the challenges of weather and local industries that can muddy the data waters.
In Pet Science we check out a cat pain scale, a method that anyone can be trained on to determine if our feline friends are in pain!
Shift gears as we navigate the world of women's health with Dr. Gunter. We journey through the maze of misinformation, from the biology of menstruation to birth control pills and pheromones. We also take a detour to discuss Dr. Gunter's latest literary offering, "Blood". And what's a ride without some emotional fuel? Fasten your seatbelts as we share the heartwarming tale of Luna, the cat with a face only a family could love.
In the family section, we share some whimsical encounters with our furry friends, adventures, and sprinkle in some surprising sugar facts. Come, ride with us, on this science-packed, pet-loving, and food-exploring adventure.
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Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zekowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.
Speaker 2:I am sure we'll be talking about this in the family section so I won't belabor the point too much, but we had an amazing weekend at the Edmonton Comic Con. The dogs did so well with huge crowds as celebrity guests, and I think that's all I'm going to say right now, because I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in the family section. Chris got super sick after the Comic Con. I think I'm starting to get the bug that she got, and I'm recording this as quickly as I can to avoid how awful she sounds with the sickness. I feel so bad for her, so you'll probably hear it a bit in her voice in the family section a little bit later. Okay, well, what's on tap this week? What's going to happen In science news I've got a bit of a breakdown of wastewater surveillance.
Speaker 2:I wish I maybe looked more into this earlier because it kept coming up like there's COVID and the wastewater and I. This was like whatever, maybe I was all burnt out of COVID. There's an article that came out about wastewater surveillance and I think now's the time to really take a look at it. In pet science we're going to do another article about cats and this has to do with cat pain. They seem to be stoic little creatures. Can you tell if your cat is in pain? And the answer may surprise you.
Speaker 2:Our guest and ask an expert is the amazing and hilarious Dr Jen Gunter, who has a new book out called Blood. She's on social media doing debunking of all manner of things related to women's health, and we were so lucky to snag her for an interview. I hope you enjoy the chat. Okay, the bad joke, that's a good one. Wastewater jokes really aren't my favorite, but they're a solid number two. Okay, on with the show, because there's no time like science time.
Speaker 2:This weekend science news sits all about what's in our wastewater and how maybe we can use that to track disease. So I do follow folks who are all up and up and talking about coronavirus waves and they were talking about stuff in wastewater and I apologize to anybody that finds that interesting. I did not. And I kind of just like you know you, when you you read something and then you don't even know what you read, those little posts would come up on Twitter or they come up in the news and I'm like, nope, don't care, and it could be because I was burnt out of COVID, but the idea to use wastewater to track viruses is a real thing and an article came out about it and I was like you know, I should learn more about it myself. So you and I you the listener and me the person talking about it we're going to learn about this together and I'm sure folks that are more in the know are going to be rolling their eyes as we chat today.
Speaker 2:So the first first off is it's true, you can use wastewater to track disease and prior to COVID-19, they used they, like governments used wastewater surveillance primarily for testing things like drugs in water or microbial ecosystems and specific locations like what kind of bugs are in your wastewater or what kind of drugs are in your wastewater. It took the pandemic to really accelerate what was happening in that area of science. It brought in folks from a whole bunch of other fields and basically supercharged the science of wastewater monitoring with geniuses from environmental science, chemistry, micro microbiology and epidemiology. So a whole bunch of wastewater treatment plants in the United States. They participate in these COVID-19 testing programs and globally there's lots of places that also participate in COVID-19 wastewater monitoring and it became fairly effective to look at the levels of coronavirus in the water to predict waves. There was a correlation there and they're like Whoa, this is actually decent for tracking. So I'm not saying COVID-19 is gone, because it's not. In fact, maybe Chris and I got COVID-19, one of the new variants from the Comic Con, but scientists are always looking to the future.
Speaker 2:If we can track COVID-19, what else could we track? And we there's people on it. There's people tracking like the flu, monkeypox and things that are drug resistance, like Candida auroras. It's interesting because John Snow in 18 John Snow, is that really the guy's name? Sorry, I'm a big Game of Thrones fan and Chris did not like Game of Thrones and whenever this one character they. Okay, this has nothing to do with the story, but John Snow went north and he got himself a wildling girlfriend and she said his name funny John Snow and Chris would like walk around the house and John Snow Anyways, it's just a little in joke. I might cut this. John Snow in 1850 linked cholera outbreaks to contaminated water.
Speaker 2:Now we have a little bit better technology than John Snow in 1850. We've got things like filtration and spectroscopy, pcr tests to make this work. You just need a little bit of money and criteria for selecting the pathogen you're going to track. Are you going to track an emerging pathogen? Are you going to track a pathogens that's already spreading throughout a population? Is that pathogen detectable in wastewater? All of these things can be actionable with the teams that were developed during COVID-19. One thing you have to remember is that wastewater monitoring of things like disease is great. It's a tool, but it does present some challenges because weather and local industries, like things that are also putting stuff into the water, can definitely skew the data as you're looking at it. Another cool thing that can be done with wastewater monitoring is you can look at total load for trends and outbreaks, or just is it there or not for more deadly pathogens. In the end, wastewater monitoring is more of a canary in the coal mine. It's an early warning. It gives you an idea that something is coming in your population if it starts to spike in the wastewater.
Speaker 2:The report also looked at a fungus that was resistant to a whole bunch of drugs. It's a fungus that can spread rapidly in hospitals and healthcare areas. It seems to be detectable in sewage. That would be very handy if you were a hospital and you were told, because the wastewater was being monitored, that this fungus, c auroras, was starting to go up in the wastewater. I feel this would wreck the whole plot of the last of us if they were just testing for that cortiseps fungus in the water, though I think in the TV show it came in through food.
Speaker 2:I think the idea of having more monitoring for things that affect our health is a good idea. You could be proactive. You could prepare. Potentially, if you see an outbreak coming, something like the H5N1 bird flu, you could be monitoring for that. Thus, if it starts to spike, your healthcare officials could do something about it. An early public health response is always better than working after the fact. It's kind of cool. That's science news for this week.
Speaker 2:This week in Pitt Science we're doing another story about cats, and yes, I've had a cat on the brain a bit the last couple of days as Chris has been really, really sick. I've been spending more time away from her so I don't get sick. She booted me downstairs to sleep but it's for my own good, so I wasn't getting her icky germs. The cat slept with me. I had a little friend sleeping with me when it was time to think about stories to do for the podcast. I was like you know, it'd be cool to know their cat one.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, let's talk about cats. This has to do with cat pain. I don't know much about cats. I asked Chris do cats show that they're in pain? And from her experience they're kind of stoic creatures. They make sounds and like you can make them cry by holding them for too long, or I would never be cruel. I would never be cruel to a cat because I'd imagine it would make sounds if you were hurting it. Definitely we don't hurt Ginger at all. She makes sounds sometimes like we are hurting her if I'm holding her for too long or I'm like not letting her go outside.
Speaker 2:But in order to determine if cats are in pain, you need some kind of reference and guess what? A feline grimace scale. That's what it's called A feline grimace scale, or F G S, was created in veterinary medicine that allows veterinarians and pet parents to determine if your cat is in acute pain. And this comes from the University of Hong Kong. Let's get to it. What does the F G S do? Well, it evaluates five aspects of a cat's face, and the cat's face has these actions, and apparently they figured out that if it's doing a thing with these parts of their face, it's in pain Ear position, orbital tightening, muzzle tension, whisker position and head position. Just like with humans, there's a scale, a numerical scale, from a low number of zero, meaning no pain, to the highest score of four, meaning the cat is in pain. Once trained, the veterinarians that are trained in this can incorporate the cat grimace scale into their day to day work when they're examining to determine if the cat is in acute pain.
Speaker 2:Now just a just a quick caveat here, just a quick add on, is that this scale doesn't work for chronic pain. So this is like pain that cats have all the time from, like arthritis or maybe a urinary tract infection. That's like lingering for days and days and days and days. This is something that's causing like immediate pain. That's new to the cat. So how effective is this scale determining if a cat is in pain? Well, first off, the scale seems to be pretty accurate, even if you're not a veterinarian. They they had over a thousand people use the scale and photos of cats and the people's responses were bang on, with eight trained veterinarians. If you're interested about the feline grimace scale, there's actually a website that you can take a look at and go through the photos and training yourself. There's also an app for Android and Apple and I've put a link in the show notes. The scale was developed to monitor the pain of cats after they come out of surgery or they have trauma related pain. It seems to be really effective and fairly open source. The website has training, manuals and photos and videos. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's pet science for this week. Hey everybody, before we get to the interview section, here's a couple ways you can help the science podcast out. Number one if you're on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating. Tell your friends and share it with people who love science and pets, like teachers. Number two think about signing up as a member of the Paw Pack. It allows you to connect with people who love our show and it's a way to keep the show free. Number three check out our merch store. We have the Bunsen stuffy 2.0. There's still some beaker stuff he's left. They're adorable as well Warm, cuddly clothes and adorable drinkware. The link is in the show notes. Now on to the interview. It's time for Ask an Expert on the science podcast and I am absolutely thrilled to have Dr Jen Gunter, author and OBGYN, with us today. Doc, how you doing.
Speaker 3:I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm good. Our account follows you on Twitter. I love your witty humor and, of course, all of the things you stand up for and try to debunk, so we're just tickled to have you on the science podcast. Where are you in the world, though? Where are you calling into the show from?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm calling in from a beautiful Marin County, California, which is just over the Golden Gate from San Francisco.
Speaker 2:Now, you haven't lived there your whole life, because I do believe you lived in Canada for a time or for a while.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I'm a Winnipeg girl, so I was born and bred in the peg and, yeah, I went to medical school there, undergrad medical school, and then I actually did my residency at Western in London, Ontario, and then I made my way to the States to do a fellowship and I worked in Kansas City for a while and then I worked in Denver, Colorado, for a while and then now I'm at in just north of San Francisco.
Speaker 2:I would hazard a guess you don't miss the Winnipeg winters.
Speaker 3:You know it's funny, I well. No, I don't, but when you live so I live in it what I can only describe as a mild temper climate. It's like so when it's colder than 65, I'm freezing cold. When it's hotter than 75, I'm boiling hot. I have like I've become like a poikila therm. I have like this really narrow range in which I can exist.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3:That's like one of my favorite words. Poikila therm it's like a great word.
Speaker 2:Poikila therm. That is triple word score in Scrabble. You win and the game is over. So one of the questions I always ask our science guests is like you're a doctor, you've got some serious training there. When you were young, were you like interested in medicine, science, the body, like that kind of stuff, Like little jet, little Jen Gunter in Winnipeg.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I did so, you know, but I didn't really think much about it as a little kid. But then, when I was 11, I had an accident and I ruptured my spleen and I ended up in the hospital and had quite a lot of interactions with the medical system and then in the workup for my ruptured spleen, we found out that I had kidney disease. So I had to have all this workup for kidney disease and then I had to have a kidney removed. So I spent about three months in and out of hospitals and surgery and all kinds of like. You know, I had an angiogram, I had all kinds of other tests because, you know, back in the day they didn't have ultrasounds and they didn't have CT scans, so this was all like hardcore and face of testing.
Speaker 3:And yeah, and so I was in and out of hospital that didn't scare you off medicine.
Speaker 3:Actually, you know, the doctors were really, I would say, like mindful of the fact that I was quite precocious, which I'm sure is like a shock for people, and they just were. They were explaining everything to me in a way that I needed to hear it and I just thought it was really interesting and it was really cool. And you know that they could use these scans and I had a nuclear medicine test. I mean, the only thing I knew about nuclear things at the time was that it could blow the world up, right. So you know, so I just thought it was like really fascinating and then I just decided that I was going to be a doctor.
Speaker 2:Now for people that don't know your specialty. Could you, could you like, just talk a little bit about what your your? I guess your expert training in medicine is.
Speaker 3:Sure, so I'm an OBGYN and Obstetrician, gynecologist and that's my you know my training right at medical school. And then I did a fellowship in infectious diseases and women's health and along the way I also specialized. I started doing pain medicine and vulva health and vaginal health and then in the last 15 years or so that and menopause has been really just kind of a big part of my practice.
Speaker 2:So I and that's of course where we know you from sorry, that's where, like our, like my wife and I, we know you from your books and your talks and your debunking and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, because all these areas in women's health are really how shall I say memorable to you know, to these predators and some of it's, because medicine's done a really bad job of explaining things to people and a bad job of taking people's concerns seriously, but the other hand, there are lots of grifters out there who like to take advantage of that. So, you know, it seems like all the areas that I'm interested in are the areas that kind of are at the nexus of that, of that need.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I have a question for you, doc, as somebody that you know. We do have you on our podcast and, man, if you're on social media lately, there is a the whole vaccine thing around. Covid is a big it's a big mess right now. But I wanted to narrow in on the HPV vaccine for people that are maybe listening and they're thinking about oh, they're here, they're like, because my wife and I are teachers, kids get this vaccine or it's part of the schedule, and they're like ooh, I don't know about this, but it's had like it's had. So hasn't it had massive successes in dropping cancer rates since, since adoption?
Speaker 3:So I would say to people we're always talking about how we need a cancer moonshot. Well, we have one and that's the HPV vaccine. We have a cancer moonshot. We have a vaccine that can prevent common cancer, it can prevent cervical cancer, it can prevent anal cancer. It's almost certainly going to be preventing many cancers in the throat, although we just don't have enough long-term data to say that. You know it's it's going to prevent many cases of penile cancer. It's really a cancer moonshot and it's it's something that, in addition to preventing cancer, people always forget about all the testing that goes into the pre-cancers. So there's lots of people with cervical cancer or with cervical pre-cancer who, because we catch them and we you know that's what screening programs do and we get them treated that they don't develop cancer. But you know what that's painful, that's awful, it's uncomfortable. No one wants to go through that testing. So the vaccine also prevents that.
Speaker 2:Does the HPV vaccine also like stop those extremely invasive like fixes or, like you know, surgeries if there is the hint of cancer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when we screen people for cervical cancer with cervical cancer screening most people know that as a pap test so many places are moving to HPV testing, testing for the human papilloma virus we pick up pre-cancers and it depends on your definition of invasive test, right?
Speaker 3:So some people find pap smears are pretty invasive, but then if we find abnormalities we might have to look at your cervix with a special microscope and we might have to take biopsies from your cervix. So some people consider that pretty invasive and then it doesn't always go away. So sometimes we have to keep seeing you back year after year and sometimes we have to keep taking multiple biopsies. We can see over time how that could become pretty traumatic for people and then we might decide we need to remove a portion of your cervix, remove the portion that's got the pre-cancer in it, and that's another procedure, and so all of these things add up and can be invasive in lots of different ways. And that's probably you know. I don't know the person and the story, but that sounds like what they might be talking about is that they had it picked up on a mental lesson, that's right, and then they had to go through sort of success, successively more and more invasive things, to kind of get to the end.
Speaker 3:And what people don't realize is sometimes that can go on for years. And so you've got this like abnormal pap smear, like hanging over your head, or you got to keep going back for follow up, and the HPV vaccine can prevent a lot of that.
Speaker 2:And it's like it's part of the kids get it and it's just like that part of their life. For most of them is just completely different than somebody who say in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, right now, yeah.
Speaker 3:So you know you want to catch it before it becomes this thing, right? So the earlier you get it, the better. However, people can still get benefit from it later on in life because there are lots of different kinds of HPV strains out there that can cause cancer and pre-cancer. Now the main ones are 16 and 18, but there are some others as well, that there's seven that are covered in the seven of the pre-cancerous ones. There's also two non-cancerous ones in the Gardasil vaccine, and so even if you had a pre-cancer from HPV 16, say, at age 21, and it never had the vaccine, then you got the vaccine years later. It's still going to protect you from the other strains that you haven't had.
Speaker 2:Can I ask you one more question about this? Just thank you for such good information and I apologize for my ignorance this isn't my area that I know a lot about HPV. Are you a carrier? Can you be a carrier and then absolutely nothing bad happens to you, but you pass it to others? Is that part of it? Sure, Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, never apologize for asking questions, right, because it's not your field, and that's great, and that's why we're here. So, yeah, so that's the whole thing. The most successful sexually transmitted infections are the ones that don't cause significant symptoms, right, because that's then how they get passed from person to person, because you don't know you have it. So the ideal infection is going under the radar. So that's right. So what happened? So about 80% of us have previously had HPV and we've cleared it. Whoa 80% yeah, it's about 80% has had one.
Speaker 2:You know one screen of HPV.
Speaker 3:That was a shock, yeah, yeah, but it comes and goes right. You get it, you clear it and it's done. But not everybody clears it, and if you happen to get one that you don't clear, then what happens is that's what can become cancer, and so that's why the younger you are, the more likely you are to have exposure to get HPV, and it's usually related to sexual activity.
Speaker 3:Right yeah, you know, and so the because it's so common when people are so young, we observe it more, right. So it's not whether you get HPV, it's whether you get HPV and it hangs around. That's the concern.
Speaker 2:So, so interesting. Thank you. Yeah, I've selfishly asked a question pernient to the age group of kids I teach, you know. Thank you for helping our listeners, but also me professionally, when I might have to answer questions from kids. So this is great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ideal age is before sexual activity. You know we, the earlier the better. You know it's between ages nine and you know 15, nine to 12 is ideal. But you know you, you want to get it in. If you can get it in before age 15, then you only need two doses, which is also another bonus, and it's just then. Then you're done. It's just something that you know is unlikely then to cause you a problem later on. You still need to do your cervical cancer screening, but you've just reduced your risk dramatically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing. That is cool. You call that a moonshot because when you look at the statistics, it's like because of this vaccine, like the cancers from HPV has like fallen off a cliff, like it's just, it's dramatic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's, it really is. It's. That's why it's so frustrating that it's been so demonized by people you know, and I think that it falls into some of those crevices I mentioned earlier, because you know there are, when you start talking about vaginal health and vulvar health and sexual health, there are many old people with, I would say, nefarious intentions, you know, who have agendas, the religious right, conspiracy theorists, you know, and it plays on people's vulnerabilities because you know there is a lot of misinformation about vaginal health. A lot of this can be scary to people. The tests are invasive and they can be painful and when people are scared they sometimes make other decisions. So it's one of those unfortunate, you know, sort of weak spots, I would say, in medicine and I think that it's really sad to see such an amazing vaccine, such an amazing development. Really struggle with the struggle against disinformation.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, the main. Just before we move on the main one I've seen around like where, where I live in the world, the questions come up, like when you're giving a kid who's nine a vaccine for something that is transmitted through, you know, sexual activity, the parents are like my kid is not doing that right now. Are you insane? Like that is disgusting, like what are you? And then you have to have that awkward conversation. Well, it's like you know, maybe eventually something's going to happen and this protects them in the face. So you know, that's the, that's the pushback we see sometimes.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's because we have difficulty having non-soft morric discussions about sex in our society and sort of over. You know, legacy of the Victorians and in the States certainly the Puritans, I suppose you know, and many other factors, and certainly not an expert in the sociology of it all. But you know, I tell people that don't you want to be protected before something happens? I mean, isn't that the ideal? And if you want to wait until your child is sexually active, then you know you've reduced the effectiveness for them and you know you, your child is going to have sex whenever they decide to have sex, regardless of whether they have the vaccine or not. We know that. So wouldn't you rather they be protected? I mean, what lesson are they going to learn by getting cervical cancer? What lesson is in that right?
Speaker 2:Right, and chances are they're not getting it when they're 18. It's like they've got young kids, or you know, like it's an awful time when that starts to happen. Yeah, that's, you're right. Nobody's learning a lesson from that, you know I mean, and that's not what medicine should be about.
Speaker 3:It should be about health. And it's really interesting. You know, when you educate kids, you know they're more likely to make better decisions for themselves. So I think that you know a lot of this is like I said, it's about control, it's about conspiracy theories. It's not about the science, because the science supports that. You know, the vaccine doesn't change sexual behavior and it reduces the risk of of, you know, pre-cancer and cancer. I mean, you know it's a moonshot.
Speaker 2:It's a cancer pill sort of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well, thanks, jen. I really appreciate you talking about this for our listeners Now, excitingly, my next question is about you're an author. You've written bestselling books. I've seen you on TV talking about your books, which is you know. That's cool that I'm talking to you. You have a new book coming out called Blood. I was wondering if you would like to talk a little bit about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the book is called Blood the Science, medicine and Mythology of Menstruation, and you know I it's about the menstrual cycle and lots of things connected with the menstrual cycle, and you know I wrote it because you know if you're not taking hormonal contraception, you're having 400 to 450 menstrual cycles in your lifetime, and shouldn't you know more about it and how it influences things and when it goes wrong? And you know many people suffer with problems related to bleeding, be it pain, be it heavy periods, be it no periods, be it conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome and or, you know, painful conditions like endometriosis, and a lot of that is the result of disinformation and misinformation. I mean not having the conditions but being unable to seek the right care or, again, being taken advantage of, and so I wanted people to have a textbook about how this part of their body worked.
Speaker 2:I can't speak like because I'm a middle-aged guy, right, I feel like this is a book that men should be reading to, because the amount of information that the teenage boys know about this area, including myself, is lacking. I would say.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know. So what I always say and I write this in the book is if you're alive, you've benefited from menstruation. If we didn't have menstruation, we wouldn't have the human race in the way that we have it. It's intricately involved in how humans have evolved and how we have evolved to have the brains that we have, how we've evolved to be the creatures that we are. And so every single thing around you that has been made by a human your computer that you might be listening to this on, or your phone, or the car that you drive if you think about it, it all exists because of menstruation, because we just wouldn't have you know, we wouldn't be what we are today. And so I would say that, since every single person benefits from menstruation, but half the population bear the burden of it, the other half of the population could at least learn about it. That is a good message.
Speaker 3:It's pretty strong on that. One Like everybody should read this book, but they really should because.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 3:All kinds of you know some every now and then. Someone sent me a video from TikTok about you know some guy complaining about his girlfriend having cramps. Or you know people who are I see people who spent all this money on useless supplements, or people that they don't even really yeah, or they don't even understand the biology of menstruation.
Speaker 3:And then you know, they get swept up by disinformation from the charlatans. And you know, I hear what some of these people say. These charlatans and I'm like I just laugh because I'm, like you know, like seriously don't understand anything to do with the biology. You know like, for example, here's a good one. So there's a lot of disinformation right now out about the birth control pill and there's disinformation about that it can change who you're attracted to your sexual partner and that this is because it affects pheromones. So I know, okay, just be here, bear with me here. Humans don't have a vocero nasal organ, meaning we can't detect pheromones.
Speaker 2:So we're not dogs. Is that what you're saying? Like we're not dogs.
Speaker 3:they have massive vocero nasal organs. So so, as someone who knows that I, it's a joke to me, but the the general public, they've heard of pheromones. They kind of know they exist. Oh, isn't that what's in perfume? There's all kinds of urban myths about it, so you can see how that myth would stick for somebody right, yeah, oh man, it's in movies, like they're science fiction movies, where right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like they've seen it on TV shows, movies, cartoons. There's a whole episode of Rick and Morty about it. I swear Right.
Speaker 3:You know what I always tell people. You know a TV show is not instructional. You know you don't learn how to drive. I hope you don't learn how to drive from watching the Fast and the Furious.
Speaker 2:Maybe mission impossible, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Or what's that? One where they're driving the mini cars through Italy up and down the stairs Is that the Italian job. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a good one. Yeah, I would think. Yeah, they don't really. They show you shifting, but there's no putting your foot on the clutch. So I think kids learning to drive a standard would struggle a bit.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, we were somewhere and there was a valet and they had assigned no stick shifts.
Speaker 2:It is pretty rare to standard. Yeah, they're pretty, I love our vehicles are all our standards, but they're on the way out, which is what it is.
Speaker 3:Well, my understanding I'm not a car buff, but I know someone who is, so I've absorbed a lot of passive information. My understanding is and even though this person's massively loves a stick shift is that modern automatic are far more fuel efficient and far more efficient at shifting and they actually save gas. So you know.
Speaker 2:I will just have to believe you. I know nothing about cars. I will just believe everything you say about menstruation and cars on the podcast, Doc. Where can people pick up this book? Is it out yet?
Speaker 3:It comes out January 23rd and they will be able to pick it up everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Books are sold at Indigo chapters at your local independent bookstore, online directly from the publisher.
Speaker 2:And you have a couple other books as well, and they're already in stores for people to take a look at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can get the menopause manifesto, you can get the vagina Bible and I have an older book on prematurity, the preemie primer. So you can find those wherever books are sold, and I'm coming on a tour for the book in January. Actually, we're coming to Edmonton and Calgary, really.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, both, we'll check our schedule.
Speaker 2:We'll see if we can pop in there with the dogs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it's like this. I'm like there's nothing more Canadian than a book tour at the end of January and the beginning of February. Hit it hard.
Speaker 2:Oof. Let's hope there's not a line outside of chapters or wherever you're going to be, because that'll be chilly, oh gosh yeah that'd be too cold For everybody listening. We'll throw a couple links into the show notes that will go to one of the sites that sells the Docs books. Very cool, very cool. So we have a couple standard questions on the podcast that we asked our guest about, and one is to share a pet story from their life with us. I was wondering if you could do that Doc.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, how about? I'll show you the story about how I got my cat, luna. So I had the greatest dog ever in the whole world, frida, and she had three legs. She was found on the street with her three legs and anyway, I had that dog for 15 years, so it was about a year and a quarter so you had to ever put down because she was 16 and had terrible arthritis in her one remaining back leg, right.
Speaker 5:One leg.
Speaker 3:Anyway, my kids I had promised one of my kids a cat when she passed, and so my sons are twins and they've had a lot of health problems Oliver especially heart surgeries and other things, and lots of extended ICU stays and things like that. And so my whole plan was when Frida passed, was that I'd have a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two, without a pet, just to grieve her and to not have so much mayhem of a new pet. And so the poor thing's body has just left the house, the person hasn't even backed out and Oliver shows up with his iPad with this picture of a kitten which is the ugliest kitten I've ever seen in my life. I literally went when he showed me the picture because she was missing an eye and the other one had been reconstructed and not well. I'm just like, oh my God. So I looked at him and I said you know, dear, kitten season is going to be starting soon and so we don't have to. We can look at other cats.
Speaker 3:Because I dislike eye problems. I think eyes are gross. I don't know how anyone is an eye doctor. It's disgusting to me. So the worst thing for me in the world would be to have a pet with an eye problem. So he looks at me with this little kitten that has recently had an eye removed and the other one reconstructed and it's all weepy and they've done their best to make it look good. And I just and he looked at me and he said, mom, she's had surgery, she'll understand me. So I went and got the cat.
Speaker 2:Right in the heart, right in the feels.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean what are?
Speaker 2:you supposed to do. You were defenseless.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, he went, he moved in for the kill and he was, he's, he's. That kid is an empath, I swear to God. And he, like it would like, like let me just move in into this vulnerable moment and let me just pull that heart string. And, yeah, I was, like, I was okay. So, oh my God, so I was. I was without a pet for 18 hours.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. And how is how did everything go okay with this cat Like is is the cat still with you?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I mean, I got her. She says she's at eight and a half. Yeah, she's eight and a half now and she so you know, when I went there she was very. She put her in my lap, she curled up and purred. I was like, okay, that's it, that's all expected of you. Good, and you know, I went to pay the adoption fee of $200. And they said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't, we don't need, we don't need that, dr Gunter, and I was like, okay, and of course it's because you know the bad news is you've had this horrible eye infection. You were found wandering on the street. You had to have all the surgery done that they paid for because she had such a lovely personality, which you did. The good news is you've been adopted by a doctor who will take care of all of your future vet bills. Okay, so she has not been the first few years. She was not an inexpensive cat.
Speaker 2:I was kind of hinting at that, like I was wondering if there was any ongoing issues from the eyes.
Speaker 3:Oh my God. Yes, I think that she's just not the most robustly designed creature. She's got five pounds. She's had a lot of ongoing health issues she has, she gets stressed and when she gets stressed she pees outside of the litter box. So we have the whole house is engineered for this cat's stress level and she goes for walks on a leash that helps with her stress and we've got the right food. And so we are now for the last touch wood kind of five years been in this. We got it all figured out and basically she gets what she wants and I'm always amazed. She's got a brain the size of a walnut and she runs the house.
Speaker 2:As cats do.
Speaker 3:cats, cats do run the house you know I have a big, you know, 70 pound chocolate lab who of course then when I got the kitten, my other son's, like well, I, you promised me a puppy. So I was like fine. So a friend of mine knew someone whose lab was having puppies. So the next day I went and picked up a lab puppy because like, why not?
Speaker 2:What a busy household, oh my goodness yeah.
Speaker 3:So, but the lab is great with her and they cuddle together. It's all good, so that's my pet.
Speaker 2:They were. They were little together. They kind of like the puppy yeah.
Speaker 3:They were little together and they chase each other and they cuddle and you know it's, it's, yeah, they're a great pair. They don't know anything else. They were both, you know, getting a puppy together. They don't know any difference and you know it's, it's worked out well.
Speaker 2:That is that. I love how you said. The cat kind of runs the house. That's that's what happens. That's what happened in our household when we got our rescue kitten. Bunsen and Beaker had the house to themselves and then this cat shows up and now the cat is the boss of these two dogs.
Speaker 3:It's amazing to me. Yeah, they, they. If a cat is, when a cat is fearless, they're in charge, and I don't know how they know that. You know, I mean because it is. I mean your. Your dogs are big. They could obviously harm the cat, should they choose to right.
Speaker 3:I mean and Hazel could harm. I mean, Hazel is 70 pounds and Luna is five and doesn't see well, right, and she is so gentle with her because Luna will try to bite her, Like it's not always just sleeping, she wants to sleep and Luna will come up and start like biting her face. Do we like get up, I want to play? And Hazel will just take her paw and very gently put it on Luna and just slowly push her down onto the ground and then she'll just keep a paw and are like no, no, baby, we're going to sleep right now.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, you should. You should videotape that and put it on Tik Tok. You'd have a million views.
Speaker 3:Oh well, you know, like all pets, as soon as they do something cute, as soon as you get your phone out to record it, they stop doing it.
Speaker 2:Touche. Yeah, that's. That's the curse of our house too, with trying to make content for the dogs. Well, you know that's. This has been super enjoyable listening to your pet stories. Thank you for sharing. It's tough on a podcast because I was laughing the whole time, but you don't see that.
Speaker 2:Right. The other question we asked our guests that's one of our standard ones is the super fact that something that you know, that you you kind of like hold in your pocket to tell people and it kind of blows their mind a bit. Do you have a super fact you could share with us?
Speaker 3:Yeah, how about this one, higher than the sugar level in the vagina, is higher than the sugar level in the blood.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, why what's? What does it need?
Speaker 3:glucose. It needs glucose to feed the good bacteria.
Speaker 2:Oh, and like physiologically it, the body moves glucose to the.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so those cells?
Speaker 2:I'm you. Yeah, this, I am blown away. I'm just trying to.
Speaker 3:So so the vaginal epithelium is filled with a storage sugar, glycogen, and the cells turn over very quickly. Basically, you're shedding cells from the top layer of the vagina constantly, and that's what goes into part makes up the discharge, or part of what makes up discharge, and and then the cells decompose and they release the storage sugar into the vagina, which feeds a good bacteria.
Speaker 2:It's a circle of life that is so interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'll give you another fat cool fact when the cells are shed, they act like a decoy for bad bacteria. So when you're, you know there's always bad bacteria and good bacteria everywhere in our body, and so the bad bacteria doesn't know that these cells are shed and so attaches to them and then gets flushed out.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, that's so tricky. I love it.
Speaker 3:It's a very, very finely tuned machine. Evolutionary marble.
Speaker 2:Wow, they're like ah, time to eat and then all the next thing, you know, they're just like out of out of the diner, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's this incredible the the sort of the host defense mechanisms in the vagina. So yeah, but people always like you know they're blown. They like that sugar fact no-transcript.
Speaker 2:That is cool. That is a super fact that in the history of my podcast nobody has even come close to sharing, so I appreciate that, doc.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just competitive so.
Speaker 2:Well, as we're nearing the end of our chat, one of the things we like to do is get to know our guest a little bit, maybe, outside of what they do for a living research, science, whatever and I was wondering if you have a hobby or a cause that you're passionate about.
Speaker 3:Oh well, I mean, I think a lot of the causes that I'm passionate about people know me for, about you know, getting facts out there, and so you know, from a hobby standpoint, I mean it's probably cliche but I do really like to travel and I, like you know, I I love experiencing. You know just other places and you know the foods and what people do and you sort of like just see the richness of everything and it always amazes me that that you know, like, for example, like everywhere you go, like in every culture there's like a flatbread. It's like amazing to me, like, like everybody can't you know that that we've all got these sort of same raw ingredients and independently every culture would come up with sort of a similar version, and so I think, seeing those like similarities, but also you know obviously the differences as well, and so, yeah, I would say that travels probably a hobby that's cool, doc.
Speaker 2:I got a question for you, so have you. Where's a place you've been that the food has just blown you away? What's the first place that comes to mind Like a place you've traveled to?
Speaker 3:Oh, you know, I would say well, there's kind of two things I mean. The Indian food in London is like really good, isn't it really good? We ate at this I don't know the name of it this Indian restaurant in London, and it was honestly, I don't think I've had a better meal in my life. It was so good.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, I love Indian food. I'll have to talk to my wife about going to London to try this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, and that's you know, I mean it was really good, and then you know I would say that you know, Paris has just some amazing food, and something that I'm fascinated about France with is they use a lot of chickpeas and there's a lot of regional chickpea dishes. So I kind of want to do the chickpea tour of France and sort of figure out what all these regional chickpea dishes are and and, like, do the chickpea tour and design it myself.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. Now, if you're a fan of travel and food when you travel, are you a fan of like those cooking shows you know, like the cooking competitions or that kind of stuff? Or is that like one step too much?
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, I have to say I did so. I don't like mean reality television.
Speaker 2:Okay. Like Chef Ramsay's Smerna people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, some of those things can get a bit mean. I don't know so, but I do like I love the Great British Bake Off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's cool hey you know, because it's just like, like everybody's supporting everybody, people, it's just. I mean obviously sometimes the you know, paul Hollywood says some snarky things, but but the get like the, the competitors are just, they just are like it's all this camaraderie and loveliness and you know it's sort of Herried while they're trying to get all the baking done and everything. And so I would say that you know, that kind of show I do, like you know, but so that would be like my favorite cooking show probably. I have, you know, and the Canadian ones quite nice too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if I've seen the Canadian one, which is ironic because I'm in Canada.
Speaker 3:Oops, yeah, I've only seen clips of it because I don't think we can get it down here and I I don't I don't watch that much TV anyway. So it's like the Great British Bake Off would be. I would say that's one of my you know, one of my you know that would be like a comfort show and I also like it too, because you know, they're just, sometimes they really go for it and they're just, they're just all Seem to be having a really good time and they just, you know, it's just, it's just nice to see something like that. That's just lovely.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Well, there you go, we got to know. We got to know Dr Gunter a little bit more than the books and the expertise on women's health. That's great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah and, and now I've stoked the Indian food. I had great Indian food this weekend too. We were on Vancouver Island actually, and we had some, some, actually some of the best and on I've ever had so sweet.
Speaker 2:We were just in Canmore, alberta, and there's a Indian restaurant there.
Speaker 3:It was quite good, so there you go Now I want some Palak paneer man.
Speaker 2:The. What is it? It's an appetizer. They make PCORA. Oh my goodness, is it so good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a big fan of Indian food, I have to say.
Speaker 2:Talking, you're all just like I know. Yeah, doc, where can people find you on social media? Are you want to follow you or see what you're up to with your social media stuff?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you bet you can find me at Basically everywhere, at Dr Jen Gunter. I'm still on Twitter a bit. It's not. I'm not on it as much as I used to, only doesn't feel like it's quite the same place, but I still am there. I'm on Instagram, dr Jen Gunter, on tick tock, but I don't know I really figure that out. I'm on threads, I'm on blue sky and it's all dr Jen Gunter, and my blog is called the Vagenda with a J.
Speaker 2:We will make sure we linked to your your blog. Do you have a sub stack as well? I thought I saw you have a sub stack.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I call my blog.
Speaker 2:So same thing. Okay, got you, yeah, yeah, yeah, my sub sec.
Speaker 3:That's the Vagenda. So yeah, and I write a lot about, you know, menopause, menstruation, you should, all the stuff. And sometimes I put up some of my recipes because I do like to cook myself.
Speaker 2:Sweet. Okay, we'll make sure some of those are linked in the show notes. Everybody. One more time, thank you for being our guest today, doc. It was so cool, educational and fun. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:We are proud to have bark and beyond supplycom now as an official sponsor of the science podcast. Bark and beyond supplycom is a small family owned company that started off making joint supplements for dogs, but now they sell toys and treats and a whole bunch of other goodies. Skip the big box stores and check out the amazing deals and Awesome stuff at bark and beyond supplycom. You'll see a link in our show notes and use the coupon code Bunsen B-u-n-s-e-n For 10% off at bark and beyond supplycom. Click the link. Skip the big box stores. How?
Speaker 4:about the little guy. It's time for a story time with me, adam. If you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Dad, you have a story.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty big story and I'll try to keep it short and I think Chris might chime in Sunday. This last Sunday, bunsen and Beaker were Comic-Con guests on Pokemon day. I honestly didn't really know what to expect. I knew we had to take photos with people and thank goodness that Adams girlfriend Annalise had the day off. She came up with us to help because we definitely needed her. She was a huge help that day but it was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:We had a media person that was our handler for the day. We had a videographer that followed the dogs around. We got special badges and when it was time to do the posing, once things got going, we actually had help from I think, like two or three different Expo people to keep the line moving and it was quite surreal that there was what was it Maybe Chris can chime in around 80 people, the dogs, 86 people in 30 minutes. The real story for me is how good the dogs were with posing. They posed for 30 minutes with people, if you can believe it.
Speaker 2:Like imagine getting your dog to do a sit, stay and the dog squirmed a bit like I'm not gonna lie, beaker was a little squirmy but she set, she like reset immediately for photos and with a couple treats for me and then Chris and Annalise on the side, they they took pictures with people for a half an hour straight, with a short little break for water. I was pretty proud of them and we got lots of smiles, lots of people were really happy to see the dogs and it was just a cool day. It was a really cool day, so good job, bunsen and beaker.
Speaker 5:What about? What about? The other best part is when they got to meet Sarah, the voice actor of Ash well, I thought I would let you talk about that. Well, we can keep talking.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's what you go then.
Speaker 5:Well, we went to the Media room and had a little bit of a break, and that's when Jason ran to the car to get more face paint for beakers cute beacot chew cheeks. And then Are you, what would you call her?
Speaker 2:Choose our handler.
Speaker 5:Our handler. She came back and said are you ready to go? And I thought, oh no, jason's not here yet. I texted you and you were coming as quickly as possible. I ran.
Speaker 5:But then you arrived and then we all left together and we got to go in through the secret entryway into the back where all the celebs were. Carl Weathers walked by us and the girl who's on the new Star Wars walked by us and actually we got to walk on the red carpet again, in front of all the stars, to take Bunsen and Beaker, to meet Sarah, the voice actress of Ash, and that was really cool.
Speaker 2:She was beyond excited to see them. Her face just lit up and Bunsen had his little hat on and she got down with the dogs and there was tons of people taking video of her and like she must be used to that, I think, because I think I'd be a little if people were taking video of me, like everybody was taking video of her, I'd be a little taken aback. But she was so good with the dogs and she gave Bunsen a great big hug and to Bunsen's credit, he let this strange lady, the strange smiley, happy lady, give him a big hug and he just kind of leaned into her and let it happen. So good for good job. For Bunsen Beaker was a little all done. She was all done with posing and she wanted to see everybody and look at things. So she, she hit her max.
Speaker 4:I guess it's time for my story. I can talk about the cats at Papa's house. I don't think Annalisa is going to say the story. She has homework to do. So Annalisa's mom came over because she doesn't live where we live, so she came over and she she stayed at Papa's house and the cats the cats loved her, which is weird because usually cats like people who don't really like cats because they can control the interaction. Dad did a podcast episode about this, but the cats really loved her and she really loves cats too, which is pretty. It's pretty impressive for for the cats at Papa's house and at the same time, like Larry and Mouse are the most chill cats in the world. Like Larry is probably the most chill cat in the world. You can grab him and manhandle him and put him in any position that you want and he'll just sit there and lay down and hug into you, which is really, which is really cute.
Speaker 4:Oh, I came home after a long day of school because I have classes that go until 9.20 on on Wednesdays and I saw the dogs and they were really, really happy to see me and Beaker had her cone off and she had the biggest smile on her face.
Speaker 4:Beaker smiley dogs, but Beaker's probably smiley or I think, like her smiles. Munson's always smiling. Beaker isn't always smiling, sometimes she has RBF but when Beaker smiles it's really, really cute and she had a really, really big smile on her face and every time I go downstairs she meets me, like when I get to a certain step she looks through the banister and then she like puts her face through and she starts licking me. So that's really cute. But Beaker every single time meets me at that one, at that one banister, and smiles at me and licks me. So I think that's, I think that's pretty cute. Munson picked me up from work today. Mom and Munson came and picked me up from work and I was really happy to see him and two people saw him and they were like, oh what, he's such a cute doggy and he is he's a pretty smiley guy.
Speaker 4:He's a very smiley guy and he's very cute. He's very sweet. He let them pet him and hug him, which is nice. Beaker doesn't like hugs. Munson likes hugs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Beaker will definitely shy away if you try to hug her.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but she likes pets, she loves pets, but she hates it when I hug her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's not her favorite.
Speaker 4:Anyway, mom, do you have a story?
Speaker 5:I sure do. I took Bunson to a party tonight. My work was having a get together at a location that is one kilometer away from our house, so I thought you know what I can take Bunson. It was an outdoor event, at the ball diamonds, and we had a bit of a fire. And I arrived and Bunson was the bell of the ball. I guess Everybody was petting him and he was just being so cute.
Speaker 5:And then, like, people were coming over and talking to him and petting him and a colleague of mine was talking about. He was at a different school last year and they had a therapy dog that was a Bernie's mountain dog that would come in twice week actually, and her name is Zoe and he just was like, wow, those dogs just look smiley all the time. And that's what he said about Bunson. He's like does he look? Does he look like he's smiling all the time? I said, oh yes, Bunson wears his emotion, his emotions, on his face, that's for sure.
Speaker 5:But we had a great time. And then another puppy came Her name is Ren and they did a greet. You know, they did the sniff, sniff and my colleague said you know, Ren is a little bit shy at first, but then she'll want to play and that's exactly what happened. She was shy at first and then she was punching Bunson in the face. She was jumping up she's like a little beagle, beagle type dog and she would jump up and she would swat his face and Bunson was like, okay, I'll play. And he did a play bow and he did a couple turns but he had a really good time and then it just was a wonderful evening and then Adam didn't get arranged for a ride and so he texted and I said am I getting you? And he's like can you please? So that allowed me to duck out early and then also get Adam and then get some groceries and then come home so we could do some calendars and the family section that I'm doing right now. All in all, it was a great evening and that's my story.
Speaker 4:Okay. Well, that was story time. Thank you so much for listening to my section of the podcast and sticking around through till the end of the podcast episode. I'll see you guys next on the next one. Bye, bye.
Speaker 2:That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the science podcast and a big shout out to our guests this week, the very amazing and also very busy Dr Jennifer Gunter Great conversation, really appreciate talking to you today and I'm sure everybody else loved the chat. We'd also like to thank the pop pack and our top tier members and everybody actually part of the pop pack, but one of the perks of being a top member part of the top dogs is you get your name shouted out at the end of the podcast. So, chris, take it away For science, empathy and cuteness.