- Let's visit countries across the globe
to see some of their unique
and some amazing medical technologies.
Let's get started! Whoop!
- [Narrator] Dao Liao, or knife therapy,
started 2,500 years ago in Ancient China-
- Knife therapy?!
- ... as an alternative method to traditional medicine.
(Dr. Varshavski laughs)
- What! No way! Are they chopping people up?
No! Not literally?
(woman speaking Taiwanese)
It's just a massage with knives? Oh, that's okay.
- [Narrator] Angelina Xiao has been
practicing and teaching knife therapy for 14 years.
- Like knife therapist or secret assassin?
(woman speaking Taiwanese)
System of oxygen flow.
I mean, putting any kind of pressure
in that kind of rapid succession,
almost like percussive therapy you do with a Theragun,
will increase a little bit of circulation,
superficially at least,
and that will increase oxygen delivery to the cells.
But you don't need a knife to do that.
- [Narrator] It is a customary practice
to hover the knives over burning sandalwood
and store them next to meteorites
to maintain the knives'-
(Dr. Varshavski laughing)
- Sorry! The meteorites thing got me!
Everything else...
I'm like, all right,
they warm up the knife,
it's dull so it's a little safer,
like I'm with it,
and then they hit me with the meteorite.
I just, I couldn't...
the meteorite, man.
And look I don't mean to laugh;
people have culture.
Like I'm just looking at this strictly from a medical lens.
Will the meteorite change anything in the knife?
(Dr. Varshavski laughing)
I can't...
especially when you're doing it through a blanket.
I mean, I don't know, man.
This must have some kind of cultural significance
that I'm missing,
but, medically, I'm the meteorite thing got me.
- Yeah, my name is Justin Schmidt.
- [Narrator] He's an entomologist.
- Does that mean he studies bugs?
- [Narrator] He's been stung by a lot of insects.
- That's such an uncomfortable sensation.
The fact that he's cool with it?
I mean, I don't know that he's cool with it.
(Dr. Varshavski chuckles)
- He reviews insect stings the way a sommelier reviews wine.
- "Pure, intense, brilliant pain
like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail-"
- Who's the audience for this book?!
If I was dating someone
and I walked into their home
and they had that book on their counter,
I'd be concerned.
Just saying.
- The Schmidt Pain Scale
is basically a scale to rate the painfulness
of stinging insects.
- What's the difference of just saying zero to 10?
- A one would be a Sweat Bee,
a two would be something like a Yellow Jacket Wasp,
a three would be something like a Harvester Ant,
and a four would be a Tarantula Hawk.
- What is a tarantula hawk?!
If I wake up tonight
and there's a tarantula hawk on me in New York City,
I swear to God there's gonna be no YouTube videos
for at least two weeks.
- [Narrator] It's no big secret that, in India,
fair skin is seen as the beauty ideal;
but skin color bias permeates all layers of society here
and it's causing some women to go to extreme lengths
to become lighter.
- What's a "black doll treatment?"
We do use this treatment for Melasma
which is also known as the "mask of pregnancy,"
but this type of discoloration on the skin
can occur with a lot of different situations:
certain medications,
thyroid disease,
sun exposure,
tanning beds.
- How popular has this treatment been?
- From last year,
there's a hundred percent increase in the number of people
who are coming in for this treatment.
- You know what's interesting?
I've seen the cultural shifts with these.
I remember when I was younger,
there were treatments for freckles
to help freckles disappear.
And now there's like freckle filters
on Instagram and Snapchat
that people are trying to put freckles on their body!
So, anytime you approach anything on your body,
changing on your body,
I can't tell you what to do,
but I can tell you with good certainty
that you should weigh the pros and cons
very, very seriously
and almost give yourself some time
before you ultimately make that decision.
- [Narrator] Bonobo apes are among
our closest living relatives.
They know which plants have healing properties.
- [Translator] And here you see an end
exactly the way the Bonobos would use it.
- What does that tell us?
- [Translator] They're quite high up,
so I can take off my mask for a moment.
- Wait, why does she need to have a mask on?
- Oh, interesting.
- [Narrator] Humans in the region
use this plant for medicinal purposes.
They use the juice of the young leaves to treat wounds
and eat them to treat intestinal cramps and diarrhea.
- [Translator] People crush these leaves
and apply them anally as enemas to treat wounds
in the intestinal tract.
- What kind of wounds do you have
in your lower intestinal tract?
Like diverticulosis where there's an infection
but usually you need antibiotics for that,
sometimes even IV antibiotics.
Because diverticulitis is like a serious,
potentially hospitalizing condition.
- [Narrator] This file of medicinal plants
demonstrates how challenging it is
to obtain approval for new drugs in western countries.
- It is hard and it should be hard
'cause we shouldn't just take drugs willy-nilly
hoping that they work
without any knowledge of who they work for,
who they're safe for,
are they better than current treatment,
so there should be a roadblock.
But it should be reasonable.
- [Narrator] This was a US company from California
who tried to investigate medicinal plants in a fair way.
This herbarium took 10 years
and it's a trove of information.
Then they went bankrupt
because the US authorities require so much documentation.
- Well the US authorities require documentation
'cause we want proof,
and I agree there's a lot of red tape
and all this stuff, bureaucracy,
but like if you have sufficient evidence
it's gonna get approved.
- [Translator] I do wonder
if it's some kind of intestinal pill.
Maybe they eat it like that,
so the substances pass into the intestinal tract
before they're digested by the stomach acids.
- Or they're primates and they just eat them
'cause it's fun and they like it.
Don't you want to know which one of those two it is
before you start taking it for intestinal infections?!
(Dr. Varshavski laughing) - [Narrator] This is a leech.
For thousands of years,
they were used to treat everything
from skin diseases to fevers.
Those cures almost certainly did more harm than good.
(Dr. Varshavski laughing)
- "Balancing the humors" they did to George Washington.
RIP.
- [Narrator] But in the right hands,
the leech can be a useful surgical assistant.
- [Dr. Varshavski] Well I'm pretty sure leeches apply
some kind of chemical
that actually prevents blood from clotting
which is how they're able to keep drinking your blood.
And I believe that could be useful in some indications.
- [Lab Worker] Can you feel it?
- [Investigator] I can feel it, yeah.
- Yeah.
- I definitely feel something going on there.
(Dr. Varshavski laughing) - This is so creepy!
- [Lab Worker] So at the moment,
it's attached by its head end
where the jaws and teeth will have made a hole.
- [Narrator] Here, you can see how the leech-
- Ew!
(Dr. Varshavski laughing) - I did not need to see that!
- [Narrator] By helping blood to flow freely
into newly reattached tissues,
the leach can save parts of the body
that would otherwise die.
- Wow! I had no idea that that was being used.
- The idea is that
you've gotta give someone who's been through a severe trauma
and opportunity to heal.
- Speaking of trauma! (Dr. Varshavski laughing)
- [Matthew Simmons] We have 40 animals at this facility.
- Wow. Looks like Roxy!
- [Matthew Simmons] I think for all the veterans
that we bring out here,
whether they work here,
or they're here for a support group,
what rings true is,
"if they can heal, I can heal."
- You know, nature healing programs are real.
It allows you to recenter in another way of living;
and especially being around animals
whether it's equine therapy,
or being with wolves,
just seeing how another type of species lives,
seeing that they're also alive,
that they have their own ways of living,
kind of takes you outside of your own problems,
and allows you to see the bigger picture.
- [Matthew Simmons] What happens is
one animal picks that one veteran.
Never again does that animal pick someone else-
- Wow.
- [Matthew Simmons] ...never again does that animal
want to show the same kind of affection as someone else.
- It's got some deeper meaning when they accept you,
they accept you into the family,
part of the pack.
- That's really cool.
I'm hoping that they take good care of their veterans
and also safety precautions,
'cause wolves at the end of the day,
even if they're somewhat domesticated,
there's still wild animals.
- All of a sudden you start to bleed, you know,
a large section of you is damaged.
There's bleeding that's occurring, blood vessels broken.
Wouldn't it be amazing
to have a material that you could literally
squirt onto that broken blood vessel and seal it up?
- Do you spray it on the blood vessel
from the outside of the body
or do you have to like surgically open the body
and apply it directly to the blood vessel that's bleeding?
I'm assuming it's not like a tire sealant
where you just spray it anywhere in the blood vessels
and then it finds its way to the to the hole.
- The natural elastic protein is methacrylated.
- Wow.
- Methacrylated tropoelastin,
so we call it "MeTro" for short.
- Let's look at the following example-
- I need to see it.
- [Scientist] When a human lung is punctured,
it collapses and requires surgery.
MeTro will eliminate the need for stitching or staples
and will simplify the procedure.
- Wow.
Well I understand that,
but the average person in that car accident's
not going to open their chest
and find where their lung has a hole in it.
So this would be strictly for doctor's use, I presume.
- [Scientist] MeTro seals in seconds,
it's stronger than surrounding lung tissue,
and it retains the lung's natural elasticity.
- That's interesting because that natural elasticity
is what is the problem in many instances
when it comes to using dermal adhesive or like skin glue
because like, for example,
if I have a cut on one of my patients over their joint,
I don't like using skin glue
because its lack of elasticity causes it to open.
But if you do the correct sutures,
you could actually get better outcomes
and maintain some of that elasticity
especially given the fact that the skin heals well.
But dermal adhesives are really powerful
and they're growing.
Some of them inhibit bacterial growth,
some repair tissues in much faster time,
and there's less time spent
going to take out sutures and stuff.
Not on lungs obviously,
but on the superficial outside portion of the body.
- [Narrator] Cindy Kennedy suffers from diabetes;
four months ago, she had an abscess taken from her abdomen
that left a gaping wound.
The solution? Place hundreds of live maggots into the wound.
- Wow.
- The secret lies in their eating habits-
these maggots eat only dead flesh
and leave healthy tissue alone.
- They not only eat dead flesh
and leave healthy tissue alone,
they can't multiply,
and they also disinfect areas
because when they digest the dead flesh
they actually digest the bacteria
and make it non-infectious.
- The maggots are a kind of a cleaning device
for these wounds.
Not only do they remove the dead tissue
which removes the food source for the bacteria,
then their saliva has antibacterial effects.
- It's important to note
that this doesn't work for all wounds.
Specifically, dry wounds don't work well for these maggots.
- [Narrator] But to Cindy,
the thought of maggots feasting on her body
doesn't necessarily sound appetizing.
- Yeah it doesn't sound appetizing,
but usually patients don't turn this down
'cause it does work well,
and there are some bandages that you could apply
that actually keep them from sight.
- [Doctor] A lot of these areas
are really a lot, lot cleaner.
The tissue that I can see in there is all pink.
- Yeah we want that live tissue to be forefront
because dead tissue can be a source of infection.
When people go to a wound care center,
a lot of times what they're doing
is just debriding the tissue
and cleaning out the dead tissue,
so it looks like it's even painful
and sometimes bleeding occurs.
You could even put topical chemicals on it
that can melt away some of that dead tissue.
But maggots is definitely an optimal choice here.
(man speaking in Hindi)
- Okay! This is so random! (Dr. Varshavski laughing)
I've never watched a Charlie Chaplin video.
- [Narrator] Dr. Aswani practices herbal medicine
in his village
and uses Charlie Chaplin to help treat his patients.
- Does he run a medical center
and a Charlie Chaplin blockbuster all in one?
Did he get the...
looks like he burned those illegally!
I feel like a DMCA copyright strike is coming his way!
No! For laughter?
'Cause it's so individually dependent.
The only type of recommendation of media that I give
outside of my YouTube videos-
just kidding-
is bibliotherapy
when I recommend specific books
for patients that have specific problems
that can be a source of entertainment,
but also educational value for what they're going through.
Is this guy in an iron lung right now?
- [Narrator] Paul spends almost every moment of his day
in an iron lung
which is the only thing that's keeping him alive.
- Why is he still in an iron lung?
We have modern medical equipment
that would work probably more efficiently than an iron lung.
- [Narrator] That's because he's paralyzed
from the neck down.
So without it, he can't breathe.
The machine helps him breathe by using negative pressure
to take air into his lungs.
- Okay, that's a good thing to explain right here.
When we take a deep breath in,
a lot of people think we kind of have
some sort of magical control to just pull air in.
But all that's happening, mechanically speaking,
is the muscles surrounding our lungs,
the diaphragm,
the rib muscles,
intercostal muscles,
they open.
So that pulls the lungs apart
and when you create that negative pressure by pulling apart,
it naturally sucks air into the lungs.
The opposite happens when you (Dr. Varshavski breathes out)
exhale.
So all you're doing is controlling muscles.
The machine itself is not an iron lung.
You're the lung inside the body.
So the big iron thing is the body
and starts pulling with its muscles
and you essentially function as the lung,
even though the lung is inside of you.
That's Poliomyelitis.
You know what we have to realize?
That since the inception of the polio vaccine,
maybe not exactly since the inception
'cause it took a while for people to get on board,
but since like the late seventies, early eighties,
there have been no outbreaks because of the polio vaccine.
Talk about efficacy!
Polio only exists right now somewhere in the Middle East,
like there's no natural cases of it here in the US.
- [Narrator] After years of hard work,
Paul passed the Bar and became a lawyer!
- Wow!
You could do like Zoom sessions with him!
- [Narrator] With the help of a pen attached to a stick,
Paul wrote his own biography entirely with this mouth.
- These days with technology and like eye-tracking software
he might be able to write so much quicker
with probably less stress on the muscles of his face.
It's a great example of post-traumatic growth where,
through trauma,
you grow as a human and you come out more focused,
more revitalized,
wanting to spread a meaningful message to others.
A doctor from the UK and I have had beef on YouTube.
We settle it here on this episode of "The Checkup" podcast.
Click here to check that out,
and as always,
stay happy and healthy!
(electronic music plays)