Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry is with us as we journey into the heart of the magnetic darkness known as an m r I machine, the Wonder Machine. After all these years of talking about this thing, I finally get it. I know it. It's crazy. We've been kind of amazed by it and then a little bit turned off by it. But then we realized it's not the machine itself, it's the way it's being applied. And so we kind of came back to it again and it nuzzled us and it's bore and it got kind of sexy. Yeah, and we're also guilty of the f m r I crime that now I kind of feel bad about. What is that? Is that a Queen's Right album? Yeah, maybe we'll just talk about that later when it's appropriate. What the Queen's Right album? No, the fm R I blunder that we've been making for thirteen years. Sure, I feel like, okay, all right, we'll go over that. Fine, Fine, Fine, I don't want to miss anything. But instead we're gonna mostly talk about the m R I the Wonder Machine as it is, because Chuck, we were always just amazed by it to begin with, but now that I understand it, I feel even more amazed by it. I'm I'm proud of humanity for having come up with this thing. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing that. And we'll talk about the history of it and everything in a sect, but it's amazing that human beings uh got together with their cohorts and said, you know what we can do. The human body is made up of sixty six water, So let's figure out how to use magnetic fields and radio waves to measure that water, uh and the tissues of our body, and then we can map it and then we can image it. Right. And so those initial people who said that were burned at the steak because it was like the sixteenth century still. But when a few more hundred years passed, a few new people came onto the scene, and they encountered a completely different environment um, one that was kind of nurturing of science and advancement in the idea that you could see inside the human body without cutting it open. And the person who won what actually kind of interestingly turned out to be a race among researchers who were um all trying to sell solve the same problem at the same time. Independently was a guy named Dr Raymond Domadian or damedian Um, and he is credited as the first person to invent the fully functional human sized m R. But he's one of typically at least three people who are credited with with inventing the m R I, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean when he got in there in July of nineteen seventy seven and nothing really happened, and I think one of his colleagues said, hey, maybe you're too big for this thing. They put in a smaller person and it worked for the first time. It took about five hours to get an image. Uh. They named the thing Indomitable, and if you look up pictures, it's in the Smithsonian now of Indomitable. You know. It's it's one of these things that looks like a bare bones version of what it ended up looking like. It's like the the MRI I version of a wicker wheelchair. All be sort of did you you didn't see a picture? No, because I suspected as much. I didn't want it to haunt my dreams. Yeah, I mean it looks sort of like this big donut. I think the difference in this one is that it shows and it may I'm not sure if it's doctor Demadian in the photo or not, but they're actually wearing some coils around their body. Um, but there is a larger donut as well. Do they look like they're on craft work tour? Sort of? Sort of? So they were to other people. Demandian was the first one. I'm glad that we settled on a pronunciation, by the way, um, and he was the first one to cross the finish line. But there were the two others who were working on that same problem, Paul Lauderbergh and Sir Peter Mansfield. And like I was saying, they were all working independently on this problem. This thing that had been demonstrated in called nuclear magnetic residence, which which is that you can make Adams do really peculiar things when you put them in the presence of um, a magnetic field. If it's strong enough, it kind of snaps them all into attention. Uh. They click their heels and they say, yes, sir, I'll get that pette for you immediately. And um, that's not how they normally behave. And so these guys Demardian, Lauderboro, and Mansfield all were like, somehow, some way, there's a way to use this, to to use this nuclear magnetic residence to look inside of the body. And that's what they said about try to do. Yeah, and pretty early on they cut the word nuclear out of it and went with imaging. So m R. I was born. I think it wasn't probably a great time, and maybe it's never a great time to throw the word nuclear into anything. Uh. You know, every everything from nuclear power to nuclear bombs have a bad rap quite frankly. Yeah, it gets even worse if you pronounce any nu oh man. Uh. And then there was someone else we do need to shout out, a physicist by the name of uh cig Ogawa or Ogawa. How would you pronounce that it's any value? See in Japan just screams to be pronounced independently. Oh really they love so C C G E SAG. That's what I would go with. Okay, I'm serious, I really think you know, I believe it just sounded funny. Um. And so what happened, Uh So while we're shouting this person out is because they discovered the if you have oxygen poor hemoglobin, it's gonna react differently by this magnetic field that's created in the m r I machine than really good oxygen rich hemoglobin, and that that contrast, you could basically eventually end up seeing blood flow, like imaging blood flow. Yeah, because with Demai and his cohort were doing, we're imaging tissues inside of the body. Um Ogawa said, well, actually you can track the flow of blood in those tissues as well. Laid the groundwork for what became f m r I functional MRI I, and then also more importantly magnetic resonance and geography, which is basically tracking blood flow in blood vessels in real time. Basically, Yeah, and all this stuff was revolutionary because a, um, you really nail it on the head earlier, like you don't have to cut people open anymore to see this stuff. Um. We we've had X rays for a long time and they're great if you want to look at certain things like your your bones and see if you've got a cracked rib or something. But when it comes to soft tissue, X rays were useless. We'll talk a little bit more about CT can CT scans and why they're awesome in their own way. But not still not as I guess functional as an m r I. Well plus CT scans. I didn't realize this. Ct s computed tomography. They use X rays as well, so you're still getting that dose of radiation from a CT scan too, all right. So all that is just to lead up to say that the m R I just beats them all those other machines stink. It truly earns his nickname the Wonder Machine. Um boy, I feel like like we should take a break before diving into this thing, should we? I'm thinking, hold on, yeah, I think this is a good spot for a break. Okay, let's do it. Okay, so we're back and uh, a bit of an early break, but that's because we're about to get in the weeds with the actual nuts and bolts. Ironically, probably doesn't have any nuts and bolts. Oh that's a good point. It's probably probably what heavy duty plastic ribbons. I don't know. It might just be like large solid injection molded pieces. That's a good question. We should have learned that. But anyway, the metaphorical nuts and bolts of this thing, Uh, if you've ever seen when they look like a big doughnut, you sit on a a little you know, it looks like a mortuary tray and you get slid in through this hole in this tube. It's only about is in diameter. So they're not great if you are claustrophobic. But they do make machines that aren't quite They don't give you quite what you want with a closed system, but they're a little more opened up. Yeah, and I got the impression that they're starting to really kind of revisit those because you can't produce quite as as great a magnetic field is powerful a magnetic field with an open system, But I think they're starting to figure out you don't necessarily need the most powerful magnetic field, so stay tuned for that in ten years. But um, the most important part of the whole m r I machine obviously is the magnet. That's what produces the magic. Is this magnetic field that so that doughnut, that elongated doughnut that you're slid into in the tube, that is the magnet basically, And it's not like a magnet like you'd put on your fridge. It would suck your fridge into what amounts to a black hole basically, if you got your fridge anywhere near this thing. It's a different kind of magnet. It's a super conducting magnet made up of coils, probably copper coils that an electrical current is run through. And when you run an electrical current through a coiled um set of metal, you can produce a magnetic field that's great, like fantastic. But to produce the kinds of like the powerful magnetic fields that they're producing in an m r I, you actually need a super conducting magnet, and that's just a whole another level. Yeah. I mean, if you want to create a very large and stable field, and we're talking, I think they measure magnets and is it or gauze. I think goss g A U S S so goss is the measurement. One tesla is ten thousand goths. So if you're looking at just a regular fly by night MRI I wonder machine, you're looking at about one point five roughly one point five tesla, or about fifteen thousand goths as far as the magnetic field goes. And that's um compared to a point five for the magnetic field of planet Earth. You're not point five tesla point five goths thousands, it's like fifty sixty thousand times more if you're an average machine. But they even make him go all the way up to ten tesla, Yeah, which is what a hundred thousand goths. Yeah. And the more goss, the more uh, the prettier machine is just getting the prettier pictures are. Yeah. Another thing that I saw though, is that they're figuring out that when you get past a certain tesla of magnetic field, it does matter, and that it actually gets worse because you're picking up so much detail that you can't tell a bit from a bob basically, and if you're a radiologist using terms like bits and bobs, you need to get out of the field and make room for somebody who takes the job a little more seriously. That's interesting. I wonder if that also goes hand in hand with the open machines and them saying like, we don't need as much goss as we thought we did. I think it does. I think they're figuring out ways to get better resolution off lower power, because not only is it really expensive, I think it's a new machine costs about a million dollars per tesla it produces. So if you've got a ten ten tesla machine, which really at this point, from what I understand, is just showing off as a medical center. Um, you just spent ten million dollars on this one m r I machine in your medical center. Um. But that also it costs a lot of money to run one of these things because to keep this stable magnetic field going, you gotta run a lot of electricity through it. And that's where the super conductivity comes in. Yeah, I mean you want two rids. I mean you've got to have like zero resistance running through those wires. And they do this and I remember we talked about this in our Are we running out of Helium? I can't abo what it was called about. We did an episode on the fact that helium um was in short supply. And one of the downsides of this, it wasn't just birthday balloons, was the fact that they use helium liquid helium to uh to make these copper coils super conductive and I think at the order of about four hundred and fifty two degrees below zero. So without that helium, they don't know if they're looking at alternatives or if there's a Plan B or not, but they need helium. Well, remember in our Macy's Thanksgiving day preative. So I don't know if it made it in there or not, but they they found like a helium supply that basically like and Macy's bought it that basically like expanded our supply of helium by some infinite amounts. So we're like flush with helium. That's true. I remember that. So so I think we're okay. So we can just the cam was kicked down the road, Chuck. We don't need to worry about that. Yeah, we don't need a plan for the future, like Y two K right, it's exactly right. Nice, nice call out. All right, So you've got your big magnet um. You you also have gradient magnets. You have three gradient magnets, and those are not nearly as on the magnitude of that the big daddy. These are about one eighty to two seventy GAUSS. And your main magnet is what's creating that main magnetic field that we're gonna go over in detail in the second, the real stable one. But the other magnets create the variable field, which you know, that's what you need to run it um against the other one to make those images happen. Yeah, that's the that's basically what you use, like to direct the UM beam essentially as it were like if you need a shoulder looked at, it would be then a different location than your knee. Yeah yeah, And you would say, well, actually I needed a little to the left, and you would use these gradient magnets to move the magnetic field. And what you're really moving from what I understand with the gradient magnets is a radio free quency pulse. And this is this is where things this is where it all comes together. You're you're using three different things. Right, You've got the magnet and when you when you put um hydrogen, when you put a body, well, we're not quite there yet, I'll oh you want me to do it now? Well, I mean it certainly was anticipation on my part. Okay, all right, I won't let you down, Chuck. So when you go into the m R I bore and you enter this magnetic field the tube, I don't think we've mentioned that true. Um, When you go in the tube and you enter the magnetic field, the atoms in your body UM have what's called the magnetic moment, which means that they respond to very strong magnetic fields by abandoning their kind of random spin along their access their procession and snapping in line along the polar ends of the magnetic field. And in the m r I that that's running lengthwise down the middle. So if you're laying on your back in an m R I tube, the magnetic field is going from your feet to your head, and that magnetic field causes the atoms in your body or the particles in your body that make up atoms, to snap into line with that polarity. So all of a sudden, you have protons in this case, as far as the m R is concerned, hydrogen protons um suddenly going from random spins to all facing your feet are all spinning towards your head, one or the other, but technically along the same line. Yeah, So some of those are and I think in the biz they call it aligning parallel or anti parallel, and they sort of cancel each other out, but there's always going to be more parallel aligned hydrogen atoms, and those are the ones that uh, we're using to measure the m R I basically, like everything else, just sort of can't as each other out, and those leftover ones and it sounds, you know, there's there's so many that you can have the cancelation of many and it still works. So I only saw this in the House to Works article. Everywhere else I saw basically made no mention of the fact that, like whether they were aligned towards your feet or towards your head, like that that mattered, and that you were focusing on the ones that hadn't aligned, like I only saw it in this article. Oh you did, okay? So then kids Science, what is what? They were all based off this House of Works article? No? No, you could tell they were original? What is I was just teasing, you know, I love kids science websites. Chuck which when this one was? But it was a good one. Um, okay. So regardless of what which adams you're focusing on, either the ones that are polarized from along the magnetic field are the ones that haven't been polarized. That's that polarity is being created by the main magnet, the superconducting magnet that has basically zero resistance because it's bathed in liquid helium and cool to just astounding temperatures. Right now, when you bring in the radio frequency pulse, which is oscillating, it's turning on and off very very quickly. What what was discovered over the last century or so before m RIS wherever even developed. But what forms the basis of the principle that mrs operate on is that if you apply a radio frequency to a bunch of um of hydrogen protons undergoing their magnetic moment, you can actually adjust the way that they're aligned. You're kind of like pushing or pulling them out of alignment, and they're kind of struggling against it, but you can you can overcome that with the radio frequency pulse. And so that's basically step one of the m R I is getting them knocked out of that polarity so that you can turn that off and basically gauge and measure them as they snap back into that polarity. Yeah, and that radio frequency pulse it has to be the same frequency of those spinning protons, so if not, they're not going to be in resonance. That's where the word resonance comes from. If they have that same frequency, they can exchange energy with one another and they're on resonance with one another, and when they turn it on and off, like you said, there's a moment where they snap back into snap back to attention essentially, and it takes a little bit of time and a little bit of energy, and that energy is what they're basically trying to measure, like that, that movement. Yeah, and because the protons, the hydrogen protons. The reason they selected hydrogen protons is because it's so abundant throughout the body. Uh, it's far and away the most abundant atom in the body is hydrogen. Um. That that you're going to find in every bit, every every nook and cranny of your body. That's another term radiologist should stay away from, but we can use it. The nooks and crannies of your body all are filled with hydrogen protons. So um, they know that a hydrogen proton and like fat, tissue is going to snap back into place and then release energy at a slightly different frequency and at a slightly different rate than the hydrogen protons making up water in the body or bone in the body or you know, your hair on your shoulders or whatever. All all of this stuff is going to just be just slightly different. And they basically know what the data that comes back, what it's telling them is, Oh, hey, i'm a I'm a fat I'm in a bunch of fat over here. I'm into water over here, I'm shoulder hair over here. And this is the data that gets transmitted to the computer that's measured by the computer that's running the MR. Yeah, and that energy burst that it emits, it's at a very specific frequency named the lar More frequency after an Irish physicist named Sir Joseph Larmore. He discovered this all the way back in and you will never need to know this information, but just in case you want to know, the lar More frequency for hydrogen in this case is forty two point five eight mega hurts per tesla of magnetic force. That's a I don't even know if that's like a cocktail that that's not even a Jeopardy question. That's a dark little pet you keep in your pocket that you pull out and like stroke every once in a while. Just reassure yourself that you're very smart. Yeah, like LaVar Burton should be. LaVar Burton would ask that question on Jeopardy and Ken Jennings would say, you gotta be kidding me. Nobody cares love, so you're you're pulling for LaVar. He's not gonna make it. I mean the other guy that somehow the executive producer of the show is of naming himself. Yeah, I mean he said that he didn't make the call, but us, I don't know, man, he I thought LaVar Burton was great and would be great for that show. I'm part of team George Stefanopolis. Did he guess yeah? Or Aaron Rodgers. He did a good job. I didn't see that one, but he still got more football to play. I'm with you, though, I think LaVar Burton would be wonderful, and from what I read, he really wants it too. So I just don't get it. And a lot of people are mad already, so I'm not so so the decision has been made. It's the executive producer. Now. They said that they're in the final negotiations. And you know, now there are some people pointing to his past, because this guy's a experienced game show executive producer, and they're like, yeah, when you were on the Prices, right, you did some not so great things, and so we'll see what happens. I don't know, what a dusty old crotch. Oh, I don't know. We'll see what happens. Let's bring humility back, everybody. Just this and the small doses is fine. That's right. And this has been game show, so Chuck and Josh and speaking of go listen to our live game shows episode I think from Denver. That was really good. Uh do we do one on game shows? Oh? My, yes we did. That's a good one. All right. So where are we? We are at the lar more frequency. I guess the one thing we need to mention to you talked earlier about the gradient magnets UM being applied to very specific parts of the body. In the biz, they call those areas slices. So you can just get us if they if you hear someone and if you're going to get an m R and you're nervous and they say get a slice of the shoulder. There, you're not getting a slice. The whole point is that of an m R is that you don't get sliced. Yes. And one of the other advantages is that because you can move these gradient magnets all over the place at all different planes UM, you can get all sorts of different views of the same area top, bottom, side, underside, all the sides. And that's a huge, huge advantage that m R I offers again without spilling a single drop of blood. Yeah, and I guess. The final piece of the puzzle here is this is all well and good that this little magic machine works like this, but you still have to be able to have a doctor look at a picture of this stuff. The imaging part of m R I is just as important as the rest, because that's what they need to assess your situation. And they do this through the magic of computers and math. And I think that's it. That's that right. We don't have to go anymore into it than that. I mean, you know, I don't fully understand it to you. It makes it the image and turns it to a mathematical formula. Fifty people on the planet who fully understand how happens. All I know is there's a really expensive computer attached, and it's the one that converts all that data into a two D or three D image. That's all you need to know, really, yeah, um, And then it ends up in the hands of a radiologist who basically says, oh, it's this, Oh it's a donkey that kind of thing, or increasingly in the hands of AI, which has gotten really really good at reading radiological charts, including m R I, is to look for weird anomalies because one of the great advantages of an m r I is those images that produces um really can resolve water in the body. And one of the reasons that's important is because when you start to suffer disease, one of the one of the almost universal symptoms of any kind of disease, malady, or disorder in the human body is an increase in the amount of water. The thing is is like, the m r I is going to show you that, but you or I can't see that. You got to go to school for many, many years and become a radiologists say that's that's just a little fluid build up, or oh that's a tumor. It's tough to distinguish. It needs a human or again an AI to make that distinction. But the m r I is going to give you the picture that will show you that thing that a radiologist could look at and say that's water, that's a tumor. That's right, pretty neat stuff. Like we said all along the Wonder Machine, that's right. And that feels like a great time for break number two. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about our fm r I. Shame that I feel that you're not even aware of Oh gosh, right after that, prepare for our shame, all right, Chuck? Why should we be ashamed? Because I think I I remember things differently than you do. That's what I think it is. So here's the deal with f m R I functioning m r I s. They track blood flow and what they've long done in UH psychiatry and neurology since this has been invented, and we've talked about this a lot on the podcast. It they will do an f m R I of your brain and they will show you pictures of certain things or have you react to certain stimuli, can be an object or a word that they say out loud or whatever, and they see where that blood flow is going in the brain with the idea of like, well, hey, if you're getting that fresh blood right here in this part of the brain, that means that that's the part of your brain that is reacting to the stimulus. And and the more I read about it, the more it seemed like that's a pretty good guess. And we don't really know what's going on with the neurons. This is just seeing what's lighting up. And I think where I feel bad as many many times over the years we've said, you know, and then they showed him a picture of this and about a being about a boom. This part starts lighting up, so case closed, and it's not as like kind of bulletproof as that I see. This is where I remember differently. We've trashed that idea multiple times over there. Did yeah, okay, totally. I remember specifically talking about one study where a guy put like a dead salmon in an m r I and then wrote a paper about what it must have been experiencing because some vauxells showed lit up. Really, so we made good as we went along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, okay, totally. We sniffed that stuff out. We've been sniffing that stuff off the case since oh eight, oh man, all right, well, I don't feel bad anymore, No, don't, don't. We definitely trashed that over the years, and and it's it's worth being trashed in that somebody figured out, like, you can use this to a certain degree and yes, you can see, oh this region's lighting up. But what they quickly found is that a region of the brain has hundreds or thousands or countless numbers of neurons involved in that area, and they're not all just doing the same thing, they're all performing different functions, they're all connected in different ways. And until we can get our resolution down on basically the individual neural level, the point, there's zero point almost in putting someone in an fMRI I um and and showing them pictures of of whatever and seeing how they're stimulated it, because it's all just guesswork somebody. Compared to to phrenology modern phrenology, you're just extrapolating huge things from very limited findings. And so we've figured that out very early on. Like that's been a long standing criticism, and we we definitely dialed into that better than everything about our efforts. I'm I'm so glad, thank you for correcting that. Although one good thing about f m r I is is that and giography where you can track blood flow outside of the brain and extrapolated beyond you know, social psychology studies. Yeah, if if a social psychology study could even get enough funding to pay for an m r I rental. We we had some social psychologists and husbands and wives of social psychologists the right end, and they were kind of mad at it at you. I think they're mad again. Uh, you know you should not be mad at are the inventors of the m r I because these things are really pretty safe. Um, you are not being exposed to radiation, and that's a great thing. You There have been not many incidences of mishaps with an m r I machine. One of the dangers of an m r I is, obviously, you know with the super magnet is going to be metal. If you've ever had one, they're gonna ask you and ask you several more times. If you have any metal on your body. You're not gonna go in there with the ear rings. You're not going to go in there with even certain kinds of makeup has metal in it. Uh. If you have a pacemaker or aneurism clips in your brain, or if you're like me, dental implants, you're gonna want to talk to them about that. And uh, because some of that stuff is still okay. It's not like it will rip a pacemaker out of your chest, because they're smarter than that now. But if you have an old pacemaker, that might be a problem, right Yeah, And even a new pacemaker can malfunction in the presence of a really strong madnake field. It won't be ripped from your chest but it's it might stop working, and that's not good. You know, you don't want that to happen. But there are like things like if you have like metal anywhere on you, it will be pulled out of your pocket. Your pocket might be pulled right off of your pants basically, um depending on whether it's one of those externally sewed pock gets or an internal probably have a gown on anyway, sure, but you could just be some schmo who likes the stand around mr I rooms and gained entry. One of the big problems is the actual medical equipment themselves. There's medical equipment that is that is has been developed to be used in an mri I room, and then there's medical equipment that accidentally finds its way into an m r I room and ends up getting sucked violently into the bore, and that is really dangerous. There's there's actually some astounding pictures on the internet. If you search mri I catastrophe of there's there's one, and I can't tell if it's real or not. There's a wheelchair that's sucked into the boar with feet sticking out from under it. I didn't see a corroborating story, but people have died from being hit by objects or pinned to the boar between a metal object and the boar. UM. And it's very very rare. It's very infrequent because people running MORI ees tend to know what to look for and what questions to ask and what to look out for. But it has happened, and when it happens, it's got to be one of the most violent things you could ever Yeah, about twenty years ago there was a boy who was killed when an oxygen tank was pulled into the bore. But like you said, that's that's the kind of thing that makes the news of the world over because it's so rare. I think every year there are millions and millions of m r I scans in the United States alone, and the FDA gets about three hundred adverse event reports annually, and most of these are like my skin burned, some because it got really hot. Um. Because I don't think we mentioned like the m r I s I've had have been very brief, just a few minutes. Um. You can be in there for like an hour or an hour and a half and you have to lay completely still. And this the sound that they make is just it's unnerving. It's this it's like this digital clanging and there are clacksons and buzzers and it's just not I remember I talked about it years ago on the show when I had my first one. Um, it's it's not a relaxing scene at all. It's a little unnerving, even though you know it's safe just because of the noise. So um but but it's it is safe, like accidents usually don't happen. Yeah, that noise, I forgot you had one before. From what I understand, that noise is relative to the the tesla's that the made magnet puts out because when you put the UM I guess maybe the gradient magnets in there, they respond to that made magnet and that's what produces that hammering or clacking sound or whatever. And it can it can get really loud and give you tonitis or hearing loss, even if they don't give you. Um, you know your mouffs. Have you still never had one? No? Let me just drack on wood there? How did yours turn out? Pretty great? Yeah? I can't even remember what the first one was for, to be honest, it was so many years ago. Uh, And then I had one more recently, Uh, for my for my gut. Oh yeah, yeah, for my g I. They were looking at my g I flow, not flow for stuff you're colon blow. They were looking for diverticula specifically, And so I was in an m r A machine and that didn't take very long. And I think they used die for that one. That's another thing that we didn't mention is I don't think they always used die as a contrast, but sometimes they do. Yeah, about a third of them they used die. And the dye seems to be from what I can tell, the the the only truly questionable part about the m R I experience, because when you come out of that magnetic field, your adams all go back to normal the way they were, and you know, there's no long term effects. But apparently the die they use is um made of gandolinium gatolinium, which is a metallic element, and they collate it so that your body doesn't like it doesn't stick around your body actually pee it out, gets processed through your kidneys. In very rare instances, some people hang onto it and it can cause a little bit of kidney damage, but far and away almost everybody passes it. It seems to be. The question is using die when you give an m r I to a woman who's pregnant, because the woman will pee it out, but the little baby in uterus or in utero um recycles the stuff that comes in there, so it will just be ingesting and peeing and ingesting and peeing that gatollinium until it's born. Um, and then that's not really good for the old kidneys. So apparently, um, they FDA recommends that you air on the side of the mother's health, like like it's a if it's a UM, like a medical emergency, and the that the that requires an mr for the mom, including die. That the FDA and apparently the a m A would say just go ahead and do it, uh and roll the dice. But if it's not a medical emergency and the woman has to get an m r I, they would probably avoid using the diet. Yeah. The die was Yeah, the die was. Um. That was kind of one of the more interesting parts because you can feel it cold running through your body. Wow, which is really interesting. And I got a taste in my mouth, like this kind of funky taste. Wow, that's really amazing. Yeah, which is always a little weird. Um, you mentioned pregnant women though, but kids is another thing. Uh m R eyes. I think in nine of m R eyes go to fully grown adults, and kids present a problem because kids are fidgety obviously, and they're hard to keep still, and you've got to start over if you want to get a good picture. So it's it's kind of been tough, and a lot of times they have to um aneste size a child to put them in an MRI machine, which you know, anytime you're going into anesthesia there's a risk there and people don't like doing that in general if you don't have to. So there are some really smart people working on that. I think a few years ago there was an article about a Stanford pediatric radiologist name Schreus Vasa na Vasana Walla, and he was working on basically kind of making Taylor made m R I machines for kids that are smaller and a little more open and don't have these huge bulky coils for their little bodies. That's amazing. What a great thing to do with your time, you know, I agreed. I mean, or you could just get on the podcast and run your mouth. You're right, I think that's a less good thing. To do with your time. But regardless, I think the m R I machine is still maybe even more than ever the wonder machine. Chuck, I agree, And it's cool to know how it works. And uh, you know, if you heard this and go in to get an m R I, it might arm you with a little knowledge. You can go in there and talk about what's the what was that number again? The frequency forty two point five eight meg It hurts per tesla yea of magnetic field applied. Just go in there start throwing that around while you have your smartphone in your pocket. That's right. Hopefully the least if you're about to get an m R I, this may do you a little less nervous about it, agreed. Uh. Well, if you want to know more about m R EYES, just do a little research or maybe go get one done. Go hit up your doctor and say how about an m R I. Let's check it out, and they'll say okay, hop in I could use the money. Uh. And since I said I could use the money, obviously it's time for listener mail. That's right. Before I read this one, I do want to shout out. We've got quite a few emails on people who have the weird compulsion to equal out the crack stepping defeat. Like, I was kind of surprised at how many people have that same thing going on. And uh, other people I think I read one of them. Uh that said he also like to chew and equal on both sides of his mouth. Quite a few people also had that, which I don't have. But it's nice to know that US crack steppers are. I don't know, I feel united. Yeah, there's a there's a whole cadre of you guys out there. It turns out, Yeah, we're gonna take over the world one day. I know. But I'm gonna call this one from Rodney about reverse osmosis. Hey, guys, you get did a really nice job on reverse osmosis. Uh. It can indeed solve the drinking water problem worldwide, as well as help solve some of the environmental problems in our industrial processes. You should also do a program on electrolytics. This technology can take salt and convert it to disinfectants that are used to treat water and kill microorganisms that make people sick. Nine thousand people die every day from water borne disease worldwide. Uh. And this this guy, Rodney has a couple of companies that deal with this, so offered us up some technical assistance if we wanted to do something on that nice, very nice, Thanks a lot, Rodney. Appreciate that UM offer, and congratulations to you for saving the world. Agreed. UM. If you want to get in touch with us like Rodney did, because you're saving the world or because you UM just want to say hi, it doesn't matter. We were fine either way. You can get in touch with us by sending an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry is with us as we journey into the heart of the magnetic darkness known as an m r I machine, the Wonder Machine. After all these years of talking about this thing, I finally get it. I know it. It's crazy. We've been kind of amazed by it and then a little bit turned off by it. But then we realized it's not the machine itself, it's the way it's being applied. And so we kind of came back to it again and it nuzzled us and it's bore and it got kind of sexy. Yeah, and we're also guilty of the f m r I crime that now I kind of feel bad about. What is that? Is that a Queen's Right album? Yeah, maybe we'll just talk about that later when it's appropriate. What the Queen's Right album? No, the fm R I blunder that we've been making for thirteen years. Sure, I feel like, okay, all right, we'll go over that. Fine, Fine, Fine, I don't want to miss anything. But instead we're gonna mostly talk about the m R I the Wonder Machine as it is, because Chuck, we were always just amazed by it to begin with, but now that I understand it, I feel even more amazed by it. I'm I'm proud of humanity for having come up with this thing. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing that. And we'll talk about the history of it and everything in a sect, but it's amazing that human beings uh got together with their cohorts and said, you know what we can do. The human body is made up of sixty six water, So let's figure out how to use magnetic fields and radio waves to measure that water, uh and the tissues of our body, and then we can map it and then we can image it. Right. And so those initial people who said that were burned at the steak because it was like the sixteenth century still. But when a few more hundred years passed, a few new people came onto the scene, and they encountered a completely different environment um, one that was kind of nurturing of science and advancement in the idea that you could see inside the human body without cutting it open. And the person who won what actually kind of interestingly turned out to be a race among researchers who were um all trying to sell solve the same problem at the same time. Independently was a guy named Dr Raymond Domadian or damedian Um, and he is credited as the first person to invent the fully functional human sized m R. But he's one of typically at least three people who are credited with with inventing the m R I, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean when he got in there in July of nineteen seventy seven and nothing really happened, and I think one of his colleagues said, hey, maybe you're too big for this thing. They put in a smaller person and it worked for the first time. It took about five hours to get an image. Uh. They named the thing Indomitable, and if you look up pictures, it's in the Smithsonian now of Indomitable. You know. It's it's one of these things that looks like a bare bones version of what it ended up looking like. It's like the the MRI I version of a wicker wheelchair. All be sort of did you you didn't see a picture? No, because I suspected as much. I didn't want it to haunt my dreams. Yeah, I mean it looks sort of like this big donut. I think the difference in this one is that it shows and it may I'm not sure if it's doctor Demadian in the photo or not, but they're actually wearing some coils around their body. Um, but there is a larger donut as well. Do they look like they're on craft work tour? Sort of? Sort of? So they were to other people. Demandian was the first one. I'm glad that we settled on a pronunciation, by the way, um, and he was the first one to cross the finish line. But there were the two others who were working on that same problem, Paul Lauderbergh and Sir Peter Mansfield. And like I was saying, they were all working independently on this problem. This thing that had been demonstrated in called nuclear magnetic residence, which which is that you can make Adams do really peculiar things when you put them in the presence of um, a magnetic field. If it's strong enough, it kind of snaps them all into attention. Uh. They click their heels and they say, yes, sir, I'll get that pette for you immediately. And um, that's not how they normally behave. And so these guys Demardian, Lauderboro, and Mansfield all were like, somehow, some way, there's a way to use this, to to use this nuclear magnetic residence to look inside of the body. And that's what they said about try to do. Yeah, and pretty early on they cut the word nuclear out of it and went with imaging. So m R. I was born. I think it wasn't probably a great time, and maybe it's never a great time to throw the word nuclear into anything. Uh. You know, every everything from nuclear power to nuclear bombs have a bad rap quite frankly. Yeah, it gets even worse if you pronounce any nu oh man. Uh. And then there was someone else we do need to shout out, a physicist by the name of uh cig Ogawa or Ogawa. How would you pronounce that it's any value? See in Japan just screams to be pronounced independently. Oh really they love so C C G E SAG. That's what I would go with. Okay, I'm serious, I really think you know, I believe it just sounded funny. Um. And so what happened, Uh So while we're shouting this person out is because they discovered the if you have oxygen poor hemoglobin, it's gonna react differently by this magnetic field that's created in the m r I machine than really good oxygen rich hemoglobin, and that that contrast, you could basically eventually end up seeing blood flow, like imaging blood flow. Yeah, because with Demai and his cohort were doing, we're imaging tissues inside of the body. Um Ogawa said, well, actually you can track the flow of blood in those tissues as well. Laid the groundwork for what became f m r I functional MRI I, and then also more importantly magnetic resonance and geography, which is basically tracking blood flow in blood vessels in real time. Basically, Yeah, and all this stuff was revolutionary because a, um, you really nail it on the head earlier, like you don't have to cut people open anymore to see this stuff. Um. We we've had X rays for a long time and they're great if you want to look at certain things like your your bones and see if you've got a cracked rib or something. But when it comes to soft tissue, X rays were useless. We'll talk a little bit more about CT can CT scans and why they're awesome in their own way. But not still not as I guess functional as an m r I. Well plus CT scans. I didn't realize this. Ct s computed tomography. They use X rays as well, so you're still getting that dose of radiation from a CT scan too, all right. So all that is just to lead up to say that the m R I just beats them all those other machines stink. It truly earns his nickname the Wonder Machine. Um boy, I feel like like we should take a break before diving into this thing, should we? I'm thinking, hold on, yeah, I think this is a good spot for a break. Okay, let's do it. Okay, so we're back and uh, a bit of an early break, but that's because we're about to get in the weeds with the actual nuts and bolts. Ironically, probably doesn't have any nuts and bolts. Oh that's a good point. It's probably probably what heavy duty plastic ribbons. I don't know. It might just be like large solid injection molded pieces. That's a good question. We should have learned that. But anyway, the metaphorical nuts and bolts of this thing, Uh, if you've ever seen when they look like a big doughnut, you sit on a a little you know, it looks like a mortuary tray and you get slid in through this hole in this tube. It's only about is in diameter. So they're not great if you are claustrophobic. But they do make machines that aren't quite They don't give you quite what you want with a closed system, but they're a little more opened up. Yeah, and I got the impression that they're starting to really kind of revisit those because you can't produce quite as as great a magnetic field is powerful a magnetic field with an open system, But I think they're starting to figure out you don't necessarily need the most powerful magnetic field, so stay tuned for that in ten years. But um, the most important part of the whole m r I machine obviously is the magnet. That's what produces the magic. Is this magnetic field that so that doughnut, that elongated doughnut that you're slid into in the tube, that is the magnet basically, And it's not like a magnet like you'd put on your fridge. It would suck your fridge into what amounts to a black hole basically, if you got your fridge anywhere near this thing. It's a different kind of magnet. It's a super conducting magnet made up of coils, probably copper coils that an electrical current is run through. And when you run an electrical current through a coiled um set of metal, you can produce a magnetic field that's great, like fantastic. But to produce the kinds of like the powerful magnetic fields that they're producing in an m r I, you actually need a super conducting magnet, and that's just a whole another level. Yeah. I mean, if you want to create a very large and stable field, and we're talking, I think they measure magnets and is it or gauze. I think goss g A U S S so goss is the measurement. One tesla is ten thousand goths. So if you're looking at just a regular fly by night MRI I wonder machine, you're looking at about one point five roughly one point five tesla, or about fifteen thousand goths as far as the magnetic field goes. And that's um compared to a point five for the magnetic field of planet Earth. You're not point five tesla point five goths thousands, it's like fifty sixty thousand times more if you're an average machine. But they even make him go all the way up to ten tesla, Yeah, which is what a hundred thousand goths. Yeah. And the more goss, the more uh, the prettier machine is just getting the prettier pictures are. Yeah. Another thing that I saw though, is that they're figuring out that when you get past a certain tesla of magnetic field, it does matter, and that it actually gets worse because you're picking up so much detail that you can't tell a bit from a bob basically, and if you're a radiologist using terms like bits and bobs, you need to get out of the field and make room for somebody who takes the job a little more seriously. That's interesting. I wonder if that also goes hand in hand with the open machines and them saying like, we don't need as much goss as we thought we did. I think it does. I think they're figuring out ways to get better resolution off lower power, because not only is it really expensive, I think it's a new machine costs about a million dollars per tesla it produces. So if you've got a ten ten tesla machine, which really at this point, from what I understand, is just showing off as a medical center. Um, you just spent ten million dollars on this one m r I machine in your medical center. Um. But that also it costs a lot of money to run one of these things because to keep this stable magnetic field going, you gotta run a lot of electricity through it. And that's where the super conductivity comes in. Yeah, I mean you want two rids. I mean you've got to have like zero resistance running through those wires. And they do this and I remember we talked about this in our Are we running out of Helium? I can't abo what it was called about. We did an episode on the fact that helium um was in short supply. And one of the downsides of this, it wasn't just birthday balloons, was the fact that they use helium liquid helium to uh to make these copper coils super conductive and I think at the order of about four hundred and fifty two degrees below zero. So without that helium, they don't know if they're looking at alternatives or if there's a Plan B or not, but they need helium. Well, remember in our Macy's Thanksgiving day preative. So I don't know if it made it in there or not, but they they found like a helium supply that basically like and Macy's bought it that basically like expanded our supply of helium by some infinite amounts. So we're like flush with helium. That's true. I remember that. So so I think we're okay. So we can just the cam was kicked down the road, Chuck. We don't need to worry about that. Yeah, we don't need a plan for the future, like Y two K right, it's exactly right. Nice, nice call out. All right, So you've got your big magnet um. You you also have gradient magnets. You have three gradient magnets, and those are not nearly as on the magnitude of that the big daddy. These are about one eighty to two seventy GAUSS. And your main magnet is what's creating that main magnetic field that we're gonna go over in detail in the second, the real stable one. But the other magnets create the variable field, which you know, that's what you need to run it um against the other one to make those images happen. Yeah, that's the that's basically what you use, like to direct the UM beam essentially as it were like if you need a shoulder looked at, it would be then a different location than your knee. Yeah yeah, And you would say, well, actually I needed a little to the left, and you would use these gradient magnets to move the magnetic field. And what you're really moving from what I understand with the gradient magnets is a radio free quency pulse. And this is this is where things this is where it all comes together. You're you're using three different things. Right, You've got the magnet and when you when you put um hydrogen, when you put a body, well, we're not quite there yet, I'll oh you want me to do it now? Well, I mean it certainly was anticipation on my part. Okay, all right, I won't let you down, Chuck. So when you go into the m R I bore and you enter this magnetic field the tube, I don't think we've mentioned that true. Um, When you go in the tube and you enter the magnetic field, the atoms in your body UM have what's called the magnetic moment, which means that they respond to very strong magnetic fields by abandoning their kind of random spin along their access their procession and snapping in line along the polar ends of the magnetic field. And in the m r I that that's running lengthwise down the middle. So if you're laying on your back in an m R I tube, the magnetic field is going from your feet to your head, and that magnetic field causes the atoms in your body or the particles in your body that make up atoms, to snap into line with that polarity. So all of a sudden, you have protons in this case, as far as the m R is concerned, hydrogen protons um suddenly going from random spins to all facing your feet are all spinning towards your head, one or the other, but technically along the same line. Yeah, So some of those are and I think in the biz they call it aligning parallel or anti parallel, and they sort of cancel each other out, but there's always going to be more parallel aligned hydrogen atoms, and those are the ones that uh, we're using to measure the m R I basically, like everything else, just sort of can't as each other out, and those leftover ones and it sounds, you know, there's there's so many that you can have the cancelation of many and it still works. So I only saw this in the House to Works article. Everywhere else I saw basically made no mention of the fact that, like whether they were aligned towards your feet or towards your head, like that that mattered, and that you were focusing on the ones that hadn't aligned, like I only saw it in this article. Oh you did, okay? So then kids Science, what is what? They were all based off this House of Works article? No? No, you could tell they were original? What is I was just teasing, you know, I love kids science websites. Chuck which when this one was? But it was a good one. Um, okay. So regardless of what which adams you're focusing on, either the ones that are polarized from along the magnetic field are the ones that haven't been polarized. That's that polarity is being created by the main magnet, the superconducting magnet that has basically zero resistance because it's bathed in liquid helium and cool to just astounding temperatures. Right now, when you bring in the radio frequency pulse, which is oscillating, it's turning on and off very very quickly. What what was discovered over the last century or so before m RIS wherever even developed. But what forms the basis of the principle that mrs operate on is that if you apply a radio frequency to a bunch of um of hydrogen protons undergoing their magnetic moment, you can actually adjust the way that they're aligned. You're kind of like pushing or pulling them out of alignment, and they're kind of struggling against it, but you can you can overcome that with the radio frequency pulse. And so that's basically step one of the m R I is getting them knocked out of that polarity so that you can turn that off and basically gauge and measure them as they snap back into that polarity. Yeah, and that radio frequency pulse it has to be the same frequency of those spinning protons, so if not, they're not going to be in resonance. That's where the word resonance comes from. If they have that same frequency, they can exchange energy with one another and they're on resonance with one another, and when they turn it on and off, like you said, there's a moment where they snap back into snap back to attention essentially, and it takes a little bit of time and a little bit of energy, and that energy is what they're basically trying to measure, like that, that movement. Yeah, and because the protons, the hydrogen protons. The reason they selected hydrogen protons is because it's so abundant throughout the body. Uh, it's far and away the most abundant atom in the body is hydrogen. Um. That that you're going to find in every bit, every every nook and cranny of your body. That's another term radiologist should stay away from, but we can use it. The nooks and crannies of your body all are filled with hydrogen protons. So um, they know that a hydrogen proton and like fat, tissue is going to snap back into place and then release energy at a slightly different frequency and at a slightly different rate than the hydrogen protons making up water in the body or bone in the body or you know, your hair on your shoulders or whatever. All all of this stuff is going to just be just slightly different. And they basically know what the data that comes back, what it's telling them is, Oh, hey, i'm a I'm a fat I'm in a bunch of fat over here. I'm into water over here, I'm shoulder hair over here. And this is the data that gets transmitted to the computer that's measured by the computer that's running the MR. Yeah, and that energy burst that it emits, it's at a very specific frequency named the lar More frequency after an Irish physicist named Sir Joseph Larmore. He discovered this all the way back in and you will never need to know this information, but just in case you want to know, the lar More frequency for hydrogen in this case is forty two point five eight mega hurts per tesla of magnetic force. That's a I don't even know if that's like a cocktail that that's not even a Jeopardy question. That's a dark little pet you keep in your pocket that you pull out and like stroke every once in a while. Just reassure yourself that you're very smart. Yeah, like LaVar Burton should be. LaVar Burton would ask that question on Jeopardy and Ken Jennings would say, you gotta be kidding me. Nobody cares love, so you're you're pulling for LaVar. He's not gonna make it. I mean the other guy that somehow the executive producer of the show is of naming himself. Yeah, I mean he said that he didn't make the call, but us, I don't know, man, he I thought LaVar Burton was great and would be great for that show. I'm part of team George Stefanopolis. Did he guess yeah? Or Aaron Rodgers. He did a good job. I didn't see that one, but he still got more football to play. I'm with you, though, I think LaVar Burton would be wonderful, and from what I read, he really wants it too. So I just don't get it. And a lot of people are mad already, so I'm not so so the decision has been made. It's the executive producer. Now. They said that they're in the final negotiations. And you know, now there are some people pointing to his past, because this guy's a experienced game show executive producer, and they're like, yeah, when you were on the Prices, right, you did some not so great things, and so we'll see what happens. I don't know, what a dusty old crotch. Oh, I don't know. We'll see what happens. Let's bring humility back, everybody. Just this and the small doses is fine. That's right. And this has been game show, so Chuck and Josh and speaking of go listen to our live game shows episode I think from Denver. That was really good. Uh do we do one on game shows? Oh? My, yes we did. That's a good one. All right. So where are we? We are at the lar more frequency. I guess the one thing we need to mention to you talked earlier about the gradient magnets UM being applied to very specific parts of the body. In the biz, they call those areas slices. So you can just get us if they if you hear someone and if you're going to get an m R and you're nervous and they say get a slice of the shoulder. There, you're not getting a slice. The whole point is that of an m R is that you don't get sliced. Yes. And one of the other advantages is that because you can move these gradient magnets all over the place at all different planes UM, you can get all sorts of different views of the same area top, bottom, side, underside, all the sides. And that's a huge, huge advantage that m R I offers again without spilling a single drop of blood. Yeah, and I guess. The final piece of the puzzle here is this is all well and good that this little magic machine works like this, but you still have to be able to have a doctor look at a picture of this stuff. The imaging part of m R I is just as important as the rest, because that's what they need to assess your situation. And they do this through the magic of computers and math. And I think that's it. That's that right. We don't have to go anymore into it than that. I mean, you know, I don't fully understand it to you. It makes it the image and turns it to a mathematical formula. Fifty people on the planet who fully understand how happens. All I know is there's a really expensive computer attached, and it's the one that converts all that data into a two D or three D image. That's all you need to know, really, yeah, um, And then it ends up in the hands of a radiologist who basically says, oh, it's this, Oh it's a donkey that kind of thing, or increasingly in the hands of AI, which has gotten really really good at reading radiological charts, including m R I, is to look for weird anomalies because one of the great advantages of an m r I is those images that produces um really can resolve water in the body. And one of the reasons that's important is because when you start to suffer disease, one of the one of the almost universal symptoms of any kind of disease, malady, or disorder in the human body is an increase in the amount of water. The thing is is like, the m r I is going to show you that, but you or I can't see that. You got to go to school for many, many years and become a radiologists say that's that's just a little fluid build up, or oh that's a tumor. It's tough to distinguish. It needs a human or again an AI to make that distinction. But the m r I is going to give you the picture that will show you that thing that a radiologist could look at and say that's water, that's a tumor. That's right, pretty neat stuff. Like we said all along the Wonder Machine, that's right. And that feels like a great time for break number two. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about our fm r I. Shame that I feel that you're not even aware of Oh gosh, right after that, prepare for our shame, all right, Chuck? Why should we be ashamed? Because I think I I remember things differently than you do. That's what I think it is. So here's the deal with f m R I functioning m r I s. They track blood flow and what they've long done in UH psychiatry and neurology since this has been invented, and we've talked about this a lot on the podcast. It they will do an f m R I of your brain and they will show you pictures of certain things or have you react to certain stimuli, can be an object or a word that they say out loud or whatever, and they see where that blood flow is going in the brain with the idea of like, well, hey, if you're getting that fresh blood right here in this part of the brain, that means that that's the part of your brain that is reacting to the stimulus. And and the more I read about it, the more it seemed like that's a pretty good guess. And we don't really know what's going on with the neurons. This is just seeing what's lighting up. And I think where I feel bad as many many times over the years we've said, you know, and then they showed him a picture of this and about a being about a boom. This part starts lighting up, so case closed, and it's not as like kind of bulletproof as that I see. This is where I remember differently. We've trashed that idea multiple times over there. Did yeah, okay, totally. I remember specifically talking about one study where a guy put like a dead salmon in an m r I and then wrote a paper about what it must have been experiencing because some vauxells showed lit up. Really, so we made good as we went along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, okay, totally. We sniffed that stuff out. We've been sniffing that stuff off the case since oh eight, oh man, all right, well, I don't feel bad anymore, No, don't, don't. We definitely trashed that over the years, and and it's it's worth being trashed in that somebody figured out, like, you can use this to a certain degree and yes, you can see, oh this region's lighting up. But what they quickly found is that a region of the brain has hundreds or thousands or countless numbers of neurons involved in that area, and they're not all just doing the same thing, they're all performing different functions, they're all connected in different ways. And until we can get our resolution down on basically the individual neural level, the point, there's zero point almost in putting someone in an fMRI I um and and showing them pictures of of whatever and seeing how they're stimulated it, because it's all just guesswork somebody. Compared to to phrenology modern phrenology, you're just extrapolating huge things from very limited findings. And so we've figured that out very early on. Like that's been a long standing criticism, and we we definitely dialed into that better than everything about our efforts. I'm I'm so glad, thank you for correcting that. Although one good thing about f m r I is is that and giography where you can track blood flow outside of the brain and extrapolated beyond you know, social psychology studies. Yeah, if if a social psychology study could even get enough funding to pay for an m r I rental. We we had some social psychologists and husbands and wives of social psychologists the right end, and they were kind of mad at it at you. I think they're mad again. Uh, you know you should not be mad at are the inventors of the m r I because these things are really pretty safe. Um, you are not being exposed to radiation, and that's a great thing. You There have been not many incidences of mishaps with an m r I machine. One of the dangers of an m r I is, obviously, you know with the super magnet is going to be metal. If you've ever had one, they're gonna ask you and ask you several more times. If you have any metal on your body. You're not gonna go in there with the ear rings. You're not going to go in there with even certain kinds of makeup has metal in it. Uh. If you have a pacemaker or aneurism clips in your brain, or if you're like me, dental implants, you're gonna want to talk to them about that. And uh, because some of that stuff is still okay. It's not like it will rip a pacemaker out of your chest, because they're smarter than that now. But if you have an old pacemaker, that might be a problem, right Yeah, And even a new pacemaker can malfunction in the presence of a really strong madnake field. It won't be ripped from your chest but it's it might stop working, and that's not good. You know, you don't want that to happen. But there are like things like if you have like metal anywhere on you, it will be pulled out of your pocket. Your pocket might be pulled right off of your pants basically, um depending on whether it's one of those externally sewed pock gets or an internal probably have a gown on anyway, sure, but you could just be some schmo who likes the stand around mr I rooms and gained entry. One of the big problems is the actual medical equipment themselves. There's medical equipment that is that is has been developed to be used in an mri I room, and then there's medical equipment that accidentally finds its way into an m r I room and ends up getting sucked violently into the bore, and that is really dangerous. There's there's actually some astounding pictures on the internet. If you search mri I catastrophe of there's there's one, and I can't tell if it's real or not. There's a wheelchair that's sucked into the boar with feet sticking out from under it. I didn't see a corroborating story, but people have died from being hit by objects or pinned to the boar between a metal object and the boar. UM. And it's very very rare. It's very infrequent because people running MORI ees tend to know what to look for and what questions to ask and what to look out for. But it has happened, and when it happens, it's got to be one of the most violent things you could ever Yeah, about twenty years ago there was a boy who was killed when an oxygen tank was pulled into the bore. But like you said, that's that's the kind of thing that makes the news of the world over because it's so rare. I think every year there are millions and millions of m r I scans in the United States alone, and the FDA gets about three hundred adverse event reports annually, and most of these are like my skin burned, some because it got really hot. Um. Because I don't think we mentioned like the m r I s I've had have been very brief, just a few minutes. Um. You can be in there for like an hour or an hour and a half and you have to lay completely still. And this the sound that they make is just it's unnerving. It's this it's like this digital clanging and there are clacksons and buzzers and it's just not I remember I talked about it years ago on the show when I had my first one. Um, it's it's not a relaxing scene at all. It's a little unnerving, even though you know it's safe just because of the noise. So um but but it's it is safe, like accidents usually don't happen. Yeah, that noise, I forgot you had one before. From what I understand, that noise is relative to the the tesla's that the made magnet puts out because when you put the UM I guess maybe the gradient magnets in there, they respond to that made magnet and that's what produces that hammering or clacking sound or whatever. And it can it can get really loud and give you tonitis or hearing loss, even if they don't give you. Um, you know your mouffs. Have you still never had one? No? Let me just drack on wood there? How did yours turn out? Pretty great? Yeah? I can't even remember what the first one was for, to be honest, it was so many years ago. Uh, And then I had one more recently, Uh, for my for my gut. Oh yeah, yeah, for my g I. They were looking at my g I flow, not flow for stuff you're colon blow. They were looking for diverticula specifically, And so I was in an m r A machine and that didn't take very long. And I think they used die for that one. That's another thing that we didn't mention is I don't think they always used die as a contrast, but sometimes they do. Yeah, about a third of them they used die. And the dye seems to be from what I can tell, the the the only truly questionable part about the m R I experience, because when you come out of that magnetic field, your adams all go back to normal the way they were, and you know, there's no long term effects. But apparently the die they use is um made of gandolinium gatolinium, which is a metallic element, and they collate it so that your body doesn't like it doesn't stick around your body actually pee it out, gets processed through your kidneys. In very rare instances, some people hang onto it and it can cause a little bit of kidney damage, but far and away almost everybody passes it. It seems to be. The question is using die when you give an m r I to a woman who's pregnant, because the woman will pee it out, but the little baby in uterus or in utero um recycles the stuff that comes in there, so it will just be ingesting and peeing and ingesting and peeing that gatollinium until it's born. Um, and then that's not really good for the old kidneys. So apparently, um, they FDA recommends that you air on the side of the mother's health, like like it's a if it's a UM, like a medical emergency, and the that the that requires an mr for the mom, including die. That the FDA and apparently the a m A would say just go ahead and do it, uh and roll the dice. But if it's not a medical emergency and the woman has to get an m r I, they would probably avoid using the diet. Yeah. The die was Yeah, the die was. Um. That was kind of one of the more interesting parts because you can feel it cold running through your body. Wow, which is really interesting. And I got a taste in my mouth, like this kind of funky taste. Wow, that's really amazing. Yeah, which is always a little weird. Um, you mentioned pregnant women though, but kids is another thing. Uh m R eyes. I think in nine of m R eyes go to fully grown adults, and kids present a problem because kids are fidgety obviously, and they're hard to keep still, and you've got to start over if you want to get a good picture. So it's it's kind of been tough, and a lot of times they have to um aneste size a child to put them in an MRI machine, which you know, anytime you're going into anesthesia there's a risk there and people don't like doing that in general if you don't have to. So there are some really smart people working on that. I think a few years ago there was an article about a Stanford pediatric radiologist name Schreus Vasa na Vasana Walla, and he was working on basically kind of making Taylor made m R I machines for kids that are smaller and a little more open and don't have these huge bulky coils for their little bodies. That's amazing. What a great thing to do with your time, you know, I agreed. I mean, or you could just get on the podcast and run your mouth. You're right, I think that's a less good thing. To do with your time. But regardless, I think the m R I machine is still maybe even more than ever the wonder machine. Chuck, I agree, And it's cool to know how it works. And uh, you know, if you heard this and go in to get an m R I, it might arm you with a little knowledge. You can go in there and talk about what's the what was that number again? The frequency forty two point five eight meg It hurts per tesla yea of magnetic field applied. Just go in there start throwing that around while you have your smartphone in your pocket. That's right. Hopefully the least if you're about to get an m R I, this may do you a little less nervous about it, agreed. Uh. Well, if you want to know more about m R EYES, just do a little research or maybe go get one done. Go hit up your doctor and say how about an m R I. Let's check it out, and they'll say okay, hop in I could use the money. Uh. And since I said I could use the money, obviously it's time for listener mail. That's right. Before I read this one, I do want to shout out. We've got quite a few emails on people who have the weird compulsion to equal out the crack stepping defeat. Like, I was kind of surprised at how many people have that same thing going on. And uh, other people I think I read one of them. Uh that said he also like to chew and equal on both sides of his mouth. Quite a few people also had that, which I don't have. But it's nice to know that US crack steppers are. I don't know, I feel united. Yeah, there's a there's a whole cadre of you guys out there. It turns out, Yeah, we're gonna take over the world one day. I know. But I'm gonna call this one from Rodney about reverse osmosis. Hey, guys, you get did a really nice job on reverse osmosis. Uh. It can indeed solve the drinking water problem worldwide, as well as help solve some of the environmental problems in our industrial processes. You should also do a program on electrolytics. This technology can take salt and convert it to disinfectants that are used to treat water and kill microorganisms that make people sick. Nine thousand people die every day from water borne disease worldwide. Uh. And this this guy, Rodney has a couple of companies that deal with this, so offered us up some technical assistance if we wanted to do something on that nice, very nice, Thanks a lot, Rodney. Appreciate that UM offer, and congratulations to you for saving the world. Agreed. UM. If you want to get in touch with us like Rodney did, because you're saving the world or because you UM just want to say hi, it doesn't matter. We were fine either way. You can get in touch with us by sending an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.