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sydnee says that she personally thinks a single-payer healthcare system would work the best, in which one entity controls healthcare payments and funding

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sydnee expresses that doctors will always find a way to take care of their patients regardless of issues with insurance as they have throughout history

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they end the episode by encouraging listeners to call their local representative in the house or senate and voice their opinions on health insurance. they don't tell their listeners what their opinion should be but encourages them to express it regardless of what it is.

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I thought it was sad that they said some physicians are against the affordable care act because they believe people should pay for what they get. they are supposed to help people and they don't want people to be able to afford to get help.

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I think this episode is important for people to listen to and learn about because getting health insurance is something most americans have to go through and struggle with

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sydnee addresses that higher-earners who had to pay high taxes due to the affordable care act may be keen to vote against it to avoid paying that much

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some want to privatize medicare, but sydnee warns that if it was privatized there would be no regulations on what or who they could deny and how much they could charge

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sydnee is a doctor which makes her personally connected to this topic as she is trying to help her patients while simultaneously trying to make sure they can afford it

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the affordable care act was established by president obama, which helped many americans who were previously denied coverage get coverage, causing 20-30 million more americans to get coverage

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coverage under the affordable care act may be rolled back, causing those 26 and under not to be covered under their parents insurance, seniors to be charged more, and women to be charged more

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sydnee talks about something called a donut-hole that exists under medicare, which is where if you spend over $3000 on medicine they make you pay for it until you get to the over $4000 mark, causing her to have to switch their meds to something cheaper, making it harder to control their healthcare

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since there was still a lot of people who still didn't have access to health insurance, medicare was made for people over 65 and medicaid was made for poor people

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hospitals would make deals with different employers to get all of their employees insurance, and it began to spread across the country as this became a way to attract employees to certain jobs. the number of people with employer-based health insurance went from 9% in 1940 to 63% in 1953.

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it used to not be very common for people to go to hospitals, so hospitals wanted to find a way to fill the empty beds. they then got the idea for insurance, where you would pay a fee each year and then they would take care of you instead of paying a large bill at once

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in 1900, the average american spent five dollars, one hundred dollars in todays money, a year on healthcare. this is because doctors didn't know much about treatments and the prices of medicines weren't regulated.

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goes in chronological order about the history of charging for healthcare, making it easier to follow along

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they say that the lower your class is, the less your treatment would cost and the higher your class is, the more it costs, which is interesting because typically in history there would be more discrimination against the lower class

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the first reference to medicine costing money is in the ancient code of hammurabi, where surgeries would cost more depending on your class in society and the type of knife used

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doctors used to give out pills made of bread that were dyed different colors with powders made of hickory ash to see if they would have any affects on their patients

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medicines that are more expensive and brand-name are shown to have a greater effect despite not being very different than other medicines

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harry beecher found that a placebo pain pill was effective in 35.2% of cases, or anywhere from 4-86% of cases, and he found that extreme pain, like from a heart attack, was more receptacle to placebo.

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many studies have looked into the placebo effect on your brain itself but they have found no evidence that the placebo effect is real

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justin shuts this down, saying it's unethical, and sydnee agrees, saying that she doesn't think doctors should ever try and deceive someone about their healthcare

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sydnee talks about the ethicality of giving a patient with chronic pain a placebo if it could help them in some way, since it is harmless

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in the medical community it is now considered unethical to give a patient a placebo outside of a research setting

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sydnee addresses the bias of the study's author, saying it wasn't clear if he misinterpreted it or exaggerated to promote placebos and push doctors to use them

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sydnee admits that the study that she cited the most from was later reevaluated and found to inaccurate results and contradicting conclusions. I'm glad that she admitted this but I'm confused as to why she didn't find another study

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the term "nocebo" describes something that you think causes you harm, so your mind manifests the harm

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there started to be more studies done about the placebo effect - and one study found that doctors who were enthusiastic and optimistic about helping a patient were more likely to be successful in that patients treatment

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there were two major debates in the medical community: whether using placebos was ethical and whether or not the placebo effect was even a real phenomenon

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a doctor named richard cabot came out and said that he didn't want to utilize the placebo effect anymore because lying is wrong and he thought that it was deceiving patients, which was controversial because it was standard practice at the time. it was inspirational of him to speak out

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sydnee talks about how doctor-patient relationships used to be the most important things because doctors didn't have as many treatments back then. "you're their doctor. they are your patient. this is a sacred bond that you are forming." I thought is sad that most doctors now are less personal and focus on the medical aspect more than the patient as a whole.

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thomas jefferson called doctors who utilizes the placebo effect "pious frauds"

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one of the earliest examples of a doctor using the placebo effect was james lind when he was trying to figure out a treatment for scurvy. he gave sailors different treatments and found that lemons and oranges worked best.

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the placebo effect was part of the medical community for years without really knowing it because doctors really didn't know what treatments worked and what didn't work

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the word "placebo" has a long history - it was used in the 14th century to describe people who would come to funerals claiming to be long-lost family to get money, and by the catholic church in the 16th century when they would send fake relics to people claiming to be possessed to see if they were faking it or not

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I wish they would have talked more about the people that solved this mystery and what they had gone on to do, they simply say that they wish they had gone on to solve more microbiological mysteries

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I wish they would have talked about other cases of this happening to add to the story and evidence instead of just theevents at the battle of pittsburg landing

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this episode was recorded in november of 2020 during the covid lockdown, and at the beginning they talk about choosing this story because it has nothing to do with what was happening in the world at that time. I like that they are trying to bring some distraction and humor into their listeners lives during hard times, making the listener more inclined to listen.

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justin and sydnee juxtapose each other in this episode - sydnee supports the scientific and logical side while justin says it could have really been an angel, which I thought was interesting

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justin says, "bill martin knows how to party. I mean, I've been saying it from the beginning. This guy’s doing party science? Are you kidding me?" - this bothered me because he's illegitimating bill's findings even though he worked hard and did tests and research to prove his theory

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I think Bill Martin is inspirational because he took a small story from history and sought a scientific explanation for it, and he won the 2001 intel international science and engineering fair

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this episode wasn't as interesting as the title seemed. they mentioned a bit about how the doctors had no idea what to do back then but I'd wished they would have dove a little bit deeper into how doctors used to struggle a lot to cure illnesses and find explanations

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I wish they would have taken proof from an actual scientific study rather than a boy's science fair project to support the claims

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I thought it was strange that no one had questioned how their wounds glowed until a teenage boy in the 2000s hundreds of years later, they say that civil wars museums would just say that angels made their wounds glow and healed them

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they state towards the end that there's not a way we can conclusively proove this as it happened so long ago and we can't even prove if the story was ever true or not

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when the bacteria got into the soldier's wound, it may have killed other bacteria, meaning that the soldiers whose wounds glowed had a lesser chance of getting infections

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these parasites don't usually live in warm temperatures, but during the day of the battle, it was very cold and the soldiers were probably suffering from hypothermia, making them a good environment for them to thrive in

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they discovered that there were parasites called nematodes in the area that the battle took place that can have the bacteria p. luminescens in them, which can glow

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a boy that liked civil war history named bill martin was interested and he sought the help of his mother who studied bacteria to help him figure out what happened

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placebos are used to test new medicines. they give some test subjects the real pill and some a sugar pill so that they can ensure that people don't feel like they're getting better just because they're getting a pill

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some soldiers began to notice their wounds glowing, and the doctors noticed that those who had glowing wounds seemed to have better outcomes and survival rates

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the story took place during the civil war during the battle of pittsburg landing. since they didn't have access to medical help, the wounded were left laying in the mud.

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this episode is slightly different than the others because it's about one specific story rather than a broader topic or disease

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sydnee says that she likes history and took many courses on history but she doesn't like reading about wars because they are so sad and they had little medical technology so there were many deaths

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I chose to listen to this episode because the title intrigued me, as it didn't seem like something that would be talked about on a medical podcast.

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sydnee talks about how no one would choose to have this illness, drawing more sympathy for those suffering

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the reason we feel the sensation of itchiness is to warn of bugs on our skin

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sydnee believes it is best to work with a combination of a psychiatrist, a family doctor or a dermatologist, and a counselor

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sydnee says, "it’s incredibly tough and every time I think, like, “oh it’s so tough to treat,” it is exponentially harder for the person who’s suffering from it." which I thought was a very powerful statement that again shows how much she cares for these people

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she doesn't feel comfortable treating them with antiparasitics because there are no parasites, but she will give them something to help with the itching sensation

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sydnee admits that these people are very hard to treat because you can't just talk them out of it, but she does listen to them and looks at what they bring her under a microscope. this shows how good of a doctor because she is able to empathize with her patients and gain their trust.

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after he says this sydnee emphasizes the fact that these people are desperate for answers and are more likely to go to a parasitologist than a psychiatrist, and they usually fall for scams to try and cure their disease, this draws more sympathy for them and it seems that sydnee cares and understands that these people are hurting

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justin jokes about how these people are just playing make believe - which I thought was sort of insensitive as these people most likely have a legitimate psychiatric disorder and are suffering

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talks about how the patients have a wide range of explanation as to why this has happened to them - including aliens and all sorts of conspiracy theories

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the cdc put together a group to investigate and they published a report in 2012 saying that they found no evidence that the disease existed

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many people came forward and said they also experienced this condition. justin sings "tale as old as time.." as sydnee says this. this uses humor as a way to express the common pattern of people following what people say blindly

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in 2002 a woman believed that her son had a new condition where hair like fibers were causing sores on his skin - none of the doctors believed her and diagnosed her with munchhausen's by proxy, but she did not give up and named the disease morgellons and formed a foundation to raise money

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it would usually start with the person being in an unclean house and feeling a bug crawl against them, and then it descends into the full-blown delusion

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justin says, "I can’t imagine that sense of always being invaded, always being, you know, having something going on in your body against your will. that must be very troubling." this was a powerful statement that made me sympathize more with the people who have this delusion

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talks about how a lot of companies will try to profit off people believing that they have parasites by trying to sell them products that will get rid of it, I like that they brought awareness to this as I have seen a lot of people falling victim to scams similar to this

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I thought this episode was an interesting little story, it wasn't my favorite episode, but I think it brought up the important point of third world country disease not getting enough funding and attention - and they seem to only get attention if it affects the united states in some way

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at the ending they remind people that if you have this room spray you need to return it to walmart to properly expose of it, sydnee jokes that that's not a sentence she'd ever thought she'd have to say

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sydnee talks about the fact that a lot of people believe that just because something is "natural" means its safe - and a lot of the times it is the contrary

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the disease got in the room sprays because they were made with rocks from a place where the melioidosis lives naturally in the dirt and water

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sydnee says that this disease deserves more research and attention but it doesn't have very much because it is not very common in the united states or europe - highlighting the fact that third world countries need more help with disease

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the treatment is 2-8 weeks of IV and then 3-6 months of antibiotics after initial contraction of the disease

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there have been four cases in the united states linked to the better home and garden sprays from walmart, and two of the patients died.

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there's not any large outbreaks of the disease- just small outbreaks, such as one that happened at the paris zoo in the 1970's

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it has been experimented as a bioterrorism weapon by the germans in world war i, which is interesting because they said that it is not very contagious and it is unlikely to cause a widespread outbreak

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standard treatment for it was a combination of chloramphenicol, co-trimoxazole, and doxycicline, and the mortality rate prior to 1989 was 80%, and then ceftazidime was introduced and the mortality rate decreased to 40% in areas with limited resources and 10% in areas with more resources

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you're more likely to contract the disease if you have other underlying illnesses, you're immunocompromised, or have a high-risk lifestyle, like drug users and those who had been to jail

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the doctors had a hard time finding live patients, all of the patients they found were already dead and they had to perform autopsies, so they knew that whatever this disease was, it wasn't good

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they did something called koch's postulates - which is where they take the disease and inject it into an animal and see if it mimics the effects that the human experience. they did this on a guinea pig and it experience the same symptoms and died the same way.

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one of the first patients who had it had been using injections drugs, so they attributed it to that, but they were confused because it was similar to a horse infection that was very rare for humans to acquire, and the man had previously been in jail, so how could he have gotten that infection?

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its common for sufferers to experience a sensation called formication - which is where it feels like there are bugs crawling beneath the skin, and they will usually damage their skin from scratching it, and they would usually bring their skin they scratched off to the doctor to look at under a microscope, but they found no sign of parasites

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sydnee talks about having more experience with this topic than other family medicine doctors because she did extra courses in tropical medicine and parasitology. she also says that people have come to her to try and help them with this delusion. this makes me more interested to listen because she has such a personal connection to the topic.

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the first doctor to take meticulous notes and records of the disease was named captain knapp, and justin jokes about how silly his name sounds, adding humor to the episode

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they began to find the disease in a lot of autopsies, and it was very similar to a disease that can infect large animals called glanders

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cases have been rising in the united states, and the disease is coming from room sprays infused with essential oils and gemstones

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the disease is usually seen in tropical places in the world such as australia or thailand

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I chose this episode because I had never heard of this disease before and I wanted to know what it was

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early patients with schizophrenia were also subjected to insulin coma therapy, in which they would purposefully be put into a coma in order to "reset" their brain

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justin uses sarcasm in the episode by saying "I did not expect this twist in sawbones that sydnee at the end of this episode would have, wait a minute, problems with how the medical system works in this country?"

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a lot of people with schizophrenia become homeless because there is not enough support. sydnee expresses the fact that we need more than just medication to help people with this illness, we need to help them with life and job skills and hygiene and nutrition