When Doctors Get It Wrong & The Science of Kindness
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Today on Something You Should Know, the next time you go to fake a smile, maybe you shouldn't.

Then, the serious blunders of modern medicine: over-prescribing antibiotics, over-performing C-sections, and peanut allergies. The modern-day peanut allergy epidemic is real, but it's also a manufactured, man-made epidemic, and it stemmed from a recommendation in the year 2000 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Also, why do we drink so much cow's milk? Lots of animals give milk. Why a cow? And the wonderful things kindness does for you. Kindness relaxes nerves. It reduces blood pressure. In fact, kindness even impacts the genetic behavior of immune cells in our bloodstream. So really, kindness supports our mental and our physical health. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Hi. You know, somebody asked me the other day, what's your favorite episode of Something You Should Know? I actually get asked this quite often and I don't have a favorite episode. I like to think they're all pretty good.

But some of them really do stand out for me, and today's episode is one of those, so I hope you enjoy it. First up today, smiling. Think about how many times you fake smile during a day. I think we all do it. And you may have heard that if you force yourself to smile, it will improve your mood. And that is true, but it has to be a real smile. Faking a smile can actually make things worse.

A study from Michigan State University found that customer service workers who fake a smile throughout the day actually wind up in a worse mood and may be withdrawn and less productive. The fake smile effect was stronger for women than for men.

So yes, smiling can improve your mood, but you really have to mean it. If you don't feel like smiling, try conjuring up pleasant or funny thoughts that will make you smile for real. Most of us do have the ability to trigger a real genuine smile, and when we do, it does help. And that is something you should know.

Modern medicine is wonderful, no doubt. The advances in medicine are truly extraordinary. But there are also some big problems and blunders. For example, have you ever wondered why there are so many people with peanut allergies today? Peanut allergies used to be rare. Now they're fairly common due to a blunder in medicine. Medicine got this so wrong.

And the peanut allergy problem is just one example, and really just a symptom, of a much bigger problem in medicine that is being addressed today by Dr. Marty McCary. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins and has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools. He's a member of the National Academy of Medicine, author of two best-selling books, and his latest book is called Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means to Our Health.

Hey Marty, welcome to Something You Should Know. Great to be with you, Mike. Thanks for having me. So let's back up a bit and if you would please explain the idea behind blind spots in medicine and where this all comes from. I think in medicine we are unfortunately have done a terrible thing to doctors. The medical establishment has inherited this system where we as physicians are told that

What's really good is for you to specialize. When you specialize, you just put your head down and you do one thing. And for me, it was removing pancreas cancer and doing pancreas surgery. And so patients come into the door with pancreatic cancer and we go to work and do our operations. And we have measured a doctor's performance by

how often they do it or how good their throughput is or how well they bill in code. And when doctors stop and look around and say, hey, wait a minute,

Why has pancreatic cancer doubled in the last two years? We haven't given doctors the time or resources to look at the root causes, but there is good medical research on the root causes. We're seeing rates of autism go up almost 14% each year. Chronic obesity, we're seeing now as a childhood illness, half of kids are overweight or obese.

Prediabetes is rampant in the population. We're seeing allergies increase. There are many explanations and ways to prevent these growing chronic diseases, but we just don't talk about them. They have been in the blind spots of medicine.

Did you say that pancreatic cancer has doubled in the last two years? Yeah. And what's unbelievable, I don't mean to make light of it, but my team at Johns Hopkins of surgeons and researchers from every specialty, we do more pancreatic cancer than any hospital in the country. And when I asked at our multidisciplinary conference, hey, does anyone know why pancreatic cancer has doubled in the last 20 years that we've been all working together? Yeah.

It's as if we never thought about it because we are incentivized by the NIH grants. Pharma is driving a lot of the narrative and supporting a lot of the research. And at no point do we get time or energy or the resources to actually stop and ask questions

well, what's going on in the environment? Maybe we need to study the environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs, not just putting every kid on Ozempic. And this is the new movement in medicine now. Do you know why? I mean, pancreatic cancer is the scariest one for me because it seems like you never find out about it until it's too late. And the fact that the incidents have doubled scares the crap out of me.

And it's not just pancreatic cancer. We're seeing more colon cancer in young people in their 30s and 40s. Breast cancer appears to be increasing. We're seeing more liver cancer. Liver cancer, one of the risk factors that we've talked about is the fatty replacement of the liver tissue from high refined carbohydrates in the diet.

So, that fatty liver, what we call steatohepatosis, is a well-known risk factor for liver cancer.

We would never say, though, that liver cancer is a foodborne illness, but it is. It is one of the biggest risk factors, and it parallels the rise in obesity rates. So we've got to educate people about ultra-processed foods. These are foods that are highly engineered, that are stripped of the fiber and nutrients, and are almost designed to be addictive. And what they do is they do two things differently.

They move fat into storage. They increase general body inflammation, which is a known risk factor of colon cancer and many other types of cancer. And we also have a lot of heavy metal exposures and microplastics. So there are some things that are likely suspects. And then one study that just came out in JAMA Surgery, one of our top journals this year,

The rise in colon cancer seen in people under age 50 was associated with them having a C-section. Now, that may just be one of the many factors, but we know that C-sections result in a different microbiome, that is the bacterial lining of the gut. And because when a baby is born

Vaginally, the gut of a baby is seeded from the bacteria that normally live in the vaginal canal. In other words, a baby in utero has no bacteria in the gut and the microbiome is formed from the seeding of passing through the birth canal and then augmented from bacteria from breast milk and skin. But when a baby is born by C-section, they're extracted from a sterile operative field.

And what may see that baby's bacteria are bacteria that normally live in the hospital. So we know there's been a different microbiome in babies born by C-section. Same thing with antibiotics. They carpet bomb the microbiome and change the composition.

Antibiotics and C-sections save lives. They're necessary many times, but they're also massively overused. In one study, 60% of antibiotics are unnecessary. And in another study, 40% of C-sections are unnecessary. So people need to know the risk-benefit relationship so that they don't fall for the medical dogma that an antibiotic may not help, but it won't hurt you.

In one Mayo Clinic study, they found kids who took an antibiotic in the first couple years of life had higher rates of asthma, celiac, learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder, and even obesity. But why are doctors over-prescribing antibiotics, do you think? I mean, doctors know what antibiotics work for and what they don't work for.

So why prescribe it in a situation when they know it's not going to work? It's harder to have the conversation. I'm talking as a physician here. It's harder to have the conversation to say, you know, there's nothing we can really do here or there's nothing that we can offer that is worthwhile, in my opinion, at this time. That's a hard conversation. It's easier to say, ah, you got an upper respiratory infection. Here's an antibiotic. You know, it may not help, but it won't hurt.

And so telemedicine has boosted a lot of the antibiotic overprescribing. When you come in with an ear infection, sometimes doctors don't even look in the ear or even know what they're looking at to distinguish bacterial from viral otitis media. I want you to tell the peanut allergy story because I've always thought about this, that when I was a kid, I didn't even hear about peanut allergies, maybe once or twice, but

But now, peanut allergies are very common and you know why.

The modern day peanut allergy epidemic is real. People really suffer. But it's also, by and large, a manufactured man-made epidemic. And it stemmed from a recommendation in the year 2000 by the American Academy of Pediatric for parents to ensure that kids avoid all peanut butter and peanut products ages zero through three.

The experts thought that based on their opinion, they could prevent future peanut allergies in kids by encouraging total abstinence in the first three years of life.

but they got it perfectly backwards. They forgot about a basic principle called immune tolerance or oral tolerance. It had been known as the dirt theory by people for generations. That is, when you're exposed to allergens in the first couple of years of life, when the body's immune system is learning, then a person is less likely to be sensitized or allergic to it later in life.

It took, sadly, 15 years into this medical dogma for someone to actually do the simple study to randomize children to both peanut abstinence versus early peanut butter exposure that is introducing a little bit at five or six months of age.

And they found the kids who had early exposure of a little bit of peanut butter had dramatically lower rates of peanut allergies later in childhood, an eightfold difference. So they got it perfectly backwards. And it took 15 years for this research to surface.

But sadly, you didn't hear a big apology or a change of course from on high. They just kind of slowly changed the practice and recognized this new research. And sadly, to this day, one of the great modern scandals is that the WIC program does not cover peanut butter from this old medical dogma. It's important for kids.

at four, five, six months of age to be introduced a little bit of peanut butter, a little bit of allergens like milk, eggs. Even some pediatricians recommend that young kids be around cats and dogs. That's because of this concept of immune tolerance. The experts got it perfectly backwards.

Okay, well, I have a question about that I want to ask you in just a moment. I'm speaking with Dr. Marty McCary. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins and author of the book, Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means to Our Health.

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Go to shopify.com slash realm to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash realm. So, doctor, can't you just chalk this up like so many things like that? That was the prevailing wisdom then. And then somebody comes along and proves it wrong. But until then, people believe it and then it's proven wrong and people don't believe it. I mean, that happens in medicine all the time.

you know before they put that recommendation out there with such absolutism and by the way that is one of the worst things you can do in medicine is if you just have a hunch or a gut feeling and you want someone to do something if you put it out there with such absolutism instead of just saying hey we don't know this is just our opinion then um tremendous damage can be done when we in in medicine

Issue recommendations based on good scientific studies. We shine as a profession. But when we issue broad health recommendations based on an opinion, we have a lousy track record. Igniting the opioid epidemic with the dogma that opioids were not addictive. Igniting the modern day obesity epidemic with the dogma that it was fat, not refined carbohydrates and ultra processed foods that drive obesity.

Do you point the finger at that recommendation about avoid fat in food and so eat carbohydrates as a big cause of obesity? Or because it's also people point the finger at, you know, ultra processed foods and they're so tasty and hard to stop eating. And how big a piece of the pie do they get?

So it is multifactorial. But if you look epidemiologically over time, as we started altering the microbiome with antibiotics, and as we moved the food supply from natural whole foods to processed foods and added sugar, and part of that was the demonization of fat, then we saw obesity rates take off. And the medical culture has this sort of natural...

instinct to blame patients sometimes for their chronic diseases. It turns out we were giving the wrong information.

The recommendation to avoid saturated fats or natural fats was perhaps the number one recommendation by doctors to the general public on health for about 60 years. People would come in a little overweight. We'd say exercise more and eat healthier. And by the way, we define eating healthier as avoiding natural fat. Well, the food industry not only moved to a high refined carbohydrate diet because fat was now...

evil, and the only way to preserve the flavor was to add carbohydrates. But also, they engineered food to be more addictive. And they figured out through byproducts how to almost fool the public. I think they were laughing at the public because they were taking things like whole wheat and converting it to this refined flour, which is basically functionally

acting like sugar. They would strip it of its fiber, strip it of its nutrients, about 20 nutrients, add back about three to five nutrients, which were really chemicals disguised as nutrients,

And then convince the public that this was enriched flour. Well, any processed or refined flour is increasing your body's insulin level. And that is probably one of the root causes of so many chronic diseases. High insulin levels are what we call insulin resistance. It is one of the precursors of diabetes.

well when you hear about all these missteps you know peanut butter antibiotics and it makes you wonder like what's the next one i think it's pesticides pesticides have estrogen-like binding properties and by the way many of these pesticides have been banned in other countries

Pesticides may account for why sperm counts are half of what they were just 50 years ago. Fertility is decreasing. The age of puberty in society has decreased now to a range of 10 to 13 years of age. It's still around 13 to 16 in other parts of the world. We have the earliest age of puberty of any developed country in the world.

And it's not a surprise when we learn that the five plus billion gallons of pesticides we pour on crops is making its way into the food supply and affecting the hormones of young children. So there are these giant blind spots in medicine, things we're not talking about that we should be talking about.

and there's also hope in those blind spots and in the past we would only talk about these topics in our doctors lounges and physician conferences but a group of us are now going directly to the public because we've got to spend more time now talking about school lunch programs food as medicine and the toxins that we expose our children to because

It makes no sense that half of our nation's children are overweight or obese. Nearly a quarter have high levels of insulin or prediabetes.

And in Japan, it's only 3%. It may not, it's, in my opinion, not, the problem is not that American children are worse or lazy. It's that we have been poisoning the food supply and we've only been taking a medication-based approach to research and illness. We have the most medicated population in the history of the world. We've got to stop and ask, what are the root causes of these chronic diseases?

Since you have your antenna up so high and you're tuned into this, I'm curious, and therefore, what do you do different? Meaning, do you buy organic food instead? Do you take a probiotic for your gut microbiome? How do you translate all this information into your life?

I eat organic food. I encourage everybody to eat only organic food, especially when you're eating the peel or the surface of a fruit or vegetable. If it's the pulp, you know, say the banana or mango, and you're not eating the peel, then it's not as important. But organic is important. It's also...

to understand that we need to get back to whole foods. If you look at where people are getting their calories today, 10 to 20% of the average American's calorie intake comes from seed oil derivatives. These very cheap government subsidized products

products like soybean and corn that is used in a very mechanical and chemical fashion to produce these seed oils. They sound natural, but they're not. And so it's important to avoid the sunflower seed oil, the canola oil, the soybean, corn oil. They are ingredients that sound natural, but they do not appear in nature.

And remember, the GI tract in your body is lined with an immune system in the wall of the GI tract because the gut is the front line of defense from allergens and exposures of things that the body will reject. So what oils do you use?

extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, oils, avocado oil. These are oils that don't denature at high temperatures, that are produced naturally, that are not chemically denatured. They're not heated at high temperatures in their production in a way that denatures them. So those are healthy oils I encourage people to switch to.

Well, obviously you wrote a whole book about these blind spots in medicine. So there's a lot more of them. But one more that you think is really important that we haven't talked about yet. One of the big blind spots in modern medicine has been the underuse of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. That is women taking estrogen or estrogen plus progesterone once their bodies stop producing it.

And the benefits of replacing those hormones, what we call hormone replacement therapy, are tremendous. They not only alleviate the symptoms of menopause, that is the hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, weight gain, and the myriad of other symptoms women can experience for sometimes eight to 10 years after menopause.

but it also has long-term health benefits. We believe it's because of the higher levels of nitric oxide that estrogen results in. That is, the nitric oxide keeps the blood vessels healthier, softer, and more dilated. And it may also have a direct impact on nerves because women who start estrogen therapy

after menopause have 50 to 60% less cognitive decline. They have less brain fog. And in one study, it reduced the risk of Alzheimer's by 35%.

Women also have lower rates of heart attacks because the blood vessels are healthier. Half the rate of fatal heart attacks in one study. And if a woman falls or is in a car accident, they're far less likely to break a bone or need surgery because estrogen makes bones stronger. So there are tremendous health benefits to starting estrogen at the time of menopause.

But sadly, most women are not offered this incredible therapy that helps them live longer and feel better because of a dogma that popped up 22 years ago in a press conference by a doctor from the National Institutes of Health. He declared to the world that hormone replacement therapy causes breast cancer.

He didn't release the data of his study in that press conference. The media ran with the results. Doctors assumed it was true. But when the study was actually published, deep in that study, there was no statistically significant increase in the rate of breast cancer in the hormone replacement therapy group compared to placebo. The results had been misrepresented. And I tracked down this gentleman for the book Blind Spots and interviewed him in retirement.

And he acknowledged to me that there was no data to support an increase in breast cancer mortality. He just believed in his gut that it does increase breast cancer.

So sadly, 50 million women have been denied this incredible therapy because of this dogma, including my mother, who broke some bones recently after a fall. And I couldn't help but think if she would have been on this, had this press conference not demonized hormone replacement therapy, could it have been avoided?

Well, so much of what you've said is really eye-opening, at least for me. I mean, I haven't heard a lot of this before. And you've done a great job of pointing out, as you say, the blind spots in medicine. I've been speaking with Dr. Marty McCary. He is a professor at Johns Hopkins. He has been a visiting professor at 25 medical schools, the author of a couple of best-selling books, and his new one is called Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means to Our Health.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. I appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Marty. Thanks so much, Mike. I really appreciate it. Reservation for two booked on Resi right this way. With Amex Gold. Your Kachua Pepe. So good. You can enjoy over $400 back in dining value annually. And the Sukiyaki for the lady.

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How many times have you been told to be kind to others? We learn that from when we're kids. Be kind. Kindness matters. And while that makes perfectly good sense, there is actually some solid evidence that kindness really matters. Being kind has interesting benefits that you may not know about. And here to reveal those benefits is Dr. David Hamilton.

David is a former R&D scientist, the author of 11 books. His latest is called The Joy of Actually Giving a F, because we don't say the F word, How Kindness Can Cure Stress and Make You Happy. Hi, David. Welcome back. I know you were a guest here a while ago, and it's good to have you back. It is my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. So before we get into the details, just in broad strokes, how is it that kindness is good for you?

In really, really broad terms, I suppose kindness relaxes nerves, it reduces blood pressure, it supports the immune system. In fact, kindness even impacts the genetic behaviour of immune cells in our bloodstream. Another thing it does is it supports our mental health. It does that in part by increasing the activity of positive emotion, happiness regions of the brain, at the same time decreasing the activity of stressors

stress regions of the brain. So really kindness supports our mental and our physical health. And this is an odd question maybe, but it does that as compared to what? As compared to people who are unkind or just not kind but not unkind? Like is it that kindness is good or unkindness is bad or both? It's both actually. Kindness is good, unkindness is bad. Just being kind

Normal, I suppose, without being kind is just sort of normal. So you don't get the benefits of kindness if you're just going about your day without any attempt to help someone, for example. It's when you actually physically do something or even sometimes mentally thinking kindly of people that the positive benefits begin to arise.

So those are some pretty good benefits that you mentioned. And when you say kindness, what does that mean? What does it mean to, is it to be kind or have people be kind to you or see someone be kind to someone else or what?

Very, very broadly, it's just when you do something that you know is beneficial to another person. And it usually begins with empathy. You know, it usually begins from that place where you're aware that someone has a need. Perhaps someone is suffering or just has any sort of need. So kindness usually begins from that space. I feel where you're at. And so here I am now doing something. It

to help you. But when it comes to benefits of kindness, we get the benefits as the giver of the kindness, but also as a receiver and get this, even as the witness to it. I mean, even for example, watching a video of

Kindness being demonstrated. I watch animal rescue videos nearly every day and you actually get some of the same benefits simply by watching kindness taking place because it really the the physiological effects Boiled down to what the experience of kindness is like it's not so much the act itself It's what the experience is like for you how it feels that brings about the the physical effects on the body and

What's the formula? Like, you have to be kind every day to see the benefits and then how much benefit do you see? Is it like life changing or is it you're a little bit better? Talk about the degrees of this. Yeah, so it's a cumulative thing. Think about if you go to the gym.

and you begin to work out, then initially you'll get a bit of a benefit because you'll feel physically stronger or faster or fitter quite quickly. But if you keep practising it, if you keep the practice up, then the benefits are cumulative. So over time, you actually get stronger, you get physically fitter, faster or whatever is appropriate to the type of exercise you're doing. So similarly with kindness, of course, you get a momentary

a momentary benefit right away, but the effects are actually cumulative. In fact, some of the research looking at even the slowing down of some aspects of the aging process in a counter to stress way, the benefits are cumulative over time. So you couldn't possibly see much of the benefits of aging

if you just did a single act of kindness, but if you made kindness a habit, almost something that you do because it's who you are, then you begin to see benefits accumulating over time.

So it would seem that there is different kinds of kindness. Like there are plenty of people who are kind in their circle, you know, but then there are other people who seem to go further out and are kind to other people. And does that matter or kindness is kindness?

Ultimately, for the individual, kindness is kindness. It doesn't matter who or what you're showing kindness to. When it comes to extending your circle of kindness, that's where it becomes more beneficial to society. Because, of course, if I'm focusing on just being kind to the people close to me, that's great for them and it's great for my health. But

It maybe wouldn't have as big an effect on my community, for example, or wider society as maybe me extending that kindness and that sympathy I might have for people a bit further afield. So the actual effect on you doesn't matter. Kindness is kindness regardless of who or what you show kindness to. But the impact on society is greater if you extend the kindness beyond your immediate circle.

Well, how is this fairly new research beyond the fact that, you know, we've heard before about the Helper's High, that it feels good to help other people, to be kind to other people. But is this basically health benefits? Is this fairly new?

Most of it is relatively new. I think initially the Helper's High stuff, I mean, that was stuff that we started to become aware of in the 70s and the 80s. And there wasn't a great deal of the physiological sides of things until more or less recently. I think when we develop better technology and we can look at the impact on your blood pressure, your blood vessels, what actually happens in the brain. So now that we have more ability to really peer inside the body,

And now because there is more focus on mental health than maybe there was 10 years ago, now you're beginning to see an increase in the amount of research that's been done around the practice of kindness, how it impacts the brain, how it impacts your heart, how it impacts your immune system, different aspects of the ageing process, how it's even contagious. All of these things are a product of our interest, I suppose, and the development of newer technology.

So it all sounds great, but is there any research that shows that kindness really has an impact on people's health and well-being?

Let me give you an example. So researchers took patients who had hypertension, who had been diagnosed with high blood pressure, and they gave them a small sum of money each week for three weeks. And they asked half of them to do something good with the money. In other words, to spend that money in a way that supports other people.

the other half of the people were asked to spend the money on themselves. And what they found after the three weeks is those who'd spent the money on others had much lower blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic. And the strength of the effect was as high as diet, eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise. Now, it doesn't eliminate other risk factors, but it certainly compensates in a similar way to the compensatory effect of exercise and diet.

I can imagine someone listening to this and thinking, okay, well, you know, this sounds great. But so what do I do different? What do I do? What is kindness? How much of it? I mean, where do you even start? And maybe I'm kind enough. I don't know. Yeah, I would say a lot of people are kind enough and a lot more kind, I think, even than we realize. One of the things that I really try to get across to people is,

is you don't need to do something big that's noticeable for it to count

It's the everyday ordinary, the little things, you know, the checking in on someone because maybe you're concerned for someone's health or maybe you just want to check in and see how someone's doing. It's those little words of encouragement and support, the little things that we do every single day. I think these are the glue that keep society together. And I think these are the things that are more important.

than the big observable things so really just try to do more of that try to do more of this just just really care about each other starting with the people that you interact with every day there certainly are some people who just you know it seems more their nature to be kind and there are other people who seem it's more their nature not to be so kind to be more self-centered and whatnot and yeah um

It seems like you either have it or you don't, and maybe you can do a little better. But if you're not predisposed to being a kind person, it seems like it's hard. I don't know. Yeah.

It is hard. There is a genetic component. You know, for example, for a start, everyone has kind genes, right? We have genes that are related to our tendency to be kind and they're some of the oldest in the human genome, like 100 million years old. When you have genes that are that old, that tells you something very important, that they are absolutely crucial for the survival and thriving of our species. But like any gene,

trait you have variations between us so some people are naturally very very kind and some people are naturally really really not really far more focused on on just themselves i suppose but then you also inside that you also have the impact of life experience because some people who maybe have a natural tendency to be kind

They've had life experience that weighs very, very heavily. And sometimes it can make a kind person less kind because life can be so tough. And I think we can all relate to that in our lives. And then you can have other people whose natural tendency is

isn't really to be kind but then they could have an environment that's really encouraged the development of empathy and through the development of empathy because of their life experience they can become more kind so there's so much leeway but for anyone the the ability to be more kind is actually related to your tendency to be empath to to have empathy and empathy is something that can be learned by by actively

practicing by actively putting ourselves in other people's shoes, imagining what it's like from the perspective of other people who are having a rough time. And so by doing that, we actually develop empathy and kindness evolves naturally out of empathy because empathy is I feel for you, meaning I share your pain. I am with you in this moment. And empathy evolves into compassion, which is like empathy, but it's now I feel for you.

So empathy is I feel with you and then compassion is I'm sharing your pain but now I'm thinking is there a way in which I could help you in some way? And that evolves then into kindness which is the putting it into practice of helping you in some way. I use an analogy of empathy like a seed

And it grows a little stem and the stem is compassion. And then the stem blooms into the head of a flower and that's your act of kindness. So kindness can be learned through developing empathy for the needs and the suffering of other people. Can you be too kind?

I think that's a matter of opinion. Personally, what I've heard, this person is too kind. It's usually friends of people concerned that their friend or loved one is too kind. And I think you can be. There comes a point.

where you need to be aware that some people might take advantage of your kindness. And that's the point where I think that comes through personal experience. I think sometimes we get burned, we get the experience of someone taking advantage of our kindness. So I think as long as you be kind, but be aware that there might be times when someone takes advantage of your kindness, then I think that's okay. But some people who are just...

who get called too kind, they're just indiscriminately kind. I have a friend who passed away a few years ago who was often called too kind, but she said, I don't really care what people say. I'm just going to put it out there. But she did get taken advantage of a few times. So I think it's a personal call whether you adapt and say, okay, I've been taken advantage of, so I'll just watch for those times.

and I'll hold back a little bit, but every other situation, I'm just going to be myself because that's who I am. So where do you think is a good place to start? If somebody's listening to this and thinking, well, you know, you've talked about all these benefits and advantages to being kind. I'd like to, I'd like to get my share of those. Like what's a good starting point to up your level of kindness?

A good first step for a lot of people is volunteering. And there's lots of charities, there's lots of organisations who do really fantastic work. And sometimes for some people, just finding out where can I volunteer, even if it's just a couple of hours a week, that dips your toes in the water, gets you that experience of I'm doing something here and it's helping other people. And then you start to realise, you start to notice yourself how valuable volunteering

the thing that you're doing actually is for other people. And it's a great first step if you're not sure where to go. And another, obviously, first step is just try to be...

polite and kind in your community, which might be as simple as just saying have a nice day to the person who served you at the local shop or the supermarket. It might be as simple as letting someone in front of you in traffic. It might be just waving them on with a smile rather than rushing to get to your destination and

honking the horn at everyone, you might just say, okay, maybe today I'm just going to see what happens if in this 30 minute car journey, I just let everyone in front of me. And then you notice that people wave and smile back. And all of a sudden you're getting that sort of feedback and you realise, wow, this is such a simple thing to do, but I'm feeling good. People are smiling. So it's having an impact on them as well. And I think it's getting that little bit of feedback that

that makes it, that encourages you to actually keep going with the kindness. Does just writing a check to a charity count?

It does count, but you might not get some of the physiological benefits. I think the benefits can be stronger when you get that experience, when you actually see the smile on someone's face, or when you learn firsthand. It's great, absolutely, write a cheque for a charity because that benefits the charity, it benefits the people. So absolutely, it counts as kindness. But if you're thinking of charity,

if the question is related to does it benefit you then maybe not quite as strongly as a face-to-face act of kind in fact some research found that when you if you learn exactly what the charity is doing and you learn about where your money is going it actually feels emotionally more satisfying than if you just write the check without any understanding or without any knowledge of

how the money is going to be spent. So it comes down to the experience that you have.

But all kindness benefits the person you're being kind to, so never stop doing what you're doing. But if it comes down, if you're looking at what effects on you as the giver, face-to-face interactions tend to have a stronger effect because you're having an actual physiological experience of being kind. So here's a situation I think a lot of people can relate to, and

Say you're walking down the street and there's a homeless person. And maybe they approach you, maybe they don't. You want to help out. And you think, well, is it kind to give them money because you don't know what's going to happen with that money? Are you, by giving them money, just enabling them to stay homeless? Are they going to spend the money on drugs or alcohol? So do you do it or do you not? Is it kind to give them money? Is it not? And I think people struggle with that.

It's a difficult call, but I would always tend on the side of saying, well, I don't know for sure what they'll use the money for, so I'm going to be kind anyway. There was a time I was on a trip in South America a few years ago.

And I went to give some money to a little girl who was, she was missing, I think one of, you know, she had, I think she was missing part of one of her arms. And my friend rapped me on the knuckles and said, don't do that because the gangs are actually, what they're doing is they're trying to exploit young kids and they're putting them on the streets to ask for money. And then the gangs are taking all the money. And I thought, maybe there's some truth in that.

But I don't know for sure. Maybe if I don't give the little girl money, I'm depriving her family of something. So at the end of the day, I ended up giving money to the little girl. I thought maybe there's something what my friend said. So I gave a little bit less. It bothered him actually that I gave anything at all. But I thought I'm going to do that anyway because I don't know. And one of my kind of guiding principles is

is just be kind because you never know and you never know what someone's dealing with. You never know what someone's gone through or going through that's brought them to how they're being right now. And you never know the backstory of the person that you're faced with in this moment. So I try best I can to err on the side of kindness.

I'm sure some people can relate to this. I have found that in my life, sometimes kindness, helping other people can be very stressful, either because you're helping too many people, you're pulled in many different directions, you're trying to help someone, it's not going as well as you'd hoped. It can be very stressful and take a toll on you trying to help someone else.

And I think these are the times when we need to turn it around and say, what do I need to do right now?

to support my own mental health. Self-kindness can just be a simple thing. You know, one of the things I do, Mike, because I find myself time-strapped a lot, and I notice that if someone needs my time, I always find a slot in my diary. If it's someone I'm close to, one of my family members or friends, I'll push things around in my diary and I'll always find some time. And I thought, well, maybe an act of self-kindness for me would be writing in my diary, meeting with self,

And what I'm doing here is I'm elevating my own mental health up to the same level as every other meeting. And it might only be a 15 minute meeting with self where I might just sit down and read a few pages of a book or do a meditation. But it might also be, you know, it's not unknown for me just as an act of self kindness to watch an episode of Star Trek in the middle of the day. But I'm doing it if I feel I actually need to take a little time out. So to

Kindness to the self can be just little simple things like that. You know, going for a walk. It could even be doing something that you know that you enjoy doing that supports your mental health, but doing it on purpose. And I think these little things can be really valuable. So your mother was right. Your grandmother was right. It's good to be kind. But it's not only good to be kind for the person you're kind to,

but it's good for you to be kind. I've been talking with Dr. David Hamilton. He is the author of 11 books, and his latest is called The Joy of Actually Giving a F. How kindness can cure stress and make you happy. And if you'd like to read it, there is a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for the explanation on kindness, David. Appreciate it. Thanks very much, Mike. Have a lovely day. ♪

Have you ever wondered why it is we drink so much cow's milk compared to other kinds of milk? We seem to prefer it from a cow, but there's nothing about cow's milk that makes it any better for us than giraffe's milk or dolphin's milk. The fact is, it's just easier to get.

Cows are docile and easy to manage, which gives them the monopoly on the milk industry. Sheep and goats are steady milk producers too, but they run around a lot and they're much harder to wrangle than cows are. In fact, reindeer are milked in some parts of the world, and clearly they're not very thrilled about it. It can take up to three people to hold the reindeer while it's being milked.

And it's also hard to compete with the sheer volume of milk produced by a cow. More than seven gallons per day on average compared to a measly half a gallon of milk from a goat.

And that is something you should know. You know, it's okay by me if you post information about this podcast on your social media accounts. If you go to our Facebook account, you could grab one of our posts and share it with your following. We'd appreciate it. It helps grow our audience, and that's what we're trying to do. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Bantwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator.

Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.