It feels like everyone's searching for the secret to living longer these days. Better health, sharper minds, stronger bodies. This is the Chonty and the Dog podcast. I'm Dr.
Marcus Rani, and I'm joined by someone who understands performance and resilience better than most, international cricketer, Chonty Rose. In this show, we explore the science of longevity, from how our bodies age, to the everyday habits that help us stay strong, sharp, and resilient as the years go by. Catch full episodes on the IBM podcast's YouTube channel and on all audio streaming platforms. And welcome to the Simplified Chorty, an episode in which we make you smarter in just a few minutes less than what we are typically used to.
So, it's a return of the Chorty, actually, we used to do these long back and then stop doing them for some reason, but now we feel, due to tremendous feedback that's come in from fans of the show, demanding Chorties. So, yes, on popular demand, they are back. Popular demand by who? Or what is the demand for us?
We won't get into, but yeah, that's about it. So, basically, the way this is going to work is, every week, we basically come out with one random question each, and then we attempt to answer it. It doesn't need to necessarily be linked to the news or careers, etc., which is the sort of high-quality reportage that you have come to expect from our show. This is going to be more just one random fact, really, which makes a nice conversation.
And we did the things that we found interesting, and we didn't know much about ourselves, and that's pretty much everything in the universe. Yeah, so, I think Kanarine has a perfect topic to start with. Yeah, and my topic is yawn. So, I bet that's what all of you do when you switch on.
But yawning is a very interesting physiological process, and it is far more interesting than I thought it was. Isn't it about the brain needing oxygen or something? Yeah, so that is a common misconception. Really?
We'll go on to it. You know, there is a whiff of truth in what you said about brain needing oxygen, but that's not entirely true. So, after a few hours of constant breathing at rest, the lungs become stiffer, and they become less pliant. And one decent yawn will return the lungs to the utility of flexibility.
But the blood oxygen levels remain the same. So, that's what Yon Sambandha also does. It makes things more pliant. Yon Sambandha, for those of you who cannot, or in the challenge, is what Yes Minister famously described as horizontal jogging.
And, yeah, so they found that yawning does not affect blood oxygen levels, at least not in healthy people. So, there are people who have respiratory problems in home. So, but it's a common misconception, and yawning is not a response to falling blood. And one of the leading yawn experts on the planet is a guy named Robert Provine, who's a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland in the U.S., who's been studying yawning for decades.
And in 1897, his classic experiment found the link between yawning and the amount of oxygen that the volunteers breathed in. Although, normally it is mostly nitrogen, 80% nitrogen, just as oxygen, and very, very little is carbon dioxide. For this experiment, he ditched the wimpy 20% oxygen rubbish, and he went all the way, and he gave his volunteers 100% oxygen, but they still yawned just as much. So, the five times effect in oxygen, like 20%, had absolutely no effect.
So, that was one, yeah. And this guy, Robert Provine, also found that most people never yawn while burning up lots of oxygen, that is while they're selling hard. So, you're doing like squats, or you're doing push-ups, and you'll never find yourself yawning. And he also tested with the high levels of CO2 to make you yawn.
So, that was the other hypothesis. So, carbon dioxide is, you know, your body responds when you're longer supposed to throw the carbon dioxide out. So, what he did was, he gave his subjects air rich in carbon dioxide. So, typically, CO2 level is about 0-3% in air.
He gave 100 times more, so 3%. So, it's not high enough to be dangerous, but it is significantly higher. And there was no difference in the yawning frequency. Now I'm curious.
But one lecture on thermodynamics. What a yawn is, is a long, slow, deep, inward breath, taken with a wide, open mouth, followed by a short, outward breath, lasting for an average of 6 seconds, and the eyes sometimes close at the peak of the yawn, and water a bit. So, that is what yawns broadly are. Sure.
And all of you are yawning right now, because yawns are contagious. Contagious, yeah. And about half of all stretches will be accompanied by a yawn. So, if you want to stretch, about 50% of the time, you'll end up yawning.
But it doesn't work the other way. So, if you yawn, it doesn't necessarily mean you're just stretching. So, 1 in 9 yawns, apparently, are accompanied by a slow and luxurious stretch of arms and legs. And the fancy word for a simultaneous yawn and stretch is pandiculation.
So, it sounds much more badass than it. Yeah, I'm just pandiculating. So, I'm as a recent person, basically. Yeah, I have to yawn on pandiculation.
It's a real pandiculation. No, we have to do pandiculation. So, we start yawning even before we are born, apparently. That was something which freaked me out.
And that's one of the reasons why I said boss is concerned about tonight. How can you, like, be in the womb? I was a boring place. I was sitting in the womb.
Nothing was happening. No TV, no internet, nothing. So, maybe that's why. Maybe that's why.
But, you know, like, fetuses also yawn. And about 11 weeks after conception, they have been observed to, you know, actually yawn. And it seems to help protect the baby's developing lungs. The baby floats in amniotic fluid, as all you know.
And it's a mixture of the baby's urine and the liquid made. Sweet. Yeah, some tasty stuff. And baby's lungs do expand and contract.
But they breathe the amniotic fluid mixed with urine and not air. That's why I think yawn. I don't know why babies cry when they come out. They're actually high-fiving boss.
Yeah. So, we don't know why unborn babies yawn. Perhaps yawning moves stagnant fluid out of the lungs and removes webs of tissue and parents of young babies have found that contagious yawning is a one-way street. That's very interesting.
Yeah. So, the baby's yawns will make the parents yawn. But the parents yawn don't make the babies. But this is only up to about eight months of age.
After that, it becomes a big issue. So, for the first eight weeks, baby is a top-down. And then everything is a democratic back-down. And what else?
Well, yawning is very important when you travel on aeroplanes. Yawning opens up the station tubes. And for the same reason, when you go scuba diving underwater, obviously you can't yawn, but you have to equalize your ears. So, you basically press your nose and you blow outwards so that the outside pressure...
Speaking of that, I found out that when your ears are blocked on planes, what you should not do is hold your nose and blow. You should swallow. Swallow. Because the pressure should work the other way around.
Which is the reverse underwater. Underwater you need to... Yeah. Because the pressure outside is much more.
So, one more interesting link is that it has links to sexuality. Yawning. Really? You would think that it's a...
So, what link is in male rats, the medications that make them yawn and stretch will also give them an erection. Okay? In most human beings, antidepressant drugs such as clomipramin and fluoxetine can put a damper on sexual desire and performance. But in a small minority of these people, these medications have an interesting side effect.
Some of them have an orgasm whenever they yawn. Isn't that awesome? Yeah. These are the group of people who love to...
Don't come around. It's insane. And another weird link is this. Stretching of arms spontaneously when yawning can lead to a bizarre response in some stroke victims.
Okay? A stroke occurs obviously when your brain is affected and then you're paralyzed and things like that. So, it causes localized damage to the brain and possible paralysis on one side of the body. So, partially paralyzed people cannot voluntarily move the arm on the affected side.
No matter how hard they try. So, there's a thing that's going on. But in 1923, a British neurologist named Francis Walsh noticed that when some stroke victims yawn, they could move the otherwise paralyzed arm. That is weird as hell.
Wow. So, why do we yawn then? Yeah. Okay?
So, we know that people with certain medical conditions yawn and people who suffer cerebral anemia or a particular problem with the medulla oblongata will yawn almost continuously. But in general, we don't know why we yawn. But here's what we do know. People are most likely to yawn in the first hour after they've woken up or in the last hour before they go to sleep when they're tired or bored or doing long boring things.
And yawning is correctly linked to tiredness and boredom. Though super awake and super interested people will sometimes yawn. For example, athletes, especially the 100 meters, 200 meters, sprinter kind of guys, you observe them and they'll be yawning before a race. Oh, and when people say, oh, look who's in goal to sleep.
Cool as hell is yawning people. And one theory suggests that yawning is associated with a transition from awake to asleep and vice versa and from alert to bored and vice versa. Wow, so it's like a portal of sorts. So, it's not oxygen.
Sort of, okay. So, I hope... Yeah, yeah. So, any tips on yawning?
On yawning? On yawning? Yeah. Don't attend thermodynamics classes as far as possible.
Or if you do, make sure you're not on those antidepressant medications. Yeah, so there you go. So, no antidepressant medicines while attending thermodynamics is the takeaway from this short event. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. And hope you enjoyed this little episode. So, we've got an interesting show for you guys next week. You've actually spoken to two of the top comedians in the comedy scene in India, Danny Fernandez and Abish Matthew.
And, yeah, it's a fascinating talk about stand-up and comedy in India, their journeys and stuff like that. It's a hilarious episode. Purely ate by the fact that the two people are far, far funnier than the three hosts. It was really insightful into the art of comedy and stand-up comedy at that time.
Yeah, that's something that won't make you yawn. And so, yeah, I look forward to that next week. And see you guys soon. Bye-bye.
Bye. Bye. Bye.