Learn about whether chocolate actually causes acne breakouts; how to get around Miller’s law, which describes the limits of your short-term memory; and why one of the first gallbladder surgeries happened on a kitchen table.
Learn about whether chocolate actually causes acne breakouts; how to get around Miller’s law, which describes the limits of your short-term memory; and why one of the first gallbladder surgeries happened on a kitchen table.
Does chocolate actually cause breakouts? by Andrea Michelson
Your Short-Term Memory Can Only Hold 7 Items (But You Can Use This Trick) by Ashley Hamer
One of the first gallbladder surgeries happened on a kitchen table by Cameron Duke
Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/hack-your-short-term-memory-the-wild-origins-of-gallbladder-surgery-and-does-chocolate-cause-acne-breakouts
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about whether chocolate actually causes breakouts; the limits of your short-term memory — and how to get around them; and why one of the first gallbladder surgeries happened on a kitchen table.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Calling all chocoholics: it’s time to set the record straight on whether chocolate really causes acne.
[OPTIONAL: CODY jump in with “yeah I didn’t know this was a thing” and Ashley talk naturally about how it’s an old wive’s tale] / You may have read that this comfort food is bad for your skin, or even noticed a pimple pop up after eating a candy bar (or several). But it turns out that there is no scientific evidence specifically connecting chocolate to the development of acne.
The cacao bean itself is harmless in terms of skin health. And in general, dermatologists won’t point to any specific food that will definitely make you break out. However, food containing sugar and dairy may trigger inflammation and oil production, especially in people who are predisposed to acne. Eating sugary food causes a spike in insulin, which in turn increases the production of an oily substance called sebum [SEE-bum]. These secretions won’t necessarily bring on a breakout, but they can worsen existing acne.
The science behind why and how dairy might affect your skin is less clear, but if there is a connection, experts think it has to do with hormones. Cow’s milk and many other dairy products contain proteins called casein and whey. The breakdown of these proteins is thought to raise levels of a hormone similar to insulin that also increases the production of acne-causing oils.
Still, dermatologists maintain that we can’t attribute acne to diet alone. Some of it might just be a false association. For instance, women tend to crave chocolate and other sugary treats in the premenstrual stage of their cycles, thanks to hormonal changes. Those same hormonal changes also trigger oil production that causes many women to break out in the days before their periods. Chocolate cravings and period pimples might simply be a cruel coincidence.
So, okay. Cacao in chocolate won’t make you break out, but the sugar and dairy content are still suspect. What’s a chocolate lover to do? Easy: reach for dark chocolate instead of milk or white chocolate. Dark chocolate contains far less sugar and dairy, and many brands contain a high concentration of antioxidants that could even benefit your skin.
But it’s worth mentioning that, while specific types of food might not immediately cause you to sprout a zit, eating a healthy diet overall is good for your health — and that includes your skin. So next time you’re craving a chocolatey treat, dark chocolate might be the way to go...and try to get some fruits and veggies in too.
Here’s something you might not know about yourself: Your short-term memory can only hold 7 things. That...is not a lot. Better write that grocery list down. Luckily, there is a handy trick we can all use to make the most of our limited memories.
By the way, you may have heard that 7-item rule referred to as Miller’s Law. It was named after George A. Miller, who’s the Princeton University psychologist that came up with it. The law states that, at any given time, the average human can only hold about seven items in their short-term memory.
I say “about” because the actual title of his wildly popular paper was “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.” So maybe you can sneak by with nine, if you’re lucky. In the paper, he explained how when people were asked to identify individual musical tones, they did okay when they had two or three to choose from, but started getting confused once there were more than six choices.
That seven-item limit is what most people talk about. What's less widely known, though, is Miller's idea of "chunks." That is, you might be able to recall seven digits or letters, but you're also able to recall seven numbers, words, or even phrases. The law puts a limit on the number of things you can remember, but it doesn’t put a limit on how big those things can be.
That detail is key to overcoming the limits of Miller's law. If you need to memorize something quickly, your best bet is to organize it into familiar chunks. For example, the eight planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune pushes Miller's upper limit. But "My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nachos" is a single sentence. One! You’ve got six more items at your disposal!
So the next time you need to remember your grocery list, think of it in aisles rather than items: you need to go to the produce aisle for broccoli and onions, and the baking aisle for flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Or you could turn it into a single story! “The broccoli princess of the onion kingdom rode her flour-colored horse named Sugar through the cinnamon forest.” Your memory may be limited, but your imagination? That’s infinite.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo.
CODY: KiwiCo creates super cool hands-on projects designed to expose kids to concepts in STEAM — that's science, technology, engineering, art and design, and math. All from the comfort of home!
ASHLEY: Each line caters to different age groups and there are a variety of topics to choose from. And every crate is designed by experts and tested by kids, and teaches a new STEAM concept.
CODY: Projects provide hours and hours of entertainment during the long summer days [ad lib 1-2 sentences “Please talk about your experience with the crates and why you love KiwiCo - specifically referring to the summer months!”]
ASHLEY: With KiwiCo’s hands-on art and science projects, kids can engineer a walking robot, blast off a bottle rocket, explore colorful, kid-friendly chemistry, and a whole lot more — all from the comfort of home. They have everything you need to make STEAM seriously fun — delivered to your doorstep.
CODY: Get your first month FREE on select crates at kiwico-dot-com-slash-CURIOSITY. That’s K-I-W-I-C-O dot com slash CURIOSITY
Thanks to modern science, we kind of take it for granted that so many things can be fixed with a routine medical procedure. Like, take gallbladder surgery. These days, a surgeon just needs a couple of hours and a few tiny incisions to remove an infected gallbladder. Easy. But behind every routine procedure, there was a daring first attempt. And one of the first gallbladder surgeries? Happened on a kitchen table. Here’s what went down.
In 1882, a 30-year-old doctor named William Stewart Halsted received word that his mother was ill. She was complaining about severe abdominal pain and her skin was turning a sickly yellow-green. Her doctors were mystified, which is why they called for Halsted — as far as physicians go, he was kind of a big deal. I mean his portrait is hanging in the Johns Hopkins Medical library for a reason.
When Halsted noticed a red, painful mass under his mother’s ribcage, he realized that she must have an infected gallbladder. The gallbladder stores bile, which helps with digestion, and his mother’s gallbladder was clogged with pus, bile salt, and pigment deposits called gallstones. The sickly color of her skin came down to buildup of a byproduct of liver metabolism called bilirubin [BILL-uh-ROO-bin]. Halsted’s training told him that this condition was probably fatal. Surgeons at the time were reluctant to cut into the upper abdomen, with all its vital organs, so the gallbladder was still mostly uncharted territory.
But Halsted was a trailblazer, to put it mildly. For instance, he had saved his own sister a year before by performing the first-ever emergency blood transfusion — with his own blood, mind you. So he pressed a chloroform-soaked handkerchief to his mother’s face and laid her out on the kitchen table. Working by candlelight at 2 a.m., he cut into his mother’s abdomen and removed seven gallstones.
This was the first successful gallstone removal surgery ever performed, and Halsted did it in his family’s kitchen. That might sound super unsanitary these days, but to be fair, 19th-century surgical suites weren’t much better. Not to mention that William Stewart Halsted was the guy who brought antiseptic into widespread medical use. His mother was in good hands, and it paid off — she made a full recovery.
But there’s an ironic twist to this story. In 1922, long after gallbladder removal became commonplace, Halsted developed gallstones himself. Although he had them removed successfully, he developed a fatal case of internal bleeding. He died because of a procedure he pioneered — but it’s one that’s saved countless patients since.
CODY: Let’s review today’s takeaways. Starting with the fact that
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Andrea Michelson, Ashley Hamer, and Cameron Duke, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!