Learn about why things taste bad after you brush your teeth; a new discovery about how fast the Earth formed that may mean good things about life in the universe; and why women may experience more pain than men.
Learn about why things taste bad after you brush your teeth; a new discovery about how fast the Earth formed that may mean good things about life in the universe; and why women may experience more pain than men.
Why does toothpaste make food taste bad? by Andrea Michelson
The Earth formed much faster than previously thought by Kelsey Donk
Scientists have identified a hormone that makes women experience more pain than men by Andrea Michelson
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-women-feel-more-pain-than-men-why-toothpaste-makes-food-taste-bad-and-earth-formed-way-faster-than-we-thought
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 why things taste bad after you brush your teeth; a new discovery about how fast the Earth formed that may mean good things about life in the universe; and why women may experience more pain than men.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If you’ve ever drunk orange juice right after brushing your teeth, you know that it’s not a pleasant experience. Chances are it tasted pretty awful, even if you normally enjoy a little OJ. What is it about brushing your teeth that makes an otherwise sweet juice taste so bitter? Turns out you can blame one specific chemical in your toothpaste.
First, I need to back up and explain how taste works. Your tongue is covered in bumps called papillae. Each of those bumps contain taste buds. Each of those taste buds contains taste receptor cells, where the actual tasting happens. The average person has anywhere between 2,000 and 8,000 taste buds, and each of those taste buds contains 10 to 50 taste receptor cells. When you eat or drink something, molecules in your food or drink activate receptors on those taste buds. Different molecules will set off different types of receptors — some of the receptors have proteins on their surface that bind to a specific molecule, others sort of unlock to let their molecule into the cell itself. Those varying reactions correspond with the tastes we perceive as salty, sweet, sour, bitter, or umami, or savory.
Contrary to popular belief, those tastes are not “assigned” to different parts of the tongue. The receptors that pick up different tastes are actually scattered all over the tongue’s surface. A single taste bud can contain receptor cells for every taste.
Like I said earlier, there’s a chemical in toothpaste that messes with this process. That chemical is called sodium lauryl sulfate. It’s there to make toothpaste all foamy when you brush your teeth. It’s also found in other stuff that foams, like shampoo and laundry detergent, but you wouldn’t put those in your mouth.
When sodium lauryl sulfate hits your tongue, it does two things to your sense of taste. One, it inhibits the receptors for sweetness, so your OJ doesn’t taste as sweet. Two, it destroys phospholipids, a type of molecule that usually tones down your bitter taste receptors. That causes bitter flavors that usually go undetected to overwhelm the sweetness of orange juice.
The good news is that sodium lauryl sulfate isn’t necessary for keeping your teeth clean, and while the vast majority of toothpastes use it, there are plenty that leave it out. We’ll include a link to a list of ‘em, or you could just search Google for “SLS-free toothpaste.” Happy brushing!
New research suggests that the Earth formed much faster than we thought. And if what’s true of Earth is true of other planets, this means that the chance of life on those planets just got a big boost. And as you probably know, I’m not gonna pass up on the chance to talk about any scientific discoveries that improve our chances of finding aliens.
Lemme back up to a LONG time ago, in a galaxy, well… well, this galaxy. I’m talking about this galaxy. Before there was the Earth, there was the proto-Earth — a sort of Earth starter kit. The traditional theory of how the proto-Earth formed goes like this: as gas and dust swirled around our young sun, it clumped together to make a bunch of small, rocky objects a few hundred kilometers across. Over tens of millions of years, these objects continually smashed together to make bigger and bigger objects, eventually forming the beginnings of our planet. According to this theory, Earth got its water in those final stages, when objects from far out in the solar system brought it in during their own collisions with our planet. It’s an interesting idea. But a new study from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation in Copenhagen says that might not actually be how it happened.
Researchers figured this out by measuring the composition of iron isotopes in different meteorites. An isotope is a version of an element with a different number of neutrons than its garden-variety form. Astronomers can use an object’s particular mix of different isotopes as a clue to tell them where and when it formed. Yeah, I know — science is pretty cool. When these researchers analyzed the isotope composition of different meteorites, they found only one that matched up with the Earth’s composition. Think about that: if different planetary bodies were smashing together to form the proto-Earth, we’d find a lot of different isotopic mixtures in our planet. But the one matching meteorite, called a CI chondrite [c-i KOHN-dryte], contains cosmic dust that’s believed to match the composition of the entire solar system — and therefore the cloud of gas and dust our solar system started from.
According to the researchers, that suggests that the Earth formed, quote, “in one go,” as the study’s lead author put it. Instead of dust turning into small objects that collided to form larger objects, the dust just collected to form the Earth. That would mean the proto-Earth could have formed within a time span of approximately five million years. If you imagine the solar system’s whole 4.6-billion-year existence as a 24-hour period, the proto-Earth would have formed in a minute and a half. That’s fast, especially compared to the five to fifteen minutes that the collision theory suggested.
But even more exciting, this cosmic dust theory suggests that planets elsewhere in the universe could be growing out of cosmic dust like Earth did. If that’s true, then water might just be a byproduct of this kind of planet creation. So it’s now even more possible that life could exist somewhere else in the universe.
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Scientists have identified a hormone that makes women experience more pain than men. And that could lead to some much-needed treatments for lots and lots of people.
Believe it or not, women are much more likely to experience migraines, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome compared to men. These disorders are known as functional pain syndromes, where a patient has pain without a clear cause. Women also commonly experience a condition called opioid-induced hyperalgesia, where opioids amplify pain instead of reducing it like they’re supposed to.
According to a recent study from a team of researchers at the University of Arizona School of Medicine, a hormone called prolactin might be to blame.
Prolactin is present in both men and women, but it’s best known in women for its role in kick-starting the production of breast milk during and after pregnancy — prolactin pro-motes lac-tation, get it? But prolactin levels don’t just rise near the end of pregnancy; they can also spike from stress. And stress is a common trigger for functional pain flare-ups. Prolactin levels can also rise as a side-effect of opioid use.
To better understand the relationship between prolactin and pain, the team performed several experiments with male and female mice. They found that when they tweaked the balance of a particular type of prolactin receptor in the female animals, it triggered a pain flare-up — but the same wasn’t true for the males. And when they gave regular injections of the opioid morphine to both male and female mice, both groups had a rise in prolactin and eventually experienced pain — but messing with prolactin receptors only relieved the female mice, not the males. That means that prolactin seems to play a big role in women’s pain, and that opioid-induced hyperalgesia must have a different mechanism in men than in women.
Now that scientists have a better understanding of these differences, they can work on developing treatments to better address women’s pain. One promising category of drugs are dopamine D-2 receptor agonists, which limit the release of prolactin. These drugs aren’t addictive, and they might offer some relief to women who experience pain due to opioids. They could also help women who haven’t found an effective treatment for functional pain syndromes.
Three out of four migraine sufferers and nine out of ten fibromyalgia patients are women. Even reducing the number of women who experience these conditions to be equal to the number of men would be a major stride in treating chronic pain. This new research is a promising step in that direction.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Andrea Michelson and Kelsey Donk, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was 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!