Strange Health

Some people are so worried about sunscreen that they're swapping factor 50 for beef tallow. Coconut oil and olive oil also have their supporters in the world of homemade sunscreen. Meanwhile, other social media creators warn that conventional sunscreens contain dangerous chemicals, interfere with our hormones or prevent us from making vitamin D.

So what does the science say? And what happens to your skin when you swap a tested sunscreen for something from the kitchen cupboard?

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt are joined by Charareh Pourzand, a pharmacologist at the University of Bath and an expert in sunscreen. She explains what different types of ultraviolet radiation do to our skin, and how much sunscreen you really need.

Watch Strange Health on YouTube or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you've got a question about a viral trend or video you've seen and you'd like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Social media offers plenty of tips how to relieve a migraine. Some people swear by a large Coke and McDonald’s fries, which has gained the nickname of a "McMigraine". Others recommend hairclips on your eyebrows, or putting your feet in hot water while cooling the back of your head with spoons.

But how much science is there behind these remedies? And why can migraine make you feel so dreadful long before your head starts hurting?

In this episode, our guest is Amanda Ellison, a professor of neuroscience at Durham University to explore what happens in your brain during a migraine and if any of the internet's migraine hacks could actually work.

Watch Strange Health on YouTube or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you've got a question about a viral trend or video you've seen and you'd like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Cottage cheese is a TikTok sensation. Social media creators are blending the curdy, clumpy white stuff into everything from cookie dough and chocolate brownies to flatbreads and even slapping it onto hot dogs. All in the name of protein.

Naturally high in protein and relatively low in fat, cottage cheese has been embraced by fitness influencers who claim it can help build muscle and burn fat. But does the science support these claims?

In this episode, we hear from Dominic Farsi, a researcher at King's College London and at Teagasc in Ireland, to get the facts about cottage cheese – and understand how much protein we really need.

Watch Strange Health on YouTube or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you've got a question about a viral trend or video you've seen and you'd like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

We're back with a new season of Strange Health, the podcast from The Conversation, that investigates the odd, awkward and occasionally disgusting questions raised by our bodies and the health trends surrounding them.

This season we’ll be looking at cottage cheese, which seems to have escaped from the back of the fridge and become one of the internet’s favourite foods, investigate some of the alarming claims circulating about sunscreen, and look at whether migraine hacks online really will alleviate your headache.

Hosts Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol, tackle a new batch of questions that have been fascinating them or sending them down unexpectedly strange research rabbit holes.

Episode 1 of season two arrives on October 13. Watch Strange Health on YouTube or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

Period scooping sounds like something you would only hear in a biology lab, not while doom-scrolling TikTok. Yet earlier this year, videos claiming you can “scoop out” your period to avoid the mess and shorten the whole thing racked up millions of views.

In this episode, we hear from Sally King, a visiting fellow at King’s College London, about why you can't shorten your period, and why you need to be careful about upsetting the pH balance of your body. She also gives us her perspective as a menstrual physiologist on other period hacks, including menstrual blood face masks, and drinks that some influencers say can shorten your period.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you've got a question about a viral trend or video you've seen and you'd like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com.

Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here. If you've got a questeion

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

• Menstrual health literacy is alarmingly low – what you don’t know can harm you
• Would you put period blood on your face? What science says about ‘menstrual masking’
• Your vagina cleans itself: why vagina cleaning fads are unnecessary and harmful

Light therapy sounds wholesome. Sit in front of a lamp. Feel better. But nowadays, it can also mean strapping on a flashing mask and watching your own brain generate kaleidoscopic hallucinations behind closed eyelids. In this episode, host Katie Edwards tries on a stroboscopic light mask being promoted by celebrities including Jennifer Aniston and Rosamund Pike to find out what happens.

And David Schwartzman, a research fellow at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, explains how stroboscopic light produces hallucinations in the brain, and how it's currently being trialled to treat conditions like depression.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

• Can a psychedelic-induced mystical experience really improve your mental health?
• SAD lamps: do they work? Experts explain how they help the winter blues

Body odour has a reputation problem. It is often treated as a hygiene failure or a social offence. In reality, it is biology at work, plus a big helping of culture.

And yet people online are trying chlorophyll shots to make their BO smell better. Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt discuss what evidence there is behind this, plus some of the health conditions that can affect body odour.

And we talk to Mats Olsson, a professor of experimental psychology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, who studies how humans perceive body odour.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk Millet

Artwork: Alice Mason

You are not alone in your own skin. Millions of microscopic creatures live there too. Our skin is home to entire ecosystems of microscopic life. Bacteria and fungi get most of the attention, but mites are there too. Among the most common are demodex mites, tiny eight-legged relatives of spiders that live inside hair follicles and pores, especially on the face. Almost all adults carry them.

In this episode we explore what these microscopic housemates are actually doing on our bodies and why the idea of them can feel so unsettling. While demodex may be harmless, there are plenty of other mites that can cause problems, from dust mites, to scabies.

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt turn this week to Alejandra Perotti, professor of invertebrate biology at the University of Reading, who studies the relationship between mites and humans.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason

• Invisible skin mites called Demodex almost certainly live on your face – but what about your mascara?
• How often should you really be washing your bedding? A microbiologist explains
• Scabies outbreak in UK and Europe – what you need to know

The vagus nerve has become the internet’s favourite body part. On social media, it is everywhere. People hum into their phones, gargle with theatrical enthusiasm, dunk their faces into bowls of ice water and poke at their ears in the hope of “activating” it.

So in this episode we focus our attention on the body’s longest cranial nerve and ask a simple question: what does the vagus nerve actually do, and can we really hack it?

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt turn this week to Arshad Majid, a professor of cerebrovascular neurology at the University of Sheffield and an expert in vagus nerve stimulation.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. Full credits for this episode available here. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk MIllet

Artwork: Alice Mason

• From decapitation to positive psychology: how one nerve connects body, brain and mind
• Stimulating the pathway connecting body and brain may change chronic condition patients’ lives

Joint cracking is one of those habits most of us acquire without thinking about it. In our third episode, we turn our attention to one of the body’s most common and least understood noises. Knuckles, backs, knees and necks all feature, along with the enduring warning many of us grew up with: “Stop cracking your joints, you’ll get arthritis.” Is there any truth in it? And why can cracking feel so strangely satisfying?

Hosts Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt turn this week to Clodagh Toomey, a specialist in musculoskeletal injury and chronic lifestyle-related diseases such as osteoarthritis, to give you the science behind the myths.

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards from The Conversation and Dan Baumgardt, University of Bristol

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Anouk MIllet

Artwork: Alice Mason

• Can popping your neck cause a stroke?
• What makes joints pop and crack and is it a sign of disease?
• Joint pain or osteoarthritis? Why exercise should be your first line of treatment

The human body, it turns out, is surprisingly good at making stone. Give it enough time and the right conditions and it will go about crystallising minerals, hardening secretions and, in rare cases, turning tragedy into rock. Gallstones. Kidney stones. Tonsil stones. Salivary stones. And, in one of the strangest and saddest corners of medical history, stone babies.

In our second episode, hosts Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol, take a tour through the stony side of human anatomy and ask why this keeps happening, where these stones form and which ones you actually need to worry about. They talk to Adam Taylor, a professor of anatomy at Lancaster University, who has spent years studying stones in both everyday and extraordinary contexts, including a rare genetic condition called alkaptonuria

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason

• Stone baby: the rare condition that produces a calcified foetus
• Our bodies don’t just make gall and kidney stones – from saliva to tonsils, these are other ones to look out for
• Bubble tea’s dark side: from lead contamination to kidney stones

Social media is full of green juices, charcoal supplements, foot patches and seven-day “liver resets”, all promising to purge the body of mysterious toxins and return it to a purer state. But do you really need to detox your liver?

In the first episode of Strange Health, hosts Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol wince and occasionally laugh their way through some of the internet’s most popular detox trends. They also speak to Trish Lalor, a liver expert from the University of Birmingham, whose message is refreshingly blunt: “your body is really set up to do it by itself.”

Strange Health is a podcast from The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason

Introducing Strange Health, a new podcast from The Conversation.

Time and again, the health stories that go viral are the ones that make people recoil slightly before clicking anyway. Worms. Smells. Leaks. Stones. Toxins. The things you Google at midnight and hope nobody ever finds in your search history.

Behind the gag reflex, there is usually a serious question. Is this normal? Is this dangerous? Has the internet just convinced me I am dying?

That is why The Conversation has launched Strange Health, a new podcast series hosted by Katie Edwards, a health editor at The Conversation, and Dan Baumgardt, a practising GP and lecturer in health and life sciences at the University of Bristol.

They take the health questions people are obsessing over online, especially the weird, gross or misunderstood ones, and examine them properly with the help of academic experts who are actively researching these issues. We ask where these ideas come from, what the science really says, and why misinformation spreads so easily when bodies get involved.

Episode 1 arrives on January 20. Follow Strange Health wherever you watch or listen to podcasts to never miss an episode.

The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit news organisation. If you like the show, please consider donating to support our work. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation here.

Hosts: Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt

Executive Producer: Gemma Ware

Editing and mixing: Sikander Khan

Artwork: Alice Mason