Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians.

Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.

Let's hear it for our guest super producer, Dylan the Chainsaw Fago.

Dylan.

Yeah, you like that.

Dylan is anything.

He's He's the most gentle chainsaw I ever did.

Now he's a velvet chainsaw.

Chainsaw for the beadle.

Dear, I missed a story.

Dylan just held up his injured hand.

Is that chainsaw relating?

It is here?

Sorry, buddy, you're okay?

Dylan?

Do you want to hop on?

I can and talk about that.

It's okay If not.

Uh.

Yeah, I was trying to cut down a tree on the fourth of July and cut into my hand.

God, but I'm gonna be okay.

You didn't lose any fingies, right, No, I no feeling, and you know I was headed to the emergency room yelling, am I gonna be able to play guitar?

Jesus?

This is so stressful?

Oh my god, I'm so glad you're okay.

That is, as a fellow guitarist, not nearly as good as you.

I understand the terror.

There and I'm bringing this up here because we are an audio podcast.

So everyone playing along at home, please note imagine if you will, a guy who looks like he absolutely can mop up in a fight.

Dylan's got this really cool bandage around.

Yeah, just so that's Nold Brown.

They called me Ben Bullen.

Oh.

Today we are exploring something that is controversial for a lot of reasons.

For a lot of people.

It's something called the fad diet.

Yeah for sure, if anyone is uh, I swear when I was reading through this incredible research brief brought to us by research associated extraordinary wren Fest Jones the best, by the way.

We love her work so much.

I couldn't help but think of the movie A Cure for Wellness.

Do you remember this film?

Yeah?

Me a god, I do.

Sort of a very love craft very lovecrafting and play on the works of John Harvey Kellogg.

And another film reminds me of wait, what was it?

Something?

Wellsville.

Two Tickets to Wellsville is about like yogurt and eemas and stuff, but obviously.

Sanitarium like health health health camps essentially not all the time consensual and oftentimes not based on what we would consider real science.

Oh not at all.

And like you know, certainly we had controversial versions of this well into these and two thousands, even pejoratively often called fat camps, you know, as a as a you know, a bigger bone fellow, I personally take issue with that.

But yeah, we are talking about fad diets today and it goes back a lot farther than you might think, or maybe exactly as far as you might think, depending The word diet is actually derived from the Greek word diatya, which, according to Louise Foxcroft from BBC Magazine, described a whole way of life.

Dieting back then was about all around mental and physical health.

I like that.

That's a very progressive form of the idea of a balanced diet, you know, referring.

To a lifestyle choice.

It's holistic, it's grishtaltic, right.

It encounters things like not just ingestion and expenditure of calorie, but also mental wellness, also community connection.

This think of it more like a rechedus at this point, a well lived life and how to define and pursue such The original point of what we would loosely call diet in the days of the Greeks was getting a hold of a greater good for your body as a as a huge organism and your function in a larger society.

But now the word diet is used everywhere.

Diet coke, right.

I swear I distinctly remember this, maybe the mandala effect, but I distinctly remember seeing something called diet bacon and thinking, now, I don't know about.

That, maybe fake and bacon.

There's certainly that, like the vegan bacon and all of that, but even a lot of those meatless substitutes are super carbi and not necessarily like one hundred percent better for you calorically speaking, I guess if you're going from non meat thing, they definitely fit the bill.

I was just thinking about the Greeks and the wellness thing, and then the films that I was talking about, and I think I just tried googling Greek enemas and I got a whole bunch of results for Greek animals.

So I don't know, Greek anemas was as much of a thing.

As you get to put the quotation marks around.

I might have misspelledious.

I spelled it like maybe a little more like Onoma, like the Tool album, and all right, yeah.

But I mean, so we're asking a real good question here, Noel.

The question is when did this switch?

When did the use of the word diet or dietas, When did it transform into what we use the word for in the modern day.

As Red points out, we can put a lot of the switch here on the Victorians.

The Victorian era, they didn't have Instagram to you know, hold influencers pedaling diet teas or laxatives.

Louis Armstrong by the way, big fan of laxatives or weight loss.

But they did have a phenomenal breakthrough in technology, the steam powered printing press, which meant that a lot more people had the opportunity to read.

Also, they did not have maybe the necessary critical thinking skills to evaluate the mallarchy from the truth archy, the malarkey from the proarchy.

We certainly this technology helped to aid some folks in disseminating their quack diets, you know, in the form of pamphlets or booklets.

So why don't we jump right in There is a fellow before Atkins became kind of synonymous with dieting, or Jenny Craig.

If people you know of a certain age, remember that.

Low carb tortillas, things like that diet everything, which does seem, by the way I was going to point out, it seems to be being leaned away from a bit.

We've got your coke eros now and the word diet.

Certainly there's the legacy diet coke.

They're never going to get rid of that, but they don't promote it, right, it just sort of exists.

Diet mountain dew not always available, but like coke ero, they've actually promoted.

We've got a guy by the name of William Bant who in his eighteen sixty three book letter on Corpulence, You're gonna have to help me out with corpulence bend because I always think of like a.

Corpse, but what corpuscles?

What is corpulence?

Ob city?

Oh okay, oh okay, gob city got it.

He lays out a diet plan that really worked for him anyway, to the point where he felt like he wanted to spread the word.

He was so popular that the word Bant, or that his name shortened to Bant, became a verb for dieting.

You know, to bant was to diets.

Yeah, And this occurs in Oxford English Dictionary.

It stays there from the late eighteen hundreds all the way to nineteen sixty three.

You might say, for example, someone gives you a good tiramasu or crazy eighteen hundreds dessert and you say, ah, thanks, but you know, I appreciate it.

I'm banting right now, And that would be the way you would that would be deployed, the same way you would say, I'm on a diet right now, like no sugar for me.

It's eighteen sixty two and bant is He's about five feet five inches tall.

He weighs two hundred and two pounds, which is a pretty noticeable metric for his part of the world at this time in history.

And his height, yes, yeah, and his heightened right, So the metrics combined ed.

He is experiencing joint pain.

He's not having a great time at field days or at sport.

And he says he has that what we will call it, Dylan, and I will call it in East Tennessee it come to Jesus more.

You may have the same statements in augusta.

Uh.

He says, Look, I've got to make a difference.

Let me see how I can improve myself.

And he looks at the current improvement propositions or regimens of the day, things like going to a Turkish bathhouse, going to a sweaty spa, doing a lot of jumping jacks, rigorous calisthetics, and he says, look, this is just making me hungrier.

I want to consume more calories.

Add to this, the poor guy has some other health problems.

He's losing his hearing, and eventually his doctor tells him something crazy.

The guy he pays the look at his ears, says, you know what, man, there is a correlation between your weight and your problems with his hearing.

This is where we meet that your doctor himself, William Harvey.

Harvey suggested to Bant that he cut out certain foods carbi stuff, fatty stuff, lactose stuff, bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer, and potatoes, and recommended that he live on animal proteins, fruits and non starchy vegetables.

Funny thing, this is definitely still a popular choice, you know, for certain types of diets today.

I mean, it definitely works, whether or not your anti meat, animal protein or not.

This is something that is in many ways in certain schools of thought, still suggested and can be very effective.

Although Bant was allowed no beer, but he could have up to six glasses of red wine or sherry a day on this diet, and Red points out that this well exceeds the Center for Disease Controls current metrics for heavy drinking Champagne and beer.

Of course we're off limits because of how sugar they are, and red wine and I believe tequila are still something that are allowable in things like the Keto diet.

This was really working for man.

He lost a pound a week on this diet and his joint pain started to subside and miraculously surprising, I think to even us in the modern day.

Here his hearing came back.

Interesting, and let's step back here for a second, because the correlation, the inspiration from the year doctor William Harvey comes from not just him picking up vibes or improvising.

Instead, Doc Harvey here had been experimenting on sugar intake in canines, and he did so because he believed there was a link between glycogen that comes from your liver and hearing loss and diabetes, or as Mac and south Park like to say, diabetes.

So as you're saying no, this guy is not just losing a pound a week on cutting out sugar.

Essentially, he is also getting his hearing back.

It's a whole new world.

He wants to communicate this success.

He publishes the first two versions of his book, weirdly called Letters on Corpulence.

He distributes them to the public.

He's not charging anyone.

It's not about the money, it's about the message.

He starts to make a little bit of profit on the third edition of this work, and it is only in that third edition that he gives his ear doctor Harvey credit for his contribution.

With that being said, Oh, we should have put this at the front.

None of this is medical advice.

Oh absolutely, none of this.

You're going to hear a lot of terrible ideas as a matter for sure.

Yeah, I think we set that up pretty well at the top.

Speaking of terrible ideas, how about ingesting paris, you know for funzies.

This is some cure for wellness type stuff.

I believe there were leeches in that.

There is another film that takes place during the Victorian era that's very recent called The Ugly step Sister, and it is apparently like a really macabre, fractured fairy tale version of I want to say Cinderella that I believe that's the one with the evil stepsisters, but it has a plot point that involves ingesting a tapeworm.

Tapeworms an old enemy of the humans and other living organisms.

So let's say you're in the Victorian era.

You don't quite have the wherewithal to control sugar intake.

You may not have the privilege of choosing what you want to eat, but you can swallow the egg of a tapeworm derived from a cow in pill four.

And the hope here is that most of the tapeworms are going to die in your stomach acid.

That's just the nature of attrition.

But what if one of these tapeworms makes it through your bubbling guts of your stomach acid and reaches your intestines, reaches maturity, and then it starts to absorb some percentage of the food nutrients and calories you ingest.

This means that you get that theoretically, this is their pitch.

This means that you can eat whatever you want and you will not gain weight.

But there's a big problem.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, So first catch most cases, the eggs in those little Victorian era pills.

First, they're hard to swallow.

Pill technology is not what it is today.

But also they're dead eggs.

Their dead egg so it would be like a placebo effect situation and or just a nasty tummy egg.

Yeah, and that's still not the worst catch.

The worst catch is if it works.

If a tapeworm egg is alive, does survive stomach acid, and the ingestion process makes it to the human intestine, it can live for decades and decades.

Unlike some other parasites, this is not a short lived parasitic cycle.

They can also grow to be up to thirty feet long.

They can get this.

Folks reproduce without a partner, so the one egg that makes it through to human intestines can build its own Brady bunch inside you.

This can lead to of course, massive hilarious diarrhea, brain swelling, dementia.

You're gonna be throwing out, You're gonna have seats.

You imagine the pharmaceutical TV commercial for tapeworms.

Like in all of this side effects that are rattled off at the end, you kind of you started the list just now.

Man, not to get off track here, but someone pointed out to me, we're talking a lot on our other show stuff that I want you to know about the advent of AI and machine learning and all of that and how it affects culture, et cetera.

Somebody pointed out that the first kind of company that is just strictly going to generate purely AI commercials will be pharmaceuticals, because those commercials, for all intents and purposes already look vaguely AI and or stock footage driven.

You know what I mean.

They're just so blaz.

Yeah, and they're illegal in all countries except for New Zealand and the United States.

What's up New Zealand?

I mean the United States.

I get it, but I thought New Zealand was better than that.

We thought, Yeah, we're not angry, you guys, We're confused and a little disappointed.

Also shout out to one of the best shows on television ever in the West, Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

There is an episode where in the care arc or Frank Reynolds does ingest a tapeworm through fecal transplant in order to in an attempt to lose weight.

This is based on reality because you can still buy tapeworm diet approaches on the dark web today.

This we can't crazy this, This next statement we can consider medical advice.

Hear us don't do These folks don't do it, just can't.

We can't advocate for stuff.

But I feel like we can tell you what you should not do, right, I.

Think we can suggest very strongly that you not ingest parasites on purpose.

I think we're safe and well within our expertise as human.

People to offer that bit of advice.

Yes, yeah, but what if you just sweat it out?

Well, that's worse too.

I mean that's just losing water weights, right, like, I mean it's right, well, sure, schmitz or whatever as they call it in the Sopranos culture.

Can be a nice way to relax after a heavy workout, can be a nice way to loosen the muscles and relax the joints and things like that.

But even people that do it for weight loss purposes usually like to make weight, you know, if you're a boxer or a wrestler or something like that.

But it is not long term.

And as someone who's been diving and doing a lot of exercise stuff lately, my way fluctuates sometimes three pounds day to day, depending on what time I weigh myself and depending on how much water I've retained.

And that is absolutely a thing.

Yeah, And even being a night walker myself in these punishing, perishing Georgia summers, I will lose weight at night, exactly, worry some degree.

And it's as we said, it's water weight.

Around the time in the Victorian era, our buddy Charles Goodyear, who later would been associated with tires.

Yes, well, we.

Did an episode that research associated Jeff uh prepared for us about the history of the Goodyear Tire Company, the Goodyear Blimp and their weird staypuffed marshmallow tire man mascot Babendum, who was for some.

Reason originally an unhinged alcohol totally.

Yeah, I think, which was smoking in some of those Maybe I'm no, you're a base he because he's Bibendi.

Yeah, he's Babendi.

Uh.

This is because Charles Goodyear is the guy credited with discovering the process of vulcanization, which makes rubber more elastic and pliobndy if yeah, yeah, babendi, if you treat it with heat and sulfur, and this means that now you can mold rubber into a variety of shapes.

It makes it more ductile, right, it means it won't snap when you bebend it, especially in cold temperature, and so immediately people attempt to capitalize on this, and they say, why don't we make rubber underwear, why don't we make rubber corsets.

Now we know the internet is crazy, that's still.

Absolutely certain circles.

They are often referred to as kinky potties, and that's okay, I'm not whatever, not kink shaming at all.

It is very much a subculture BDSM whatever you want to call it, these types of share yeah, and also club culture and very much a fashion choice.

But not many people necessarily wearing them for health reasons anymore.

Right right, right, yeah, And of course we're not gonna yuck a yum.

We are going to tell you that the first rubber undergarments were not for any sort of admitive or romantic pursuit.

They were a diet craze because the thought was, okay, they were kind of like spanks.

They would smooth out your excess body silhouette.

But they would also and this was seen as a big like a big plus a value add this would make you sweat your keyst off.

And the idea was that you sweat just like you're walking around in Atlanta's heat.

You would lose water weight.

As we said, the pickle of it is water weight is temporary.

Yeah, I mean, can you imagine the smell of those sweated rubber garments?

Oh my gosh, who was not good?

Right?

You know what it makes me think of immediately when I think of sweaty rubber garments is the original Batman movie when he's walking through all those.

Flames in that clearly very rubber suit.

I mean he must have had what Wren describes here as a full body swamp ass.

Yeah.

And the thing that, look, let's take some time as fans of film, we're cinophiles, like folks, we hope you are too.

The biggest plot hole is and the Keaton Batman franchise is that he cannot.

Turn his head.

He had to turn his hole.

Yeah, he had to full torso pivot.

Yeah.

And did you know that he was wearing like nikes that those are special custom Nikes And if you look at the screen used version of the suit, they're like kind of you know, bespoke nikes, much like the auto lacing.

Shoes and Back to the Future too.

Mm hmmmmm.

Nailed it.

Uh.

Well, let's let's say this right.

So we've explored the idea of eliminating sugar, which actually does have some sand to it.

We've explored the faustian dangerous bargain of outsourcing weight loss to parasites.

We've talked about getting some gear on you.

But let's talk about this.

What if you take a queue from the health reformer Horace Fletcher, and you say, ABC, we're not quoting Glenn Garrett Glynn Ross here, not always be clothesy, always be chewing.

Yeah, I love this nickname.

This guy should have been a King of France or something known as the Great Masticator, which means the great chewer masticating.

It's a great word.

Horace Fletcher, like you said, he was all about chewing.

He thought that swallowing food before it had been completely liquefied into some sort of like slurry could result in poor health consequences, including obesity.

According to a fabulous podcast from Science History Institute, I'm just gonna go ahead and quote what Wren pulled out of this episode, but do check out their podcast.

A mouthful of bread might take a few dozen shoes to liquify, but once with a green onion, it took Fletcher seven hundred and twenty two shoes before he let himself swallow.

How many licks does it take to get to the tutsiro center of a tutzerral pop?

It depends on how you want your poop.

Also true that they should have used that for the ad campaign.

One shoe per second, which is twelve straight minutes of chewing or masticating.

Here's one for everybody with miss a photo.

No, no, yeah, we're not gonna do all twelve.

We're not gonna do seven two.

Actually, I gotten a healthy conversation on a plane about someone who refused to chew like a person anyway.

Obviously Fletcher bit myopic.

He was too obsessed, right, Yeah, bit pro chew.

And he is very high fluting, very dignified and proud about the results of his ingestion process.

He's a poop, goes into it, he says, shows it off.

Yeah, he parties.

Yeah, he shows it off at parties.

That is a true story, folks.

He also says, look, where's the poop.

My poop is the best evidence that my diet is super efficient.

I'm getting all the nutrients out of it.

And he mailed again a true tale.

He mailed a physiologist at Yale a box of his own poop in hopes of proving his diet was a success.

Now, if we have a physiologist in the audience tonight, I know we have several.

You guys know when this didn't work, right?

We know you shouldn't just mail your mind.

No, you shouldn't.

You need to be asked before you mail.

That sounds like something Jared Leto would do, like as a method acting, you know, technique in one of his joker roles.

Ben, are you familiar with this this German design feature known as the flash spooler?

Yes, yeah, the poop proof.

It's apparently a little bit of an antiquated design, but it can still be found in a lot of German bathrooms.

The function of the flash spooler, which translates roughly to shallow flusher, is to prevent splashage, but also to give a perfect little spot that might give you know, the excretor the opportunity to examine their stool.

I think that our boy here would have been a big fan of the flash spooler.

Of course.

Yeah.

I remember the first few times I saw it, I was mystified, but I thought it was a win in rome situation, and you know, what am I going to call the front desk and tell them to change their culture change?

I think what we've both expressed our pro bidet stance.

And one thing, when we were traveling in the Middle East, I noticed that is not the case in any other country that I've ever been to, including Europe, where you'd think it'd be a thing, But days in every public toilet, but like handheld ones that are like attached to the wall like a little little sprayer sprayer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.

This is part of the great conversation right about cleanliness, about fat diets, about efficiency of the human body.

If we fast forward to today's society, will see that there is a proliferation of what we'll call over the counter or OTC weight loss medications, not all created equally.

Some have dubious claims, some are older, some are basically amphetamines, and some are newly rolled out things like what we call GLP once the most famous of which would be ozembic.

Yeah for sure.

I mean it's a medication that has kind of been repurposed to great effects and success for a lot of folks, So no judgment there at all.

I think it's kind of a little bit odd the way culture is sort of like poo pooing it when it's very much it helps people, myself included.

I've absolutely taken these in the past and it helped me kind of get rid of some of that food noise, which is the thing people talk about that I've always struggled with some you know, super positive about people using it correctly.

The thing about it is, though it's not a miracle drug.

You while some people do and I don't think this is the right move, you really shouldn't just rely on it and it alone.

You really should pair it with like a change in your diet, a change in your exercise regimens, that whole lifestyle thing that we talked about, in order to make sure that the weight stays off and to help promote kind of healthy habits.

Yeah, it's not uncommon for one medication or substance to be initially deployed for one condition and then to be monetized.

For different conditions off label.

Things sometimes off label.

Yeah, just so, I'm thinking, for instance, about the discovery of viagra right, which is now most popularly known as an erectile dysfunction medical it was.

Originally I don't think I know about this, Ben.

Yeah, I believe originally it was meant to address things like hypertension.

Got it so, circulatory issues.

And then we must imagine, we're just ridiculous hit history cinematic here.

We must imagine that moment in a study where all these heart patients were like, no, I'm great, yeah, exactly what are you doing?

What is it a priapism?

Yes, yes, the two messens that continues to.

Yeah that's right.

Yeah, well in this case since it's a desired effect, but absolutely true, Ben.

This was also the case with a lot of other kinds of drugs, like you said, Ben, including some that were extremely addictive like methamphetamine, some that were toxic, and in some cases, some that would outright kill you.

This is in the thirties and through the sixties, by the.

Way, Yeah, yeah, absolutely so.

GLP ones originally were supposed to treat obesity and diabetes, and now they've entered their second act.

Back in the earlier days.

Oh gosh, we have a discussion about this on our sister show Stuff.

They don't want you to know how the Russians would give heat pills to people that would keep you awake, but if you took too many for too long they would literally cook you anyway.

Yeah, denotrophan, all amphetamine, rainbow pills, these things were they were finding their true north of use and abuse.

Denotrophenol in specific was used to make explosives during World War Two, and in nineteen thirty four, after World War Two, it was sold as a weight loss drug.

Even pharmacologist at Stanford approved this.

And all this stuff did when you consumed it was to kick your metabolism into overdrive, sort of like if you're listening to a podcast played at regular speed and then you hit that two X button.

That's what it did to people's tabitalisms.

There were aggressive side effects excessive sweating, that makes sense, right, increased body temperature, sure, but there were other things like cataracts.

Can I also just double back really quickly on the GLP one discussion.

It does feel that there's some similarities in the way that's been so broadly rolled out and like so widely used, and perhaps not enough attention paid on any potential long term knock on consequences.

I just want to point that out.

It is absolutely a personal choice.

I'm not saying anyone should do that, and there are perhaps things to weigh because as we know, you know, money rules everything, and the moment people figured out they could make a load of money, you know, selling that for weight loss, that's exactly what happened.

I do feel like there might come a time where some research says.

Ooh, maybe that wasn't the best thing for you.

So just throwing that out there, smart point and well made, well put, because there aren't really longitudinal studies available yet, we've got a way a few decades.

It reminds me of the shoe stores.

This might be a little old for a lot of us, but I remember when the shoe stores would have X ray novelty devices to help you figure out your shoe size.

Yeah, a lot of people got cancer.

No way, I'm not laughing.

I didn't know that was a thing.

And that is That is man, that's messed up.

I'll tell you.

Here's another one that I think we both I don't want to call it shadenfreud, but I think it fascinates both of us that amphetamines were originally marketed as nasal decongestants.

That's how they came out.

That is an energy thing.

Just if you got a snuffy nose, what's that word you taught me in English insulsult fate.

Yeah, for insul fate, I believe is the word for consuming things nasally.

But also, if I'm not mistaken, the active ingredient and methamphetamine and the reason that they're kept behind glass now and you have to show an ID to get it are certain cold medicines.

So obviously that was an active ingredient, you know, in the first place, I'm just conjecturing there.

I'm pretty sure that.

Must be the right, like not non confederate.

I think that's something like that.

Yeah.

So first it comes out as a thing where people are saying, are you tired.

Of these snuffy knows?

Don't feel snuffing cocate hour?

Yeah, exactly, change aw ve custom method better means a cleaner nose for.

A cleaner world.

Also with cocaine, Also with cocaine all over the counter.

Percent Yeah, I mean that's true.

Cocaine was over the counter, and as we know earliest recipes, this is not a myth.

If I'm not mistaken, of coca cola did contain small amounts of cocaine.

Dylan says, a lot of these sound dangerous.

I think I'll stick to good old laudanum.

There you go, are your children talking back?

Oh?

Your children awake at all?

That was chan saw Fagan's laudanum.

I'm more of an ether guy myself was preferring to just huff it from.

A rag, you know, yeah, like a real American.

Anyway, this amphetterine thing, obviously similar to these other stories, the market finds other uses for it.

It is distributed to troops multiple sides of World War Two, and the idea is we can keep the fighting forces running longer, consuming fewer food resources.

And after the war people discovered this also, you know, provably suppresses appetite, so it becomes something like rolling stones, mother's little helper.

It's a popular weight loss drug, particularly among the housewives in the West, who, many of whom have have met a kind of agency, being allowed into the workplace for the first time, and now they're being forced back into these domestic roles.

Yeah, Poppin' bennies, Bens of drains, dexadrins, little blues and reds or whatever they used to call them.

And these continue to be popular.

What's the word I'm looking for, recreational pharmaceuticals into the like you know, counterculture scene, the.

Hippie kind of scene.

Amphetamines, however, are really really bad for you.

Yes, it turns out, Yeah, it turns out.

There's turns out is important and causes lack of it alone causes bad things to happen in the brain and the body.

It's also nice to not have compulsive behaviors paranoia, and it's sort of like not the flex But it's cool to have as many of your teeth as you can.

It certainly is it kind of is.

So there are side effects like you described.

No, especially after long term or prevalent use.

These sorts of substances can induce sollucinations, chronic noz constipation, vomiting, manic, real, real dangerous cognitive behavior.

But doctors didn't know that because they didn't have those longitudinal studies just yet.

So this is the rise of what we loosely could call rainbow pills.

Everything you described.

That little vitamins in there.

We find some supplements.

No, we're talking amphetamines, mainly sedatives, diuretics which I believe doesn't that make you poop or make you pee?

Sorry, it makes you pee diuretics, yeah, and thyroid hormones.

In addition to taking other pills and supplements, right.

Yeah, And it wasn't until nineteen sixty eight that the pendulum began to swing back.

A journalist medical professionals started noticing there were troubling things at play.

One investigative reporter, noted in history dot com, went to ten obesity clinics and was posing as a patient.

They were given more than fifteen hundred things that would qualify as rainbow pills.

This leads to nineteen seventy a guy named Richard Nixon, who is famous for being kind of a pill himself, but also yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit of a tricky one.

He passed the Controlled Substances Act, a very imperfect act, part of a very imperfect thing called the War on Drugs.

Kicked it right on off, didn't he?

He sure did, man.

This reclassified everybody's favorite little helpers as scheduled to controlled substances, which made it much more difficult for doctors to prescribe them.

Willie.

One could argue, this is maybe a positive part.

Of this is like, what are the positive parts?

Yeah?

I think that's true, But you did still have these boutique clinics, these like, I don't know, kind of what you might call today these medspots, right, but you yeah, you had back then these you know, weight loss clinics where you would maybe have a specialty, a specialized doctor who was able to kind of loophole his way into prescribing you the you know, the go go pills in addition to other supplements, perhaps regiments of exercise.

A lot of these quack kind of like machines like that would like rub.

The chub off of you.

You know, I'm talking about belts or whatever.

I think of the belt too that just goes back and forth.

Uh.

Combine that with the electro shock vest that would just sort of shock your muscles into contracting.

And you never heard about those.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So we'd have things like that.

Wren also points out, and it has an excellent picture of these kind of rolling pin machines that.

Would like squeeze your body.

Just I don't think that would just roll around.

It was not the way.

This is not the way.

It's it's not the way for efficacious medical results.

But the Cetastasia and Me says it would feel nice along your back or body if depending on the pressure right the PSI.

But yeah, this is this is just another case we have so much more to get to master cleanses.

We haven't even gotten to.

That cleanses, juice cleanses with the idea of detoxing, which I think to this is still a bit people look askance at this idea of because the thing about this is a lot of these holistic type remedies, they are positive and they are sort of a way to just encourage more full body, you know, nutrition and thinking about making better choices, eating less processed foods, et cetera.

But once it's really easy though, for it to kind of spiral into the realm of quackery with even the best of intentions.

Right right, A lot of this stuff, if you take out the sorcery of not fully understood medical substances, the answer is almost always going to be as you said, lifestyle.

I would add calorie deficit right, maintaining that and finding a place that supports your good choices and reinforces them.

I think we've got to hit so many more fad diets, as our power ren Fest points out Beverly Hills diet, military diet.

We mentioned keto and ketosis is an interesting South Beach.

Was a big popular one.

South Beach nutri system all the hits.

We'll get to them soon.

Weight Watchers is still very much a thing, very much mother.

It's old school.

My godmother attends wait Watchers in New York City.

And I will just say too, like, if you're looking to make a tiny change, you know, diet and exercise, I swear cutting out sugar, like not putting sugar in my coffee and cutting out alcohol or drinking a whole lot less alcohol.

That'll game changing.

It makes a difference.

Again, check out the episode on Big Sugar for stuff they don't want you to know.

Yeah, that's a.

Great podcast talking about Big Sugar, the podcast which is an incredible expose on the brutal and dangerous sugar.

Oh, I got it.

I forgot about that one.

I just think about the earlier Oh we.

Did, that's right.

We did a full deep dive on it ourselves, and we also had on the host of an investigative piece podcast series called Big Sugar.

I was so happy when they confirmed that earlier research.

We're out to something.

We're going to follow it up.

We hope you enjoyed this episode, folks.

Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.

Thanks to our super producer returning tattooed from some Adventures mister Max Williams.

Thanks to our guest superproducer Dylan the chainsaw Fag and remember to buy Chainsaw Fagan Laudanum wherever it is sold, which no offense.

Stillan might not be everywhere these days, kind of like cheerwine, so pick up a bottle where he cand thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, thanks to orgey Cham thanks to Jonathan Strickland Ak the Twister.

Who else?

Oh man, did we sayeah?

You starready said Aja Bahamas the he's the puzzler.

Do we have a nickname for Jorge yet?

No?

Wait, he had one.

It was like Riverside or something.

Oh, that's right, it wasn't a very good one.

We'll we'll have to workshop that one, but big thanks to Jorge.

Excited to have him back very soon and we have another crossover with him coming out very soon.

If it's already out on stuff they don't want you to know or we talk a lot about some of the same things we talked about in Ridiculous History.

But a lot deeper and weirder stuff.

In terms of what were some of your favorite topics that we touched on in that conversation.

Oh, all the outer space stuff, that's right, yeah, But beyond Big Bang, we talked a lot about singularity events, a lot about surveillance state kind of stufflation, the simulation.

Theory, all that stuff.

So do check that one out.

Huge thanks to Chris Fhrasiotis and heaves Jeff cos here in spirit of course, and thanks again torn Fast.

Jones for this incredible research on fad diets.

And thanks to you Ben.

This is a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, and thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track.

Everybody tuned in next week, have a great one and we'll have a classic on Saturday, and we'll be back on Tuesday with more ridiculous history.

We'll see you next time.

Focus.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.