In this episode of Tiny Show and Tell Us, we break down what limits on anesthesia could mean, both for doctors and patients. Then we hear from a listener who鈥檚 on a research trip in Puerto Rico and went kayaking in a bioluminescent bay. What is bioluminescence? And what are the perfect conditions to try to see it?
Transcript of this Episode
Sam Jones: Welcome to Tiny Show and Tell Us, the bonus series where you write in with your favorite science news or factoid. We read your email aloud and then dive deeper. I'm Sam Jones, and I'm here with my co-host, Deboki Chakravarti.
Deboki Chakravarti: Hi, Sam. I am very excited. Last time we got to talk about killer whales wearing salmon hats. We also heard from a listener about her grandmother's work as a pharmacist.
Sam Jones: I loved that.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah, it was really cool. It inspired her to study protein-protein interactions. So yeah, we really love getting to hear from all of you. And before we kick things off today, a huge thank you to Tien Nguyen for doing the research for this episode. And also just a reminder to all of you that we need emails from you. So please let us know the things that have been really cool to you. Send us an email at tinymatters@acs.org or fill out the form linked in the episode description, and maybe we'll get to read it out loud and talk about it.
Sam Jones: I'd love that.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. So Sam, do you want to get us started?
Sam Jones: Absolutely. Okay. So my Tiny Show and Tell Us today is from listener Jade. And Jade wrote in saying, "With all the chaos around medical practice and insurance in the news, I find the focus on the suggestion of implementing time limits for anesthesia use very interesting. I think in general, the job of an anesthesiologist is overlooked and underplayed, and in actuality, they play a vital role in the operating room. I also found this article about it written recently in light of the insurance stuff." And it's a Science News article. Okay, thank you, Jade, for writing in.
Deboki Chakravarti: Sam, before you get started, people probably don't realize this about us, because we never talk about it on the podcast, but you and I are both Real Housewives fanatics and listening to this, immediately my mind goes to Real Housewives of Miami and Larsa telling Nicole, who's this Real Housewife, who is also an anesthesiologist, super intelligent and everything, and Larsa Pippen in her moment decides to tell her that she doesn't really do anything. She just puts people to sleep, and it's a pretty great moment.
Sam Jones: I completely forgot about that. And yeah, I have a lot of respect for Nicole, who unfortunately it seems like is not coming back for the next season of Real Housewives of Miami.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. I mean, it's because she's probably got more things to do. She's got to get some people to sleep.
Sam Jones: Right. And yes, she does have more things to do, and as we will discuss, she does a lot more than put people to sleep. Sorry, Larsa. Okay So Jade linked to a Science News article that was titled, 鈥淧roposed Time Limits on Anesthesia May Have Jeopardized Patient Safety.鈥澨�
Before we get into that, I want to just talk about anesthesia. What is it? Why is it used? And yes, it is in part used to put people to sleep. So of course the goal of anesthesia is to keep you from feeling pain, and it can be used in different forms and in different surgeries. So sometimes you're just getting local anesthesia where the area around whatever is being removed is numb. So this would be things like skin biopsies or maybe stitches. I've gotten a couple biopsies and it's been really small... like a mole or something like that, and they use local anesthesia so they can remove it and it's not super painful, so I love that local anesthesia.
Then you have regional anesthesia, which really just covers a bigger area. Epidurals in childbirth are an example of regional anesthesia, which makes a lot of sense. And then of course you have general anesthesia where you are essentially put to sleep. You are knocked out cold, and it's typically during a much larger surgery. Although I did get general anesthesia for my wisdom teeth, which I know not all people do, I guess. I don't know.
Deboki Chakravarti: But I was out for mine.
Sam Jones: I was glad I was out, to be honest.听
Deboki Chakravarti: Totally. It was very trippy to wake up and be like, oh, I fell asleep and now I'm awake.
Sam Jones: Yeah, yeah. No, my family likes to joke that I... Because I'm a highly organized type A human being, and I actually left the appointment, I have no recollection of any of this. I went up to the front desk. I scheduled a follow-up appointment. I'm like 19. I scheduled a follow-up appointment, put it in a calendar, and then got in the car and 12 hours later I'm home. I wake up from my stupor and I'm like, I remember nothing. Nothing. So I went into delivery mode immediately.
So anyways, general anesthesia. So with general anesthesia, anesthesiologists who are medical doctors specializing in anesthesia, they're paying close attention to a number of things like your blood pressure, breathing, heart rate. They're monitoring all of this during a surgery. If you have an underlying health condition like asthma or diabetes, they're aware of it ahead of time, and they may be paying attention to additional factors during their monitoring because of that.
And they're also, of course, they're speaking with your surgeon or whatever doctor is in charge of your care. But also before a surgery, they typically, and that's been my experience as well, they will come and talk with you and sort of ask you about... Double check on anything. I'm someone who I had general anesthesia once, and I naturally have pretty low blood pressure, and it makes me kind of nervous because I'm at a higher risk of passing out. And when you think about being put under and then you already have low blood... I don't know, I wasn't sure I would work. I was really anxious. I talked to the anesthesiologist about it and he was like, so awesome, walked me through it and was like, I've got this drug ready and this drug ready and this drug ready if something happens. So anyways, it made me feel better.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah.
Sam Jones: Let's talk about something everyone loves, their favorite topic: insurance. So there are currently no limits, and I'm saying this is within the United States. I actually don't know how this is covered in other countries. There are currently no limits on anesthesia coverage in the United States. Earlier this year, there was at least one insurance company that was saying they were going to impose some limits starting in February, but then they ended up reversing those plans. But of course, then it led to this big conversation, some of which was covered in the science news story that Jade sent, which included a Q&A with two anesthesiologists who talked about a number of things, including how every surgery is different, every person is different, meaning every surgery is different. It is not always possible to predict exact timelines. I mean, we'd love to say, hey, this surgery is only going to take three hours, but how many times does someone go in for surgery and then they realize there's this additional thing we need to do.
Or they're maybe not responding to the anesthesia in the way that we thought. So someone could have an allergic reaction to it. That happens. Or maybe someone has way more scar tissue in an area that's being worked on than the doctors realized because they couldn't see it in all the scans as well as they thought they could, and so that could make a surgery last longer. So there is this concern that putting time limits on anesthesiologists could mean that a surgery has to be rushed. It needs to move more quickly than it would naturally, and that of course impacts patient safety.
So at this point right now as we are recording this, this isn't going to come out for a little bit, but this is end of March 2025. There are no limits in terms of anesthesiology coverage in the United States time wise, and hopefully that will remain the case because it really seems like there have been some opposing opinions to that because of over billing to insurance companies. But as someone on the patient side of things, I just want to make sure my surgery is not rushed if I have to go through it. So thank you, Jade, for writing in. I actually heard about all of this stuff in the news, but I hadn't really looked into it. So it was interesting diving a little bit deeper and then thinking about the implications more.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah, because that would be terrible if they're like, well, your anesthesia is up. Can't do that anymore.
Sam Jones: Right. We're going to have to schedule a second surgery.听
Deboki Chakravarti: Right. Well, I have something from listener Emma who says, ""Hi. I am currently on a research trip in Puerto Rico, and last night we went kayaking in a bioluminescent bay. When you disturb the water, the bioluminescent plankton light up. The oxygen they get when the water moves against them gives them the energy needed to glow. The purpose of this is to attract the predators of their predators, i.e., a small fish comes to eat them, and they light up, attracting a bigger fish to eat the smaller fish." I'm really excited to talk about this because bioluminescent plankton are super pretty. We actually... I worked on an episode of Journey to the Microcosmos about them, and there's a little bit of that that I want to talk about because there's some cool stories. And so if you want to see what they look like under the microscope, you can check out Journey to the Microcosmos and see 鈥�
Sam Jones: Oh yeah, we'll link to that video for sure in the episode description.
Deboki Chakravarti: So basically bioluminescence is when an organism can make their own light via a chemical reaction. And bioluminescent plankton are an organism called dinoflagellates, and so they use a molecule called luciferin to make their light. Luciferase is an enzyme and an [inaudible 00:09:13] to make oxyluciferin in light. So the oxyluciferin is like a byproduct, but the light is the cool thing that we get to see. And so that's kind of basically what Emma was talking about, and we don't know exactly where Emma was in Puerto Rico, but Puerto Rico has at least three bioluminescent bays, Mosquito Bay, Laguna Grande, and La Paguerra, and apparently Laguna Grande is particularly bright. The pictures are really cool. It's really, really neat to see. And so there are some things to take into account if you're going to Puerto Rico and you want to see them, because it's not always going to be the right time.
The best time to go is between December and February because it's less rainy, so the water will be more clear, and it's also better to go on darker nights. Obviously, that will let you see more of the bioluminescence. So new moons are when you really want to go out. And so I just want to add this one more story about bioluminescent plankton that I think is really cool. In 1954, a fighter pilot named Jim Lovell who'd later become an astronaut, he was on a training mission off the coast of Japan, and during the mission, his navigation system stopped working and it was completely dark out. So that's tough. How do you deal with that? Except when Lovell turned off the lights in the cabin, he could actually see bioluminescence in the water below him. And I guess that apparently helped him figure out how to get back to land or figure out where he needed to go. So I just thought that's really cool.
Sam Jones: That is really cool. I love that. I feel like that's... It's a book, but I feel like it's also a children's book a little bit. I can just imagine the really beautiful drawings.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah, for sure.
Sam Jones: That's really cool. So I've seen bioluminescence. My husband is from Puerto Rico. We go back to Puerto Rico all the time, but I've never seen it there because I haven't been able to get to any of those spots when you need to. But I have seen bioluminescence before. For a few summers, I worked in Woods Hole. This is like Falmouth, Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and there's bioluminescence there. You can just wade out into the water in the summer, and again, if it's the right conditions, it'll just really... You can drag your hand through the water and you just feel like there's a sparkle that's following you. It's just so cool. I love... It's beautiful.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yeah. It just seems so magical.
Sam Jones: It is. It does feel like it's like fairy dust or something, right? Something like that.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yep.
Sam Jones: Yeah. Now I feel like I need to... Next time I go to Puerto Rico, I'm like, this is happening. We have to do this. But I am trying to remember where he went, which one he went to. I've heard about the one in Fajardo. Vieques is the other one. Right? The Mosquito Bay. But got to seriously add it to the list.
Deboki Chakravarti: Yep. Thanks to Jade and Emma for submitting to Tiny Show and Tell Us, a bonus episode from Tiny Matters, created by the American Chemical 中国365bet中文官网 and produced by Multitude. And a big thank you to science journalist, Tien Nguyen, who did the research for this episode.
Sam Jones: You can send us an email to be featured in a future Tiny Show and Tell Us episode at tinymatters@acs.org, or you can just fill out the form that's linked in the episode description. We'll see you next time.
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