Luke O'Neill

speaker

4,575 appearances 24 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard yesterday

Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 24 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

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Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill · The Science of Stings · 10 Sep 2026 podcast

Watch out for that.

Call 999, as I say, and then get the doctor involved with the EpiPen is the way to treat that as well.

That's the bee stings.

The similarities here, as I say, but as I say, if you take it milliliter by milliliter, as it were, the bee venom causes more pain and swelling and redness than the wasp.

So they are slightly more troublesome to us, I suppose, is the way to think of it.

Bees are worse than wasps then in terms of stinging.

Now, lastly, to complete our round of the science of stings, nettles.

Now, of course, every child gets stung with nettles.

We all remember it, don't we?

And it was very painful to us.

You're playing in a field and next thing, awful pain from the nettles.

Now, what is causing nettle stings?

Well, very importantly, in the nettle juice, let's call it that, there is histamine.

So nettles have their own histamine and that's an inflammatory factor that we make ourselves, of course.

And that goes into your skin, causes the inflammation and all the blood rushes in and the redness has been caused by the histamine.

It's also got acetylcholine, remarkably.

Now acetylcholine, again, is in our own bodies.

It's used to communicate between nerve cells.

And lo and behold, the nettle has some acetylcholine and that hits off nerves and causes them to fire.

And hence some of the pain you're getting and irritation is from acetylcholine.

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