Chapter 1: What are vestigial organs and why are they still relevant?
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So do you have an appendage you'd rather not have?
Um, no, I think my body is fine, just as it is. What are you trying to tell me, Norman?
Nothing, just wondering, really. I've been pondering on that. You've been pondering on my appendages? No, no, no. Well, really, it's an excuse for everything's about me. There's an appendage I'd rather not have. Is there? I'd quite like to have teeth that don't need fillings, you know? So there's lots of organs that I think I'd rather have in good shape rather than bad shape.
But no, I'm quite happy with all my appendages.
Fair enough. Actually, shall we do a little appendage checklist? I'm interested to know how many of these items you still have within your body.
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Chapter 2: What roles do tonsils play in our immune system?
And they're probably just a throwback to when we needed a full mouth of teeth, including the back, to chew on very difficult fibres.
So that's one thing. I think everyone, when I think about vestigial parts of the human body, I think about the tailbone, the coccyx, which, I mean, the name is there. We used to, well, our ancestors had tails. We don't. There's still a bone there. There you go. I wouldn't want to get rid of it, but it's not like we've got a tail waving around behind us anymore.
And then there's the plica semilunaris. Some people might say plica semilunaris.
I don't say either because I'd never heard of that thing before you said it just now.
So it's when you're gazing into your loved one's eyes and you see in the corner of their eye, you know, next to the nose, a little fold in the conjunctiva.
Oh, like a third eyelid.
And that's exactly what it's the vestige of.
Like a crocodile.
Yeah. So maybe you've married a crocodile. I mean, who knows? Have you married a crocodile? No.
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Chapter 3: How do tonsillectomies impact long-term health?
And Charles Darwin listed a whole bunch of things that he said were vestigial. And we've talked about most of them, ear muscles, wisdom teeth, appendix, tailbone, body hair, like you said. Weidersheim published a book called The Structure of Man in the late 1800s, talking about 86 human organs he considered vestigial. And one of them was, as you say, the pineal gland. And the more we look at
the more we see about how useful some of these organs are that we might not have otherwise understood. Like tonsils, for instance. We used to kind of whip them out the minute they got infected in kids. And now there's actually quite a high bar you've got to cross if you're going to have a tonsillectomy.
Well, in fact, they used to whip them out even before you got infected as a prophylactic procedure, classically on the kitchen table.
So you've still got your tonsils. You obviously dodged that when you were a kid.
Yeah, we didn't have a very big kitchen table, so... We didn't have a kitchen table. We couldn't afford one.
Luxury.
Yeah. So the tonsils can be an annoying organ, particularly in childhood, repeated infections. They can become enlarged, obstruct breathing, all sorts of issues with tonsils. And the temptation has always been to remove them to improve your quality of life and perhaps risk of serious infection occurring like a tonsillar abscess, for example, in the neck.
But it turns out that tonsils are not a vestigial organ.
No, they're part of our immune system. They're actually quite an important part of our lymphatic and immune system.
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Chapter 4: What is the function of the appendix in the human body?
Yes, I knew there were surgeries that you needed to have to be on Antarctica.
If you want to go to Antarctica for other reasons, it's fine. But there's some pretty gnarly reasons why if you're the doctor, because there's usually only one in Antarctica over winter, you're not allowed to have an appendix. Do you want to guess at what the reason for this is?
So you're going to have to appropriate it on yourself?
Yeah, because someone did. Someone literally took out their own appendix in Antarctica one winter. It was actually a Russian doctor in 1961. His name was Leonid Rogozov. And he, in my notes, I have this in all caps, removed his own appendix. He got sick.
realised he was able to diagnose himself with acute appendicitis, realised there was going to be no way to evacuate him and knew that without an appendectomy he would die. So he instructed his fellow Antarctic explorers on what to do, basically to hold the surgical retractors and a mirror, gave himself local anaesthetic, took out his own appendix.
When he saw the state of his appendix when he opened himself up, he realised just how serious it was that it would have ruptured. without intervention. And he was back on duty two weeks later.
What a hero. I mean, these days, the option exists to treat it with antibiotics. We recently covered this on our sister podcast, The Health Report. And the worry has been because when you get cancer in the appendix, it's a particularly unpleasant kind of cancer. And it's not one of those cancers that's been rising.
And one of the theories here is that the trend to treat appendicitis with antibiotics has left appendices in place that may have malignant tissue. whereas otherwise they would have been removed with appendicitis, preventing the onset of cancer.
Anyway, there's been a recent study suggesting that if that's the case, you can actually pick the people who may have a malignancy there, and it's usually a long course of symptoms in an older person, usually over the age of 60. So you can eliminate that sort of risk.
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Chapter 5: Why is the gallbladder considered important despite being removable?
If you're having recurrent tonsillitis, your life is miserable, you've developed abscesses, there's actually a risk from the infection itself, or you've got obstructive breathing, or a child has, get it out. With the appendix, it's similar. If you've got a grossly affected appendix and it's gone too far for antibiotics, then you want that out. And with the gallbladder, pretty straightforward.
If you've got gallstones and they're symptomatic, Probably better out than in.
Jane, Cass, thank you both so much for your questions. You can ask us a question by emailing thatrash at abc.net.au.
And who's written in this week?
Into the mailbag. Yeah. Rami says, big fan of you too, especially Dr. Norman and the Mediterranean diet, two of the MVPs. However, I am hurt over your fruit advice. This is in relation to our episode last week about whether you can get away with not eating fruit. Rami says, I have fruit as a meal anytime with some bread and olive oil. My wife marvels at that.
Very Roman of you, Rami. Very Roman.
The original Mediterranean. That's right. Christy says, I was listening to you talking about fruit and vegetables and it reminded me of my niece. Her dad is a plant biologist and I was in the shops with her. She had been told that she could pick a piece of fruit to have. I suggested tomatoes, cucumbers and capsicum because they are fruit too.
She looked at me with the disdain that only a four-year-old can manage and said, there's no such thing as vegetables. Which is apparently because in plant biology, there's no distinction between fruits and vegetables. Apparently plants, just fruit to produce seeds. And it's all just a human social invention.
Out of the mouths of babes.
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