Hey, this is Outside N.A. Show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgie with producer Felix Poon in the recording studio. Hey Felix. Hey Nate. So to kick things off, I want to ask you, did you ever dissect a frog in high school? Yeah, I can remember this smell. It was like the smell of formaldehyde. And they would be all rubbery and slick. Just, just, just. Yeah, so not your thing, but I spoke to someone named Monsi Shravastava who's a lot more comfortable with dissection. She spent her college years in the early 2000s cutting up animals for science. And back in those times, people didn't have a lot of tools, right? No fancy crisper and whatnot. But you could take a razor blade and cut things up so you could cut up embryos, you could cut up animals. But Monsi had a very specific focus to her studies. And there was this very special thing that these organisms would do after she cut them up. I did work on worms that you could cut up and watch them regrow, which was pretty amazing. So not only would they survive getting cut in half, but they would actually regenerate. That's so wild. I wonder if she could like see it in real time, I'm sure not. But you're like, oh my gosh, a little bottom half of that worm's coming back. So Monsi Shravastava is a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University. And she studies regeneration. And Monsi says there are lots of animals that have this ability, most iconically, lizards, starfish, worms. The one she studies is called the three-banded panther worm. You can cut them into multiple pieces. Each piece will make a new worm, including they'll make a whole new brain out of nothing, which will ultimately recover full function. Wow, that's like a multi-headed hydra, you know? Like you cut off one head and it just grows another. So the reason they can do this is because of something they have, something called pluripotent stem cells. Or as Monsi puts it, stem cells with superpowers. These cells can make you all the neurons of the brain. They can make you all of the types of the muscle you need. They can make you all of the types of gut cells you need, so on and so forth. And unlike worms and starfish, we humans only have these superpower pluripotent stem cells in the very beginning of our embryonic life, only like until a week after conception. Wow. After that, they are not pluripotent anymore. They're specialized, like skin stem cells will regenerate our skin, intestinal stem cells will regenerate our intestinal lining, but they can no longer just regenerate into whatever cell they want anymore. But some species keep their pluripotent stem cells even into adulthood. Take the ashelotl, which is a type of salamander where you can chop off its arm multiple times and it will regrow the entire arm. And there are colleagues of mine in the field who are trying to really get at these questions of are there ways to maybe enhance the process in humans somehow? Yeah, let's inject some humans with some ashelotl blood or something and allow us to regenerate our arms. Okay, so maybe, you know, all forms of healing aren't as miraculous as this, but even the body's ability to repair a scrape is pretty awesome. So today on the show, we are going to have an episode that is all about the wonders of healing, from why animals lick their wounds to healing from heartbreak, and even why do we like to pick at scabs? Ew. Even if that grosses you out, please, please stay tuned. Here is Rivals. Welcome to the naughtiest show on television. To the unmissable crime drama, High Potential. Gotta dead body, gotta go. A lifetime of great stories awaits. This spring on Disney Plus, 18 Plus, subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hey, this is Outside In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hedgie, and here to bring us our listener questions about the wide world of healing is producer Felix Boone. Hi, so we just talked about regeneration, and I thought this question we got from Lucy Perkins on Instagram was kind of related. Lucy asked us, why do people like to pick scabs? Do you pick your scabs, Nate? Who doesn't? Why do you do it? Because sometimes it just feels good. Like, this is, yeah, I've been playing hockey a lot, and so I've had eczema on my legs, and eczema is like an allergic reaction, it gets really itchy, and then when you scratch it, it like scabs out, but the scratching feels so good that you just keep doing it, and you just create this worse and worse problem, it's infuriating. I just, yeah, I feel like I'm just constantly picking at this scab. So sorry, everybody. Well, that's gross. Yeah, uh-huh. But for a more scientific response, we've got our executive producer Taylor Quinby who looked into this, so I'm just gonna pass it off to him to take it from here. Good idea. So here's Taylor. People sometimes say, the eyes are the window to the soul, but our largest bodily organ, and yes, the skin is an organ, is more like a window into our neuroses. Skin picking is a thing, not just as scabs, just in general. People let their anxiety lands on their skin and they pick. This is Mona Gojara, a board-certified dermatologist and professor at Yale School of Medicine. They pick pimples, they pick scabs, they pick normal skin, they just pick everything. And while it's true that scabs are sometimes like fidget spinners, we toy with them because we can, the most common reason we pick scabs is because they can be super freaking itchy. So what creates that itch? So when your skin gets injured, your body basically jumps into action. A newly forming scab acts like a sticky mesh or a tarp that covers the fresh wound. And that sticky mesh is essentially a net that traps blood cells, it dries out and becomes a hard crust. It's basically your body's built-in bandaid, made of dried blood, platelets, and fibrin. But just under the surface, there's something else flooding that wound too. Immune cells come in to help fight infection, because remember, you fell down, it's going to be dirty cement or dirt. This is Susan Taylor, the Burnett Johnson professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. And besides fighting infection, she says those immune cells can have an unfortunate side effect, inflammation. I mentioned those inflammatory cells that are in the wound, they release mediators that cause itching. So it's not the scab itself that causes the itching, it's the healing wound that causes the itching, right? But since the scab covers the wound, that's what we're going to tug at. So that's the basic answer. The itch that makes you want to pick doesn't come from the scab, it's what's going on underneath. And most of the time, it's actually a sign the healing process is working. Needless to say, dermatologists will tell you you shouldn't be picking scabs if you can help it. You want to give the skin underneath time to grow and cover the wound. Remember, all of your skin cells, we call those keratinocytes, have been scraped off. So the skin cells at the edges are going to start migrating, moving towards each other to seal that up. And once that's done, the scab should dry up and flake away on its own. And you should feel victorious for not succumbing to the itch. But Mona Gohara told me something else surprising. Ideally, you don't want a wound to form a scab at all. Honestly, I bet if you interviewed like a hundred dermatologists, they would be like, oh no, scabs, we don't want scabs. Scabs may be the body's natural bandaid. But Susan Taylor says you can form an artificial scab that's going to heal the wound even faster. All you have to do is clean it gently and cover it in something like Vaseline or aquafore. That is going to seal that wound. It's going to provide a very slippery environment for those keratinocytes to migrate together. It's going to seal out that external environment that's susceptible to infections and all kinds of bacteria. So whether you've scraped your knee or nicked your finger, here's a handy rhyme to guide you. Keep it moist, clean, and covered in Vaseline. All right, that was producer Taylor Quimby. Nate, what's the scariest wound you've had to deal with? Oh, my mom cut herself with a kitchen knife once and it just started pouring blood. She had that like, she's like, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. And you're like, no. Did she lose a finger? Did she lose a digit? No, she didn't lose her digit, but she had to go to the hospital and she has an aversion to knives now. She does not like touching them knives, which makes sense. That's the scariest one I had to deal with. And like our next question is kind of related to this question of wounds. This one comes to us from Luke in Richmond, Virginia. I've always wondered about this too. Like the animals must be on to something, right? So producer Justine Parody looked into it. Wound licking is thought to be instinctual. Not only do dogs lick their wounds, but so do cats, rodents, bison, and primates, including humans. It's not only animals doing this. If you in the morning are preparing your sandwiches for lunch and you accidentally cut your finger, you put your finger in your mouth. That's Hank Braun, a medical biologist at the Academic Center of Dentistry in Amsterdam. When animals lick a wound, their tongue is physically cleaning it by removing debris and dead tissue. But there's also a chemical agent involved, saliva, which is the focus of Hank's research. Humans actually have plenty of old legends about saliva, from the Scottish Highlands to ancient Rome. There's also an old French saying, which translates to, the best doctor is the mouth of the dog. And it turns out these legends are kind of right. Saliva isn't just for digestion. 99% of saliva is indeed water. However, the other 1% are the very interesting part. There's a bunch of different proteins and growth factors in saliva that might help with like blood clotting and wound healing. Saliva even contains analgesic substances that might help to reduce pain. This is Jane Sykes, a professor of veterinary medicine at UC Davis. When you actually think about it, you know, wounds in the mouth and also, or you lose a tooth, the wounds often heal much faster than wounds on the skin, possibly because of the effect of all of these substances in saliva. This is a little puzzling because another thing about the mouth is that it is a perfect environment for bacteria. And if oral bacteria does find its way into an open wound, it can be very dangerous. There's this one case study about an immunocompromised individual licking their finger after hurting it in a bike accident, resulting in infection and eventually a partial amputation of the thumb. Now, if a dog were to lick that same open cut on a human hand, the risks of serious infection might be even greater, especially for babies or immunocompromised people. So, turns out the best doctor actually isn't the mouth of the dog. But as for a dog licking its own wound... Interestingly, unless a bite wound is involved, we often don't see these particular bugs causing infections in dogs and cats that are just licking their own wounds. They more commonly get infections from growth of bacteria that normally live on the surrounding skin rather than those that live in the mouth. Still, wound licking can become obsessive and prevent healing. Jane recommends stopping pets from overdoing it, especially if it's a surgical wound. You can use tools like the Elizabethan collar, more commonly known as the cone of shame. Meanwhile, researchers like Hank think there's a lot of therapeutic potential in the healing agents found in saliva. If you purify them, you would be able to synthesize them, you would have a kind of new generation of antibiotics. In fact, his lab has already worked on reproducing one of these wound-enhancing factors. We were able to synthesize it in the lab artificially and it now is being added to some gels, etc. to enhance the wound-healing effect of those gels. But there are also other effective tools to care for open cuts, almost certainly in your house right now. Soap and water. There are alternatives to licking our wounds. That was producer Justine Perdy. Now, if you've got a question for us, please send it to us. The next theme we are working on is the topic of love. So for a little inspiration, maybe you can ask us what's going on in our bodies when we're falling in love or out of love, or maybe whether do animals fall in love? We could take questions about animal behavior or reproduction. It kind of depends on how we decide to interpret this one. But anyways, you can record yourself on a voice memo and then email it to us at outsideinatnhpr.org, or you can call our hotline at 1-844-GO-AUTER. We recently had someone leave us a question there and then right before they hung up. Oh, and if you haven't hung up yet, I called 1-800-GO-AUTER a minute ago, which I think you should try just to see how funny that must have been. But you could remind everybody that it's not 1-800-GO-AUTER, it's 844. Anyways, thanks a bunch. So I got curious and I gave that number a call. Hello and congratulations. Just for calling today, we're offering you a free medical alert device. You know, it's the little life-saving button you can wear around your neck in case of an emergency. These devices are often very expensive, so press 1 now. Our number is 1-844-GO-AUTER. Give us a call there at the 844 number and leave us your questions. Alrighty, we'll be right back. Wait, wait, wait. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. This is not an ad. This is me, Nate, and I'm here to tell you that it is yet again time to open up the outside inbox to listen to questions. We have been getting the most random submissions lately. Like, can bobcats get hairballs? Or why does warm dirt smell so good? But we need more questions, so please send us the weirdest, wackiest questions about science in the natural world that you can think of. It is super easy. You can call our hotline at 1-844-GO-AUTER. Or even better, send us a voice memo to OutsideInRadio at nhbr.org. Okay, back to the show. And I'm Felix Poon. And today we are answering listener questions about healing. And on that topic, this next question comes to us from Monica in West Hartford, Connecticut. We've all heard the phrase, take a deep breath and associate it with calming down. So I was wondering about the science behind breath work, how it works, and why it's so powerful in helping to regulate the nervous system. Okay, so I'm gonna close my eyes. I'm going to inhale. Wait, that's an exhale. Oh, you said inhale, right? It sounded like, okay, okay, okay. That's how I inhale all the time. You've never heard me breathe it. I'm always going, anyways, I'm gonna inhale, Felix. My nose is a little stuffy. And I'm gonna pass it on to you. Can you lead me just to actually what you would do for a healing style of breathing? Yes, this is called diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing or full yogic breathing. And just this practice calms you down instantly. This is Dr. Aditi Garg, a yogic and naturopathic physician guiding us through a basic yoga breathing exercise. Feel free to join in if you can. You have to place your left hand on the abdomen, your right hand on the chest. You have to sit comfortably. And then as we breathe in, we will feel our chest is expanding. Also try to expand your abdomen, fill it up like a balloon. And as you breathe out, the abdomen comes down, chest comes down. When it comes to our breath, most of the time we're not really thinking about it. It's involuntary. Our body just does it automatically. And how we breathe depends on what's going on around us. So we have two phases of our nervous system. One is the sympathetic nervous system where we are mostly in the fight or flight mode. Let's say there's a lion chasing you or maybe a high stakes presentation at work. Your sympathetic nervous system would kick in. You would not want to digest food. You would not want to sleep. You would want to run. Your breath becomes shorter and your heartbeat becomes faster. And then when the coast is clear, the other phase of your nervous system kicks in. The parasympathetic system, also known as rest and digest, which is when you are relaxing your digesting food, you're able to calm down your mind. So if our breathing changes depending on which nervous system mode we're in, does it work the other way around? Because an amazing thing about the breath is that it's also voluntary. We have the power to consciously change how we breathe. So does changing our breath change the state of our nervous system? Breathing can work as the switch. Maybe change the rhythm, maybe change the length and breadth. So this is essentially what breath work is. Any method of modulating the breath. And some studies suggest it can be a powerful tool. Research has shown it can reduce anxiety and depression. Some studies found breath work helped control blood sugar for people with type 2 diabetes. Others have even shown that it can reduce inflammation and boost immune cells that fight off infections. But how does it do this? I spoke to Dr. Carolina Esteveau, a neuroscientist and mental health researcher. And she says that we don't have conclusive evidence yet. Breath work is still seen as woo-woo, it's not seen as actual science. So it's very difficult to get public bodies to fund this kind of research. And as a result, we only have very, very small studies that don't really give us that definitive answer. A lot of research into breath work focuses on the vagus nerve. Think of the vagus nerve as the trunk of a tree. It's rooted in our brain, then it runs all the way down to our heart, lungs and intestines. The idea is that our breathing is connected to the vagus nerve. And we might be able to use breath work to send signals to say our cardiovascular system or digestive system. Different techniques are intended to achieve different results. There are so many different patterns of breathing. There are types of breath work that make you more active, more alert. There are types of breath work that heat you up if you're feeling cold. So it's not just about calming you down. So this segment is not intended as medical advice, but Carolina says you don't have to wait for science to figure this all out before you try breath work for yourself. Diaphragmatic breathing is a good place to start. You can also try alternate nostril breathing, a technique you often see in yoga classes. You can just close one of the nostrils and breathe in from the other, then close the other one and see. You will see that there is some resistance in one of the nostrils, which means that the opposite one is more active at that moment. Aditi says the right nostril correlates to that sympathetic or fight-or-flight mode of your nervous system, while the left correlates to the parasympathetic or rest and digest mode. So alternate nostril breathing could help you activate one mode over the other or bring greater balance between the two. But if you're looking for something even more advanced, Aditi suggests 4-7-8-4 breathing. We breathe in for 4 counts, hold the breath for 7 counts, breathe out for 8 counts, and hold the breath again for 4 counts. When your breath stops, your thought stops. And that is why retention of breath is really important. And even if that's all it does, pausing our thoughts, for many of us, that is a welcome relief. Okay, Nate, which of your nostrils is more open than the other? Left or right? Maybe the left one right now? Huh, my right one is more open. Huh. Anyways, for our final listener question, we heard from Jenna in North Carolina. What is the best outdoor activity to do to heal your heart after it's been broken? Ooh, that is a good question. I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. I think it's a good question. To heal your heart after it's been broken. Ooh, that is a good question. Producer Marina Hanky looked into this one. Answering the question of how to heal from a breakup can feel like a near spiritual task. Love, heartbreak, they're all pretty squishy feelings. What I study is how can people use the way they think or what they do to feel better after a heartbreak. Not for Sandra Longuslog. She's an associate professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. In order to figure out how to recover from heartbreak, Sandra starts with what goes on during heartbreak. It changes your emotions, so you may get more what's called sympathetic nervous system activation, which is fight or flight response. There's different theories about why this happens, but a centralizing idea is when a breakup occurs, you lose a core attachment figure. Leave the psychology language behind and the phrase that comes to mind from personal experience, lost at sea. Now, there's lots of ways to heal from heartbreak and probably just about as many articles about it online. But Sandra is particularly interested in something called negative reappraisal. I know this sounds pretty ruthless, but the idea is to focus your attention on the parts of the relationship that didn't make sense. So what mean thing that they said, what is that hobby that you didn't like? Sandra found that negative reappraisal can help people feel less in love. But when she tested it in a lab, it didn't make her participants feel any happier. And that was of course not my intention, because I was like, I'm going to make these people feel better, but I make them feel worse. Which gets us to those outdoor activities. Sandra told me that distracting yourself after a breakup does tend to make people feel better, especially when paired with reflection. And what is more distracting than the great outdoors? Now, Sandra wasn't going to declare whether rock climbing or kayaking would do the job better, but according to the research, nearly 100% of adults have felt heartbreak in some way. So I put a call out asking people on the internet how they handled their breakups. I'm going through a breakup right now. One of the only things that genuinely helps is like going for a walk. I had just moved to a new city and there was a very lovely trail near my apartment. I try not to let myself listen to anything. And I would go on runs every morning and I was not a runner. No podcast, no music. And just hear the birds. It's like the only thing that gets me out of this anxious, very sad headspace. The listener who reached out with this question told me that she'd signed up for a watercoloring and backpacking trip after a big breakup. The painting had forced her to concentrate on exactly what was in front of her. And the backpacking, in her words, helped her embrace the suck. It seems that moving in nature in any way helps. And that Sandra could agree with. Even though your mind will still have a chance to maybe think about your ex-partner, I do think those can be very valuable to help people feel better. I noticed that many people gave examples of being alone in nature, like one listener who'd never been to her local park before. That is until her divorce. But now I would wake up at six in the morning. I'd walk two miles in. I'd walk two miles back out to my car. Eventually, she started inviting friends on those walks. And that can also be an important part of the healing process. Outdoor activities may be especially promising if they involve spending time with people. Social support has shown really positive outcomes for breakup recovery when tested by psychologists. Whether it's watercoloring or running for the first time, there's a core idea here. You can help yourself heal. Sometimes people will say, you know, love is a natural process. You shouldn't mess with it. And sometimes people even think they shouldn't. But you know, depression is in the natural process. Cancer is in the natural process. We're definitely trying to mess with those. Repairing heartbreak isn't just a matter of time. It's also what you do with that time. That was producer Marina Henke. Now, speaking of heartbreak, if you've got questions about matters of the heart, matters of love, send them our way. You can call and leave a voicemail at 1-844-GO-AUTER. Or better yet, you can record a voice memo and then send it to us at outsideinatnhpr.org. That does it for today's episode. This episode was recorded, produced and mixed by Felix Poon, Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, and Taylor Quimby. It was edited by Taylor, Justine, and Marina. Our staff also includes Jessica Hunt. Taylor Quimby is our executive producer. I am your host, Nate Hedgie. Rebecca LaVoy is NHPR's director of On Demand Audio. Special thanks to Emily Lovett, Abby Foy, and Evelyn Olmos. Music is from Blue Dot Sessions, Arthur Benson, Joseph Bell Habib, Jules Gaia, Rand Aldo, and Matt Large. And Outside In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to. The long-standing advice show and ambi-award-nominated Best Personal Growth podcast that's back with new episodes and a new host, who? Me, Mike Peska. Each week, I tackle a listener question, ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from a world-class expert, you know, someone who actually very much knows what they're talking about. Think of it as Eve's dropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silences. You've got questions. We'll find the experts and the answers. So follow How To with Mike Peska wherever you get podcasts. Have you ever asked yourself, can the president really do that or wondered if there was too much money in political campaigns? Then check out the new season of You Might Be Right, hosted by us, former Tennessee governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. We're back for a brand new season now, and You Might Be Right cements the idea that constructive disagreement can lead to real problem-solving. This season, we're going to dig into the role of the National Guard, AI regulation, and a lot more. New episodes drop every other week. Follow You Might Be Right wherever you get your podcasts.
