The Science Pawdcast

Episode 18 Season 7: Big Splash, Pain Meds, and Crappy Dogs

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 18

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We explore the physics behind making the biggest splash in pool jumping and examine a promising new non-opioid painkiller that could revolutionize pain management without addiction risks. 

Our investigation into canine health reveals which dog breeds are most prone to diarrhea—with some surprising findings for particular designer breeds.

• The science of Manu jumping reveals a precise 45-degree entry angle with V-shaped body posture creates the biggest pool splash
• Underwater backward roll and leg extension forms an air pocket that collapses to create maximum splash height
• New experimental drug SBI-810 targets pain pathways without causing addiction or euphoria
• This non-opioid painkiller outperformed newer opioids in animal testing and could reduce reliance on addictive pain medications
• Study of 2.25 million dogs shows breeds with names ending in "poo" have highest diarrhea rates
• Cavapoos (14.95%), Maltese (14.6%), and Miniature Poodles (14.26%) top the list for diarrhea incidence
• Most canine diarrhea cases (92%) involve only one event per year and resolve with a single vet visit
• Common treatments include probiotics, dietary management, and sometimes antibiotics for more severe cases

Here's a link of Manu jumping! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogkRgkf4YAo


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Speaker 1:

Hello science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zukoski. And I'm Chris Zukoski, we're the pet parents of Bunsen, beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.

Speaker 2:

The science animals on social media.

Speaker 1:

If you love science.

Speaker 2:

And you love pets.

Speaker 1:

You've come to the right spot, so put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 18 of season seven. Chris, how are you liking the weather outside today? How does it feel to breathe?

Speaker 2:

Unfortunately, the air quality has deteriorated quite a bit since the. I don't know what the air patterns are doing, but it's brought in the smoke that has happened from our wildfires around Canada and our air quality is poor.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was really bad. In the Calgary city south of us they're telling people just don't go outside. It's so bad. There's a haze that's hanging everywhere and it's making weird colors with the sun. Yeah, it's just eerie.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but of course we're thinking about the people who are impacted in the communities that are actually on fire and we hope everybody is able to get out safely and just stay positive and healthy. All those ideas.

Speaker 1:

All right, forest fires aside, let's get on with the show. What are we talking about this week? Our two science articles. One is about making the biggest splash at a pool using science, and that's my alley, because I like to make big splashes at a pool. Our other science article is about a pain killing drug that maybe has better side effects than most other drugs less of a high and less addictions and, chris, you found a pet science article we're going to talk about.

Speaker 2:

I sure did. I found it and I shared it with you and you laughed. So it's going to be it's going to be a good one.

Speaker 1:

It's definitely a crappy article. I'll tell you that. All right, let's get on with the show. There's no time like science time. This week in science news, we're going to talk about Manu jumping. It's all about making the biggest splash in the pool, and it's a splash centered sport rooted in the Maury and Pasifika communities of New Zealand. Now, before we get too much into the science, I used to teach swimming lessons. You did too, chris, and I was a competitive swimmer, so I know my way around a swimming pool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you sure do, and you like to jump in.

Speaker 1:

And occasionally the kids think they could beat me in a splashing contest, like they would be like, ah, let's get the teacher, kind of thing. And because I understand the physics of swimming the kids had there's no way they could beat me in splashing. And because I understand the physics of swimming the kids had there's no way they could beat me in splashing. And then I would also do this like cupping boom, where it's hard to describe, but you put your hand up high and you slap it down in the water and if the kids are under the water it sounds like a depth charge, it's like under the water. It sounds really cool and they love doing it.

Speaker 2:

When it was a way to trick them to do their rhythmic breathing yeah, because they wanted to hear it, so they would bob under and then bob up and then bob under and you're like haha, tricked you and splashed you right now.

Speaker 1:

Maybe one thing I didn't like doing was jumping off of the highest diving boards. I didn't mind jumping off the diving board, but the high diving boards of the diving platforms were a little spooky and these in menu jumping you bomb. Apparently, you bomb by leaping off platforms, bridges or cliffs and the idea is to create the biggest water splash possible. People celebrate this, as it is incredibly chaotic and the sound that it makes and the splash that it makes is joyful for all, which seems like it would hurt yeah, and jason like this is a such a celebration of the sport.

Speaker 2:

They recently made a competition and it's called the zed manu World Champs in 2024.

Speaker 1:

So relatively new hey.

Speaker 1:

Relatively new to do these splash-centered Manu jumps by jumping off those platforms, bridges or cliffs yeah, and there's a really good video of this on YouTube, so we'll make sure we YouTube link the Zed Manu World Champs competition because it's pretty wild. So where does the science come in? This comes from May 16th in Interface Focus. It was conducted by researchers from the King Abdullah University and this was inspired by TikTok and YouTube videos on how to Manu. It was a tutorial by Brad Day, a mining engineer from Hamilton, New Zealand. So it was all inspired by somebody who was teaching people how to basically make the biggest splash and they're like, hey, let's do some science over that.

Speaker 2:

And what they found is that the technique is key. The splash height that you can get is not alone by brute strength, but you have to have precise technique and timing. So the optimal menu form is an entry angle of 45 degrees and you have to have a V shaped body, so your legs and torso angled outward, and I know. And then you have to have a butt. First, entry into the water, and the key part is that underwater, like the key magic happens. Underwater you do a backward roll and a leg extension and that creates a pocket and then you get a big splash.

Speaker 1:

So think about if you were to jump off a tall diving platform if you don't know what you're doing. You want to come straight down, right, like a pencil, like straight down. That's like a. You're not at a 45 degree angle. A 45 degree angle is like a nice dive.

Speaker 2:

You do a nice dive and you can do an oh what's that? Into the water, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and you can do a nice dive from those platforms if you practice at a 45, but not with your butt first and not doing like a crunch as a v, like I don't think that would hurt quite a bit they have analyzed 50 online videos that kind of prove you otherwise.

Speaker 2:

They had 3d printed projectiles and they had robotic divers or splash bots as part of the research, and high speed cameras, and the key discovery was that air cavity formation and the collapse was the secret behind the high splash, and that happens underwater.

Speaker 1:

Now, as they crunched, crunch the numbers, I think whoever did this was just having a lot of fun, because this is what they this is literally in the science report. Okay, upon water entry, the jumper's butt leads, forming a deep air cavity. Whoever had to write that sentence, the butt must leave forming a cavity. I think that's pretty, pretty good writing. And then they have to roll backwards and stretch their legs so that makes the cavity even bigger. Think of you hit with your butt and it makes an air pocket, and then you roll backwards quickly and stretch your legs and it makes the cavity even bigger and gravity collapses the cavity and that gravity collapse of the water smashing together sends it skyward.

Speaker 2:

And your timing is critical, that timing of the leg extension. If it happens too early you'll have a week under developed splash, and if it's too late it's a mistimed collapse. So the Goldilocks ideal moment is halfway through underwater. So the Goldilocks ideal moment, where it's not too hot, not too cold, it's just right, takes place halfway through the underwater descent and then you get that maximum splash height and, of course, as science does, they're like how can we apply this to the real world?

Speaker 1:

and maybe they were stretching a little bit, because obviously this is a very fun and curious. Obviously this is a very fun and curiosity driven type of research, but they highlighted that in aerospace engineering, spacecraft still touch down in the water sometimes. So perhaps they could apply the angle to how the aircrafts touch down and also, of course, things that are in the water like your boats. Maybe they could change the boat hull to impact. Maybe they could change the boat hull and that would impact angle designs for smoother water entries. I'm not so sure about if you want your spacecraft to come down at a 45 and a V shape, but first and make a big splash, it would look good on TV though.

Speaker 2:

It would look good on TV. So there was the. If we're talking about the competition, they did have criteria that they used to judge the best Manu jumper, and that was the height and the sound of the splash. And they also had points for creativity and originality.

Speaker 1:

There you go. It sounds like figure skating. Right, you still have to hit all your jumps, but you got to be creative while you do it. All right, that's our first science news item for this week. On to science news item number two. This is all about a pain medication to help mitigate long-term pain. Both you and I we've had stretches in our life where we've had some pretty intense pain. You definitely had a really bad one that was way worse than mine, and I had some serious back injuries on and off that were super debilitating, as was yours.

Speaker 2:

Mine was a back injury as well. I was moving my classroom and paper and binders are very heavy and I was like, nope, I can move my classroom all by myself. And I was just moving the Tupperwares and I went and I lifted and I tweaked and that was enough just to set me off. I went for a run when I was at home and you said, boy, you sure look like Picasso, You're an ass. And I said what? Boy, you sure look like Picasso, You're an ass. And I said what? And it was a long haul trying to regrow my nerve down my leg. Um, I had drop foot and other things like that. I used a physio and Cairo and massage and now I work out at the gym to make sure that I stay in tip top shape.

Speaker 1:

Did you take any pain meds though? No, Did you take? I didn't think so.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

I took some like Robax to set when I hurt my back. I think I hurt my back. Speaking of moving, it was when I was helping my parents move.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I definitely hurt my back then, and then I would have little flare-ups from martial arts. I think from like jumping around and jamming it and I gave up martial arts. What? Eight years ago? Something like that, maybe six years ago?

Speaker 2:

It's been a while, Jason.

Speaker 1:

It's been a while. Yeah, yeah, it's been a while, Jason.

Speaker 2:

It's been a while, yeah, yeah, it's been a while, for sure, and, to be honest, you don't have the same kind of pain that you used to have. So I think that's although that you miss that sport and that, those friendships that you made and the challenge that is martial arts. I think your body thanks you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a contact sport. Anybody who plays contact sports you are eventually you're going to be injured lots. All right, but let's get to the study. The drug is called SBI-810 and it's an experimental drug developed by Duke University School of Medicine. What makes this special is it's a non-opioid painkiller and it targets pain pathways without causing addiction or major side effects. This was published in Cell on May 19th. How does it work, chris?

Speaker 2:

What this medicine does is it targets the neurotensin receptor 1, which is found in the brain and the spinal cord and in sensory neurons, and it uses a technique actually called biased agonism. And what makes it really cool is the precise targeting. It avoids pathways that are responsible for euphoria, and the euphoria is linked to the addiction and also side effects like constipation and sedation.

Speaker 1:

One of the problems with opioids is they go everywhere on many different cellular pathways indiscriminately. So, yeah, they help out with pain and we should never like people who are on them for pain. Right now I don't want to be in somebody's shoes who has chronic pains and they need them. If you need an opioid for your pain, yeah, but they do target your pain, but also a bunch of other stuff. So you start to get tolerance buildup and there's a chance of overdose. Because this drug is focused and selective, it provides you pain relief without that high and without that tolerance development.

Speaker 2:

So the results came from animal testing and in mouse models, the SBI 810 reduced pain from surgical incisions, as well as mice with bone fractures and nerve injuries, and it also lowered behavioral signs of pain like facial grimacing. I know I do that when I'm in pain or guarding, and, believe it or not, sbi 810 outperformed some of the newer opioids and gabapentin as well, which is a common nerve pain drug.

Speaker 1:

Bunsen was on that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, Bunsen was on that for his pain.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for his neck pain and the surgery.

Speaker 2:

And also SBI 810 has some combination potential because it works both the central and nervous peripheral systems. It provides a balanced approach to pain relief and what they found is when it's used in conjunction with opioids, it actually enhanced their effectiveness and in turn that allows for prescribing a lower opioid dose. So that's wonderful for the potential for a safer pain management system.

Speaker 1:

One thing we have to mention is this is still in early trials. They only have the mouse models. Human trials are being planned in the future. Now this is supported by the American NIH and the US Department of Defense. They have patents filed for it, so looks like the human trials are going to go forward.

Speaker 1:

So I don't want people to think, oh, I can just rush out and get this thing. It's not there yet and it may be years before it is. That's the maybe you know the bad part. The good part is that this drug is designed for pain that is so bad for right now, like acute, like after you have surgery. I remember after my dad got his hip surgery, he was on some very strong opioids right after his surgery and then chronic pain, like, for example, if you have diabetic neuropathy, where you have nerve pain from your diabetes. I think the most important part, beyond what it could do, is it would probably help reduce the alliance on extremely strong opioids which, both in the United States and Canada and across the world, are causing so many deaths a year from overdoses.

Speaker 1:

Fentanyl is in the news quite a bit. That is a synthetic opioid drug, extremely powerful 100 times more powerful than morphine and definitely has its uses in the clinical setting. But because of the addictive quality of it and the euphoria people feel from using it, they get addicted very easily. That's what makes fentanyl so dangerous. It's very easy to overdose on. So any way science can help stop the reliance on that, the better. All right, that's science news for this week. This week in pet science, as mentioned, we have a pretty crappy topic. I'll let you introduce it, chris, because you were the one that found it and I burst out laughing when you sent it to me.

Speaker 2:

Because the clickbaity title was six dog breeds that are more likely to suffer from diarrhea.

Speaker 1:

Oh, if you own pets, poop and pee is part of your life, Just like when you were kids. A little right. It is it is it's. You live by the poop and the pee. Has the baby pooped? Has the baby peed? Does the baby need to be changed? Poop and pee, poop and pee. You're just surrounded. You live in a haze of poop and pee and then when you have dogs, especially puppies. You live in a haze of poop and pee.

Speaker 2:

Well, especially Bunsen has a kind of sensitive stomach. Every time he poops I look at his poop to make sure that it's okay and if it's super runny I may or may not take pictures of it. And then actually, when he was going through the tapeworm cyst, prior to that diagnosis and prior to his surgery, I was noticing that his stool was runny and it actually was bloody. He was so sick. So all of these things, you really do have to watch all things with your dog, from their head to their, from their noses to their paws and everything in between, because you know what? There are fur babies, but acute diarrhea is actually a common reason for vet visits and our study comes from Dogs in the United Kingdom and the study aimed to estimate the incidence of diarrhea under the vet care of your primary pet giver and they were trying to identify potentially demographic risk factors, to point down, okay, what dogs are having diarrhea. And then they were looking to describe clinical management patterns like how are we treating diarrhea within dogs?

Speaker 1:

It's a silly thing but it's super serious. That is if. If your dog has diarrhea one time, okay, but I get it. If your dog has constant diarrhea, that is super worrisome. And, yeah, I can see people taking their dog to the vet and the data set that we're talking about use something called vet compass, which is a national UK veterinary clinical data system, and the sample size was enormous 2.25 million dogs that's how many dogs are in the system and then they randomly selected 8,000 cases and of those confirmed acute diarrhea and just shy of 2,000, 1,835 cases. So this is an enormous sample size, which is awesome. A lot of pet studies we've done in the past have got like 30 dogs, but now we've got millions.

Speaker 2:

They defined what is a case of diarrhea and it had to be at least one event of uncomplicated acute diarrhea, so without other complications with it, and the study comes from 2019. And the dogs also had the honor, Chris, of talking about this really poopy subject. Okay, and I'm going to be real, there's a little bit of a common thread or a common theme in the names of these dogs. The breed with the highest incident is the Cavapoo, at 14.95%. So 15% is the Cavapoo, and then the Maltese comes just under at 14.6%, the miniature Poodle again at 14.26%, and the German Shepherd at 12.15%. And there was two more that were up there as well. That was the Yorkshire Terrier and then also the Cockapoo.

Speaker 2:

So again it's just like that name, it's in their name.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, I'm good. Is there a dog with the Cockapuke? Because then would that dog just puke all the time, maybe.

Speaker 2:

That's Bunsen. Bunsen is a puker.

Speaker 1:

Bunsen is a puker, though Bernoulli threw up the other day that was nasty, that was not good.

Speaker 1:

But he eats boots, so that's on him, Okay. Across clinical findings, 92% of the dogs had only one diarrhea event in 2019. And most dogs 80% required just one visit. The duration of their diarrhea before the vet was less than 24 hours, about 30%. Up to two to three days of diarrhea was about 27%, and then the middle was between one and two days. So, yeah, that two to three day stretch of diarrhea you probably should get your dog into a vet. Obviously, what I'm thinking happens sometimes is your dog gets sick on the weekend and you're like we can wait till Monday. We've been through that. And then we're like, if it's not super serious, like maybe diarrhea, like we'll just that's a Monday problem. But other times we're like no, we're going into a merge because that's what's open on the weekend.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and because I track Bunsen's poop and actually track all the dog's poop, I know what a normal poop looks like for them.

Speaker 2:

And if they're a little sick if it's a little bit runny. And then after Bernoulli ate the boot, I made sure to watch for a cycle to make sure that he was pooping, because he could get into things and that could gum up his system quite quickly. So again, it's really important. So other symptoms actually do accompany diarrhea, so vomiting, vomiting and diarrhea go hand in hand about 44% of the time. Reduced appetite the dogs don't feel as hungry at 27% and then they're lethargic, which 25% is an accompanying case with the diarrhea.

Speaker 1:

And in all of the cases, some of the dogs had hemorrhagic diarrhea, so that's bloody stool and that's about 29%. That's pretty crazy. So let's talk a little bit about what happened when the dogs were at the vet, because that was the second part of this. One of it was like how many dogs have diarrhea and what breed were they? But when the dogs were brought in, 82% of them were not given any lab tests on their first vet visit. And that seems like about what it is. When we've taken our dogs in, they're like let's wait and see. That was how many times have we heard that. Let's just wait and see.

Speaker 2:

They do an exam like visual exam. And they palate, palate the stomach and feel around and then I don't know. They're highly trained in what they do and so they know how the dogs respond to all their tests. Like we just think, oh, our dog has diarrhea, and they see it all the time, so they are able to, I guess, be give a more realistic view of what might be more serious versus oh, this is just diarrhea.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So about of the roughly 18% of dogs that had lab tests, 11% were blood work. They were, there was about 4% fecal analysis and then about 4% had the dog's abdomen image. So I wonder, though, if those are cases where people are like, hey, maybe our dog did eat a boot and he has diarrhea, so maybe we should scan his stomach looking for boots. What were some of the treatments and management stats that came in after the dogs went in?

Speaker 2:

Probiotics, and that's happened for Bunsen. They've suggested putting probiotics onto his food or putting Greek yogurt into a Kong, and that was a common treatment. Yeah, that was a common treatment about 60% of the time. Another thing is what is your dog eating? Dietary management?

Speaker 1:

Are they eating boots?

Speaker 2:

No, they'll say how many times were we told yeah? How many times were we told, oh, chicken and rice for at least three days, or maybe change your dog's food. Antibiotics was prescribed 38.2 percent of the time, and that's a bit of a concern that's kind of high yeah, and we'll talk about the prevalence of antibiotics later, but then also anti-nausea medication was prescribed, and the most prescribed antibiotic was something called metronidazole, and if the dogs had blood in their stool, that increased the likelihood of being prescribed an antibiotic.

Speaker 1:

That makes sense. There could be something much more serious causing blood in their diarrhea. I get that.

Speaker 2:

So we talked about the six dogs that had an increased odds of acute diarrhea, but there were two breeds that actually had decreased odds they're like the anti-diarrhea dogs they're the anti-diarrhea dogs, and those are the jack russell terrier and the chihuahua, the chihuahua, wow, I knowihuahua.

Speaker 1:

Wow, it was the lowest by far, like not even close. It's probably because they don't eat enough food to poop. They just exist off spite.

Speaker 2:

Maybe, but there's actually other risk factors that the study analyzed in terms of is my dog going to get diarrhea? So it's higher. The age is important. So dogs that are less than three have a higher incidence of diarrhea. But then also over nine years old, so less than three over nine, you hit your sweet spot between four and five years where you don't necessarily have diarrhea. You got your biome in control. Interesting that neuter dogs had a higher odd, had higher odds of diarrhea, and the designer crossbreeds actually had a 1.34 times higher odds than general crossbreeds. So those are those cockapoo, those designer breeds that I was talking about.

Speaker 1:

And if you were a Dollychill cephalic, those are the skulls that are was talking about. And if you were a Dolly chill cephalic, those are the skulls that are long elongated. So if you have a narrow head and long face, that increased your odds. And, shockingly, here's where the brachycephalic dogs come in. Good, they had less diarrhea. So those are your flat faced dogs that can't breathe well. At least they're not pooping everywhere with gross diarrhea.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

They're just like. They're just having trouble breathing in the corner when it gets hot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

They've got other problems. Okay, we don't need to give them diarrhea too.

Speaker 2:

No, so you know what Diarrhea is common, but it's often mild and it happens in about one to 12 dogs annually and the majority of the dogs do recover with one vet visit. And the guidelines against overuse of antibiotics are out there, but there still is prescriptions for the antibiotics.

Speaker 1:

All right, Chris. Thanks for this fun study. It's never fun when your pet has diarrhea. It's never fun when you have yourself have diarrhea. Diarrhea is just not fun at all. But this study does a great job of explaining. If you have one of those dog breeds, you're probably more likely to have diarrhea in your future. Like a magic eight ball that you shake and it says your future contains diarrhea.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

Especially if your dog ends in poo. There you go, there's, that's your sign.

Speaker 2:

If your dog ends in poo, their name ends in poo, then that's in your future.

Speaker 1:

That's pet science for this week. That's it for this week show. Thanks for coming back week after week to support us. We love that we have such a great core audience that listens to our show. One of the groups we would love to, one of the groups we always like to shout out, is the Top Dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, the Paw Pack. We would love your support there as well. So check out the show notes, chris. Let's hear those names.

Speaker 2:

Amelia Fettig Rhi Oda Carol Hainel let's hear those names.

Speaker 1:

For science, empathy and cuteness Woof, woof, woof.