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The Skinny on Lyme Disease · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, Stuff you should know listeners, if you want to
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Speaker 1: com for info and ticket links and everything you need
0:27
Speaker 1: to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
0:31
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:39
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
0:42
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is Stuff
0:46
Speaker 1: you Should Know. Uh, the podcast and Chuck, I have
0:51
Speaker 1: a question for you. You know it kicks me off
0:56
Speaker 1: lime disease. I'm so mad at you blaming me for
1:03
Speaker 1: that one. She's like, you should say this, and I said,
1:05
Speaker 1: you know what, I should totally say that. Uh. Yeah.
1:09
Speaker 1: This is sort of a follow up to our July
1:11
Speaker 1: two thousand ten episode Why Ticks Suck, which in which
1:16
Speaker 1: which is sort of a legendary episode because we uh
1:20
Speaker 1: falsely promised to send people T shirts if they made
1:23
Speaker 1: it all the way through the episode. We were just kidding,
1:26
Speaker 1: but we still get those requests of where's my shirt? Yes,
1:29
Speaker 1: that's hilarious. I forgot about that and also wants sued today. Yeah,
1:34
Speaker 1: probably so. Um. I also want to point out and
1:37
Speaker 1: shout out our former website how Stuffworks dot com because
1:42
Speaker 1: a couple of the articles that we used for much
1:44
Speaker 1: of this episode is from the old hs W website. Nice.
1:48
Speaker 1: They're holding it down over there, they're holding it down
1:50
Speaker 1: and this is some good stuff. Yeah. So we're talking
1:53
Speaker 1: today about lime disease in particular, not limes. No, we
1:58
Speaker 1: should say it's capital l y m E disease. And
2:03
Speaker 1: the reason it's called that is because it's named after
2:05
Speaker 1: a town which is one of three towns where the
2:07
Speaker 1: initial outbreak of lyme disease that led to this bacterial
2:12
Speaker 1: infection persistent bacterial infection um was first uh described medically.
2:18
Speaker 1: But what are the facts of the show? I think, Oh, yeah, sure,
2:22
Speaker 1: who knew it was named after a town Lime, Connecticut?
2:25
Speaker 1: I knew? Did you know that before this? Sure? Did
2:27
Speaker 1: we cover that? And why tick suck? I don't think so,
2:30
Speaker 1: all right, well you're smarter than me. That No, it's
2:32
Speaker 1: not that. I think. What what got me was I
2:35
Speaker 1: heard about people saying like, no, lyme disease, like people
2:38
Speaker 1: take it for granted, but it's actually some really mysterious illness.
2:41
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I
2:43
Speaker 1: think I looked into this year's back and that's what
2:45
Speaker 1: I found out. All right, that was all. So we're
2:48
Speaker 1: equally smart, right exactly. I'm not smarter than you, and
2:50
Speaker 1: what it is smarts. It's just like someone happens to
2:54
Speaker 1: know one thing, someone else knows another. Sure, I say,
2:57
Speaker 1: they cancel out, we're all smart. There you go. I'm
3:00
Speaker 1: glad you pulled that out because I would have been like,
3:01
Speaker 1: what is smart? Uh? I couldn't have come up with
3:05
Speaker 1: the definition so lyme disease. Um, We'll go ahead and
3:10
Speaker 1: hit you with a couple of stats here. Uh. Lyme
3:12
Speaker 1: disease in the United States is more than doubled since nine.
3:16
Speaker 1: That's astounding, it is, uh And it is spread too.
3:20
Speaker 1: It used to be very much localized in kind of
3:22
Speaker 1: the Northeast, sort of mid Atlantic areas, some in the South,
3:27
Speaker 1: but now you can get lyme disease, and I believe
3:31
Speaker 1: the entire lower forty eight is that correct? There there
3:34
Speaker 1: are cases in all forty eight states. Supposedly half of
3:37
Speaker 1: the counties in the United States now are considered at
3:40
Speaker 1: high risk for lyme disease. And like all of this
3:44
Speaker 1: happened just in the last like twenty or so years, Yeah,
3:49
Speaker 1: which is I mean, there's there's a lot of debate
3:51
Speaker 1: over the CDC calls lyme disease endemic, which is a
3:55
Speaker 1: disease that has become a like an ongoing art of
4:00
Speaker 1: an area or region, and some other people are saying, guys,
4:04
Speaker 1: what what we're talking about here is an epidemic. This
4:06
Speaker 1: is an epidemic, and you should start calling it that
4:08
Speaker 1: because it will kind of raise the alarm to the
4:11
Speaker 1: next level or two where it should be, because this
4:14
Speaker 1: is a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing
4:18
Speaker 1: right now. Lime disease is the number one vector borne
4:23
Speaker 1: disease in the United States. It's way more prevalent than
4:27
Speaker 1: things like West Nile or chicken guna or anything like that,
4:30
Speaker 1: but it's still kind of treated as like up there
4:32
Speaker 1: in the northeastern US thing, and that's just not the case.
4:35
Speaker 1: It's it's spread every in every direction except east because
4:39
Speaker 1: it hit the Atlantic, but everywhere else where. It can
4:42
Speaker 1: spread into the interior of the United States and up
4:45
Speaker 1: into Canada. It's starting to Yeah, and there's also a
4:48
Speaker 1: history continuing to this day even where lyme disease can
4:52
Speaker 1: be UM, overlooked, misdiagnosed, UM, not taken as seriously by
4:59
Speaker 1: your doctor as it should be UM, including what we'll
5:02
Speaker 1: get too later on something called post treatment lime disease syndrome. Uh.
5:07
Speaker 1: And it's all very frustrating if you have been a
5:11
Speaker 1: an individual that has had lime disease. There's a big
5:14
Speaker 1: community out there. People they're like, why woult anyone listen
5:16
Speaker 1: to us? Why won't our doctors take us seriously? And
5:20
Speaker 1: what do we have to do here? Like do we
5:22
Speaker 1: have to start dropping dead? Yeah, there's a tremendous amount
5:25
Speaker 1: of frustration in in that community because that there's this
5:29
Speaker 1: sentiment among the medical establishment that you know, take some antibiotics. Exactly,
5:34
Speaker 1: it's easy to cure lime disease. Here's some antibiotics. You
5:37
Speaker 1: still have persistent symptoms because are probably in your head.
5:40
Speaker 1: We're not going to say there in your head, but
5:42
Speaker 1: they're in your head and the people who are experiencing
5:44
Speaker 1: these symptoms are like, no, my life has has been
5:47
Speaker 1: derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren't doing anything
5:50
Speaker 1: about it. It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of
5:53
Speaker 1: people out there that are pretty pretty stoked right now
5:55
Speaker 1: to be hearing this. Yeah, you know, we're advocating for
5:59
Speaker 1: you guys, not patting myself on the back, although I
6:02
Speaker 1: am literally patty like I see you chuck here. That
6:06
Speaker 1: elbow is sticking out pretty far. So. Lime disease is
6:10
Speaker 1: a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium uh
6:14
Speaker 1: bore leah burg door ferry wow borg de ferry, burg
6:19
Speaker 1: de ferry. We're gonna get you an apron and call
6:22
Speaker 1: you the word butcher burg door fairy work, work, work,
6:27
Speaker 1: and we'll get to why it's called that in a bit.
6:29
Speaker 1: But if you haven't caught on by now, it is
6:30
Speaker 1: transmitted through tick bites, right, So, a tick, and in
6:34
Speaker 1: particular a nymph stage of a tick, which is a
6:38
Speaker 1: like young adul or juvenile tick um, will transmit this bacteria,
6:44
Speaker 1: the Borelia burg door ferry um, into a human. And
6:48
Speaker 1: the reason we usually get it from nymph's chuck is
6:51
Speaker 1: because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing, but
6:56
Speaker 1: a nymph tick will because they're stupid. They don't know
6:58
Speaker 1: anything yet. So as they're feeding on us. After somewhere
7:03
Speaker 1: maybe around twenty four to thirty six hours of feeding,
7:06
Speaker 1: this infected tick that has this bacteria in the bacteria
7:09
Speaker 1: will make its way from the mid gut to the
7:12
Speaker 1: tick saliva, and the tick transmitted transmits it into the
7:15
Speaker 1: human blood stream where it's just absolutely reeks havoc on
7:19
Speaker 1: the human body. Yeah, and you said something really key
7:22
Speaker 1: there hours later, really really important. They have to be
7:28
Speaker 1: attached to you for that long, sometimes even longer to
7:31
Speaker 1: transmit this bacterium. So if you find a tick on
7:34
Speaker 1: you and you get it off, you don't need to
7:36
Speaker 1: sweat lime disease. No, if you get it off in
7:39
Speaker 1: due time, right exactly, I feel like you see it's
7:41
Speaker 1: still crawling on you. It's unattached. You don't worry about
7:43
Speaker 1: it at all. Um, But when it is attached, and
7:46
Speaker 1: when when it when it has transmitted the bacteria. What
7:50
Speaker 1: it's transmitted. This b burg door ferry is like really
7:55
Speaker 1: amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving you
7:58
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection. Um, it has figured out how to
8:02
Speaker 1: zoom through the bloodstream but then also take itself out
8:05
Speaker 1: of the bloodstream by latching onto the cell the walls
8:08
Speaker 1: of your blood vessels. Yeah, this was crazy about the
8:11
Speaker 1: cellular stuff that once it's attached to a cell. They said,
8:15
Speaker 1: it's like a slinky. It doesn't let go. It just
8:18
Speaker 1: like basically reaches out and grabs the next cell without
8:22
Speaker 1: letting go of the previous cell and just sort of
8:25
Speaker 1: walks end over end, never unattaching itself right exactly. So Um,
8:30
Speaker 1: as it's moving along, it's never it's not going to
8:33
Speaker 1: get kind of you know, washed away in the extracellular matrix.
8:36
Speaker 1: It's stuck to the cell. If it wants to be
8:38
Speaker 1: stuck to the cell, it can do the same thing
8:40
Speaker 1: to the blood vessel walls to pull itself out of
8:42
Speaker 1: the blood stream and then go attack you know, specific
8:45
Speaker 1: parts of the body. So it's really good at hanging on.
8:49
Speaker 1: That's one thing that makes it kind of pernicious and
8:52
Speaker 1: like another thing exactly, it's basically yeah, it's like the
8:55
Speaker 1: bacteria version of a tick. I didn't think about that, um.
8:59
Speaker 1: And then another thing does Chuck, I think this is
9:01
Speaker 1: really really recent research. It can actually change its protein
9:06
Speaker 1: expression at a much faster rate than the normal mutation
9:10
Speaker 1: rate for bacteria, something like fifteen times faster. Yeah. Well,
9:14
Speaker 1: what that does is that just makes it really hard
9:16
Speaker 1: for our human immune system to catch up to it, right,
9:20
Speaker 1: because our immune system will produce antibodies based on the
9:23
Speaker 1: initial infection. But by the time the antibodies come around
9:27
Speaker 1: the um this, the bacteria may have changed the itself
9:32
Speaker 1: so that the antibodies won't recognize so they'll just go
9:34
Speaker 1: right past it because it doesn't it doesn't fit the
9:37
Speaker 1: description that the antibodies have. That's right, And you'll know
9:40
Speaker 1: that something's bad is happening. First of all if you
9:44
Speaker 1: find that tick. But if you get headaches, fever, fatigue
9:49
Speaker 1: is a huge, huge symptom. But the real tell tale
9:53
Speaker 1: is what's called e m It's an expanding skin rash
9:55
Speaker 1: called er athema migrants and it like, uh, it's that
10:01
Speaker 1: circular pattern. And then we did talk about this on
10:04
Speaker 1: the Ticks episode. But it's a circular pattern with a
10:07
Speaker 1: what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it. Yes,
10:09
Speaker 1: and you can take off your butcher's apron now because
10:11
Speaker 1: you just that was beautiful. Put on your chef's chef's hat.
10:15
Speaker 1: You're sweating over there. So, UM, that that particular rash,
10:21
Speaker 1: that bull's eye rash, that is like just an absolute
10:24
Speaker 1: telltale sign that you have a lime boreolis bo bore
10:29
Speaker 1: uh boreliosis infection. UM. That only comes around and like
10:35
Speaker 1: maybe se cases. I think if every if every person
10:40
Speaker 1: got that rash, we would not have this this problem
10:43
Speaker 1: with lime disease because it would be caught very quickly
10:45
Speaker 1: because you get that within usually about a week or
10:48
Speaker 1: less of getting infected. But it doesn't come up in
10:52
Speaker 1: all cases. And um with some of those other symptoms
10:56
Speaker 1: like you said, like weakness, headaches, UM, flu symptoms like
11:01
Speaker 1: those could be a lot of different other things, joint pain, um.
11:06
Speaker 1: And so the lime disease infection goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed
11:12
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, are did for many, many years.
11:15
Speaker 1: It's just now that they're starting to kind of recognize
11:17
Speaker 1: it or suspect lime when otherwise they might not have.
11:21
Speaker 1: I mean literally hundreds of things can be can have
11:25
Speaker 1: the same symptoms as lime disease. So lime has been
11:28
Speaker 1: around for a long time. UM, we'll talk about the
11:31
Speaker 1: history here in a minute, as far as the nineteen
11:33
Speaker 1: seventies go and official recognition, but it's been around, I believe.
11:38
Speaker 1: The Yale School of Public Health find the bacterium and
11:42
Speaker 1: ancient North America like sixty thousand years old before the
11:47
Speaker 1: arrival arrival of humans. Uh, they have an autopsy of
11:51
Speaker 1: a fifty three hundred year old mummy that had lime disease. Yeah,
11:56
Speaker 1: you know Ootsy the ice Man, remember him, Remember Brutcy. Yeah.
12:01
Speaker 1: I was disappointed that they referred to him as a
12:03
Speaker 1: fifty year old ummy. It's like, no, it's Ootsy that
12:05
Speaker 1: I and everybody knows him, give his name, but he
12:08
Speaker 1: had lime disease. He did. And there was a German
12:10
Speaker 1: physician named Alfred buck Wald who described this that e
12:15
Speaker 1: M skin rash that we now call lime disease about
12:18
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty years ago. Right, So, so lime
12:22
Speaker 1: disease has been around a while, but we are just
12:26
Speaker 1: now seeing a huge again, an epidemic of it um
12:31
Speaker 1: and in a massive spread of it not just in
12:33
Speaker 1: North America, but there's also two other kinds of ticks
12:36
Speaker 1: that transmit to other kinds of lime causing bacteria in
12:41
Speaker 1: Europe and Asia and in all three places North America,
12:44
Speaker 1: Europe and parts of Asia. Um, the incidents of lyme
12:48
Speaker 1: disease is picking up at an alarming pace. I think
12:52
Speaker 1: we should slow down our pace, take a break. We'll
12:55
Speaker 1: come back and we'll talk about Lime, Connecticut right after this. Alright, So, Lime, Connecticut,
13:29
Speaker 1: something is very old hat to you branded about it
13:33
Speaker 1: for years Lime, Old Lime. And what was the third town?
13:36
Speaker 1: I don't remember. No, let's just call it a new Lime.
13:41
Speaker 1: It was not. They're gonna be so mad. They're high
13:43
Speaker 1: school football team is gonna go berserk on Old Lime
13:46
Speaker 1: this year in the es. So there were a group
13:49
Speaker 1: of children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that
13:53
Speaker 1: we're having all these weird symptoms, uh, swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches,
13:57
Speaker 1: all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days.
14:03
Speaker 1: But in the early nineteen seventies, doctors were definitely did
14:06
Speaker 1: not have this on the radar. And we're very dismissive
14:10
Speaker 1: of what was going on in these towns. And if
14:12
Speaker 1: it were not for the work of Judith Minch and
14:15
Speaker 1: Polly Murray to just regular moms. Although Polly Murray did
14:20
Speaker 1: work for the World Health Organization for a while they
14:23
Speaker 1: were advocates, they were patient advocates because their families were
14:26
Speaker 1: getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like,
14:30
Speaker 1: someone's got to do something. Something's going on here, and
14:33
Speaker 1: these doctors are not being any help. And it was
14:36
Speaker 1: a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book
14:38
Speaker 1: she made it sort of her life's work, called The
14:42
Speaker 1: Widening Circle. And because of sort of the persistent sexism
14:47
Speaker 1: and science, they were largely discounted, even though they had
14:51
Speaker 1: a list of thirty seven individuals they researched on their
14:54
Speaker 1: own contacted scientists. Uh, I just we just really need
14:58
Speaker 1: to shout them out. Poly Murray died just about a
15:01
Speaker 1: month ago at the age that right. Yeah, she was
15:05
Speaker 1: a persistent cuss as they call him up in the
15:07
Speaker 1: Yankee States. So um, On the one hand, yes, from
15:13
Speaker 1: the everything I've read and all the impressions I have,
15:16
Speaker 1: they were very much dismissed and it was very much sexist,
15:19
Speaker 1: and also I think because they weren't doctors. But on
15:22
Speaker 1: the on the other hand, the doctors who were being
15:25
Speaker 1: presented with these cases were like, I have no idea
15:27
Speaker 1: what this is, so let's just pretend it's not real.
15:30
Speaker 1: But Luckily those two women in the groups that they established,
15:34
Speaker 1: they went on and they contacted Yale Medical School, they
15:38
Speaker 1: contacted the state, and they really kind of put this
15:41
Speaker 1: on the map. But they said, there is a mysterious
15:43
Speaker 1: epidemic that's going on where you have a lot of
15:46
Speaker 1: kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere. What
15:49
Speaker 1: are you guys gonna do about it? And because of
15:51
Speaker 1: their agitation, this mystery made its way to the desk
15:56
Speaker 1: or I guess, the microscope of a guy named Willie
16:00
Speaker 1: um Burgdorfer, and he was at the time the world's
16:04
Speaker 1: foremost authority on what's called Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which
16:09
Speaker 1: is another tickborn bacterial infection. Remember that when I was
16:12
Speaker 1: a kid, that was a big news item. It was
16:16
Speaker 1: he was working out in Colorado, and Colorado was ground
16:19
Speaker 1: zero for Rocky Mountain spotted fever for a while. UM,
16:22
Speaker 1: which is, yeah, you do not want to have that.
16:24
Speaker 1: It's a really bad bacterial infection. But by this time
16:28
Speaker 1: they had done thanks to the legwork UM done by
16:31
Speaker 1: the moms and the patient advocate groups in Lime, Connecticut, UM,
16:36
Speaker 1: it had been pretty well established that the common thread
16:38
Speaker 1: between all these people besides the where they lived. And
16:42
Speaker 1: by the way, it was um Chuck Lime old Liman,
16:45
Speaker 1: East had him, sorry, East had him Um. Aside from
16:49
Speaker 1: the fact that they all lived in the same region,
16:51
Speaker 1: was that all of them were almost all of them
16:53
Speaker 1: were called being bitten by a tick, and a lot
16:56
Speaker 1: of them had a mysterious rash right before the symptoms presented.
16:59
Speaker 1: So it came to this guy, Willie um Bergdorfer's microscope
17:05
Speaker 1: because they had said, there's something in the ticks here
17:08
Speaker 1: that is creating this disease that we haven't encountered before.
17:11
Speaker 1: That's right, and he had already discovered this bacterium h
17:18
Speaker 1: called it. How do you how do you pronounce that
17:19
Speaker 1: spirit chet, spire key sparke. But the spiro keet is
17:24
Speaker 1: a type of bacteria and that's what give me the apron.
17:29
Speaker 1: They all right, spiral chet and you just made me
17:33
Speaker 1: think of the older brother Chet and weird science. Now
17:36
Speaker 1: go make yourself one. But wad Man, that guy had
17:41
Speaker 1: some good quotes. Yeah, r I P What what Bill
17:45
Speaker 1: Paxton when, oh he died a couple of years ago.
17:48
Speaker 1: Very sad? Are you sure you thinking of Bill Pullman? No,
17:53
Speaker 1: Bill Paxston died. It was so sad because I had
17:56
Speaker 1: just listened to his Mark Marin interview and he was like,
18:00
Speaker 1: after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be
18:02
Speaker 1: Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. And he just sounded like
18:05
Speaker 1: the best guy and best family man. And he passed
18:07
Speaker 1: away way too early. Yeah, really, I did not know
18:11
Speaker 1: about that. I saw a Frailty not too many weeks ago.
18:14
Speaker 1: It's still pretty good. Was it the first viewing er? No? No, no,
18:17
Speaker 1: I've seen it before, but yeah, great movie. Yeah. But
18:21
Speaker 1: he wrote and I believe directed and starred in it. Yeah,
18:24
Speaker 1: it was so good and I love a good Powers
18:26
Speaker 1: Booth cast and call for sure it was. It was
18:29
Speaker 1: unusual and surprising, but it wasn't perfect. Very good underrated film.
18:34
Speaker 1: Where are we? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about Rocky
18:37
Speaker 1: mont and spotted fever. Willie Berg door for identifying the
18:40
Speaker 1: spiral keet um that was causing right, spiral check dumb dumb? No,
18:48
Speaker 1: remember we established were all smart. He Yeah, so he
18:52
Speaker 1: discovered this, uh, this Paara keet and he was honored, uh,
19:00
Speaker 1: this discovery and naming that thing after himself. That's why
19:04
Speaker 1: has that interesting name. I get the impression he didn't
19:06
Speaker 1: name it after himself. They named it after him. Go on, okay,
19:12
Speaker 1: but there's a big difference between him saying this thing
19:14
Speaker 1: is called the burg door fury bacteria and somebody saying
19:18
Speaker 1: we're going to name this after you. I totally agree. Okay,
19:22
Speaker 1: So burg door fury or burg doorfur. He figures out
19:27
Speaker 1: what is the basis of lyme disease, which is great.
19:30
Speaker 1: That's an enormous breakthrough. It establishes that yes, it is
19:33
Speaker 1: its own thing, it's its own disease. And because it
19:36
Speaker 1: was a bacteria, it's a spira key, which again it's
19:39
Speaker 1: a kind of a snakelike shaped bacteria specific kind that
19:44
Speaker 1: walks like a slinky um. Because it was a bacterial infection,
19:48
Speaker 1: the medical establishment said, oh, we got this. Here, take
19:51
Speaker 1: some antibiotics and over you know, the course of several years,
19:55
Speaker 1: starting in I think the nineties, is when they really
19:59
Speaker 1: started to say, okay, ay, we can cure lyme disease,
20:02
Speaker 1: especially if we catch it early on um by a
20:05
Speaker 1: two to four week round of antibiotics. Here you go,
20:09
Speaker 1: and they said case closed, were the medical establishment. Let's
20:13
Speaker 1: go have a party for ourselves. Yeah, and here's the thing,
20:16
Speaker 1: like many times, that can take care of the problem.
20:20
Speaker 1: So it's not like they were just lazy and not
20:23
Speaker 1: doing their work. But I think they closed the book
20:26
Speaker 1: a little too soon, and a lot of people do
20:28
Speaker 1: because that that oral that round of oral antibiotics. Um,
20:32
Speaker 1: if you catch it early, it can really work. But
20:35
Speaker 1: and I think they say, what like nine times out
20:37
Speaker 1: of ten, if you catch it early, then that will
20:40
Speaker 1: that will work right there. So they're so persistent with
20:45
Speaker 1: that assertion that if you find a tick on yourself
20:48
Speaker 1: and you live in an area where lyme disease is
20:52
Speaker 1: known to thrive, um, if you can't say how long
20:55
Speaker 1: that tick's been on you, they're probably just going to
20:57
Speaker 1: give you a round of antibiotics and lactically. Yeah, and
21:01
Speaker 1: and and again, like you said, in a lot of cases,
21:03
Speaker 1: and I believe, from what I've read, the vast majority
21:07
Speaker 1: of cases in early stage lime disease, that round of
21:10
Speaker 1: antibiotics should work. Yeah. And they say that if you
21:15
Speaker 1: and this is from the American Lime dias Is Foundation,
21:18
Speaker 1: uh quote, if you live in in endemic area, have
21:22
Speaker 1: symptoms consistent with early lyme disease, and suspect recent exposure
21:26
Speaker 1: to a tick, present your suspicion to your doctor. So
21:29
Speaker 1: that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis.
21:31
Speaker 1: So show up to your doctor and say, yeah, madam sir,
21:35
Speaker 1: I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please
21:38
Speaker 1: sit down. Well, they're saying sort of, still, you still
21:40
Speaker 1: sort of need to be your own advocate because it
21:43
Speaker 1: is so hard to diagnose still, because if you're going
21:45
Speaker 1: on symptoms alone, like we said, there are hundreds of
21:48
Speaker 1: things that share those symptoms and lime disease may not
21:52
Speaker 1: be the first thing they think of. That's a huge
21:54
Speaker 1: problem with lime disease. Another huge problem is that the
21:58
Speaker 1: test we use to test for line disease doesn't actually
22:01
Speaker 1: test for the b burg door free um bacteria. It
22:05
Speaker 1: tests for the antibodies that should be present in your
22:08
Speaker 1: blood stream if you have a bacterial infection, not even
22:11
Speaker 1: specific to that one, but a bacterial infection. The problem
22:15
Speaker 1: is it takes days, if not maybe a week or
22:18
Speaker 1: two before your body mounts an effective immune response against
22:22
Speaker 1: this infection. So if you find a tick and they
22:26
Speaker 1: give you a test, say within the first couple of days,
22:28
Speaker 1: it's gonna come back negative, even though you very much
22:31
Speaker 1: have a burg door free um infection, it's gonna come
22:35
Speaker 1: back negative because it's the antibodies haven't been created yet.
22:39
Speaker 1: The other part of the problem is even if you
22:42
Speaker 1: take a blood test that tests directly for the burg
22:45
Speaker 1: Door free bacterium, it moves out of the blood stream
22:49
Speaker 1: really easily and within several days. So there's a very
22:52
Speaker 1: brief window of time where you can directly test for
22:56
Speaker 1: the burg Door free um bacteria and find it in
22:59
Speaker 1: a simple a blood test. Yeah, you can also get
23:02
Speaker 1: false positives. Uh. And they're advocating now for two tiered
23:05
Speaker 1: testing for confirmation of the diagnosis. So if you get
23:09
Speaker 1: that first positive test, uh, sometimes now you'll get a
23:13
Speaker 1: different test, a Western blot test that's gonna really get
23:17
Speaker 1: more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies. Right.
23:21
Speaker 1: So part of the other problem is the a lot
23:24
Speaker 1: what the reason a lot of patient activists and patient
23:27
Speaker 1: advocate groups say no, doctors, you're wrong, like this is
23:31
Speaker 1: not good enough, is that there's a sneaking suspicion among
23:34
Speaker 1: people who have what's called chronic lime or post treatment
23:39
Speaker 1: lime disease syndrome, is that the round of antibiotics, the
23:44
Speaker 1: two to four week round of antibiotics that seemingly cured
23:48
Speaker 1: the lime disease symptoms that you had actually failed to
23:52
Speaker 1: fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection. This
23:57
Speaker 1: created this lime disease in the first place, that it
24:00
Speaker 1: just burrowed further into your body. And because the medical
24:03
Speaker 1: establishment said we got it, it's fine, You're these antibiotics
24:07
Speaker 1: cured it and didn't go deeper. Um that that bacterial
24:12
Speaker 1: infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse
24:15
Speaker 1: ways later. Yeah, and it's a really big deal because
24:18
Speaker 1: you know what will happen is they'll say, you're cured.
24:22
Speaker 1: We gave these antibiotics. They worked. But weeks and months
24:25
Speaker 1: and even years later, when people have persistent fatigue and
24:29
Speaker 1: muscle aches and headaches and you know, like your knee
24:33
Speaker 1: joints hurt, they said, like a brain fog can happen.
24:36
Speaker 1: And these are all things that are I don't want
24:39
Speaker 1: to say generic, but if you walk into your doctor
24:41
Speaker 1: and say I feel like I'm fuzzy and have a
24:43
Speaker 1: brain fog and get headaches and I'm tired, Uh, it's
24:49
Speaker 1: sort of a wide it's hard to pinpoint what's going
24:51
Speaker 1: on and there and they think you're cured of the
24:55
Speaker 1: lime disease. So that's where some of the more dismissive
24:59
Speaker 1: um at least from the lyme disease community. They're saying like,
25:02
Speaker 1: I have this chronic issue, and they're saying, but no,
25:04
Speaker 1: there's no such thing. It's a chronic issue, right. Well,
25:07
Speaker 1: they're also saying like, look, we gave you a test
25:10
Speaker 1: for lyme disease and you came back negative. You know,
25:13
Speaker 1: we know you had it before we tested you. We
25:16
Speaker 1: came back positive, we treated with antibiotics. Now we've tested
25:19
Speaker 1: you again and it's coming back negative. You don't have
25:22
Speaker 1: lyme disease anymore. So there's a huge debate whether they're
25:26
Speaker 1: the antibiotic course is not enough and that the lime
25:29
Speaker 1: disease is persisting elsewhere in the body, and that maybe
25:33
Speaker 1: it's changed its form so that it won't show up
25:35
Speaker 1: on the tests like it should, or um there's remnants
25:39
Speaker 1: of it. I saw one one article that suggested that
25:43
Speaker 1: the cell wall from the spial keet the brig door
25:47
Speaker 1: free spiro key can remain even after the things dead
25:50
Speaker 1: and persistent like joint tissue and cause an immune response there,
25:54
Speaker 1: which would explain this long term arthritis is like a
25:58
Speaker 1: post treatment lyme disease syndromes emptem um or is it
26:03
Speaker 1: that it converts into an entirely different disease, like an
26:07
Speaker 1: autoimmune disorder. Yeah. Some people think that it could trigger
26:11
Speaker 1: an autoimmune response and the infection is gone, and this
26:15
Speaker 1: is what's happening later on? Is uh, Is you have
26:18
Speaker 1: this autoimmune response, it can lead to other things like
26:22
Speaker 1: rheumatic heart disease. I think we do we cover Gian
26:26
Speaker 1: Bear syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes.
26:30
Speaker 1: We've talked about it, and I think, if I remember correctly,
26:32
Speaker 1: is g a bar a GiB? I'm pretty sure. Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: we could both be wearing the apron for this one, though.
26:40
Speaker 1: We'll split it up. I get the half, all right,
26:43
Speaker 1: I get the top half on Porky pig in it
26:45
Speaker 1: all right. I'm gonna just cover my bits down there. Uh.
26:49
Speaker 1: But regardless of of what's happening, what people know is
26:52
Speaker 1: is that they don't feel right, and it's extremely frustrating
26:56
Speaker 1: to to feel these symptoms months and years later and
27:00
Speaker 1: not be taken seriously in the doctor's office. Yeah. So
27:03
Speaker 1: a lot of people are saying that we should we
27:05
Speaker 1: these This course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks,
27:08
Speaker 1: it should be many months because you really need to
27:11
Speaker 1: get all of the spiral keyed out of there or
27:14
Speaker 1: else it's going to persist and you're going to have
27:16
Speaker 1: big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying like this,
27:19
Speaker 1: what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a
27:22
Speaker 1: lot of frustration, Like you're saying, a big disconnect, and
27:25
Speaker 1: this is something that is probably going to keep playing out,
27:29
Speaker 1: although it seems like it maybe on its way out
27:32
Speaker 1: because of the epidemic proportions lime is taking now in
27:35
Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, I mean, the statistics are mounting
27:38
Speaker 1: up such that it can't be ignored any longer. Not
27:40
Speaker 1: that it was ignored, but you know, that's probably a
27:42
Speaker 1: harsh statement, but it's being taken way more seriously now. Yeah,
27:46
Speaker 1: that's something like there's an expectation that there's going to
27:49
Speaker 1: be something like three hundred to four hundred thousand new
27:53
Speaker 1: cases of lime disease in the United States alone, and
27:57
Speaker 1: that tend to of those patients will end up with
28:03
Speaker 1: chronic lime disease. Yeah. I mean, I spend a fair
28:06
Speaker 1: amount of time hiking around the woods with my dogs
28:08
Speaker 1: and have pulled plenty of ticks off of them, and
28:11
Speaker 1: plenty of ticks off of myself and I have fatigue
28:15
Speaker 1: a lot because I have a four year old and
28:17
Speaker 1: every now and then I'm like, I have lime disease. Well,
28:20
Speaker 1: probably not, and here's why. Well, I've never had the
28:22
Speaker 1: bull's eye. First of all, okay, that's a big one.
28:24
Speaker 1: But also the ticks you pull off of your dog,
28:27
Speaker 1: those are dog ticks. They do not transmit lime. It's
28:30
Speaker 1: specifically the long lay or black legged tick, which is
28:35
Speaker 1: a type of dear tick. Well, but here's the thing.
28:38
Speaker 1: There are plenty of deer ticks in the woods. Are
28:40
Speaker 1: you saying that they if they would not latch onto
28:43
Speaker 1: a dog, and they'd be like, oh, no, I don't know.
28:46
Speaker 1: I don't know, because there's deer ticks all over the woods. Sure,
28:48
Speaker 1: there definitely are. Um, I don't know if if dear
28:51
Speaker 1: ticks will latch onto a dog. That's entirely possible they
28:55
Speaker 1: won't since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and
28:58
Speaker 1: deer ticks. But I do know that dog ticks don't
29:00
Speaker 1: transmit lime. Well, I think we should talk about My
29:05
Speaker 1: favorite thing from the Ticks episode, and this is when
29:07
Speaker 1: I will lay on people from time to time, is
29:10
Speaker 1: remember how ticks attached themselves They just hang out on
29:14
Speaker 1: blades of grass and things and just snap their little
29:17
Speaker 1: claws constantly, just waiting for something to pass by. Right,
29:23
Speaker 1: they since the CEO two and of the mammal that's
29:26
Speaker 1: walking past, so interesting and Chuck. One thing I read
29:30
Speaker 1: is that somehow the lime lime infected ticks because they're
29:35
Speaker 1: infected themselves. Lime resides as in like small mammals and
29:39
Speaker 1: rodents as a reservoir. They're infected, but they don't have symptoms.
29:43
Speaker 1: Ticks get infected with this stuff and they're just passing
29:46
Speaker 1: it along. It's not like they're the ultimate source of
29:49
Speaker 1: of lime disease. Ticks are misunderstood. They're really great, right,
29:53
Speaker 1: But from what I saw, the ticks that are infected
29:56
Speaker 1: with the line bacteria are actually better finding hosts than
30:01
Speaker 1: non infected ticks. Like it's somehow enables them to be
30:05
Speaker 1: better parasites. It's interesting. Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we
30:10
Speaker 1: cover that or do I just know that because I don't,
30:13
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but I do. I remember you talking
30:15
Speaker 1: about in the Ticks episode about how they wave their
30:18
Speaker 1: arms in the airway somebody passed by, and I remember
30:21
Speaker 1: one of our listeners made some art of that we
30:25
Speaker 1: gotta find it, that's right, and from snapping their little
30:29
Speaker 1: fingers on a blade of grass to my dogs, but
30:32
Speaker 1: to my scrotum, it's quite a it's quite a ride.
30:36
Speaker 1: It's a wild ride. And then to Emily eventually plucking
30:39
Speaker 1: that thing out for me, that's nice, gotta that's what
30:42
Speaker 1: marriage is all about. Folks. Yeah, you just have your
30:44
Speaker 1: forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, get it out,
30:47
Speaker 1: get it out. Uh. So let's take another break. Okay,
30:51
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about prevention, and then a
30:53
Speaker 1: little bit about some very recent interesting, uh wacky things
30:59
Speaker 1: going on in Congress about lime disease as a bioweapon. Okay, okay, Chuck,
31:33
Speaker 1: you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having
31:35
Speaker 1: to have a tick pulled from your crotch? Don't ever
31:38
Speaker 1: go into mother nature. Just stay in your mid century
31:42
Speaker 1: modern home with tiled floors, and don't go into the woods.
31:46
Speaker 1: It sounds delicious. No, I love the woods. You love
31:49
Speaker 1: the woods? Right? Yeah? Yeah, I love watching the woods
31:53
Speaker 1: on television from your mid century house. No I do.
31:57
Speaker 1: I love the woods myself. Yeah, I'm just getting get
32:00
Speaker 1: in the woods. But um, they recommend things like deep
32:05
Speaker 1: I don't use that stuff on my own body. But
32:09
Speaker 1: some people will say put that all over your body
32:11
Speaker 1: and put it on your clothes and put it on
32:12
Speaker 1: your socks and shoes and just walk around spraying a
32:15
Speaker 1: cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods.
32:18
Speaker 1: What I do is I just check for ticks. Yeah,
32:20
Speaker 1: a good thing to do, seriously, it looks super dorky,
32:23
Speaker 1: but what do you care is to tuck your pant
32:26
Speaker 1: legs into your socks. Uh? When? When? And then when
32:30
Speaker 1: you come out, like wear light colors too, because you
32:32
Speaker 1: can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then
32:34
Speaker 1: when you when you come out of the woods, Um,
32:38
Speaker 1: take your clothes off and take a shower as soon
32:40
Speaker 1: as you can, and just inspect yourself, Inspect your growing,
32:43
Speaker 1: your armpits, your scalp. Part of the problem with lime
32:47
Speaker 1: disease though, is remember you get it from TIMPs? Do
32:51
Speaker 1: you get it from ticks in the nymph stage which
32:55
Speaker 1: are really really small. So you've got to check really
32:57
Speaker 1: really well to see, um, if you have that tick
33:00
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, and just while you're at it, take
33:03
Speaker 1: off the adult tis as well. Yeah, don't just leave
33:06
Speaker 1: those and check your dogs. You know you check your
33:09
Speaker 1: dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their
33:13
Speaker 1: legs whatever that's called their leg bits. Uh, check behind
33:16
Speaker 1: their ears, check under their collars, because ticks are trying
33:19
Speaker 1: to you know, they're not gonna hang out just like
33:21
Speaker 1: on the top of their back. They may start there,
33:24
Speaker 1: but they're going to try and find a place that's
33:26
Speaker 1: dark and warm and out of out of view. Yeah.
33:30
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say you can't get lime disease
33:33
Speaker 1: from an adult chuck. It's just that the nymphs are
33:36
Speaker 1: far more likely to feed on a human than an
33:38
Speaker 1: adult is. But a line infected adult tick will transmit
33:44
Speaker 1: sure line to you too. Very important distinction. So now
33:48
Speaker 1: we move on to the US Congress very recently, about
33:52
Speaker 1: a month ago, and did July I think, Yeah, there
33:54
Speaker 1: was a US House Rep named Chris Smith, Republican out
33:58
Speaker 1: of New Jersey, who introduce legislation that said, hey, Department
34:02
Speaker 1: of Defense, you should review these claims that I'm seeing
34:07
Speaker 1: that our own Pentagon researched using ticks to spread lime
34:12
Speaker 1: disease as a bioweapon in the mid twentieth century. I'm
34:15
Speaker 1: reading a lot about this in books and articles that
34:18
Speaker 1: we did research on Plumb Island and we we and
34:22
Speaker 1: other insects too, not just ticks, of turning them into bioweapons.
34:25
Speaker 1: And this thing passed. And a lot of this comes
34:28
Speaker 1: from a book written by Chris Newby called Bitten Colon
34:33
Speaker 1: The Secret History of Lime Disease and and Biological Weapons.
34:38
Speaker 1: And this book, like I think Chris Smith, the representative
34:41
Speaker 1: from New Jersey said, like this book really inspired me
34:45
Speaker 1: to to take up this legislation. Um. But in the book,
34:48
Speaker 1: Newby basically says, the government at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, and
34:53
Speaker 1: I'm Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into
34:55
Speaker 1: an animal disease research center, we're doing it was an
34:58
Speaker 1: insect disease research they were they were looking into, um
35:04
Speaker 1: well they've they definitely were doing biowarfare research there. Um
35:10
Speaker 1: but and then Fort Dietrich into for however long if
35:13
Speaker 1: they're not still doing it now, but them they were
35:17
Speaker 1: apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons.
35:24
Speaker 1: I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I
35:27
Speaker 1: find that highly believable. But what Nubia is saying is
35:30
Speaker 1: they were doing that research and then the way we
35:34
Speaker 1: got lime diseases. Whatever research they were coming up with escaped,
35:39
Speaker 1: say a ticket attached to a bird that flew off
35:41
Speaker 1: a plumb island and landed in the area around Lime, Connecticut.
35:45
Speaker 1: And these ticks got off and they started to breed
35:48
Speaker 1: and they they became endemic in this area. And that's
35:52
Speaker 1: where lime disease came from. There was actually a biological
35:55
Speaker 1: weapon that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully
36:00
Speaker 1: released into the larger population in the northeast. Yeah. So
36:05
Speaker 1: here's my question. I haven't read the book. Uh, but
36:09
Speaker 1: are they saying that that that we created lime disease
36:14
Speaker 1: or that we just weaponized it, because those are two
36:17
Speaker 1: very different things. Yeah. I don't know what she's saying either,
36:20
Speaker 1: And I think, um, she stopped short of saying that,
36:25
Speaker 1: but that it's implied that if you put two and
36:27
Speaker 1: two together, the government was looking into biological warfare and
36:31
Speaker 1: they were talking about, um, you know, using ticks at
36:34
Speaker 1: some point, and you know, it's really close to this
36:39
Speaker 1: ground zero of where the tick epidemic began you put
36:43
Speaker 1: two and two together. That's the impression I have is
36:45
Speaker 1: that she didn't actually come out and say it, but
36:47
Speaker 1: that she lets the readers surmise for themselves. Which is
36:50
Speaker 1: the problem. Well, I mean that's very easy to disprove
36:55
Speaker 1: if she's actually claiming that they created lime disease, because
37:00
Speaker 1: we just got through saying it was in who was
37:03
Speaker 1: the Mummy? It was aut ars Ago over in the Alps. Uh. Well, true,
37:11
Speaker 1: but it also in the United States. I mean it
37:13
Speaker 1: came around in the Uh we first discovered it in
37:15
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and like several different places. It wasn't just
37:19
Speaker 1: lime Connecticut. They found it in California. And you can't
37:23
Speaker 1: just that just it doesn't add up that it would
37:25
Speaker 1: be popping up in all these random places if it
37:27
Speaker 1: escaped from Long Island Sound in nineteen fifty three, right,
37:30
Speaker 1: which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy theory,
37:33
Speaker 1: and that's very much what it is, is a conspiracy
37:35
Speaker 1: theory that um, well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental,
37:39
Speaker 1: it was purposeful, and that they spread it around the
37:42
Speaker 1: northeast California and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the
37:47
Speaker 1: actual place where the first case of lyme disease was
37:50
Speaker 1: described in the United States in nineteen sixty nine, about
37:54
Speaker 1: six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped
37:59
Speaker 1: up in old lime lime in East HadOM. Well, it's
38:03
Speaker 1: a very bad idea if that's what went on, because
38:07
Speaker 1: you have to depend on a lot of things, which
38:09
Speaker 1: is a these ticks definitely finding their way to uh
38:14
Speaker 1: the enemy, be they attached to the enemy successfully and
38:18
Speaker 1: transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A
38:22
Speaker 1: very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and
38:26
Speaker 1: fatigue over the course of a long time. Right, that
38:30
Speaker 1: also produces a one of a kind telltale rash that
38:34
Speaker 1: tells you, supposedly in plenty of time that you have
38:37
Speaker 1: this um this disease that needs to be treated with
38:41
Speaker 1: a simple course of oral antibiotics. Yeah, and it has
38:44
Speaker 1: to be probably in the country. They're not. They don't
38:46
Speaker 1: thrive well in the city. So it's just it doesn't
38:48
Speaker 1: make a good biological weapon. No. And then again, people
38:52
Speaker 1: who subscribed as a conspiracy theories say, well, they can't
38:55
Speaker 1: all be winners. But maybe it was just something they
38:57
Speaker 1: were experimented with and it wasn't very good. Trust me.
38:59
Speaker 1: I mean, we've done enough research on stuff our American
39:02
Speaker 1: government used to do and continue to do that it's
39:05
Speaker 1: not the most outlandish thing in the world. No, it's not.
39:07
Speaker 1: And that's also why Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey,
39:11
Speaker 1: shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand, because it's entirely plausible.
39:15
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's not just a complete wacko idea. The
39:19
Speaker 1: other reason Christmas shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand
39:22
Speaker 1: is because he is a true lime warrior. He introduced
39:26
Speaker 1: other legislation called the Tick Act, and of course he
39:29
Speaker 1: had to make tick an acronism. That um an acronym,
39:33
Speaker 1: not in an acronism for the ticks, Colon, Identify Control
39:40
Speaker 1: and Knockout Act. He was really grasping like a tick
39:44
Speaker 1: on a blade of grass with that one. But the
39:46
Speaker 1: point is knockouts not one word unless he used his
39:49
Speaker 1: knockout that's what he's saying. I guess because um. But
39:56
Speaker 1: it would create an additional hundred and eighty million dollar
40:00
Speaker 1: is in federal funding for lyme disease research, which was
40:03
Speaker 1: sorely needed right now. That's awesome. I didn't know he
40:05
Speaker 1: was such an advocate. That's good. He really is. He
40:07
Speaker 1: hates lyme disease like like a lot. I was about
40:13
Speaker 1: to say something, but I wish I could take a
40:15
Speaker 1: pill that would bulk up my analogy region in my brain. Oh,
40:19
Speaker 1: your analogies are great. What were you gonna say, I
40:21
Speaker 1: want to know we can beep it up. I was
40:24
Speaker 1: gonna get political. I was gonna say, he hates ticks
40:26
Speaker 1: like he hates Okay, can we leave that and bleep it.
40:31
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll find out right. So, um, the
40:35
Speaker 1: whole idea that it's a bioweapon almost certainly not the case, right,
40:39
Speaker 1: but it makes for good press. I mean, like if
40:41
Speaker 1: you look up like lyme disease and bioweapon. There is
40:44
Speaker 1: a lot of recent articles right now. It just because
40:47
Speaker 1: a member of Congress introduced this legislation. What a lot
40:51
Speaker 1: of people are all are saying is, look, it makes
40:55
Speaker 1: sense like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that.
40:58
Speaker 1: But on the same at the same time, there's another
41:02
Speaker 1: really great explanation for it, and it's climate change that
41:07
Speaker 1: this whole thing came about in the seventies, because we're
41:10
Speaker 1: starting to see what was called, um, the first epidemic
41:15
Speaker 1: from climate change. And there's this really great article on
41:19
Speaker 1: a On, which is a great website by Marybeth Phifer
41:23
Speaker 1: spells it like Michelle Phifer with the p called ticks rising,
41:27
Speaker 1: and um, she's an investigative reporter, science journalist who really
41:32
Speaker 1: went to a lot of troubles to explain how climate
41:35
Speaker 1: change has created a new world for ticks and we
41:39
Speaker 1: are now living in it. Yeah, I mean, in two
41:43
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, the e p A actually started to use
41:47
Speaker 1: for new indicators about what's going on with climate change
41:50
Speaker 1: and the impact, and one of them was the spread
41:52
Speaker 1: of lime disease. So like the e p A officially
41:55
Speaker 1: uses that as a factor uh in an indicator in
41:59
Speaker 1: determining the impact of climate change now right, and so
42:01
Speaker 1: the whole the whole basis of this idea is that
42:04
Speaker 1: because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in
42:08
Speaker 1: far fewer numbers from over the winter, so they're surviving
42:12
Speaker 1: longer there. Um, as it it gets warmer and warmer,
42:16
Speaker 1: higher and higher up their range is spreading rather rapidly.
42:20
Speaker 1: And wherever these ticks go, lime disease is game to
42:23
Speaker 1: go with them. So the spread of lyme disease is
42:27
Speaker 1: increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing too, and
42:30
Speaker 1: ticks have gotten totally out of hand in some areas.
42:33
Speaker 1: In that same aon article, um Marybeth Pheiffer was talking
42:37
Speaker 1: about how moose are dying in their thousands in like
42:42
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death
42:47
Speaker 1: by a hundred thousand ticks at once. It's amazing that
42:51
Speaker 1: never happened before. And now all of a sudden, it's
42:54
Speaker 1: kind of becoming routine because the ticks aren't dying off
42:57
Speaker 1: in the winter like they're supposed to. And again it's
43:00
Speaker 1: because of climate change. And then in the Northeast, Chuck,
43:04
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of
43:06
Speaker 1: ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to
43:09
Speaker 1: support the tick population. Sure, back in the day, there
43:12
Speaker 1: were things like mountain lions, and there were predators that
43:16
Speaker 1: would help control the deer population. Wolves, wolves. They're even
43:20
Speaker 1: suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the deer population. Oh yeah,
43:24
Speaker 1: you can bet that's going to happen. Really, no, I
43:28
Speaker 1: mean do you think so? Yeah? Totally, Like a three
43:31
Speaker 1: thousand people a year coming down with lime in the
43:33
Speaker 1: United States, they're gonna start reintroducing wolves to combat if
43:37
Speaker 1: it has even a half of a chance to be
43:40
Speaker 1: interested to see if that happens, because humans are gonna
43:43
Speaker 1: want to hunt those wolves. Yeah, you know, it just
43:47
Speaker 1: brings it out on us for some reason. Huh. Well,
43:50
Speaker 1: I mean they hunted the mountain lions, right, but I
43:54
Speaker 1: think that's the idea of of oh wait a minute,
43:58
Speaker 1: really weird and um circuit. As bad things happen when
44:03
Speaker 1: we overhunt mountain lions and wolves, maybe when we reintroduce them,
44:07
Speaker 1: we won't have to, you know, or we won't follow
44:10
Speaker 1: that impulse, will just let nature take its course. Right.
44:14
Speaker 1: Who knows you got anything else? Man? I got nothing else.
44:19
Speaker 1: So there's a solution around of antibiotics and some wolves
44:22
Speaker 1: that will cure what ails us. Yeah, advocate for yourself still,
44:26
Speaker 1: people in the wolves persistent. That's good advice for everything.
44:32
Speaker 1: Chuck agreed, Um, almost everything. There's certainly cases where persistence
44:38
Speaker 1: is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right, Okay. Uh.
44:43
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about lyme disease, go
44:47
Speaker 1: check out all of the articles there are to read.
44:50
Speaker 1: And again, go check out the a on article by
44:52
Speaker 1: Marybeth fight for it's really interesting. Um. And since I
44:55
Speaker 1: said it's interesting, that means it's time for a listener mail.
45:00
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this neat story about how great stuff
45:02
Speaker 1: he should know listeners are from Portland, Maine. Hey, guys,
45:06
Speaker 1: my wife, daughter and I all stuff you show listeners
45:09
Speaker 1: for years. Decided last minute to buy tickets to the
45:11
Speaker 1: show while on vacation at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, just
45:15
Speaker 1: a short drive south of Portland. We had nosebleed seats
45:19
Speaker 1: naturally because we waited until just an hour before showtime. Uh.
45:22
Speaker 1: And that was more than cool by us, and we
45:24
Speaker 1: were totally stoked just to be there, whatever the seats.
45:27
Speaker 1: When we got to our balcony seats, a friendly fellow
45:29
Speaker 1: named Matt approached us, said he had three tickets for
45:32
Speaker 1: orchestra seats and asked if we'd like them. The tickets
45:35
Speaker 1: were intended for friends of his who were stuck in
45:38
Speaker 1: labor day weekend traffic couldn't make it to the show.
45:40
Speaker 1: Turns out he had been scouting the crowd for forty
45:43
Speaker 1: minutes looking for a group of three even in listening
45:46
Speaker 1: the help of the ushers to find three people together,
45:48
Speaker 1: and we were the first group that he saw. Brief
45:50
Speaker 1: walk downstairs and there we were three rows from the
45:53
Speaker 1: stage for the supremely excellent show about podcast topic redacted.
46:00
Speaker 1: Thanks to Matt and his friends being stuck in traffic.
46:04
Speaker 1: We went from not having tickets an hour before showtime
46:06
Speaker 1: to having third row ten minutes before you guys took stage.
46:10
Speaker 1: We considered it a little piece of true magic. So
46:12
Speaker 1: while I'm confident this lengthy set up and telling you
46:15
Speaker 1: the story is way too long for the air, no,
46:18
Speaker 1: not true, Richard Clark, the whole family would be for
46:20
Speaker 1: ever grateful if you could give Matt and the Connecticut
46:23
Speaker 1: groundskeeper a huge thank you from Rich Susan and Emily
46:27
Speaker 1: and Upstate New York for sharing those seats with us.
46:29
Speaker 1: That is fantastic. I love our shows, man, it's great.
46:32
Speaker 1: People are so kind. And that is from Richard Clark,
46:35
Speaker 1: not Dick Clark, but rich Clark. Oh that's even better.
46:39
Speaker 1: Dick Clark's taken. That's right. Thank you for rich Clark
46:42
Speaker 1: for recognizing that too. Yeah, thanks for coming to the show,
46:46
Speaker 1: rich and bringing the family. And thank you Matt for
46:48
Speaker 1: being such a cool dude. That was very nice of you.
46:50
Speaker 1: I'm utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people. Yes, okay, Well,
46:57
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, you
46:58
Speaker 1: can go on to stuff you should know die com
47:00
Speaker 1: and you can send us a tweet or insta post
47:04
Speaker 1: or a comment or what have you, that kind of
47:06
Speaker 1: thing because all of our social links are there. Or
47:10
Speaker 1: you can just do it the old fashioned way and
47:12
Speaker 1: send an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
47:15
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio
47:18
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Speaker 1: where ever you listen to your favorite shows.