Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Josh Josh Clark. No, not that Josh
Speaker 1: Clark you went to high school with. Sorry to get
Speaker 1: your hopes up like that. This is Josh Clark from
Speaker 1: that podcast you listen to Stuff You Should Know, And
Speaker 1: for this week's SYSK Select, I'd chosen our September twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen episode on lime disease. This one's pretty fascinating because
Speaker 1: it turns out lime disease has a ton of intrigue
Speaker 1: associated with it. It started out with a cluster of
Speaker 1: weird symptoms of people in Connecticut, and then they finally
Speaker 1: figured out it was coming from tics. But the mystery
Speaker 1: wasn't over because people started developing chronic lime and at
Speaker 1: first the medical community didn't believe they had any disease whatsoever.
Speaker 1: They thought it was all in their heads. Well they
Speaker 1: were wrong. You can find out about all this and
Speaker 1: more in this episode on lime disease.
Speaker 2: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This
Speaker 1: is Stuff you Should Know the podcast. Yeah, Chuck, I
Speaker 1: have a question for you. Yes, you know it kicks
Speaker 1: me OFFLME disease.
Speaker 3: I'm so mad at you.
Speaker 1: Blame you me for that one. She's like, you should
Speaker 1: say this, and I said, you know what, I'm I
Speaker 1: should totally say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This is sort of a follow up to our
Speaker 3: July twenty seventh, twenty ten episode Why Ticks Suck In,
Speaker 3: which which is sort of a legendary episode because we
Speaker 3: falsely promised to send people T shirts if they made
Speaker 3: it all the way through the episode. That's right, We're
Speaker 3: just kidding. But we still get those requests of wears
Speaker 3: my shirt.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's hilarious. I forgot about that and also get
Speaker 1: sued today.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Probably. So. Also want to point out and shout
Speaker 3: out our former website HowStuffWorks dot com because a couple
Speaker 3: of the articles that we use for much of this
Speaker 3: episode is from the old HSW website.
Speaker 1: Nice, they're holding it down over there.
Speaker 3: They're holding it down and this is real good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we're talking today about lime disease.
Speaker 3: In particular, not limes.
Speaker 1: No, we should say it's capital l ym disease. And
Speaker 1: the reason it's called that is because it's named after
Speaker 1: a town which is one of three towns where the
Speaker 1: initial outbreak of lime disease that led to this bacterial
Speaker 1: infection persistent bacterial infection was first describe medically.
Speaker 3: One of the facts of the show. I think, oh yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: who knew it was named after a town, Lime, Connecticut?
Speaker 3: I knew did you know that before this?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 3: Did we cover that? And why tik suck?
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: All right, well, you're smarter than me that.
Speaker 1: No, it's not that. I think what got me was
Speaker 1: I I heard about people saying, like, no lime disease,
Speaker 1: like people take it for granted, but it's actually some
Speaker 1: this really mysterious illness. And I'm like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? So I think I looked into this year's
Speaker 1: back and that's what I found out.
Speaker 3: All right, that was all So we're equally smart.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, I'm not smarter than you.
Speaker 3: What is smart? It's just like someone happens to know
Speaker 3: one thing, someone else knows another. Sure, I say, they
Speaker 3: cancel out, we're all smart here you goo.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you pulled that out because I would have
Speaker 1: been like, what is smart? I couldn't have come up
Speaker 1: with the definition.
Speaker 3: So lime disease, We'll go ahead and hit you with
Speaker 3: a couple of stats here. Lime disease in the United
Speaker 3: States is more than doubled since nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: That's astounding, it is.
Speaker 3: And it has spread too. It used to be very
Speaker 3: much localized in kind of the Northeast, sort of mid
Speaker 3: Atlantic areas, some in the South, but now you can
Speaker 3: get lime disease. And I believe the entire lower forty
Speaker 3: eight is that correct.
Speaker 1: There are cases in all forty eight states. Supposedly half
Speaker 1: of the counties in the United States now are considered
Speaker 1: a high risk for lime disease. And like all of
Speaker 1: this happened just in the last like twenty or so years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, there's a lot of debate over
Speaker 1: the CDC calls lime disease endemic, which is a disease
Speaker 1: that has become a like an ongoing part of an
Speaker 1: area or region, and some other people are saying, guys,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is an epidemic. This is
Speaker 1: an epidemic, and you should start calling it that because
Speaker 1: it will kind of raise the alarm to the next
Speaker 1: level or two where it should be. Because this is
Speaker 1: a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing right now,
Speaker 1: lime disease is the number one vector borne disease in
Speaker 1: the United States. It's way more prevalent than things like
Speaker 1: West Nile or chicken gooony or anything like that, but
Speaker 1: it's still kind of treated as like up there in
Speaker 1: the northeastern US thing, and that's just not the case.
Speaker 1: It's spread in every direction except east because it hit
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, but everywhere else where. It can spread into
Speaker 1: the interior of the United States and up into Canada.
Speaker 1: It's starting to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's also a history continuing to this day
Speaker 3: even where lime disease can be overlooked, misdiagnosed, not taken
Speaker 3: as seriously by your doctor as it should be, including
Speaker 3: what we'll get to later on something called post treatment
Speaker 3: lime disease syndrome. And it's all very frustrating if you
Speaker 3: have been an individual that has had lime disease. There's
Speaker 3: a big community out there of people that are like,
Speaker 3: why won't anyone listen to us, Why won't our doctors
Speaker 3: take as seriously? And what do we have to do here?
Speaker 3: Like do we have to start dropping dead?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of frustration in that community
Speaker 1: because there's a sentiment among the medical establishment that.
Speaker 3: You know, he takes some antiotics.
Speaker 1: Exactly, it's easy to cure lime disease. Here's some antibiotics.
Speaker 1: You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head.
Speaker 1: We're not going to say they're in your head, but
Speaker 1: they're in your head. And the people who are experiencing
Speaker 1: these symptoms are like, no, my life has been derailed
Speaker 1: by these symptoms, and you guys aren't doing anything about it.
Speaker 3: It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out
Speaker 3: there that are pretty pretty stoked right now to be
Speaker 3: hearing this. Yeah, you know for sure we're advocating for
Speaker 3: you guys. Sure, not patting myself on the back, although
Speaker 3: I am literally patty like.
Speaker 1: I see you chuck here. That albow is sticking out
Speaker 1: pretty far. So.
Speaker 3: Lime disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by
Speaker 3: the bacterium boro lea burgdorfrairi wow borg da faery burg
Speaker 3: dea fraiari.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get you an apron and call you the
Speaker 1: word butcher.
Speaker 3: Burgdor fairy work more. And we'll get to why it's
Speaker 3: called that in a bit. But if you haven't caught
Speaker 3: on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites.
Speaker 1: Right, So, a tick, and in particular a nymph stage
Speaker 1: of a tick, which is a young adult or juvenile tick,
Speaker 1: will transmit this bacteria, the Borellia burgdor fairy, into a human.
Speaker 1: And the reason we usually get it from nymphs chuck
Speaker 1: is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing,
Speaker 1: but a nymph tick will because they're stupid, they don't
Speaker 1: know anything yet. So as they're feeding on us. After
Speaker 1: somewhere maybe around twenty four to thirty six hours of
Speaker 1: feeding this infected tick that has this bacteria in it,
Speaker 1: the bacteria will make its way from the mid gut
Speaker 1: to the tick saliva and the tick transmit it transmits
Speaker 1: it into the human bloodstream, where it just absolutely wreaks
Speaker 1: havoc on the human body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you said something really key there, twenty four
Speaker 3: thirty six, forty eight hours later, really really important. They
Speaker 3: have to be attached to you for that long, sometimes
Speaker 3: even longer to transmit this bacterium. So if you find
Speaker 3: a tick on you and you get it off, if
Speaker 3: you don't need to sweat lime disease, no, if you
Speaker 3: get it off in due time.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, If like you see it's still crawling on you.
Speaker 1: It's unattached, you don't worry about it at all. But
Speaker 1: when it is attached and when it has transmitted the
Speaker 1: bacteria what it's transmitted, This be burgdor Ferry is like
Speaker 1: really amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving
Speaker 1: you a bacterial infection. It has figured out how to
Speaker 1: zoom through the bloodstream but then also take itself out
Speaker 1: of the bloodstream by latching onto the walls of your
Speaker 1: blood vessels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was crazy about this cellular stuff that once
Speaker 3: it's attached to a cell. They said, it's like a slinky.
Speaker 3: It doesn't let go. It just like basically reaches out
Speaker 3: and grabs the next cell without letting go of the
Speaker 3: previous cell and just sort of walks end over end right,
Speaker 3: never unattaching.
Speaker 1: Itself right exactly. So as it's moving along, it's never
Speaker 1: it's not going to get kind of you know, washed
Speaker 1: away and the extracellular matrix it's stuck to the cell.
Speaker 1: If it wants to be stuck in the cell, it
Speaker 1: can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls
Speaker 1: to pull itself out of the bloodstream and then go
Speaker 1: attack you know, specific parts of the body, So it's
Speaker 1: really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes
Speaker 1: it kind of pernicious. And then another thing exactly, it's
Speaker 1: basically yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. And then another thing it does, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I think this is really really recent research. It can
Speaker 1: actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate
Speaker 1: than the normal mutation rate for bacteria, something like fifteen
Speaker 1: times faster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what that does is that just makes it
Speaker 3: really hard for our human immune system to catch up to.
Speaker 1: It, right, because our immune system will produce antibodies based
Speaker 1: on the initial infection, but by the time the antibodies
Speaker 1: come around, the bacteria may have changed itself so that
Speaker 1: the antibodies won't recognize it. They'll just go right past
Speaker 1: it because it doesn't it doesn't fit the description that
Speaker 1: the antibodies have.
Speaker 3: That's right, And you'll know that something bad is happening
Speaker 3: first of all if you find that tick. But if
Speaker 3: you get headaches, fever, fatigue is a huge, huge symptom.
Speaker 3: But the real telltale is what's called em It's an
Speaker 3: expanding skin rash called erythema migrants and it's like it's
Speaker 3: that circular pattern. And then we did talk about this
Speaker 3: on the Ticks episode. But it's a circular pattern with
Speaker 3: what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you can take off your butcher's apron now
Speaker 1: because you just that was beautiful, put on your chef's
Speaker 1: chef's hat.
Speaker 3: You're sweating over there.
Speaker 1: So that that particular rash, that bullseye rash, that is
Speaker 1: like a just an absolute telltale sign that you have
Speaker 1: a line boreolis boreliosis infection that only comes around and
Speaker 1: like maybe seventy to eighty percent of cases. I think
Speaker 1: if every person got that rash, we would not have
Speaker 1: this problem with lime disease because it would be caught
Speaker 1: very quickly because you get that within usually about a
Speaker 1: week or less of getting infected. But it doesn't come
Speaker 1: up in all cases. And with some of those other
Speaker 1: symptoms like you said, like weakness, headaches, flu like symptoms
Speaker 1: like those could be a lot of different other things,
Speaker 1: joint pain, and so the lime disease infection goes undiagnosed
Speaker 1: or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases, are did for
Speaker 1: many many years. It's just now that they're starting to
Speaker 1: kind of recognize it or suspect lime when otherwise they
Speaker 1: might not have.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean literally hundreds of things can be can
Speaker 3: have the same symptoms as lime disease. So lime's been
Speaker 3: around for a long time. We'll talk about the history
Speaker 3: here in a minute, as far as the nineteen seventies
Speaker 3: go and official recognition, but it's been around. I believe
Speaker 3: the Yale School of Public Health find the bacterium in
Speaker 3: ancient North America, like sixty thousand years old before the
Speaker 3: arrival of humans. They have an autopsy of a fifty
Speaker 3: three hundred year old mummy that had lime disease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know Utzi the Iceman, remember him?
Speaker 3: I remember Uzzy?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was disappointed that they referred to him as
Speaker 1: a fifty three hundred year old mummy. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's Utzi the ice everybody knows him, give him his name.
Speaker 1: But he had lime disease.
Speaker 3: He did. And there was a German physician named Alfred
Speaker 3: Buckwald who described this that em skin rash that we
Speaker 3: now call lime disease about one hundred and thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Right, So lime disease has been around a while, but
Speaker 1: we are just now seeing a huge again an epidemic
Speaker 1: of it, and in a massive spread of it, not
Speaker 1: just in North America, but there's also two other kinds
Speaker 1: of ticks that transmit two other kinds of lime causing
Speaker 1: bacteria in Europe and Asia, and in all three places,
Speaker 1: North America, Europe, and parts of Asia, the incidence of
Speaker 1: lime diseases picking up at an alarming pace.
Speaker 3: I think we should slow down our pace. Take break. Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about Lime
Speaker 3: Connecticut right after this. All right, So Lime, Connecticut. Something
Speaker 3: is very old hat to you.
Speaker 1: Right it for years Lime Old Lime?
Speaker 3: And what was the third town? I don't remember, No,
Speaker 3: let's just call it New Lime. It was.
Speaker 1: Notice, they're going to be so mad. Their high school
Speaker 1: football team is going to go brazik on Old Lime
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen seventies, though, there were a group of
Speaker 3: children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were
Speaker 3: having all these weird symptoms swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches,
Speaker 3: all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days,
Speaker 3: But in the early nineteen seventies, doctors were definitely did
Speaker 3: not have this on the radar and were very dismissive
Speaker 3: of what was going on in these towns and if
Speaker 3: it were not for the work of Judith Minch and
Speaker 3: Polly Murray too, just regular moms. Although Polly Murray did
Speaker 3: work for the World Health Organization for a while. They
Speaker 3: were advocates. They were patient advocates because their families were
Speaker 3: getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like,
Speaker 3: someone's got to do something. Something's going on here, and
Speaker 3: these doctors are not being any help, right, And it
Speaker 3: was a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book.
Speaker 3: She made it sort of her life's work in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, a book called The Widening Circle. And because
Speaker 3: of sort of the persistent sexism and science, they were
Speaker 3: largely discounted, even though they had a list of thirty
Speaker 3: seven individuals they researched on their own, contacted scientists. We
Speaker 3: just really need to shout them out. Polly Murray died
Speaker 3: just about a month ago at the age of eighty five.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah, Yeah, she was a persistent
Speaker 1: cuss as they call them up in the Yankee States.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, yes, from the everything I've
Speaker 1: read and all the impressions I have. They were very
Speaker 1: much dismissed, and it was very much sexist and also
Speaker 1: I think because they weren't doctors. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what this is, so let's just
Speaker 1: pretend it's not real. But luckily those two women in
Speaker 1: the groups that they established, they went on and they
Speaker 1: contacted Yale Medical School, they contacted the state, and they
Speaker 1: really kind of put this on the map. They said,
Speaker 1: there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on where you
Speaker 1: have a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. What are you guys going to do
Speaker 1: about it? And because of their agitation, this mystery made
Speaker 1: its way to the desk or I guess, the microscope
Speaker 1: of a guy named Willie Bergdorffer, and he was at
Speaker 1: the time the world's foremost authority on what's called Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain spotted fever, which is another tickborn bacterial infection.
Speaker 3: I remember that when I was a kid, that was
Speaker 3: a big news item. It was a scary one.
Speaker 1: He was working out in Colorado, and Colorado was ground
Speaker 1: zero for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. For a while, which is, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do not want to have that. It's a really
Speaker 1: bad bacterial infection. But by this time they had done
Speaker 1: thanks to the legwork done by the moms and the
Speaker 1: patient advocate groups in the Lime, Connecticut, it had been
Speaker 1: pretty well established that the common thread between all these people,
Speaker 1: besides where they lived and by the way, it was
Speaker 1: chuck lyme Old Lime and East HadAM sorry East HadAM
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that they all lived in the
Speaker 1: same region, was that all of them were almost all
Speaker 1: of them were called being bitten by a tick, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before
Speaker 1: the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willie
Speaker 1: Bergdorffer's microscope because they had said, there's something in the
Speaker 1: ticks here that is creating this disease that we haven't
Speaker 1: encountered before.
Speaker 3: That's right, and he had already discovered this bacterium called
Speaker 3: it How do you how do you pronounce that spirit.
Speaker 1: Chat spira keet, spire key, But spira keet is a
Speaker 1: type of bacteria, and that's what that's what they all, right,
Speaker 1: spirra chet and you just made me think of the
Speaker 1: older brother Chet and weird.
Speaker 3: Now go make yourself one. But what.
Speaker 1: Man? That guy had some good quotes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, rip what what Bill Paxton when he died
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago? Very sad?
Speaker 1: Are you sure I'm thinking of Bill Pullman?
Speaker 3: No, Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I
Speaker 3: had just listened to his uh Mark Maron interview and
Speaker 3: he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more
Speaker 3: than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. He just
Speaker 3: sounded like the best guy and best family man. And
Speaker 3: he passed away way too early.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, I did not know about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still
Speaker 1: pretty good.
Speaker 3: Was it the first viewinger?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, I've seen it before.
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, great movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But he wrote and I believe directed and starred
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was so good. And I love a good
Speaker 3: Powers Booth cast and call.
Speaker 1: For sure it was. It was unusual and surprising.
Speaker 3: But it was perfect, very good, underrated film. Where are we? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were talking about Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Willie
Speaker 1: Bergdorfer identifying the spiro keet that was causing.
Speaker 3: Lime hirakeet right, spira chet What a dumb, dumb.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, remember we established we're all smart.
Speaker 3: He Yeah, So he discovered this, this parakeet, and he
Speaker 3: was honored by this discovery and naming that thing after himself.
Speaker 3: That's why it has that interesting name.
Speaker 1: I get the impression. And he didn't name it after himself.
Speaker 1: They named it after him to go on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but.
Speaker 1: There's a big difference between him saying this thing's called
Speaker 1: the Burgdorferey bacteria and somebody saying we're going to name
Speaker 1: this after you.
Speaker 3: No, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Burgdorfrey or Burgdorfer. He figures out what is
Speaker 1: the basis of lime disease, which is great. That's an
Speaker 1: enormous breakthrough. It establishes that yes, it is its own thing,
Speaker 1: it's its own disease. And because it was a bacteria,
Speaker 1: it's a spier key, which again it's a kind of
Speaker 1: a snakelike shaped bacteria specific kind that walks like a slinky.
Speaker 1: Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh,
Speaker 1: we got this here. Take some antibiotics, and over the
Speaker 1: course of several years, starting in I think the nineties,
Speaker 1: is when they really started to say, okay, we can
Speaker 1: cure lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on
Speaker 1: by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Right,
Speaker 1: here you go, and they said, case closed, we're the
Speaker 1: medical establishment. Let's go have a party for ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And here's the thing, Like many times that can
Speaker 3: take care of the problem. So it's not like they
Speaker 3: were just lazy and not doing their work. But I
Speaker 3: think they closed the book a little too soon, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people do because that oral that round
Speaker 3: of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can
Speaker 3: really work. But and I think they say, what like
Speaker 3: nine times out of ten, if you catch it early,
Speaker 3: then that will that will work right there.
Speaker 1: So they're so persistent with that assertion that if you
Speaker 1: find a tick on yourself and you live in an
Speaker 1: area where lime disease is known to thrive, if you
Speaker 1: can't say how long that tick's been on you, they're
Speaker 1: probably just going to give you a round of antibiotics portolactically. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again, like you said, in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: and I believe, from what I've read, the vast majority
Speaker 1: of cases in early stage lime disease, that round of
Speaker 1: antibiotics should work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they say that if you and This is
Speaker 3: from the American Lime Diesus Foundation quote. If you live
Speaker 3: in an endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early lime disease,
Speaker 3: and suspect recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion
Speaker 3: to your doctor so that he or she may make
Speaker 3: a more informed diagnosis.
Speaker 1: So show up to your doctor and say, yeah, madam,
Speaker 1: I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please
Speaker 1: sit down.
Speaker 3: Well, they're saying sort of, still, you still sort of
Speaker 3: need to be your own advocate because it is so
Speaker 3: hard to diagnose. Still, because if you're going on symptoms alone,
Speaker 3: like we said, there are hundreds of things that share
Speaker 3: those symptoms and lime disease may not be the first
Speaker 3: thing they think of.
Speaker 1: That's a huge problem with lime disease. Another huge problem
Speaker 1: is that the test we use to test for lime
Speaker 1: disease doesn't actually test for the b burgdorfree bacteria. It
Speaker 1: tests for the antibodies that should be present in your
Speaker 1: bloodstream if you have a bacterial infection, not even specific
Speaker 1: to that one, but a bacterial infection. The problem is
Speaker 1: it takes days, if not maybe a week or two
Speaker 1: before your body mounts an effective immune response against this infection.
Speaker 1: So if you find a tick and they give you
Speaker 1: a test, say within the first couple of days, it's
Speaker 1: going to come back negative. Even though you very much
Speaker 1: have a Burgdor free infection, it's going to come negative
Speaker 1: because it's the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other
Speaker 1: part of the problem is even if you take a
Speaker 1: blood test that tests directly for the Burgdor free bacterium,
Speaker 1: it moves out of the blood stream really easily and
Speaker 1: within its several days. So there's a very brief window
Speaker 1: of time where you can directly test for the Burgdor
Speaker 1: free bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can also get false positives, and they're advocating
Speaker 3: now for two tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis.
Speaker 3: So if you get that first positive test sometimes now
Speaker 3: you'll get a different test, a Western block test, right,
Speaker 3: that's gonna really get more specific to that antibody, not
Speaker 3: just the general antibodies.
Speaker 1: Right. So part of the other problem is the reason
Speaker 1: a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say no, doctors,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, like this is not good enough, is that
Speaker 1: there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called
Speaker 1: chronic lime or post treatment lime disease syndrome is that
Speaker 1: the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round
Speaker 1: of antibiotics that seemingly cured the lime disease symptoms, that
Speaker 1: you had actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria
Speaker 1: that created this infection, that created this lime disease in
Speaker 1: the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body.
Speaker 1: And because the medical establishment said we got it, it's fine,
Speaker 1: these antibiotics cured it and didn't go deeper, that bacterial
Speaker 1: infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse
Speaker 1: ways later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a really big deal because you know
Speaker 3: what will happen is they'll say, you're cured. We gave
Speaker 3: these antibiotics. They worked. But weeks and months and even
Speaker 3: years later, when people have persistent fatigue and muscle aches
Speaker 3: and headaches and you know, like your knee joints hurt,
Speaker 3: they said, like a brain full can happen. And these
Speaker 3: are all things that are I don't want to say generic,
Speaker 3: but if you walk into your doctor and say I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm fuzzy and I have a brain fog
Speaker 3: and get headaches and I'm tired, it's sort of a
Speaker 3: wide it's hard to pinpoint what's going on. Sure, and
Speaker 3: they think you're cured of the lime disease. So that's
Speaker 3: where some of the more dismissive, at least from the
Speaker 3: lime disease community. They're saying, like, I have this chronic issue,
Speaker 3: and they're saying, but no, there's no such thing as
Speaker 3: a chronic issue. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, they're also saying like, look, we gave you a
Speaker 1: test for lime disease and you came back negative. Right
Speaker 1: you know, we know you had it before we tested you.
Speaker 1: We came back positive, We treat you with antibiotics. Now
Speaker 1: we've tested you again and it's coming back negative. You
Speaker 1: don't have lime disease anymore. So there's a huge debate
Speaker 1: whether they're the antibiotic course is not enough and that
Speaker 1: the lime disease is persisting elsewhere in the body, and
Speaker 1: that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't
Speaker 1: show up on the tests like it should, or there's
Speaker 1: remnants of it. I saw one article that suggested that
Speaker 1: the cell wall from the spiro keat the brigdor free
Speaker 1: spiro keet can remain even after the thing's dead and
Speaker 1: persistent joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which
Speaker 1: would explain this long term arthritis is like a post
Speaker 1: treatment line disease syndrome symptom. Or is it that it
Speaker 1: converts into an entirely different disease, like an autoimmune disorder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some people think that it could trigger an autoimmune
Speaker 3: response and the infection's gone, and this is what's happening
Speaker 3: later on. Is you have this autoimmune response, it can
Speaker 3: lead to other things like rheumatic heart disease. I think
Speaker 3: we do we cover Keon Bear syndrome or just talk
Speaker 3: about it in different episodes.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it, and I think if I remember
Speaker 1: correctly as Gia Barre.
Speaker 3: GiB, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could both be wearing the apron for this
Speaker 1: one though.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll split it up. I get the doer half.
Speaker 1: All right, I get the top half. I'm porky pigging
Speaker 1: it all right.
Speaker 3: I'm going to just cover my bits down there. But
Speaker 3: regardless of what's happening, what people know is is that
Speaker 3: they don't feel right, and it's extremely frustrating to feel
Speaker 3: these symptoms months and years later and not be taken
Speaker 3: seriously in a doctor's office.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of people are saying that these
Speaker 1: this course of antimbiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks,
Speaker 1: it should be many months, because you really need to
Speaker 1: get all of the spiral keet out of there or
Speaker 1: else it's going to persist and you're going to have
Speaker 1: big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying, like
Speaker 1: what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of frustration that you're saying a big disconnect, and
Speaker 1: this is something that is probably going to keep playing out,
Speaker 1: although it seems like it may be on its way
Speaker 1: out because of the epidemic proportions line is taking now
Speaker 1: in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that
Speaker 3: it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored,
Speaker 3: but you know that's probably a harsh statement, but it's
Speaker 3: being taken away more seriously now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw something like there's an expectation that there's
Speaker 1: going to be something like three hundred to four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand new cases of lime disease in the United States alone,
Speaker 1: and that ten to twenty percent of those patients will
Speaker 1: end up with chronic lime disease.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I spend a fair amount of time
Speaker 3: hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled
Speaker 3: plenty of ticks off of them and plenty of ticks
Speaker 3: off of myself. And I have fatigue a lot because
Speaker 3: I have a four year old and every now and
Speaker 3: then I'm like, do I have lime disease?
Speaker 1: Well? Probably not, And here's why.
Speaker 3: Well, I've never had the bulls eye. First of all, okay,
Speaker 3: that's a big one.
Speaker 1: But also the ticks you pull off of your dog,
Speaker 1: those are dog ticks. They do not transmit lime. It's
Speaker 1: specifically the long late or black legged tick, which is
Speaker 1: a type of deer tick.
Speaker 3: Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer
Speaker 3: ticks in the woods. Are you saying that they if
Speaker 3: they would not latch onto a dog, and they'd be.
Speaker 1: Like, ooh, no, I don't know. I don't know, because
Speaker 1: there's deer ticks all over the woods. Sure, there definitely are.
Speaker 1: I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible they won't, since there's such a differentiation
Speaker 1: between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know
Speaker 1: that dog ticks don't transmit lime.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing
Speaker 3: from the ticks episode, And this is one I will
Speaker 3: lay on people from time to time is remember how
Speaker 3: ticks attach themselves. Sure, they just hang out on blades
Speaker 3: of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly,
Speaker 3: just waiting for something to pass by.
Speaker 1: Yet they think can latch onto, right, they sense the
Speaker 1: co two of the mammal that's walking past.
Speaker 3: So interesting and chuck.
Speaker 1: One thing I read is that somehow the lime lime
Speaker 1: infected ticks because they're infect of themselves. Lime resides as
Speaker 1: in like small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get
Speaker 1: infected with this stuff and they're just passing it along.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're the ultimate source of lime disease.
Speaker 3: No, ticks are misunderstood.
Speaker 1: They're really great, right, But from what I saw, the
Speaker 1: ticks that are infected with the lime bacteria are actually
Speaker 1: better at finding hosts than non infected ticks. Like it
Speaker 1: somehow enables them to be better parasites. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do
Speaker 3: I just know that?
Speaker 1: Because I don't, I don't remember, but I do I
Speaker 1: remember you talking about in the Tics episode about how
Speaker 1: they wave their arms in the air when somebody passed by,
Speaker 1: and I remember one of our listeners made some art
Speaker 1: of that. We got to find it.
Speaker 3: That's right. And from snapping their little fingers on a
Speaker 3: blade of grass to my dog's but to my scrotum,
Speaker 3: it's quite a to ride.
Speaker 1: It's a wild ride.
Speaker 3: And then to Emily eventually plucking that thing out for me,
Speaker 3: that's nice, gotta that's what marriage is all about, folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just have your forearm thrust across your eyes.
Speaker 1: You're like, get it out, get it out.
Speaker 3: Uh. So let's take another break. Okay, we'll talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about prevention and then a little bit about
Speaker 3: some very recent interesting wacky things going on in Congress
Speaker 3: about lime disease as a bio weapon.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you
Speaker 1: keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch?
Speaker 3: Don't ever go into mother Nature. Just stay in your
Speaker 3: mid century modern home with tiled floors, and don't go
Speaker 3: into the woods. Sounds delicious, No, I love the woods.
Speaker 3: You love the woods? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love watching the Woods on television.
Speaker 3: Yeah, from your midcentury house.
Speaker 1: No, I do. I love the woods myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just kidding, get in the woods, but they
Speaker 3: recommend things like deet. I don't use that stuff on
Speaker 3: my own body, but some people will say put that
Speaker 3: all over your body and put it on your clothes,
Speaker 3: and put it on your socks and shoes and.
Speaker 1: Just walk around spring a cloud of it around you
Speaker 1: constantly while you're in the woods.
Speaker 3: What I do is I just check for ticks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a good thing to do, Seriously, it looks super dorky,
Speaker 1: but what do you care is to tuck your pant
Speaker 1: legs into your socks. Yeah, sure, when and then when
Speaker 1: you come out, like wear light colors too, because you
Speaker 1: can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then
Speaker 1: when you when you come out of the woods, take
Speaker 1: your clothes off and take a shower as soon as
Speaker 1: you can, and just inspect yourself. Inspect you're growing your armpits,
Speaker 1: your scalp. Part of the problem with lime disease, though,
Speaker 1: is remember you get it from TIMPs? Do you get
Speaker 1: it from ticks in the nymph stage which are really
Speaker 1: really small. So you've got to check really really well
Speaker 1: to see if you have that tick on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the
Speaker 3: adult tics as well. Yeah, don't don't just leave those
Speaker 3: and check your dogs. You know, you check your dogs
Speaker 3: under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs
Speaker 3: whatever that's called their leg pits. Check behind their ears,
Speaker 3: check under their collars, because ticks are trying to you know,
Speaker 3: they're not going to hang out just like on the
Speaker 3: top of their back. They may start there, but they're
Speaker 3: going to try and find a place that's dark and
Speaker 3: warm and out of view.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't mean to say you can't get lime
Speaker 1: disease from an adult chuck. It's just that the nymphs
Speaker 1: are far more likely to eat on a human than
Speaker 1: an adult is. But a lime infected adult tick will
Speaker 1: transmit sure lyn to you too.
Speaker 3: For sure, A very important distinction. So now we move
Speaker 3: on to the US Congress. Very recently, about a month ago,
Speaker 3: end of July. I think, yeah, there was a US
Speaker 3: House rep named Chris Smith, a Republican out of New Jersey,
Speaker 3: who introduced legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you
Speaker 3: should review these claims that I'm seeing that our own
Speaker 3: Pentagon researched using tics to spread lime disease as a
Speaker 3: bioweapon in the mid twentieth century. I'm reading a lot
Speaker 3: about this in books and articles that we did research
Speaker 3: on Plumb Island and and other insects too, not just ticks,
Speaker 3: of turning them into bioweapons, and this thing passed. And
Speaker 3: a lot of this comes from a book written by
Speaker 3: Chris Newby called Bitten Colon The Secret History of Lime
Speaker 3: Disease and Biological Weapons.
Speaker 1: And this book, like I think Chris Smith, the representative
Speaker 1: from New Jersey said, like, this book really inspired me
Speaker 1: to take up this legislation. But in the book, Newby
Speaker 1: basically says, the government at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, and on
Speaker 1: Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into an
Speaker 1: animal disease research center, we're doing.
Speaker 3: It was an insect disease research center before that, I guess.
Speaker 1: They were looking into well, they definitely were doing biowarfare
Speaker 1: research there.
Speaker 3: Early early nineteen fifties, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Fort Dietrich for however long if they're not
Speaker 1: still doing it now, But they were apparently looking into
Speaker 1: ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I
Speaker 1: find that highly believable. But what Newby is saying is
Speaker 1: they were doing that research and then the way we
Speaker 1: got line diseases, whatever research they were coming up with, escaped,
Speaker 1: say a tick attached to a bird that flew off
Speaker 1: of Plumb Island and landed in the area around Lyme, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and these ticks got off and they started to breed
Speaker 1: and they became endemic in this area. And that's where
Speaker 1: lime disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon
Speaker 1: that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully released
Speaker 1: into the larger population in the northeast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So here's my question. I haven't read the book,
Speaker 3: but are they saying that that we created lime disease
Speaker 3: or that we just weaponized it, because those are two
Speaker 3: very different things.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what she's saying either, and I
Speaker 1: think she stopped short of saying that, but that it's
Speaker 1: implied that if you put two and two together, the
Speaker 1: government was looking into biological warfare and they were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, using ticks at some point, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's really close to this ground zero of where the
Speaker 1: tick epidemic began. You put two and two together, that's
Speaker 1: the impression I have is that she didn't actually come
Speaker 1: out and say it, but that she lets the readers
Speaker 1: surmise for themselves, which is the problem.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's
Speaker 3: actually claiming that they created lime disease, because we just
Speaker 3: got through saying it was in who was the Mummy Utsi?
Speaker 3: It was in Utsi years ago over in the Alps. Well, true,
Speaker 3: but it also in the United States. I mean, it
Speaker 3: came around in the We first discovered it that in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, and like several different places. It wasn't just
Speaker 3: lime Connecticut. They found it in California, right, And you
Speaker 3: can't just that just it doesn't add up that it
Speaker 3: would be popping up in all these random places if
Speaker 3: it escaped from Long Island Sound in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: Right, which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory and is very much what it is, is a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental.
Speaker 1: It was purposeful that they spread it around the northeast
Speaker 1: California and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual
Speaker 1: place where the first case of lime disease was described
Speaker 1: in the United States in nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, about
Speaker 1: six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped
Speaker 1: up in old Lime Lime in East HadAM.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a very bad idea if that's what went on,
Speaker 3: because you have to depend on a lot of things,
Speaker 3: which is A these tics definitely finding their way to
Speaker 3: the enemy. B they attached to the enemy successfully and
Speaker 3: transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A
Speaker 3: very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and
Speaker 3: fatigue over the course of a long time.
Speaker 1: Right, that also produces a one of a kind, telltale rash,
Speaker 1: Right that tells you, supposedly in plenty of time that
Speaker 1: you have this this disease that needs to be treated
Speaker 1: with a simple course of oral antibiotics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it has to be probably in the country.
Speaker 3: They don't thrive well in the city, right, So it's
Speaker 3: just it doesn't make a good biological weapon.
Speaker 1: No. And then again people who subscribed as conspiracy theory say, well,
Speaker 1: they can't all be winners. But maybe it was just
Speaker 1: something they were experimenting with and it wasn't very good.
Speaker 3: Trust me. I mean, we've done enough research on stuff
Speaker 3: our American government used to do and continue to do that.
Speaker 3: It's not the most outlandish thing in the world.
Speaker 1: No, it's not. And that's also why Chris Smith, the
Speaker 1: representative from New Jersey, shouldn't just be dismissed out of
Speaker 1: hand because it's entirely plausible. It's yeah, it's not just
Speaker 1: a complete wacko idea.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The other reason Christmis shouldn't just be dismissed out of
Speaker 1: hand is because he is a true lime warrior. He
Speaker 1: introduced other legislation called the Tick Act, and of course
Speaker 1: he had to make tick an achronism, that an acronym,
Speaker 1: not a an acronism, stand for the Ticks Colon, Identify
Speaker 1: Control and Knockout Act. He was really grasping like a
Speaker 1: tick on a blade of grass with that one.
Speaker 3: But the point is, but knockout's not one word unless
Speaker 3: you use it as knockout.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what he's saying, I guess, because the work
Speaker 1: goes act. But it would create an additional one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty million dollars in federal funding for lime disease research,
Speaker 1: sorely needed.
Speaker 3: Right now, that's awesome. I didn't know you was such
Speaker 3: an advocate. That's good.
Speaker 1: He really is. He hates lime disease like like a lot.
Speaker 3: I was about to say something, but I wish I.
Speaker 1: Could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy
Speaker 1: region in my brain.
Speaker 3: Oh, your analogies are great.
Speaker 1: What were you going to say? I want to know
Speaker 1: we can beep it off.
Speaker 3: And I was going to get political. I was going
Speaker 3: to say, he hates ticks like he hates Okay, can
Speaker 3: we leave that and bleep it. I don't know, we'll
Speaker 3: find out, all right.
Speaker 1: So the whole idea that it's a bioweapon almost certainly
Speaker 1: not the case, right, but it makes for good press.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you look up like lyme disease
Speaker 1: and bioweapon. There is a lot of recent articles written
Speaker 1: on it. Just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation.
Speaker 1: What a lot of people are saying is, look, it
Speaker 1: makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go
Speaker 1: to that. But on at the same time, there's another
Speaker 1: really great explanation for it, and it's climate change that
Speaker 1: this whole thing came about in the seventies, because we're
Speaker 1: starting to see what was called the first epidemic from
Speaker 1: climate change, and there's this really great article on Aon,
Speaker 1: which is a great website by Mary Beth Pfeiffer spells
Speaker 1: it like Michelle Pfiffer with the p called ticks Rising,
Speaker 1: and she's an investigative reporter of science journalists who really
Speaker 1: went to a lot of trouble to explain how climate
Speaker 1: change has created a new world for ticks and we
Speaker 1: are now living in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in twenty fourteen, the EPA actually started
Speaker 3: to use four new indicators about what's going on with
Speaker 3: climate change and the impact, and one of them was
Speaker 3: the spread of lime disease. So like the EPA officially
Speaker 3: uses that as a factor in an indicator in determining
Speaker 3: the impact of climate change now right.
Speaker 1: And so the whole basis of this idea is that
Speaker 1: because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in
Speaker 1: far fewer numbers from over the winter, so they're surviving
Speaker 1: longer as it gets warmer and warmer, higher and higher
Speaker 1: up their range is spreading rather rapidly. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: wherever these tics go, lime disease is game to go
Speaker 1: with them. So the spread of lime disease is increasing
Speaker 1: as the spread of ticks is increasing too, And ticks
Speaker 1: have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In
Speaker 1: that same Aon article, well, Mary Beth Pfeiffer was talking
Speaker 1: about how moose are dying in their thousands in like
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death
Speaker 1: by one hundred thousand ticks at once.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that.
Speaker 1: Never happened before. And now all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: kind of becoming routine because the ticks aren't dying off
Speaker 1: in the winter like they're supposed to. And again it's
Speaker 1: because of climate change. And then in the Northeast, Chuck,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of
Speaker 1: ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to
Speaker 1: support the tick population.
Speaker 3: Sure, back in the day, there were things like mountain lions,
Speaker 3: and there were predators that would help control the deer population. Yeah, wolves, wolves.
Speaker 3: They are even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the
Speaker 3: deer population.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can bet that's going to happen.
Speaker 3: No really, no, I mean do you think so? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Totally. Like if three hundred thousand people a year are
Speaker 1: coming down with lime in the United States, they're going
Speaker 1: to are reintroducing wolves to combat if it has even
Speaker 1: a half of a chance.
Speaker 3: I'd be interested to see if that happens for sure,
Speaker 3: because humans are going to want to hunt those wolves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it just brings it out in us
Speaker 1: for some reason. Huh.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they hunted the mountain lions, right.
Speaker 1: But I think that's the idea of oh wait a minute,
Speaker 1: really weird and circuit as bad things happen when we
Speaker 1: overhunt mountain lions and wolves, maybe when we reintroduce them,
Speaker 1: we won't have to, you know, or we won't follow
Speaker 1: that impulse. We'll just let nature take its course.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Who knows you got anything else? Man?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: So there's a solution around antibiotics and some wolves, and
Speaker 1: that'll cure what ails us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, advocate for yourself still, people, sure, and the.
Speaker 1: Wolves be persistent. That's good advice for everything. Chuck agreed. Everything.
Speaker 1: There's certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea,
Speaker 1: But you.
Speaker 3: Know what I'm saying, right, I do know.
Speaker 1: Okay. If you want to know more about lyme disease,
Speaker 1: go check out all of the articles they are to read.
Speaker 1: And again, go check out the aon article by Mary
Speaker 1: Beth fight for It's really interesting and since I said
Speaker 1: it's interesting, that means it's time for listener mayil.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call this neat story about how great
Speaker 3: stuff you should know listeners are. Oh, I like that
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