Science Friday - US Surgeon General On Mental Health, Tracking Tick Bites. Sept 1, 2023, Part 1

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

What To Expect From Hurricane SeasonWe’re approaching the peak of hurricane season, which is usually around mid-September. It’s that time of year when it feels like there’s a new storm every week, and we blow through the alphabet trying to name them. This week, Hurricane Idalia made landfall around Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 3 storm, which caused a few fatalities, left hundreds of thousands of people without power, and some without homes. So what do we know about Idalia, and what can we expect from the rest of the hurricane season?Ira talks with Rachel Feltman, editor at large at Popular Science, about hurricane season and other science news of the week. They chat about what we’re learning from India’s lunar rover, a three-inch roundworm pulled out of someone’s brain, a new study about public health and air pollution, heavy metals in marijuana products, what an ancient Egyptian mummy smells like, and a turtle named Tally, who is far from home. The Surgeon General Warns About An Epidemic Of LonelinessThe early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were lonely for many, upending their social lives. But loneliness pre-dates COVID, especially among young people. In a recent advisory, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy warned that the negative health effects of loneliness and isolation are comparable to smoking daily. Despite being more technologically connected than ever before, the Surgeon General’s Office is also raising concerns about the harms of social media on youth mental health.Ira sits down for a conversation with the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, about the intersection of youth mental health, social media, and loneliness. Dr. Murthy outlines both public policy and community interventions that can help strengthen America’s emotional well being and social connections. Keeping Tabs On Tick BitesIf you live in the Midwest or Northeast, you’re probably aware of an issue that’s gotten worse over the years: ticks, and the illnesses they can spread, including Lyme Disease and Alpha-gal syndrome.Scientists are still trying to learn more about how and where ticks are spreading. That’s where The Tick App comes in. It’s a community science effort where you can log your tick encounter and help scientists learn more about tick-borne disease. Science Friday digital producer Emma Gometz sat down with Ira to talk about her recent article profiling the app, and the scientists behind forms of tick monitoring research. To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, a conversation with U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, about what's been dubbed the silent epidemic loneliness. And later we're talking ticks and how you can help scientists study them. But first, we are approaching the peak of the hurricane season when it feels like there's a new storm every week and we blow through the alphabet and naming them. Well, this week, Hurricane Nidalia made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm.

It left hundreds of thousands of people without power, some without homes. So what do we know about this hurricane? And what can we expect from the rest of the hurricane season? Joining me to discuss this story and other science news of the week is Rachel Feldman, editor at large at Popular Science Based in New York. Welcome back, Rachel. Thanks for having me, Ira. Nice to have you.

Okay, you know, speaking of the hurricane, it seems thankfully it was not as bad as predicted, right? Yeah, that's true, though it's all relative. I mean, this is a situation where, first of all, the forecasting was extremely accurate. So kudos to Noah. Basically, people were able to plan and there were really good evacuation protocols, again, because just the track of this hurricane was really well forecasted. And then there are a few things that really came down to chance. It happened to hit at low tide. So where there was about nine feet of storm surge in where it made landfall in Florida could have had an additional three feet if it had hit at high tide. And obviously there's just no predicting that. So it's really good that we were prepared for what could have been

12 feet of storm surge. The storm also weakened from a cat four to a cat three. And of course, while these days storm surge tends to be more of a concern than the wind speed itself. Obviously, a storm with lower wind speeds is always going to be less dangerous, all other things being equal. And then it also happened to hit the least populated area of Florida. So while of course there have been some really serious property damage and it sounds like a couple of fatalities, things could have been much, much worse if just a few things about the storm. that we have no control over had turned out differently. So great reminder to always be prepared for the worst of those forecasts.

Speaking about being prepared, what can we expect, what are they expecting for the rest of the hurricane season? Yeah, well, what's interesting about that, Ira, is that we are entering an El Nino climate pattern, which usually means much less hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin. But between the fact that those atmospheric conditions that tend to kill off hurricanes, basically with wind shear. Those are being slow to develop.

And meanwhile, we have this record-breaking warm water that is fuel for hurricanes. So, you know, forecasters are saying that we really are not out of the woods yet in terms of this hurricane season. You know, it officially goes until November. And we probably will have at least a few more named hurricanes in that time. Yeah, absolutely. Now, let's move on to something, well, how do I describe this? It's a little weird.

And it's a bit scary. You know where I'm going with this, right? Well, take over. Go ahead. So neurosurgeons in Australia put out a case report about pulling a live three-inch-long worm out of the brain of a patient in 2022. They say she's doing very well in being a real champ about being the first person in the world to ever have this particular parasite in her brain.

So she's a stronger woman than I am. How did it get there? So the best guess is that this parasite at first doctors were like, what is this roundworm? Like, we don't recognize it. They couldn't find anything, you know, in the medical literature about a roundworm that looked like this being in the human body, let alone the human brain. And they were able to identify it as a known parasite that infects pythons. And this patient, who's a woman in her 60s in Australia, she forages forages for a, local grasses to use in cooking, is my understanding. And so their best guess is that as she was foraging in her local area where pythons that carry this parasite are prevalent, that through their

feces, got to contact with her food or eating utensils. And so this is just a case of zoonotic crossover or spillover where this parasite that is not supposed to want to live in humans decided, sure, why not. Luckily, it was found and it sounds like the patient is doing well. Great reminder, though, that you could always become the first human carrier of something. Be careful out there. Be diligent. Exactly.

I know the news is full of health stories. And there's another one about air pollution and lifespan. That's also not so good. Yeah. So the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute put out their big report on air quality. And unfortunately, they say that lowered air quality is an air pollution is responsible for reducing average life expectancy by 2.3 years worldwide. So it goes without saying that that's skewed toward some countries. There are four countries in South Asia, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan that account

for more than half of the total years of life lost globally due to pollution. But it's still something that is a global problem. And air pollution is not good for. you, even if you're in a country with better air quality than the ones I listed. And I think especially with the issues we've had this past summer, this is something that a lot of people are going to care about. Yeah, yeah. Is there any good news from this report? There is some good news. So China, which was long, you know, like a poster child for having smog-filled skies, according to this report, they have improved their air quality by more than 40 percent since 2013, which is when the government undertook, like, a multi-billion dollar war against pollution. So basically, you know, they put in clean air policies

tougher than ever before. They put in air monitoring stations. They shut down coal mines and coal plants. And that is paid off. It looks like residents have gained a couple of years of lifespan back. Of course, they don't have great air quality. There's a lot of room for improvement. But it's great proof that, you know, when a government has the money and the desire to really come combat air pollution, you can make a big difference. Yeah, that really is good news. If you want to do what, you can do it. Yep.

Speaking of smoking in a different terminology, there's a new study that suggests some troubling information about marijuana. Yeah, so this new study looked at a few thousand adults, and it found that people who had reported using marijuana in the last 30 days were found to have 27% higher blood lead levels than people who didn't use either marijuana or tobacco. That part's important because smoking tobacco is still known to be the, like, biggest source of lead for people in the U.S. But it looks like marijuana is maybe catching up, which we don't want to hear. There were also high levels of cadmium, but lead is really the substance that's like there's no safe level of exposure to that.

So we really don't want to hear that. Where does it come from? Yeah, what's interesting is that we already know that plants are really good at taking up heavy metals from the soil. And basically any product that involves sort of, you know, distilling the plant or condensing it, you're going to have that high quantity of heavy metals and, you know, you're going to have to work to take that out. It's actually a known issue with vegan protein powders as well. So it's not at all exclusive to marijuana. Well, I would think that it becomes more commercialized.

There'll be a better standard of health for the plants, right? Yeah, yeah. So definitely it's something that, again, in the vegan protein industry, as people became more aware, of it. There's been more standardization. And, you know, what the researchers of this study said is that you really want to make sure that, first of all, you're actually buying your products from a legal dispensary. And, you know, states do have guidelines in place about how much heavy metal is allowed in a product. So you want to, like, look up what your state's policies are, make sure that they're good, and then make sure that the products you're using follow them. And there are a couple

other things to consider. The researchers did say that, you know, this study didn't differentiate between, like, gummies and smoking, but generally speaking, inhaling lead is always worse. So that's something to keep in mind. And they also pointed out there are no federal testing rules for hemp-derived products that have CBD as opposed to THC. So even if you don't think of yourself as being a marijuana user, if you tend to, like, vape CBD oil, you should definitely be paying attention into studies like these. Good stuff. And now for something totally different, I mean, what mummies smell like.

This is not something you wake up in the morning and start wondering about. I mean, speak for yourself. But, yeah, apparently these researchers do. They decided to find out what a 3,500-year-old Egyptian noblewoman named Sinetnai smelled like. And they say she smelled like beeswax, plant oil, and tree resin, and maybe a little bit of a smoky note as well. So pretty good. Wow. Can this tell us anything about the mummification process? Yeah. So this is one of the more complex mummification bombs that they've found. But what they're more excited about is where all this stuff came from because the tree resins seem to come from. They think

large trees or pistachio trees or a few other trees that aren't naturally found in Egypt. Some of them show up in the northern Mediterranean, and some come from like Southeast Asian forests. So they think this might be an indication that there was a way farther-reaching trade at earlier dates than they previously thought. That's cool. I want to end this news roundup on some good news, and that's about a turtle, a turtle far from home. Tell us about that.

Yeah, Talley the Turtle. She's a Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle, so they're the smallest and therefore cutest and also most endangered species of sea turtles in the lower. world. And they're found at the Gulf of Mexico, but they can get caught on the Gulf stream. And Talley showed up 4,000 miles away from home on a beach in Wales in 2021. No. Yeah. Wow.

And usually that's bad news. The cold water will just kill baby sea turtles that get caught and pulled out that far. But a dog walker on the beach saw her thought she was dead, but still like called to report her to the authorities, which is exactly. what you should do. And sure enough, when some local marine researchers got there, they found she was alive. She was in very rough shape, but they spent the next few months nursing her back to health. And now she's being flown home. It was a big undertaking, a lot of people involved. But once the Houston Zoo gives her the all clear, they'll be releasing her near Galveston, Texas. Well, we wish safe travels to Talley the Turtle. Yes. To you two, Rachel, have a good and safe holiday weekend. Thank you, you too, Ira. Rachel Feldman, editor at large at popular

science based in New York, and we wish all of our listeners a safe and happy holiday. Up next, the U.S. Surgeon General's concerns about loneliness, depression, and why social apps are to blame. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. About two years ago, I sat down with U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy. It was at a stage of the COVID pandemic where cities were just starting to open up, but a rise in cases was forcing many places to reinstate masking mandates. They were concerned about whether a large enough part of the population would receive vaccines and boosters were still in development. But in the middle of that public health crisis, I asked Dr. Murthy what he would focus on post-pandemic. And without hesitation, he said there

was another crisis he saw looming, and that was depression, social disqualification, connection and the overall mental health of America. He's made these issues the key part of his health agenda now and has recently added loneliness. So I wanted to bring him back to get an update. Dr. Vivek Murthy is the U.S. Surgeon General. He heads the U.S. Public Health Service. Welcome back to Science Friday. Well, thank you so much, Ira. I'm glad to be back. Thanks for having me. You've been pretty busy, haven't you been? I have. It's been a busy time. Let's start with a statement I read that you issued in May, and you said, we are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I'm concerned that social media is an important

driver of that crisis, one that we must urgently address. Tell us how we address that. Well, I'll tell you, I right, first, the reason I issued it is because not only a surgeon general, but as a doctor or as a father myself, I'm watching what is happening to our children around the with regard to social media use, and I'm deeply concerned about the impact it's having on their mental health and well-being. You know, we are in the middle of a youth mental health crisis, and I believe that social media has become a major contributor to that. The data that we laid out in the Surgeon General's advisory I issued in May of this year

on social media and youth mental health speaks to some of the reasons why we should be concerned. What we're seeing, for example, that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of poor mental health outcomes such as symptoms of depression and anxiety. Now, this is concerning because in part the average amount of use is 3.5 hours per day among adolescents. Body image issues we're seeing significantly impacted in a negative way by social media use. We're seeing it detract from kids sleep. Many kids are saying they feel addicted to it. And as many describe to me when I do roundtables around the country, kids most often tell me they Number one, feel like social media makes me feel worse about themselves.

Two, it makes them feel worse about their friendships, but three, they can't get off it. And so I'm very concerned about this. And I think to address this, what we've got to do is first recognize that up until now, we've placed the entire burden of managing the risks of social media entirely on their shoulders of parents and kids. And that is just not right. These are rapidly developing technologies that most parents didn't have to grow up with. And they're designed by some of the best developers.

program designers in the world. And so you pit those developers up against kids and parents. That's just not a fair fight, which is why what I call for in the advisory, in addition to individual action, community action is policymaker action. And specifically, we need policies that number one, establish safety standards like we have for motor vehicles and for other products that kids use that will help to reduce their risk of exposure to harm and also reduce the likelihood that companies will develop the kind of technology that would manipulate kids and just spending more and more time on them. Finally, we also need to ensure that companies are required to disclose data to the public and to parents in particular. Our researchers tell us constantly that they are

unable to get access to the full data they need from social media companies to understand the extent of impact on the mental health of kids. We should not be hiding this data. That's another area where policymakers have a role to play. Is there any way to stop companies from targeting kids? Well, there certainly are ways to stop companies from exposing kids to harm. And I know that because we've done that in other industries, as Surgeon General, I do a lot of work related to tobacco. And our office is a long history of working on this issue. And this is a place where we've had public health successes by working through policy and through culture change and practice and getting industry to reduce their targeting of youth. There's more to do on that front,

by the way, and we're actively engaged in it. So the bottom line is, we can, can do it, but we have not up until this point. We have moved very slowly on the policy front. I would say it's been about 20 years that social media has been on the horizon, has been used by adolescents and by people of all ages. Yet, we are still in infancy when it comes to actually designing the kind of policy response that's required to keep our kids safe. What kind exactly, what would the policy say that you would like to have designed? Number one, it would require data transparency. Companies would need to disclose the data that they have on the mental health and overall health impacts for their platforms on kids. That would need to be disclosed to the public. Number two, we would need to establish actual safety standards like we have done for automobiles for other products that would limit the following. Number one, the exposure of children to harmful content, like extreme violence, pornography, and other harmful content that would limit the bullying and harassment the too many kids experienced now, including from strangers, that would

also limit the use of manipulative features that would essentially get kids to use more and more and more of their social media platform in a given day, such that it displaces sleep, time with friends in person, time for physical activity. These are designed choices that companies make. And what policy can do is to help reduce the likelihood that those features are in place. It can also require evidence. If a company says to me, you know what, our platforms are safe because we've taken certain measures to ensure that they're safe. Well, I don't want to just take their word for that.

I want to see their proof. Where is the evidence that shows me that using these platforms is not harmful for my kids? I have not seen that evidence yet. And the independent scientists I talked to on the outside have not seen that either. You know, you brought up tobacco, which we know is a potent, addictive drug. It's like you're comparing social media to being addicted to a drug. Well, I think if you talk to young people, that's exactly how many of them in fact describe it. In fact, a third of adolescents say that they feel addicted to social media.

Half of them say if they had to stop using social media, they would have a very hard time doing so. You don't have to just look at kids. Talk to adults. Think about your own life experience. I suspect many people listening to this may also feel like they are addicted to social media. And this is not happening by accident. The business models of many of these platforms are built on how much time you use the platform. The more you use it, the more revenue it generates.

So their incentive is to create more and more ways to keep you on, whether that's good for your health or not. We need a different model, a model that actually prioritizes the health and well-being of the users, particularly our kids. That's what I care about most, as Surgeon General. You've also made room, though, to talk about the benefits of social media, specifically in usefulness to underrepresented groups. Can you talk about that a bit? What we do know is that community is very important for all of us, but particularly for individuals who find themselves going through life experiences or having an identity, you know, a background that is not necessarily shared by a lot of folks around them. So we look at members of the LGBTQ community.

We look at people who may be struggling with certain illnesses that are rare or unusual. A lot of times it's hard to find community, to find people around you who are going through what you're going through, who you can talk to openly. And social media for some people has had the benefit of helping them find community. That's a good thing. But because there are some benefits of social media does not mean that we should swallow all of the harms that are associated with it as well. And again, to use as an example of parallel automobiles, there was a time when I was growing up,

when the number of automobile-related fatalities was extraordinarily high. And we didn't say, you know what, that's just a price of modernity. Automobiles are helping people get more efficiently from point A to point B, so we just have to accept all of this harm that's taking place. We didn't do that. What we said instead is we need to make this a much safer experience. And that's why we put standards in place and ensure that cars had seatbelts. They had airbags.

They had to undergo crash testing to ensure the frames were safe. What we also did not do IRA at that time is we didn't put the intent. burden on parents. We didn't say, hey, when your child turned 16 and when you're getting them into a car, why don't you go ahead as a parent, test out the frame yourself, test out the brakes, make sure that all elements of the car are actually working. That would have seemed ridiculous. Parents don't have the expertise to do that. But we're finding that true here as well. Parents need help. They need support. And this is why legislation and regulation is actually critical when it comes to protecting kids from social media.

Your advisory calls for more research. Give me an idea of what kinds of research has already been done that you think should serve as a bellwether to future research. Well, some of the questions we want to understand more deeply are which kids are most deeply affected by the potential harms of social media. We also want to know what kind of use seems to generate the most harm. What times of the day is using the social media seem to be most concerning. We know, for example, right now already, that a third of adolescents stay up to midnight or later on weeknights using their devices, and a lot of that is social media use. So there's more that we need to understand in terms of the granularity of harm. This will help us to better tailor interventions and to tailor policy. But I do want to stress, Ira, that we know enough now to take action. And the call for more research must be pursued

alongside, in parallel with, policy-related efforts to ensure that we're putting these kind of safeguards and safety measures in place. One of the biggest parts of your agenda now is, as I mentioned before, is dealing with the crisis in loneliness. How did you arrive at that as part of your agenda? Well, the truth is, Ira, I experienced loneliness long before I thought of it as a public health problem. Like many people in America, I struggle with loneliness.

when I was younger, when I was in school and grade school. I never told anyone about it because I was ashamed. I thought it meant that I was not likable or somehow something was wrong with me. And over time, though, when I became a doctor, I came to see that many of my patients were also struggling with loneliness. And I never learned about it in medical school, yet there it was, staring at me in the face. And I realized I didn't quite know what to do in those circumstances for my patients. It was when I became surgeon general, though, Ira, that I realized.

that this is an experience that went way beyond my own life and my patient's lives. But this is something people all across our country were struggling with. And as I dug into it, I realized two things, Ira. One is that loneliness is extraordinarily common with one and two adults in America, with measurable levels of loneliness. The numbers, by the way, are much higher among young people. But the second thing I realized is how consequential loneliness is for our health. and the people who struggle with being socially disconnected, with feeling lonely or isolated,

they actually are at much higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicide, but also, and this is surprising, for physical illness, they're at increased risk of heart disease, of dementia, of premature death. And so however you look at it, loneliness is an important public health concern, one that has flown under the radar for a long time, but one that I think is exceedingly important for us to address right now. And the pandemic made it worse for many people. Even though as the pandemic receives, we've got to recognize that there was a very high level of loneliness long before COVID-19 arrived. How do you report loneliness? I mean, how do you track it? How do you measure it? It seems to me that it would have to be self-reported or physicians or how do you know about it?

That's a good question. Well, loneliness is a subjective term. And it is based on whether the connections you feel you have in your life are sufficient. And in fact, if you need more connections than you actually have, you feel lonely. But it is a subjective term. Isolation, on the other hand, is an objective term. It's a descriptor of how many people you may interact with or have physically around you. And there are now validated survey instruments that we can use to actually measure the level of loneliness or isolation, like in a population. And thankfully, this data has been collected now over the years. We need much more of it. But the data we have tells us that, number one, loneliness is exceedingly common in the overall

population, around 50% of people with measurable levels of loneliness. That's adults. But the real concern for me, Ira, is looking at young people who, despite how connected they are by technology, and in some cases because of it, seem to have the highest rates of loneliness of people across the age spectrum. This is Science Friday from WNYT Studios. compared to other countries. How lonely are we? Well, it turns out this is a global challenge.

The United Kingdom, Australia, other countries in Europe, Japan, many of these countries are struggling with loneliness as well. In many cases, there are still very early stages of gathering the kind of granular data that you would want to fully in a in-depth way understand the extent of the crisis, but it has become clear that we're not alone in this struggle. The United Kingdom in fact and Japan, both appointed cabinet level individuals in government to actually look at the issue of loneliness and to help develop a strategy for their countries. So while we are not the only ones who are struggling as a country, I do think it's important that we move quickly in building the kind of national strategy and a response that we need because the bottom line is loneliness

is much more than a bad feeling. It is a public health crisis that has consequences for our mental and physical health as well as for our communities. It turns out, Ira, if you look at communities that are more connected, they tend to be more economically prosperous, they tend to have lower rates of violence, and they also tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity like hurricanes or tornadoes. You know, what's ironic about this is when I had this interview like I'm having with you now, with psychologists when social media started, let's say, 20 years ago or so, and one of the things that the psychologist told me is, you know, once we get kids hooked up to social media,

they're going to be less lonely. And it doesn't mean to be turning out that way, is it? Ira, you know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of what I heard when the internet was first coming into common use. When I heard someone say on the news, you know, once everyone starts using the internet, people won't be able to lie anymore because they'll be able to look up the truth and it'll be there. Well, I think both of those predictions turned out about the same. which is that when it comes to social media in particular, well, there are some kids who have been able to find connection and community through social media. There are many more, I think, who have struggled and who've struggled in a few ways.

One, I think many of them have come to experience a shift from what used to be in-person connections to online connections, which are different. They also experienced a shift from a smaller number of high-quality connections to a larger number of quality connections. You know, it's fine to say I've got a thousand or two thousand connections on a given social media platform. But how many of those people truly know you would show up for you in a crisis? How many of those people could you be truly vulnerable and open with? That's what truly matters in terms of feeling lonely. And finally, I think one thing we sometimes underestimate is the extraordinarily harmful effect of the culture of comparison that exists

on social media. You know, people have been comparing themselves to each other, Ira, for millennia, right? We do that all the time. But what is different with social media is that the sheer volume of comparison that's happening is like nothing we have experienced before. Maybe when I was growing up on a given school day, I compared myself to the 20, 30, 40 kids I interacted with in school on that day. But now, as many young people tell me, they may see thousands of images of people in

their social networks and they're constantly comparing themselves to their lives, to their bodies, to their academic achievements, to everything else, which is why nearly half of adolescents say that social media makes them feel worse about their body image. So we have to take all this into consideration and recognizing that what may have started off as a well-intended platform that sought to connect people and build community, has unfortunately for many young people become a force that has eroded their self-esteem, weakened their social connections, and contributed to real mental health harms and suffering. We're going to have to take a break, and when we come back, more talk with Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. If you're just joining us, I'm continuing my conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General. We're talking about youth mental health and loneliness. Is part of the answer then just getting people or kids out and into the public domain again, meeting other people in real time? I do think that is part of it because when we look at how the harms of social media actually play out, we find that in addition to being exposed to harmful content, in addition to being exposed to bullying and harassment and to this culture of comparison, there's a displacement effect that's taking place where the more social media kids are using. And again, it's about three and a half hours a day on average for adolescence now. But that takes away often from sleep, from in-person interactions and from physical activity, all of which are. we know are essential for the mental health and well-being of young people. So one of the things I often advise parents is that if their child is already on social media, one of the things that they can do is to carve out tech-free spaces in their child's lives, where their children will be

off of their phones and the devices and will be out in the world, interacting with people, playing with friends, being present at dinner and interacting with family members. That's a big part of what we need to do now. It's not easy, which is also one of the other things I recommend to parents is to partner with one another, to support one another. When parents are doing this together, they're forming partnerships, that can make it easier. And it also helps kids understand that they're not the only kids who are being asked to create these kind of tech-free zones. Other kids are doing it as well. Can you teach parents to recognize loneliness in their kids and possible side effects? Loneliness I think of as the great masquerader. It can look different.

in different people. Sometimes it can look like someone who's withdrawn or quiet. Other times it can look like someone who's irritable and angry and lashing out. And so it's not always easy to recognize, which is why I think it's so important for us as parents, but also just as friends and family members, to check in on one another, to ask people how they're doing, how they're feeling, and sometimes to ask them how they feel about the friendships in their life, whether they have enough time with friends, whether they feel like there are people in their life they can talk to if they're having a hard time. And sometimes it might seem awkward or hard to have that kind of conversation. But I will tell you this, having spoken to many people who have struggled with

loneliness, I know that just even having someone in their life who would open up that conversation would be something they would be so grateful for. Many people feel like, gosh, nobody even cares enough about me to ask about these things. And when you're lonely, sometimes you can go into a downward spiral where the lonelier you are, the more it erodes your self-esteem makes you feel like you're lonely because you're not likable, which makes it harder to reach out to people, which makes it even lonelier. And sometimes breaking out of that cycle of loneliness, you need somebody else in your life who can pause, who can say, hey, you know what, I see you, I care about you, I want to know how you're doing. You know, what you're saying

are anecdotal things that happen in your life and my life. But I'm wondering, Are there any real examples of an intervention that has generated measurable outcomes that some sort of thing actually works to combat loneliness? Yeah, so there's a lot that works. And the interesting thing about this is some examples I'll share with you are going to sound deceptively simple. And the reason they sound so simple is because as human beings, we actually are hardwired to connect. It doesn't take a lot for us to actually come back to one another and build healthy relationships. but it's getting started that is often the hard part. So here are some of the interventions I've seen around the country that have really made a powerful difference.

You know, I've seen on a school level, for example, I've seen programs like the Beyond Differences program, which started in California and now spread throughout the country. This is a simple program where high school students, mentor middle school students, and help teach them how to look out for other kids who may be struggling with loneliness in their school. They might find someone who's sitting alone, eating by themselves at lunch, lunchtime day after day, they help teach them simple and kind ways to bring them in to a circle without embarrassing them and making them feel like they're part of a community. That's had a powerful effect on reducing rates of loneliness. I think also of the becoming a man program. This is a different

kind of program, but it's a program now, you know, with a counterpart called the Working on Womenhood program, the BAM and the WOW programs. But these involve bringing a small group of about 10 young people together with the facilitator who meet once a week and they talk about what's going on in their lives. They build trust. They build a relationship with one another. And over time, they help each other resolve conflict and deal with challenges. I witnessed one of those groups in action when I was in Chicago a few years ago. And it was really powerful to see the bonds that are formed there. I'll lastly share one other example with you, which is outside of a school. This is something called the neighbor's table that a woman named Sarah Harmeyer started in her community in Dallas, Texas.

She moved there. Some time ago, didn't really know anyone. Wanted to feel more connected to people, wasn't quite sure how. So she did something bold. And I mean, that was a little scary to her at the time, which is she sent an invitation out to all of her neighbors and asked them to come over for a meal. She didn't know who would show up. Her father helped her build this big, long wooden table,

which she put outside. And you waited, and it turned out a lot of people wanted to come. So they showed up. And day after day, she started having these types of meals for her neighbors, and she found that a lot of them had lived there for a long time, but didn't know one another. And over drinks and meals, they came to just chat, to get to know one another, and to feel like they had a community.

So these small initiatives, checking on each other, inviting people over for a meal, making sure that your kids have actual time in person with friends and with family, these can go a long way toward helping us build connection. Because again, this isn't about transforming ourselves into something different and foreign and unnatural. This is about returning to who we are, who we've evolved to be, which is beings who are deeply connected to one another. And letting people know they have outlets to be reconnected. Yes, absolutely. And one of the things I call for in our advisory that I think we need to do in our country

is to rebuild social infrastructure. We're used to thinking about the physical infrastructure like bridges and highways, but there's also something called social infrastructure, which are the programs and policies and structures that support the development of healthy relationships. These could be programs in schools like the ones I described earlier. They could be workplace programs that actually create opportunities for colleagues to get to know one another. But they can also be programs in the communities run by faith organizations and YMCA's and others that create spaces for people to come to know one another, especially across

different backgrounds. We used to have a lot of this before IRA, but over the last half century, there has been a decline in people's participation in those organizations and community efforts that used to bring people together, whether there were faith gatherings, service effort, recreational leagues. And we're seeing the consequence of that, combined with how we're using social media technology, combined with the fact that technology has just evolved in a way that's made it unnecessary for us to run into each other at the grocery store or the post office. Put on all this together. We've seen a real toll on our relationships.

And this is the time for us so consciously rebuild that social infrastructure and rebuild a connection in our lives. I've only got a couple of more minutes. I want to touch on the fact that we've seen evidence that cases of COVID are on the rise again. People are talking about masking up in certain crowds again. Coming to a winter where people are going to be isolated more? Are we going to be put it as an outbreak of loneliness or, you know, being alone again? and actually increasing those problems? Well, that's an important question.

And I think one of the things we learned in the first year in particular of the pandemic was that what really suffered were our connections with one another. And a lot of people were separated physically and otherwise from each other, and it did increase loneliness. If we think about the winter that's approaching, we have a lot more knowledge and tools with which to approach this winter in a way that I think can result in us not necessarily. having to struggle with loneliness the way we did in 2020. I think we can and should be much

more proactive about reaching out to people, even if they're not able to come because to a gathering, maybe they're worried about their health, maybe they're unwell with flu or COVID or another winter-related illness. Reaching out to people to make sure that they don't feel isolated, that they don't feel alone is important. And proactively reaching out to our friends if we're not able to join gatherings is also important. I think we've also just realized that the more we use the tools that we've developed over the last few years, the better off we will be as a society. In 2020, when we were struggling, we didn't have vaccines. We didn't know what treatments would work to help people with COVID. And in some cases, those treatments hadn't been developed.

We have treatments now. We have vaccines that are effective in reducing the risk of bad outcomes with COVID. This is a time for us to utilize those tools. And if we do, my hope is that we can manage COVID the way we do other respiratory illnesses like flu and others, where, yes, they still do circulate every year, but we know how to manage them, how to live our lives, and how to stay connected with one another. One last question. We saw how health misinformation and disinformation can be a huge public health problem. We saw that during the height of the pandemic, and it continues to be a concern for a lot of us and for your office. Can you tell us about, how you go about combating this?

Well, this is one of the great public health challenges we're going to face over the years ahead. We're in the throes of it right now. We saw during the early years of COVID in particular such overflow, if you will, of misinformation around COVID and now that's just spreading to other health conditions as well, to other vaccines. We put out an advisory on health misinformation in the summer of 2021, laying out strategies for how we can. address this as a country. It involves actions that we can take as individuals, for example, like making sure that we don't forward information, even with the best of intentions to other people, unless we know it's from a credible scientific source. But it also involves steps that

information platforms, including the media, including social media, need to take as well to ensure that their sources are accurate, that they're scientifically based, that they give context. Make no mistake, especially with the increasing presence of artificial intelligence in our information environment, that it is becoming easier and easier to mask and disseminate misinformation. So this is a threat that we're going to have to be mindful of, vigilant about for years to come. Dr. Murthy, we have run out of time. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us and being one of public health's most thoughtful speakers. Thank you very much for your service.

Well, thank you so much, Ira. It's an honor to be with you. Well, we'll have you back maybe not wait two years from now. We'd love that. Dr. Vivek Murthy is the U.S. Surgeon General. He has the U.S. Public Health Service. If you live in the Midwest or Northeast, you've probably become aware of an issue that's gotten worse over the years. I'm talking about ticks and the illnesses they can spread, including Lyme disease. Scientists are still trying to learn more about how and where ticks are spreading,

and that's where the tick app comes in. No, not TikTok. It's a community science effort where you can log your tick encounter and help scientists learn more about tick-borne diseases. Here to tell us about this project is Emma Gomez, Science Friday's digital producer who wrote an article about this topic for our website. Emma, tell me about this story. Well, there's a lot of research coming out about how climate change is causing ticks range to expand. And ticks need to be in a warmer environment to be active and because it's going to be. to be warmer for longer times of the year, their actual period of activity is increasing. And so there's been some research also coming out about how their tick-borne diseases are spreading.

You might have heard about alpha-gal syndrome, which creates a meat allergy if you get bitten by a tick or like typical, like Lyme disease, stuff like that. And those diseases are becoming more popular, unfortunately. Yeah, you know, I live in Connecticut. I know all about Lyme disease. it was invented here. Let's talk about why ticks particularly are hard to combat. Yeah, well, they're just a really interesting animal. The way they move is really unique. That's why they're on tall grass.

They just crawl right up there. They can't really jump directly on you. So their movement is largely dictated by the hosts that they're attached to. So to understand how ticks move, you kind of have to understand how the hosts like deer or mice or even humans are moving them around. Yeah, I said at the top, I was talking about community science, and I hear there's an app for reporting tick encounters.

Tell me about that. Yes, there is. So a researcher at Columbia University named Maria Duke Wasser worked with a couple other universities to make something called the tick app, which helps people who are exposed to ticks in their day-to-day life, find out more about what kind of tick might have bitten them, what life stage it is, and that can help you decide the level of risk that you might have been exposed to. And what that does for the scientists is it helps them understand who's being bitten by ticks or who's even being exposed to ticks at all, where they are, when it happens. It just gives them a full range of data about tick behavior specifically.

And then for the app users, they get access to educational resources about how to remove a tick, how to identify one at all. And it just helps them understand what potential diseases they might be exposed to. And it could help them just understand that level. of risk. So it's interesting how this app is an educational tool, but the scientists also use that data from the reports to do their research. So I guess if you've actually been bitten by a tick, you're helping out the scientists. Yeah, definitely. Now, how would you respond to someone who is afraid of going outside because of the risk of ticks? Yeah, I was terrified of ticks. I kind of still

am. But what I learned when I was writing this story was that we already know a lot about prevention. So permethrine, for example, you can soak your clothes in it and it will repel ticks, checking for ticks after you go outside and knowing that you don't have to go into the middle of the forest to get bitten by a tick. Actually, in urban areas, yeah, ticks will concentrate in places with grasses, like in parks or even backyards. So just like being conscious, that if you're out in a place where a tick could be, just to check. And then you can also send them to a lab and they can actually test what diseases that tick has. And then it's the same thing. You get to find out if you've been exposed to a disease. And then that research lab will use that

data to help us understand, like, where confirmed cases of ticks carrying disease actually are. So this is a pretty serious project because not only are you checking for ticks on yourself, which is very important, right? You want to know if you're not. you've been bitten by a tick and to do something about it because it can be serious, but you're also helping other people because now we'll know maybe we're all the ticks are living. Definitely. The scientist, Dr. Diego Gwasser, said that community source data is really important because not a lot of this could be done experimentally. We just have to know the reality of who is and isn't getting bitten and what kind of diseases they're being diagnosed with.

And a great example that I think about a lot is that the CDC used to estimate, how many people were diagnosed with I'm disease by just how many people were reporting it to the CDC. But then they started taking data from commercial labs, research labs, and insurance claims, actually. And then they found the number was actually 10 times the number that people were reporting. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Well, Emma, thank you for bringing this very important stuff to us. Yeah, no problem. Emma Gomez, Science Friday's digital producer. You can check out her article at sciencefriiday.com slash ticks. And that wraps up this hour. Here's some of the folks who helped make this show happen. Beth Rami is our controller. Annie Nero is our individual giving manager. Jordan Smudjik and Jason Rosenberg

are our grants manager, and George Harper is our stewardship manager. B.J. Lideman composed our theme music, and if you missed any part of the program, or you would like to hear it again, yes, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And if you want to reach us, way we love it. SciFry at ScienceFriday.com. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.