Stuff You Should Know - The Skinny on Lyme Disease

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

If you live in the Northeastern U.S. then you may know someone who has had Lyme disease. But it's spreading all over the country and parts of the world. Learn all about this tick-borne disease today.�� Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, stuff you should know listeners, if you wanna come see us live, you've only got a couple of more cities this year that still have tickets, and that is Orlando and New Orleans. Yep, we'll be in Orlando on October 9th at the Plaza Live,

and we'll be in New Orleans at the Civic Theater the following night, October 10th. And friends, like Chuck said, you better go get your tickets. Go to sysklive.com for info and ticket links and everything you need to come see us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark,

there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Yeah, Chuck, I have a question for you. Yes. You know what ticks me off? Lyme disease. I'm so mad at you. Blame you for that one, she's like,

you should say this, and I said, you know what? Tell her I'm so mad at her. I should totally say that. Yeah, this is sort of a follow up to our July 27th, 2010 episode, Why Ticks Suck, which is sort of a legendary episode because we falsely promised to send people T-shirts if they made it all the way through the episode.

That's right, that's right. We were just kidding, but we still get those requests of where's my shirt? Yes, that's hilarious, I forgot about that. And also wanna- I think we get sued today. Yeah, probably so. Also wanna point out and shout out our former website,

HowStuffWorks.com, because a couple of the articles that we used for much of this episode is from the old HSW website. Nice, they're holding it down over there. They're holding it down and this is some good stuff. Yeah, so we're talking today about Lyme disease in particular. Not Lymes.

No, we should say it's capital L-Y-M-E disease. And the reason it's called that is because it's named after a town, which is one of three towns where the initial outbreak of Lyme disease that led to this bacterial infection, persistent bacterial infection, was first described medically about that.

Yeah, one of the facts of the show, I think. Oh, yeah? Sure, who knew it was named after a town, Lyme Connecticut. I knew. Did you know that before this? Sure. Did we cover that and why ticks suck? I don't think so.

All right, well, you're smarter than me. No, it's not that. I think what got me was, I heard about people saying like, no, Lyme disease, like people take it for granted, but it's actually some, this really mysterious illness. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

So I think I looked into this years back and that's when I found out. All right. That was all. So we're equally smart. Right, exactly. I'm not smarter than you. And what is smart?

It's just like, someone happens to know one thing, someone else knows another. Sure. I say they cancel out, we're all smart. There you go. I'm glad you pulled that out because I would have been like, what is smart? I couldn't have come up with the definition.

So, Lyme disease, we'll go ahead and hit you with a couple of stats here. Lyme disease in the United States is more than doubled since 1997. That's astounding. It is. And it is spread too. It used to be very much localized

in kind of the Northeast sort of mid-Atlantic areas, some in the South, but now you can get Lyme disease and I believe the entire lower 48, is that correct? There are cases in all 48 states. Supposedly half of the counties in the United States now are considered at high risk for Lyme disease. And like all of this happened just in the last

like 20 or so years. Yeah. Which is, I mean, there's a lot of debate over, the CDC calls Lyme disease endemic, which is a disease that has become like an ongoing part of an area or region. And some other people are saying, guys, what we're talking about here is an epidemic.

This is an epidemic and you should start calling it that because it will kind of raise the alarm to the next level or two where it should be because this is a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing right now. Lyme disease is the number one vector-born disease in the United States. It's way more prevalent than things like West Nile

or Chicken Gunia or anything like that. But it's still kind of treated as like up there in the Northeastern U.S. thing. And that's just not the case. It's spread in every direction except East because it hit the Atlantic. But everywhere else where it can spread into the interior of the United States and up into Canada, it's starting to.

Yeah, and there's also a history continuing to this day even where Lyme disease can be overlooked, misdiagnosed, not taken as seriously by your doctor as it should be, including what we'll get to later on, something called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. And it's all very frustrating if you have been an individual that has had Lyme disease. There's a big community out there of people

that are like, why won't anyone listen to us? Why won't our doctors take us seriously? And what do we have to do here? Like, do we have to start dropping dead? Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of frustration in that community because there's a sentiment among the medical establishment that, you know, Hey, man.

Just take some antibiotics, you'll be fine. Exactly, it's easy to cure Lyme disease. Here's some antibiotics. You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head. We're not gonna say they're in your head, but they're in your head. And the people who are experiencing these symptoms

are like, no, my life has been derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren't doing anything about it. It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out there that are pretty stoked right now to be hearing this. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We're advocating for you guys. Sure.

I'm not patting myself on the back, although I am literally patting myself. I feel like I see you, Chuck, you're... That elbow is sticking out pretty far. So Lyme disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium boralea, burgdorferi. Wow.

Burgdiferi, burgdiferi. We're gonna get you an apron and call you the word butcher. Burgdorferi, wort, wort, mork. And we'll get to why it's called that in a bit. But if you haven't caught on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites. Right, so a tick,

and in particular a nymph stage of a tick, which is a young adult or juvenile tick, will transmit this bacteria, the boralea burgdorferi, into a human. And the reason we usually get it from nymphs, Chuck, is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing. But a nymph tick will,

because they're stupid, they don't know anything yet. So as they're feeding on us, after somewhere maybe around 24 to 36 hours of feeding, this infected tick that has this bacteria in it, the bacteria will make its way from the mid-gut to the tick saliva, and the tick transmits it into the human bloodstream, where it just absolutely wreaks havoc on the human body.

Yeah, and you said something really key there, 24, 36, 48 hours later, really, really important. They have to be attached to you for that long, sometimes even longer, to transmit this bacterium. So if you find a tick on you and you get it off, you don't need to sweat Lyme disease. No.

If you get it off in due time. Right, exactly. If you see it's still crawling on you and it's unattached, you don't worry about it at all. But when it is attached, and when it has transmitted the bacteria, what it's transmitted, this B. burgdorferi, is really amazing at its job,

which is infecting you, giving you a bacterial infection. It has figured out how to zoom through the bloodstream, but then also take itself out of the bloodstream by latching onto the walls of your blood vessels. Yeah, this was crazy about the cellular stuff, that once it's attached to a cell, they said it's like a slinky, it doesn't let go. It just like basically reaches out and grabs the next cell

without letting go of the previous cell, and just sort of walks end over end. Right. Never unattaching itself. Right, exactly. So as it's moving along, it's never, it's not gonna get kind of, washed away in the extracellular matrix.

It's stuck to the cell, if it wants to be stuck to the cell. It can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls to pull itself out of the bloodstream, and then go attack specific parts of the body. So it's really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes it kind of pernicious. And then another thing, exactly.

It's basically, yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick, I didn't think about that. And then another thing it does, Chuck, I think this is really, really recent research. It can actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate than the normal mutation rate for bacteria, something like 15 times faster. Yeah, well, what that does is that just makes it really hard

for our human immune system to catch up to it. Right, because our immune system will produce antibodies based on the initial infection, but by the time the antibodies come around, the bacteria may have changed itself so that the antibodies won't recognize it. It'll just go right past it, because it doesn't fit the description

that the antibodies have. That's right. And you'll know that something bad is happening. First of all, if you find that tick, but if you get headaches, fever, fatigue is a huge, huge symptom. But the real telltale is what's called EM. It's an expanding skin rash called erythema migraines.

And it's like that circular pattern. And then we did talk about this on the ticks episode, but it's a circular pattern with what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it. Yes, and you can take off your butcher's apron now, because that was beautiful. Put on your chef's hat. You're sweating over there.

Yeah, so that particular rash, that bull's eye rash that is just an absolute telltale sign that you have a Lyme Borellosis infection. That only comes around in maybe 70 to 80% of cases. I think if every person got that rash, we would not have this problem with Lyme disease, because it would be caught very quickly, because you get that within usually about a week

or less of getting infected. But it doesn't come up in all cases. And with some of those other symptoms, like you said, like weakness, headaches, flu-like symptoms, like those could be a lot of different other things, joint pain, and so the Lyme disease infection goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases or did for many, many years.

It's just now that they're starting to kind of recognize or suspect Lyme when otherwise they might not have. Yeah, I mean, literally hundreds of things can have the same symptoms as Lyme disease. So Lyme's been around for a long time. We'll talk about the history here in a minute, as far as the 1970s go and official recognition, but it's been around, I believe, Yale School of Public Health,

find the bacterium in ancient North America, like 60,000 years old before the arrival of humans. They have an autopsy of a 5,300-year-old mummy that had Lyme disease. Yeah, you know, Uzi, the ice man, remember him? I remember Uzi. Yeah, I was disappointed that they referred to him as a 5,300-year-old mummy.

It's like, no, it's Uzi, the ice man, everybody knows him. Give him his name. But he had Lyme disease. He did, and there was a German physician named Alfred Buchwald who described this, that EM skin rash that we now call Lyme disease about 130 years ago. Right, so Lyme disease has been around a while,

but we are just now seeing a huge, again, an epidemic of it and a massive spread of it, not just in North America, but there's also two other kinds of ticks that transmit two other kinds of Lyme-causing bacteria in Europe and Asia. And in all three places, North America, Europe, and parts of Asia,

the incidence of Lyme disease is picking up at an alarming pace. I think we should slow down our pace, take a break. Okay, all right. And we'll come back and we'll talk about Lyme Connecticut right after this. ["Hey Dude, The 90s"] Stop, you should know.

["Hey Dude, The 90s"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so Lyme Connecticut, something

that's very old hat to you. Right, I've known about it for years. Lyme, old Lyme, and what was the third town? I don't remember. Well, let's just call it a new Lyme. It was not. They're going to be so mad. Their high school football team is going to go berserk

on old Lyme this year. In the 1970s, though, there were a group of children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were having all these weird symptoms, swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches, all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days, but in the early 1970s, doctors were definitely did not have this on the radar and were very dismissive of what was going on in these towns.

And if it were not for the work of Judith Mench and Polly Murray to just regular moms, although Polly Murray did work for the World Health Organization for a while, they were advocates. They were patient advocates because their families were getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like, someone's got to do something. Something's going on here.

And these doctors are not being any help. Right. And it was a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book. She made it sort of her life's work. In 1996, a book called The Widening Circle. And because of sort of the persistent sexism and science, they were largely discounted, even though they

had a list of 37 individuals. They researched on their own, contacted scientists. We just really need to shout them out. Polly Murray died just about a month ago at the age of 85. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, she was a persistent cuss as they call him up in the Yankee states.

That's right. So on the one hand, yes, from everything I've read and all the impressions I have, they were very much dismissed. And it was very much sexist. And also, I think, because they weren't doctors. But on the other hand, the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like, I have no idea what this is.

So let's just pretend it's not real. But luckily, those two women and the groups that they established, they went on and they contacted Yale Medical School. They contacted the state. And they really kind of put this on the map. They said, there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on where you have a lot of kids who suddenly

have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere. What are you guys going to do about it? And because of their agitation, this mystery made its way to the desk, or I guess the microscope, of a guy named Willie Bergdorfer. And he was, at the time, the world's foremost authority on what's called Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, which is another tick-borne bacterial infection.

I remember that when I was a kid. That was a big news item. It was. That scary one. He was working out in Colorado. In Colorado, it was ground zero for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever for a while. Which is, yeah, you do not want to have that.

It's a really bad bacterial infection. But by this time, they had done, thanks to the legwork done by the moms and the patient advocate groups in Lyme, Connecticut, it had been pretty well established that the common thread between all these people, besides where they lived, and by the way, it was Chuck Lyme, old Lyme, and East Hadham. Sorry, East Hadham.

Aside from the fact that they all lived in the same region, was that all of them, or almost all of them, were called being bitten by a tick. And a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willie Bergdorfer's microscope, because they had said, there's something in the ticks here that is creating this disease

that we haven't encountered before. That's right, and he had already discovered this bacterium called, how do you pronounce that? Spirachet? Spirochete. Spirochete. But a spirochete is a type of bacteria, and that's what. Spirachet.

That's what I know. Give me the apron. There you go. All right. Spirochete. You just made me think of the older brother Chet in weird science. Now go make yourself one, but what?

Man, that guy had some good quotes. Oh yeah, RIP. What, what? Bill Paxton? When? Oh, he died a couple of years ago, very sad. Are you sure? I'm positive. You're thinking of Bill Pullman.

No, Bill Paxton died, it was so sad, because I had just listened to his Mark Marin interview, and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. He just sounded like the best guy and best family man, and he passed away way too early. Yeah, really.

I did not know about that. I saw Fraylty not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good. Was it the first viewing or? No, no, no. I've seen it before, but yeah. Yeah, man, great movie. Yeah, but he wrote, and I believe,

directed and starred in it. Yeah, it was so good. I know I love a good powers booth casting call. For sure. It was unusual and surprising, but it was perfect. Very good, underrated film. Where are we? Oh yeah, we were talking about Rocky Mountain,

Spotted Fever, Willie Bergdorfer, identifying the Spyrokeet that was causing Lyme disease. Spyrokeet, right. Spyrochette. What a dumb dumb. No, no, remember we established we're all smart. Yeah, so he discovered this, this Perrakeet, and he was honored by this discovery

and naming that thing after himself. That's why it has that interesting name. I get the impression he didn't name it after himself. They named it after him. No, so they honored him. No, no, no, go on. Yeah. Okay, but there's a big difference between him saying,

this thing's called the Bergdorfery bacteria and somebody saying, we're gonna name this after you. No, I totally agree. Okay, so Bergdorfery or Bergdorfer, he figures out what is the basis of Lyme disease, which is great. That's an enormous breakthrough. It establishes that, yes, it is its own thing.

It's its own disease. And because it was a bacteria, it's a Spyrokeet, which again, it's a kind of a snake-like shaped bacteria, specific kind that walks like a slinky. Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh, we got this here. Take some antibiotics. And over the course of several years starting in,

I think the 90s is when they really started to say, okay, we can cure Lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on, by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Right. Here you go. And they said, case closed. We're the medical establishment.

Let's go have a party for ourselves. Yeah, and here's the thing, like many times that can take care of the problem. So it's not like they were just lazy and not doing their work, but I think they closed the book a little too soon and a lot of people do, because that oral, that round of oral antibiotics,

if you catch it early, it can really work. But, and I think they say what, like nine times out of 10, if you catch it early, then that will work. Right, they're so persistent with that assertion that if you find a tick on yourself and you live in an area where Lyme disease is known to thrive,

if you can't say how long that tick's been on you, they're probably just going to give you that round of antibiotics. I wanted to buy that. Yeah. And again, like you said, in a lot of cases, and I believe from what I've read, the vast majority of cases in early stage Lyme disease,

that round of antibiotics should work. Yeah, and they say that if you, and this is from the American Lyme Disease Foundation, quote, if you live in an endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early Lyme disease and suspect recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion to your doctor so that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis.

So. Show up to your doctor and say. Yeah. Madam, sir, I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please sit down. Well, they're saying sort of still, you still sort of need to be your own advocate, because it is so hard to diagnose still,

because if you're going on symptoms alone, like we said, there are hundreds of things that share those symptoms, and Lyme disease may not be the first thing they think of. That's a huge problem with Lyme disease. Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for Lyme disease doesn't actually test for the B. burgdorfery bacteria.

Right. It tests for the antibodies that should be present in your bloodstream if you have a bacterial infection. Not even specific to that one, but a bacterial infection. The problem is it takes days, if not maybe a week or two, before your body mounts an effective immune response

against this infection. So if you find a tick and they give you a test, say within the first couple of days, it's going to come back negative, even though you very much have a burgdorfery infection, it's going to come back negative because it's the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other part of the problem is,

even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the burgdorfery bacterium, it moves out of the bloodstream really easily and within several days. So there's a very brief window of time where you can directly test for the burgdorfery bacteria and find it in a simple blood test. Yeah, you can also get false positives

and they're advocating now for two-tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis. So if you get that first positive test, sometimes now you'll get a different test, a Western blood test, that's going to really get more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies. Right, so part of the other problem is the reason

a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say, no, doctors, you're wrong, like this is not good enough, is that there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called chronic Lyme or post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. Is that the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round of antibiotics

that seemingly cured the Lyme disease symptoms that you had actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection, this created this Lyme disease in the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body. And because the medical establishment said, we got it, it's fine. These antibiotics cured it and didn't go deeper.

That bacterial infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse ways later. Yeah, and it's a really big deal because what'll happen is they'll say, you're cured, we gave these antibiotics, they worked, but weeks and months and even years later when people have persistent fatigue and muscle aches and headaches and like your knee joints hurt,

they said like a brain fog can happen. These are all things that are, I don't wanna say generic, but if you walk into your doctor and say, I feel like I'm fuzzy and I have a brain fog and I get headaches and I'm tired, it's sort of a wide, it's hard to pinpoint what's going on. And they think you're cured of the Lyme disease. So that's where some of the more dismissive,

at least from the Lyme disease community, they're saying like, I have this chronic issue. And they're saying, but no, there's no such thing as a chronic issue. Well, they're also saying like, look, we gave you a test for Lyme disease and you came back negative, you know? We know you had it before, we tested you,

we came back positive, we treated it with antibiotics, now we've tested you again and it's coming back negative, you don't have Lyme disease anymore. So there's a huge debate whether the antibiotic course is not enough and that the Lyme disease is persisting elsewhere in the body and that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't show up on the tests like it should.

Or there's remnants of it. I saw one article that suggested that the cell wall from the spirochete, the burgdorfery spirochete can remain even after the thing's dead and persist in like joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which would explain this long-term arthritis as like a post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome symptom.

Or is it that it converts into an entirely different disease like an autoimmune disorder? Yeah, some people think that it could trigger an autoimmune response and the infection's gone and this is what's happening later on is you have this autoimmune response that can lead to other things like rheumatic heart disease. I think we, did we cover Gion-Bear syndrome

or just talk about it in different episodes? We've talked about it and I think if I remember correctly, it's Guillain-Barre. Guillain-Barre. Give me the apron. I'm pretty sure, yeah. We could both be wearing the apron for this one though. Well, we'll split it up.

I get the lower half. All right. I get the top half, I'm porcupigging it. All right, I'm gonna just cover my bits down there. But regardless of what's happening, what people know is that they don't feel right. And it's extremely frustrating to feel these symptoms months and years later and not be taken seriously

in a doctor's office. Yeah, so a lot of people are saying, this course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks. It should be many months. Cause you really need to get all of the spirochete out of there or else it's going to persist and you're gonna have big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying like,

this, what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a lot of frustration like you're saying a big disconnect and this is something that is probably going to keep playing out. Although it seems like it may be on its way out because of the epidemic proportions Lyme is taking now in the United States.

Yeah, I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored, but you know, that's probably a harsh statement, but it's being taken way more seriously now. Yes, that's something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like 300 to 400,000 new cases of Lyme disease in the United States alone.

And that 10 to 20% of those patients will end up with chronic Lyme disease. Yeah, I mean, I spend a fair amount of time hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled plenty of ticks off of them and plenty of ticks off of myself. And I have fatigue a lot because I have a four year old and every now and then I'm like, do I have Lyme disease?

Well, probably not. And here's why. Well, I've never had the bullseye first of all. Okay, that's a big one. But also the ticks you pull off of your dog, those are dog ticks, they do not transmit Lyme. It's specifically the long late or black legged tick, which is a type of deer tick.

Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer ticks in the woods. Are you saying that they, if they would not latch onto a dog and they'd be like, ooh, no. I don't know, I don't know. Because there's deer ticks all over the woods. Sure, there definitely are. I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog.

It's entirely possible they won't since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know that dog ticks don't transmit Lyme. Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing from the ticks episode. And this is one I will lay on people from time to time. Is remember how ticks attach themselves?

Sure. They just hang out on blades of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly just waiting for something to pass by that they can latch onto. Right, they sense the CO2 of the mammal that's walking past them. So interesting.

And Chuck, one thing I read is that somehow the Lyme infected ticks, because they're infected themselves. Lyme resides in like small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. Yeah. They are infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get infected with this stuff and they're just passing it along.

It's not like they're the ultimate source of Lyme disease. No, ticks are misunderstood. They're really great. Right, but from what I saw, the ticks that are infected with the Lyme bacteria are actually better at finding hosts than non-infected ticks. Like it somehow enables them to be better parasites.

That's amazing. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do I just know that? Cause I'm smart. I don't remember. But I do, I remember you talking about in the ticks episode about how they wave their arms in the air,

waving for somebody to pass by. And I remember one of our listeners made some art of that. We got to find it. That's right. And from snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dog's butt to my scrotum, it's quite a ride. It's a wild ride.

And then to Emily, eventually plucking that thing out for me. That's nice. That's what marriage is all about, folks. Yeah. You just have your forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, get it out, get it out. So let's take another break.

Okay. And we'll talk a little bit about prevention and then a little bit about some very recent, interesting, wacky things going on in Congress about Lyme disease as a bio weapon. Okay. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show,

Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing.

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OK, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch? Don't ever go into mother nature. Just stay in your mid-century modern home with tiled floors and don't go into the woods. Sounds delicious. No, I love the woods. You love the woods, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I love watching the woods on television. From your mid-century house? No, I love the woods myself. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Get in the woods, but they recommend things like deet. I don't use that stuff on my own body.

But some people will say, put that all over your body and put it on your clothes and put it on your socks and shoes. Just walk around spraying a cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods. What I do is I just check for ticks. Yeah, a good thing to do seriously. It looks super dorky, but what do you care? Is to tuck your pant legs into your socks.

Yeah, sure. And then when you come out, like wear light colors too, because you can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then when you come out of the woods, take your clothes off and take a shower as soon as you can and just inspect yourself. Inspect your groin, your armpits, your scalp. Part of the problem with Lyme disease though

is remember you get it from ticks in the nymph stage, which are really, really small. So you've got to check really, really well to see if you have that tick on you. Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the adult ticks as well. Yeah, don't leave them. Yeah, don't just leave those on.

And check your dogs. Check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs, whatever that's called, their leg bits. Check behind their ears, check under their collars, because ticks are trying to, you know, they're not going to hang out just like on the top of their back.

They may start there, but they're going to try and find a place that's dark and warm and out of view. Yeah, I don't mean to say you can't get Lyme disease from an adult, Chuck. It's just that the nymphs are far more likely to feed on a human than an adult is, but a Lyme infected adult tick will transmit Lyme to you too, for sure. Yeah, a very important distinction.

Yeah. So now we move on to the U.S. Congress, very recently, about a month ago. End of July, I think. Yeah, there was a U.S. House rep named Chris Smith, Republican out of New Jersey, who introduced legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you should review these claims that I'm seeing

that our own Pentagon researched using ticks to spread Lyme disease as a bio weapon in the mid 20th century. I'm reading a lot about this in books and articles that we did research on Plum Island and other insects too, not just ticks, of turning them into bio weapons. And this thing passed. And a lot of this comes from a book written

by Chris Newby called Bitten, Colin, The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. And this book, I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, said this book really inspired me to take up this legislation. But in the book, Newby basically says, the government at Fort Detrick, Maryland

and on Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into an animal disease research center, were doing- It was an insect disease research center before that, I guess. They were looking into, well, they definitely were doing bio warfare research there. Early, early 1950s, yeah. And then Fort Detrick for however long,

if they're not still doing it now. But they were apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons. I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I find that highly believable. But what Newby is saying is, they were doing that research. And then the way we got Lyme disease

is whatever research they were coming up with, escaped, say a tick attached to a bird that flew off of Plum Island and landed in the area around Lyme, Connecticut. And these ticks got off and they started to breed and they became endemic in this area. And that's where Lyme disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon

that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully released into the larger population in the Northeast. Yeah, so here's my question. I haven't read the book, but are they saying that we created Lyme disease or that we just weaponized it? Because those are two very different things.

Yeah, I don't know what she's saying either. And I think she stops short of saying that, but that it's implied that if you put two and two together, the government was looking into biological warfare and they were talking about using ticks at some point. And it's really close to this ground zero of where the tick epidemic began. You put two and two together.

That's the impression I have is that she didn't actually come out and say it, but that she lets the reader surmise for themselves, which is the problem. Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's actually claiming that they created Lyme disease, because we just got through saying it was in, who was the mummy?

Utsi. It was in Utsi, 5,300 years ago. Over in the Alps. Well, true, but it also in the United States, I mean, it came around in the, we first discovered it in the 1970s and like several different places. It wasn't just Lyme Connecticut,

they found it in California. Right. And you can't just, it doesn't add up that it would be popping up in all these random places if it escaped from Long Island Sound in 1953. Right, which I think somebody who's subscribed to this conspiracy theory, and it's very much what it is as a conspiracy theory,

that, well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental, it was purposeful. Oh, okay. And that they spread it around the Northeast, California, and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual place where the first case of Lyme disease was described in the United States in 1969,

about six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped up in old Lyme, Lyme, and East Hadam. Well, it's a very bad idea if that's what went on, because you have to depend on a lot of things, which is, A, these ticks definitely finding their way to the enemy, B, they attach to the enemy successfully and transmit the disease, and then what does it transmit?

A very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and fatigue over the course of a long time. Right, that also produces a one-of-a-kind telltale rash. Right. That tells you supposedly in plenty of time that you have this disease that needs to be treated with a simple course of oral antibiotics. Yeah, and it has to be probably in the country,

they don't thrive well in the city. Right. So it doesn't make a good biological weapon. No, and then again, people who subscribed to this conspiracy theory say, well, they can't all be winners, but maybe it was just something they were experimenting with and it wasn't very good.

Trust me, I mean, we've done enough research on stuff our American government used to do and continue to do that. It's not the most outlandish thing in the world. No, it's not. And that's also why Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand,

because it's entirely plausible. It's not just a complete wacko idea. The other reason Chris Smith shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand is because he is a true Lyme warrior. He introduced other legislation called the TIC Act. And of course he had to make TIC an acronym. An acronym, not an an acronym.

What's it stand for? TICS colon, identify, control, and knockout act. He was really grasping like a TIC on a blade of grass with that one. But the point is... But knockout's not one word unless you use it as knockout. Well, that's what he's saying, I guess,

because it's one word. So it's really the TICOs act. But it would create an additional $180 million in federal funding for Lyme disease research, which is sorely needed right now. That's awesome. I didn't know he was such an advocate, that's good. He really is.

He hates Lyme disease, like a lot. I was about to say something, but... I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region and my brain. Oh, your analogies are great. What were you gonna say? I wanna know.

We can beep it off if you need to. I was gonna get political. I was gonna say he hates TICS like he hates... Bleep. Okay. Can we leave that and bleep it? I don't know, we'll find out. All right.

So the whole idea that it's a bio weapon, almost certainly not the case, right? But it makes for good press. I mean, like if you look up like Lyme disease and bio weapon, there is a lot of recent articles written on it just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation. Yeah.

A lot of people are saying is, look, it makes sense like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that. But at the same time, there's another really great explanation for it. And it's climate change. That this whole thing came about in the 70s because we're starting to see what was called

the first epidemic from climate change. And there's this really great article on Aeon, which is a great website by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, spells it like Michelle Pfeiffer with the P called TICS Rising. And she's an investigative reporter, a science journalist who really went to a lot of trouble to explain how climate change has created a new world

for TICS and we are now living in it. Yeah. I mean, in 2014, the EPA actually started to use four new indicators about what's going on with climate change and the impact. And one of them was the spread of Lyme disease. So like the EPA officially uses that as a factor and an indicator in determining

the impact of climate change now. Right. And so the whole basis of this idea is that because of warmer weather, TICS are being killed off in far fewer numbers from over the winter. So they're surviving longer. As it gets warmer and warmer, higher and higher up,

their range is spreading rather rapidly. Oh yeah. And wherever these TICS go, Lyme disease is game to go with them. So the spread of Lyme disease is increasing as the spread of TICS is increasing too. And TICS have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In that same Aeon article,

Mary Beth Pfeiffer was talking about how moose are dying in their thousands in like Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death by a hundred thousand TICS at once. It's amazing. That never happened before. And now all of a sudden it's kind of becoming routine because the TICS aren't dying off in the winter

like they're supposed to. And again, it's because of climate change. And then in the Northeast Chuck, one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of TICS is because there's been an explosion of deer to support the TIC population. Sure, back in the day, there were things like mountain lions and there were predators

that would help control the deer population. Yeah, wolves. Wolves, they're even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the deer population. Oh yeah, you can bet that's gonna happen. No, really. No, I mean, do you think so? Yeah, totally.

Like if 300,000 people a year are coming down with Lyme in the United States, they're gonna start reintroducing wolves to combat if it has even a half of a chance. I'd be interested to see if that happens. For sure. Because humans are gonna want to hunt those wolves. Yeah.

You know? It just brings it out on us for some reason, huh? Well, I mean, they hunted the mountain lions. Right, but I think that's the idea of, oh, wait a minute, really weird and circuitous bad things happen when we over hunt mountain lions and wolves. Maybe when we reintroduce them,

we won't have to, you know, or we won't follow that impulse. We'll just let nature take its course. Right. Who knows? You got anything else, man? I got nothing else. So there's a solution, a round of antibiotics

and some wolves and that'll cure what ails us. Yeah, advocate for yourself still, people. Sure. And the wolves. Be persistent. That's good advice for everything, Chuck. Agreed. Almost everything.

There's certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right? I do know. Okay. If you want to know more about Lyme disease, go check out all of the articles there are to read. And again, go check out the Aeon article by Mary Beth Pfeiffer.

It's really interesting. And since I said it's interesting, that means it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this neat story about how great stuff you should know listeners are. Oh, I like that. Portland, Maine. Hey guys, my wife, daughter and I,

all stuff you should know listeners for years, decided last minute to buy tickets to the show while on vacation at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, just a short drive south of Portland. We had nosebleed seats naturally because we waited until just an hour before showtime. And that was more than cool by us. And we were totally stoked just to be there,

whatever the seats. When we got to our balcony seats, a friendly fellow named Matt approached us, said he had three tickets for orchestra seats and asked if we'd like them. The tickets were intended for friends of his who were stuck in Labor Day weekend traffic, couldn't make it to the show.

Turns out he had been scouting the crowd for 40 minutes, looking for a group of three, even enlisting the help of the ushers to find three people together. And we were the first group that he saw. Brief walked downstairs and there we were, three rows from the stage for the supremely excellent show about podcast topic redacted.

Thanks to Matt and his friends being stuck in traffic. We went from not having tickets an hour before showtime to having third row 10 minutes before you guys took stage. We considered it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm confident this lengthy setup and telling you the story is way too long for the air. No. Not true, Richard Clark.

The whole family would be forever grateful if you could give Matt and the Connecticut groundskeeper a huge thank you from Rich, Susan and Emily in upstate New York for sharing those seats with us. That is fantastic. I love our shows, man. It's great. People are so kind.

And that is from Richard Clark. Not Dick Clark, but Rich Clark. Oh, that's even better. Yeah. Dick Clark's taken. That's right. And good for Rich Clark for recognizing that too. Yeah.

Thanks for coming to the show, Rich, and bringing the family. And thank you, Matt, for being such a cool dude. That was very nice of you. I am utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people. Yes. Okay, well, if you wanna get in touch with us,

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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.