Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease

8:25Chuck Bryant: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 Borrelia 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.

9:13Josh Clark: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.

9:30Chuck Bryant:No. If you get it off in due time. Right, exactly. If you see it still crawling on you, it's unattached, 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.

10:02Josh Clark:Yeah, this was crazy about this 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, never unattaching itself.

10:21Chuck Bryant:Right, exactly. So as it's moving along, it's not going to 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. Like ticks. 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.

11:04Chuck Bryant:Something like 15 times faster.

11:06Josh Clark:Yeah, what that does is that just makes it really hard for our human immune system to catch up to it.

11:12Chuck Bryant: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. They'll just go right past it because it doesn't fit the description that the antibodies have.

11:32Josh Clark: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.

11:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

11:43Josh Clark:But the real telltale is what's called EM. It's an expanding skin rash called erythema migrans. And it's like that circular pattern. And I know we did talk about this on the Ticks episode, but it's a circular pattern with what looks like a bullseye in the center of it.

12:01Chuck Bryant:Yes. And you can take off your butcher's apron now because you just, that was beautiful. Put on your chef's hat. You're sweating over there. Yeah. So that particular rash, that bullseye rash that is like just an absolute telltale sign that you have a Lyme borreolus, a Lyme borreoliosis infection, that only comes around in like 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.

12:58Chuck Bryant: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 it or suspect Lyme when otherwise they might not have.

13:14Josh Clark: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.

13:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah, you know, Utsi the Iceman. Remember him? I remember Utsi. Yeah, I was disappointed that they referred to him as a 5 ,300-year-old mummy. It's like, no, it's Utsi. The ice cream, everybody knows him. Give him his name. But he had Lyme disease.

14:01Josh Clark: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.

14:13Chuck Bryant: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.

14:44Josh Clark:I think we should slow down our pace, take a break.

14:47Chuck Bryant:Okay, all right.

14:47Josh Clark:We'll come back and we'll talk about Lyme, Connecticut, right after this. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Stuff you should know.

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15:42Josh Clark:Hey, everybody. Support for the show today comes from public. So it kind of feels like there's two types of investing platforms. You've got the old school brokerages that look like they were designed in like 1995. And then you have those other platforms, you know, the ones that feel less like investing and more like a casino.

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16:34Josh Clark:Ad paid for by Public Holdings. Brokerage services by Public Investing. Member FINRA, SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors. SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.

16:53Chuck Bryant:You ever been to the pharmacy counter and the pharmacist asks, do you have any questions? And suddenly your mind goes blank. Well, that's exactly why you need to listen to Beyond the Script from CVS Pharmacy and iHeart Media.

17:04Josh Clark:That's right. It's hosted by Dr. Jake Goodman. And this podcast brings you real conversations with CVS pharmacists, the health experts you see most, answering the questions you wish you'd asked, like which medications may not mix well, what vaccines you should consider before a big trip, and even those questions that you were too embarrassed to say out loud.

17:21Chuck Bryant:Each episode busts myths, decodes health trends, and gives you practical, trustworthy advice straight from the people behind the counter. No white coats, no lectures, just real talk, real answers, and maybe a few laughs. Listen to Beyond the Script on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

17:55Josh Clark:All right. So Lime, Connecticut, something that's very old hat to you. Right. Brand new to me. I've known about it for years. Lime, old Lime, and what was the third town? I don't remember. No, let's just call it New Lime. It was not New Lime. They're going to be so mad.

18:11Chuck Bryant:Their high school football team is going to go berserk. On old Lyme this year?

18:15Josh Clark: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 Minch and Polly Murray, two 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.

18:57Josh Clark: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 in 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.

19:32Chuck Bryant:Oh, is that right?

19:32Josh Clark:Yeah.

19:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, she was a persistent cuss, as they call them up in the Yankee states.

19:37Josh Clark:That's right.

19:37Chuck Bryant: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 in 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.

20:17Chuck Bryant: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.

20:40Josh Clark:I remember that when I was a kid. That was a big news item. It was. A scary one.

20:44Chuck Bryant:He was working out in Colorado, and Colorado 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, 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 Lime, Old Lime, and East Haddam. Sorry, East Haddam. 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.

21:24Chuck Bryant:And a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willie the 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.

21:39Josh Clark:That's right. And he had already discovered this bacterium called, how do you pronounce that? Spirochet? Spirochete. Spirochete.

21:51Chuck Bryant:But a spirochete is a type of bacteria. Spirochet.

21:55Josh Clark:That's what I know. Give me the apron.

21:57Chuck Bryant:There you go.

21:58Josh Clark:All right.

22:00Chuck Bryant:Spirochet. You just made me think of the older brother Chet in Weird Science.

22:04Josh Clark:Now go make yourself one, buttwad.

22:08Chuck Bryant:Man, that guy had some good quotes.

22:10Josh Clark:Oh, yeah. R.I.P. What? Bill Paxton. When? He died a couple years ago. Very sad. Are you sure? I'm positive.

22:19Chuck Bryant:You're thinking of Bill Pullman.

22:21Josh Clark:No, Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I had just listened to his Marc Maron interview, and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor. Oh, neat. He just sounded like the best guy and best family man, and he passed away way too early.

22:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, really. I did not know about that. I saw Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good.

22:43Josh Clark:Was it the first viewing?

22:45Chuck Bryant:No, no, no. I'd seen it before, but years ago. Yeah, man, great movie. Yeah, but he wrote and, I believe, directed and starred in it.

22:52Josh Clark:Yeah, it was so good. And I love a good Powers Booth casting call.

22:55Chuck Bryant:For sure. It was unusual and surprising, but it was perfect.

23:00Josh Clark:Very good underrated film. Where are we?

23:03Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. We were talking about Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Willie Bergdorfer identifying the spirochete that was causing Lyme disease.

23:12Josh Clark:Spirochete, right.

23:13Chuck Bryant:Spirochet. What a dum-dum.

23:16Josh Clark:No, no.

23:17Chuck Bryant:Remember we established we're all smart.

23:19Josh Clark:Yeah, so he discovered this parakeet. and he was honored by this discovery and naming that thing after himself. That's why it has that interesting name.

23:33Chuck Bryant:I get the impression he didn't name it after himself. They named it after him. No, so they honored him. No, go on. Yeah. Okay. But there's a big difference between him saying this thing's called the Bergdorfere bacteria and somebody saying we're going to name this after you.

23:48Josh Clark:No, I totally agree.

23:50Chuck Bryant:Okay. So 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 spirochete, which, again, it's kind of a snake-like shaped bacteria, a 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, you know, 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.

24:36Chuck Bryant:Here you go. And they said, case closed. We're the medical establishment. Let's go have a party for ourselves.

24:43Josh Clark:Yeah, and here's the thing. Like, many times that can take care of the problem.

24:48Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

24:49Josh Clark: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 round of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can really work. And I think they say, what, like nine times out of ten, if you catch it early, then that will work.

25:10Chuck Bryant: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 prophylactically. 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.

25:41Josh Clark: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.

26:00Chuck Bryant:Right, show up to your doctor and say, Madam, sir, I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please sit down.

26:07Josh Clark:Well, they're saying 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.

26:24Chuck Bryant:Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for Lyme disease doesn't actually test for the B. burgdorferi 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 days, it's going to come back negative. Even though you very much have a burgdorferi infection, it's going to come back negative because the antibodies haven't been created yet.

27:07Chuck Bryant:The other part of the problem is even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the Bergdorfere 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 Bergdorfere bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.

27:29Josh Clark: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 blot test that's going to really get more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies.

27:49Chuck Bryant: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, that created this Lyme disease in the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body.

28:30Chuck Bryant: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.

28:44Josh Clark:Yeah, and it's a really big deal because, you know, what will 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, you know, like your knee joints hurt, they said like a brain fog can happen. And these are all things that are, I don't want to 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. Sure. And they think you're cured of the Lyme disease.

29:24So that's where some of the more dismissive, at least from the Lyme disease community, they're saying, like, I have this chronic issue.

29:31Josh Clark:And they're saying, but no, there's no such thing as a chronic issue.

29:35Chuck Bryant:Right. Well, they're also saying, like, look, we gave you a test for Lyme disease and you came back negative. Right. You know, we know you had it before. We tested you. We came back positive. We treated with antibiotics. Now we've tested you again and it's coming back negative. if 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 Bergdorf-ry 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.

30:30Chuck Bryant:Or is it that it converts into an entirely different disease like an autoimmune disorder?

30:37Josh Clark: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 It can lead to other things like rheumatic heart disease. I think we did. We cover Guillain-Barre syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes.

30:58Chuck Bryant:We've talked about it. And I think if I remember correctly, it's Guillain-Barre.

31:02Josh Clark:Guillain-Barre. Give me the apron.

31:04Chuck Bryant:I'm pretty sure. Yeah. We could both be wearing the apron for this one, though.

31:08Josh Clark:Well, we'll split it up. I get the lower half.

31:10Chuck Bryant:All right. I get the top half.

31:12Josh Clark:I'm Porky Pig in it. All right. I'm going to 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

31:31Chuck Bryant:yeah so a lot of people are saying this course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks it should be many months because you really need to get all of the spirochete out of there or else it's going to persist and you're going to 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.

32:04Josh Clark: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.

32:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like 300 ,000 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.

32:33Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, I spent 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.

32:52Chuck Bryant: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 black-legged tick, which is a type of deer tick.

33:04Josh Clark:Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer ticks in the woods. Are you saying that 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.

33:16Chuck Bryant: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.

33:30Josh Clark: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.

33:50Chuck Bryant: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. They're 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.

34:31Chuck Bryant:Like it somehow enables them to be better parasites.

34:35Josh Clark:That's amazing.

34:36Chuck Bryant:Isn't that interesting?

34:37Josh Clark:Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do I just know that because I'm smart?

34:41Chuck Bryant: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 waiting for somebody to pass by. And I remember one of our listeners made some art of that. We got to find it.

34:54Josh Clark: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.

35:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah. You just have your forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, get it out, get it out.

35:17Josh Clark:So let's take another break. Okay. 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 bioweapon. Okay.

35:34Chuck Bryant:Okay. Da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, stuff you should know.

36:04Josh Clark:a casino.

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36:20Josh Clark:Retirement accounts? Yep. High-yield cash? Of course. They even have direct indexing. Honestly, this is what an investing platform should look like. Modern design, simple to use, and customer support that actually cares.

36:32Chuck Bryant:Go to public.com slash S-Y-S-K and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash S-Y-S-K.

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37:00Chuck Bryant:You ever been to the pharmacy counter and the pharmacist asks, do you have any questions? And suddenly your mind goes blank. Well, that's exactly why you need to listen to Beyond the Script from CVS Pharmacy and iHeart Media.

37:11Josh Clark:That's right. It's hosted by Dr. Jake Goodman. And this podcast brings you real conversations with CVS pharmacists, the health experts you see most, answering the questions you wish you'd asked, like which medications may not mix well, what vaccines you should consider before a big trip. And even those questions that you were too embarrassed to say out loud.

37:28Chuck Bryant:Each episode busts myths, decodes health trends, and gives you practical, trustworthy advice straight from the people behind the counter. No white coats, no lectures, just real talk, real answers, and maybe a few laughs. Listen to Beyond the Script on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

37:52Josh Clark:You know what phone calls are always super important to me are the phone calls that I have with my mom. She's the only parent I have left, and I always look forward to those calls. Here's something you might not know. 2026 will mark the 150th anniversary of the first ever phone call. That took place on March 10th, 1876. And from the call that sparked it all to the first long-distance phone lines, the first line across America, the first line across the Atlantic, the first round-the-world call, the first commercial cell service, and the first 911 system, AT &T has been connecting people for 150 years in so many different ways.

38:27Chuck Bryant:So congrats on 150 years of connecting people, AT &T. Connecting changes everything. AT &T.

38:50Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch?

38:55Josh Clark: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.

39:04Chuck Bryant:Sounds delicious.

39:05Josh Clark:No, I love the woods. You love the woods, right?

39:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Yeah? I love watching the woods on television.

39:12Josh Clark:From your mid-century house?

39:13Chuck Bryant:No, I do. I love the woods myself.

39:16Josh Clark: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.

39:32Chuck Bryant:Just walk around spraying a cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods.

39:36Josh Clark:What I do is I just check for ticks.

39:38Chuck Bryant: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.

39:45Josh Clark:Yeah, sure.

39:47Chuck Bryant: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.

40:25Josh Clark:And check your dogs, you know. You check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs, whatever that's called, their leg pits. 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.

40:48Chuck Bryant: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.

41:03Josh Clark:Yeah, a very important distinction.

41:05Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

41:05Josh Clark:So now we move on to the U.S. Congress.

41:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

41:08Josh Clark:Very recently, about a month ago.

41:11Chuck Bryant:End of July, I think.

41:12Josh Clark:Yeah, there was a U.S. House rep named Chris Smith, a 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 bioweapon 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 bioweapons. And this thing passed. And a lot of this comes from a book written by Chris Newby called Bitten, colon, The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons.

41:55Chuck Bryant:And this book, like, I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, said, like, 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...

42:16Josh Clark:It was an insect disease research center before that, I guess.

42:19Chuck Bryant:They were looking into... Well, they definitely were doing biowarfare research there.

42:26Josh Clark:Early 1950s?

42:28Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

42:28Josh Clark:Yeah.

42:28Chuck Bryant: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.

43:11Chuck Bryant:There was actually a biological weapon that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully, released into the larger population in the Northeast.

43:22Josh Clark: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.

43:36Chuck Bryant: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, you know, using ticks at some point. and, you know, 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 readers surmise for themselves, which is the problem.

44:09Josh Clark: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? Ootsie. It was in Ootsie 5 ,300 years ago. Over in the Alps. Well, true. But also in the United States, I mean, it came around in the—we first discovered it in the 1970s in, like, several different places. It wasn't just Lime, 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.

44:47Chuck Bryant: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 purposeful or accidental. It was purposeful.

44:58Josh Clark:Okay.

44:59Chuck Bryant: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 been old lime, lime, and east had them.

45:20Josh Clark: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.

45:47Chuck Bryant:Right, that also produces a one-of-a-kind telltale rash 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.

46:01Josh Clark: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.

46:08Chuck Bryant:No, and then again, people who subscribe 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.

46:17Josh Clark: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.

46:25Chuck Bryant: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. Yeah, 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 anachronism. What does it stand for? TICS, colon, Identify, Control, and Knockout Act. He was really grasping like a tick on a blade of grass with that one. But the point is—

47:05Josh Clark:But knockout's not one word unless you use it as knockout.

47:08Chuck Bryant:That's what he's saying, I guess, because it's one word. So it's really the Ticko's Act. But it would create an additional$180 million in federal funding for Lyme disease research, which is sorely needed right now.

47:22Josh Clark:That's awesome. I didn't know he was such an advocate. That's good.

47:24Chuck Bryant:He really is. He hates Lyme disease, like, a lot.

47:30Josh Clark:I was about to say something, but.

47:32Chuck Bryant:I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region in my brain. Oh, your analogies are great. What were you going to say? I want to know. We can beep it off.

47:41Josh Clark:I was going to get political. I was going to say he hates ticks like he hates b****. Okay. Can we leave that and bleep it?

47:49Chuck Bryant:I don't know. We'll find out. All right. So the whole idea that it's a bioweapon, almost certainly not the case, right? But it makes for good press. I mean, like if you look up like Lyme disease and bioweapon, there is a lot of recent articles written on it just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation. Yeah. What a lot of people are saying is, look, it makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that. But on the same 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.

48:35Chuck Bryant:And there's this really great article on Aeon, which is a great website, by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, spells it like Michelle Pfeiffer with a P, called Ticks 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 ticks, and we are now living in it.

48:59Josh Clark: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.

49:19Chuck Bryant:Right. And so the whole basis of this idea is that because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in far fewer numbers 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 ticks go, Lyme disease is game to go with them. So the spread of Lyme disease is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing too. And ticks 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 100 ,000 ticks at once.

50:08Chuck Bryant:That's amazing. That never happened before. And now all of a sudden it's kind of becoming routine because the ticks 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 ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to support the tick population.

50:28Josh Clark:Sure. 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.

50:41Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. You can bet that's going to happen.

50:44Josh Clark:No, really. I mean, do you think so?

50:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, totally. Like if 300 ,000 people a year are coming down with Lyme in the United States, they're going to start reintroducing wolves to combat it if it has even a half of a chance. I'd be interested to see if that happens. For sure.

51:00Josh Clark:Because humans are going to want to hunt those wolves.

51:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

51:04Josh Clark:You know?

51:04Chuck Bryant:It just brings it out in us for some reason, huh?

51:07Josh Clark:Well, I mean, they hunted the mountain lions. Right. But I think that's the idea of, oh, wait a minute,

51:16Chuck Bryant:really weird and circuitous bad things happen when we overhunt 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.

51:43Josh Clark:Yeah, advocate for yourself still, people.

51:45Chuck Bryant:Sure. And the wolves. Be persistent. That's good advice for everything, Chuck. Agreed. Almost everything. There are certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right?

51:58Josh Clark:I do know.

51:59Chuck Bryant: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.

52:17Josh Clark:I'm going to call this a neat story about how great Stuff You Should Know listeners are. Ooh, I like that. From 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.

52:52Josh Clark: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. A brief walk 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.

53:27Josh Clark:We considered it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm confident this lengthy setup in 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.

53:47Chuck Bryant:That is fantastic. I love our shows, man.

53:49Josh Clark:It's great. People are so kind. And that is from Richard Clark. Not Dick Clark, but Rich Clark.

53:55Chuck Bryant: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'm utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people. Yes. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and you can send us a tweet or an Insta post or a comment or what have you, that kind of thing, because all of our social links are there. Or you can just do it the old-fashioned way and send an email.

54:31Chuck Bryant:Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

54:39Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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