Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease

Hey guys, it's Josh Josh Clark. No, not that Josh Clark you went to high school with. Sorry to get your hopes up like that. This is Josh Clark from that podcast you listen to Stuff You Should Know, And for this week's SYSK Select, I'd chosen our September twenty nineteen episode on lime disease. This one's pretty fascinating because it turns out lime disease has a ton of intrigue associated with it. It started out with a cluster of weird symptoms of people in Connecticut, and then they finally

Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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 it kicks me OFFLME disease.

I'm so mad at you.

Blame you me for that one. She's like, you should say this, and I said, you know what, I'm I should totally say that.

Yeah. This is sort of a follow up to our July twenty seventh, twenty ten episode Why Ticks Suck In, which 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, We're just kidding. But we still get those requests of wears my shirt.

Yes, that's hilarious. I forgot about that and also get sued today.

Yeah. Probably. So. Also want to point out and shout out our former website HowStuffWorks dot com because a couple of the articles that we use 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 real good stuff.

Yeah. So we're talking today about lime disease.

In particular, not limes.

No, we should say it's capital l ym 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 lime disease that led to this bacterial infection persistent bacterial infection was first describe medically.

One of the facts of the show. I think, oh yeah, sure, who knew it was named after a town, Lime, Connecticut? I knew did you know that before this?

Sure?

Did we cover that? And why tik suck?

I don't think so.

All right, well, you're smarter than me that.

No, it's not that. I think what got me was I I heard about people saying, like, no lime 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 year's back and that's what I found out.

All right, that was all So we're equally smart.

Right exactly, I'm not smarter than you.

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 here you goo.

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 lime disease, We'll go ahead and hit you with a couple of stats here. Lime disease in the United States is more than doubled since nineteen ninety seven.

That's astounding, it is.

And it has 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 lime disease. And I believe the entire lower forty eight is that correct.

There are cases in all forty eight states. Supposedly half of the counties in the United States now are considered a high risk for lime disease. And like all of this happened just in the last like twenty or so years. Yeah, which is I mean, there's a lot of debate over the CDC calls lime disease endemic, which is a disease that has become a like an ongoing part of an area or region, and some other people are saying, guys,

Yeah, and there's also a history continuing to this day even where lime 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 lime disease syndrome. And it's all very frustrating if you have been an individual that has had lime 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

Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of frustration in that community because there's a sentiment among the medical establishment that.

You know, he takes some antiotics.

Exactly, it's easy to cure lime disease. Here's some antibiotics. You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head. We're not going to 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 pretty stoked right now to be hearing this. Yeah, you know for sure we're advocating for you guys. Sure, not patting myself on the back, although I am literally patty like.

I see you chuck here. That albow is sticking out pretty far. So.

Lime disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium boro lea burgdorfrairi wow borg da faery burg dea fraiari.

We're gonna get you an apron and call you the word butcher.

Burgdor fairy work more. 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 Borellia burgdor fairy, 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

Yeah, and you said something really key there, twenty four thirty six, forty eight 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, if you don't need to sweat lime disease, no, if you get it off in due time.

Right exactly, If like you see it's still crawling on you. 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 be burgdor Ferry is like 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 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 right, never unattaching.

Itself right exactly. So as it's moving along, it's never it's not going to get kind of you know, washed away and the extracellular matrix it's stuck to the cell. If it wants to be stuck in the cell, it can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls to pull itself out of the bloodstream and then go attack you know, specific parts of the body, So it's really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes

Yeah, And 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. They'll just go right past it because it doesn't 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 migrants and it's like it's 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 you just that was beautiful, put on your chef's chef's hat.

You're sweating over there.

So that that particular rash, that bullseye rash, that is like a just an absolute telltale sign that you have a line boreolis boreliosis infection that only comes around and like maybe seventy to eighty percent of cases. I think if every person got that rash, we would not have this problem with lime 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

Yeah. I mean literally hundreds of things can be can have the same symptoms as lime disease. So lime's been around for a long time. We'll talk about the history here in a minute, as far as the nineteen seventies go and official recognition, but it's been around. I believe the Yale School of Public Health find the bacterium in ancient North America, like sixty thousand years old before the arrival of humans. They have an autopsy of a fifty three hundred year old mummy that had lime disease.

Yeah, you know Utzi the Iceman, remember him?

I remember Uzzy?

Yeah. I was disappointed that they referred to him as a fifty three hundred year old mummy. It's like, no, it's Utzi the ice everybody knows him, give him his name. But he had lime disease.

He did. And there was a German physician named Alfred Buckwald who described this that em skin rash that we now call lime disease about one hundred and thirty years ago.

Right, So lime disease has been around a while, but we are just now seeing a huge again an epidemic of it, and in 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 lime causing bacteria in Europe and Asia, and in all three places, North America, Europe, and parts of Asia, the incidence of lime diseases picking up at an alarming pace.

I think we should slow down our pace. Take break. Okay, all right, we'll come back and we'll talk about Lime Connecticut right after this. All right, So Lime, Connecticut. Something is very old hat to you.

Right 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.

Notice, they're going to be so mad. Their high school football team is going to go brazik on Old Lime this year.

In the nineteen seventies, 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 nineteen seventies, 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

Oh is that right? Yeah, Yeah, she was a persistent cuss as they call them up in the Yankee States.

That's right.

So on the one hand, yes, from the 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

I remember that when I was a kid, that was a big news item. It was a scary one.

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

That's right, and he had already discovered this bacterium called it How do you how do you pronounce that spirit.

Chat spira keet, spire key, But spira keet is a type of bacteria, and that's what that's what they all, right, spirra chet and you just made me think of the older brother Chet and weird.

Now go make yourself one. But what.

Man? That guy had some good quotes.

Oh yeah, rip what what Bill Paxton when he died a couple of years ago? Very sad?

Are you sure I'm thinking of Bill Pullman?

No, Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I had just listened to his uh Mark Maron 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.

Yeah.

I saw Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good.

Was it the first viewinger?

No? No, no, I've seen it before.

But yeah, man, great movie.

Yeah. But he wrote and I believe directed and starred in it.

Yeah. It was so good. And I love a good Powers Booth cast and call.

For sure it was. 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 spiro keet that was causing.

Lime hirakeet right, spira chet What a dumb, dumb.

Yeah. No, remember we established we're all smart.

He Yeah, So he discovered this, this parakeet, 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. And he didn't name it after himself. They named it after him to go on.

Yeah, okay, but.

There's a big difference between him saying this thing's called the Burgdorferey bacteria and somebody saying we're going to name this after you.

No, I totally agree.

Okay, So Burgdorfrey or Burgdorfer. He figures out what is the basis of lime 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 spier key, which again it's a kind of a snakelike shaped bacteria specific kind that walks like a slinky. Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh,

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 ten, if you catch it early, then that will that will work right there.

So they're so persistent with that assertion that if you find a tick on yourself and you live in an area where lime 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 a round of antibiotics portolactically. 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 lime disease, that round of antibiotics should work.

Yeah, And they say that if you and This is from the American Lime Diesus Foundation quote. If you live in an endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early lime 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, 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 lime disease may not be the first thing they think of.

That's a huge problem with lime disease. Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for lime disease doesn't actually test for the b burgdorfree bacteria. 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.

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 block test, right, that's gonna 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 lime or post treatment lime disease syndrome is that the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round of antibiotics that seemingly cured the lime disease symptoms, that you had actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria

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,

Well, they're also saying like, look, we gave you a test for lime disease and you came back negative. Right you know, we know you had it before we tested you. We came back positive, We treat you with antibiotics. Now we've tested you again and it's coming back negative. You

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 do we cover Keon Bear syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes.

We've talked about it, and I think if I remember correctly as Gia Barre.

GiB, 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 doer half.

All right, I get the top half. I'm porky pigging it all right.

I'm going to just cover my bits down there. But regardless of what's happening, what people know is 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 that these this course of antimbiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks, it should be many months, because you really need to get all of the spiral keet 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

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 away more seriously now.

Yeah, I saw something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like three hundred to four hundred thousand new cases of lime disease in the United States alone, and that ten to twenty percent of those patients will end up with chronic lime 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 lime disease?

Well? Probably not, And here's why.

Well, I've never had the bulls eye. 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 lime. 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 lime.

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.

Yet they think can latch onto, right, they sense the co two of the mammal that's walking past.

So interesting and chuck.

One thing I read is that somehow the lime lime infected ticks because they're infect of themselves. Lime resides as 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 lime disease.

No, ticks are misunderstood.

They're really great, right, But from what I saw, the ticks that are infected with the lime bacteria are actually better at finding hosts than non infected ticks. Like it somehow enables them to be better parasites. It's interesting.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do I just know that?

Because I don't, I don't remember, but I do I remember you talking about in the Tics episode about how they wave their arms in the air when somebody passed 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 but to my scrotum, it's quite a to ride.

It's a wild ride.

And then to Emily eventually plucking that thing out for me, that's nice, gotta 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.

Uh. 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 lime disease as a bio weapon.

Okay, okay, 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.

Yeah, from your midcentury house.

No, I do. 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 and.

Just walk around spring 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, when 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 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 you're growing your armpits, your scalp. Part of the problem with lime disease, though,

Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the adult tics as well. Yeah, don't don't just leave those 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

Yeah. I don't mean to say you can't get lime disease from an adult chuck. It's just that the nymphs are far more likely to eat on a human than an adult is. But a lime infected adult tick will transmit sure lyn to you too.

For sure, A very important distinction. So now we move on to the US Congress. Very recently, about a month ago, end of July. I think, yeah, there was a US 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 tics to spread lime disease as a

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 Dietrich, Maryland, and on Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into an animal disease research center, we're doing.

It was an insect disease research center before that, I guess.

They were looking into well, they definitely were doing biowarfare research there.

Early early nineteen fifties, Yeah.

And then Fort Dietrich for however long if they're not still doing it now, But they were apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons.

Yeah.

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 line diseases, whatever research they were coming up with, escaped, say a tick attached to a bird that flew off of Plumb 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

Yeah. So here's my question. I haven't read the book, but are they saying that that we created lime 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 stopped 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

Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's actually claiming that they created lime disease, because we just got through saying it was in who was the Mummy Utsi? It was in Utsi 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 that in nineteen seventies, and like several different places. It wasn't just

Right, which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy theory and is very much what it is, is a conspiracy theory that well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental. It was purposeful that they spread it around the northeast California and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual place where the first case of lime disease was described

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 tics definitely finding their way to the enemy. B they attached 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 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's just it doesn't make a good biological weapon.

No. And then again people who subscribed as 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 yeah, it's not just a complete wacko idea.

Right.

The other reason Christmis shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand is because he is a true lime warrior. He introduced other legislation called the Tick Act, and of course he had to make tick an achronism, that an acronym, not a an acronism, stand for the Ticks 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, but knockout's not one word unless you use it as knockout.

Well, that's what he's saying, I guess, because the work goes act. But it would create an additional one hundred and eighty million dollars in federal funding for lime disease research, sorely needed.

Right now, that's awesome. I didn't know you was such an advocate. That's good.

He really is. He hates lime disease like like a lot.

I was about to say something, but 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.

And I was going to get political. I was going to say, he hates ticks like he hates 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 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. What a lot of people are saying is, look, it makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go

Yeah, I mean, in twenty fourteen, 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 lime disease. So like the EPA officially uses that as a factor in 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, ticks 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, lime disease is game to go with them. So the spread of lime disease is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing too, And ticks

It'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.

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 are even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the deer population.

Oh yeah, you can bet that's going to happen.

No really, no, I mean do you think so? Yeah?

Totally. Like if three hundred thousand people a year are coming down with lime in the United States, they're going to are 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 going to want to hunt those wolves.

Yeah, you know, it just brings it out in 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 circuit as 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 around 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. 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 they are to read. And again, go check out the aon article by Mary Beth fight for It's really interesting and since I said it's interesting, that means it's time for listener mayil.

I'm going to call this neat story about how great stuff you should know listeners are. Oh, 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

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.

Thank you for rich Clark for recognizing that too.

Yeah.

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