Show 907: Ticks, Fleas & Mystery Disease
The People's Pharmacy
Joe and Terry Graedon
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2014
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most people are familiar with tick-borne diseases such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Lyme disease. But other diseases transmitted by ticks and fleas and biting flies may be flying under the radar. One such organism is called Bartonella.
More Than Cat Scratch Fever
Bartonella is known as the cause of cat scratch fever, but its significance is much greater. New research suggests that it may underlie many hard-to-treat conditions. Joint pain, brain fog and chronic fatigue may all be symptoms of a difficult-to-detect Bartonella infection. Might you have Bartonellosis?
This Week’s Guests:
Edward Breitschwerdt, DVM, is Professor of Internal Medicine at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. He is a co-director of the Vector Borne Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, which has been testing animals for vector borne infections, including Bartonella, since 1984. He is chief scientific officer at Galaxy Diagnostics. He spoke to us previously in 2010 about other tickborne diseases.
B. Robert Mozayeni, MD, is a rheumatologist specializing in chronic inflammatory diseases with neurovascular as well as rheumatic manifestations. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Translational Medicine Group and chief medical officer of Galaxy Diagnostics.
The article published by Drs. Breitschwerdt & Mozayeni was in Emerging Infectious Diseases in 2012. Here is a link to the full free article.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Joe Graydon. |
| 0:02.3 | I'm Terry Graydon. |
| 0:03.8 | Welcome to this podcast of the People's Pharmacy, where we bring you the stories behind the health headlines. |
| 0:10.2 | This podcast is brought to you by Redux Industries, makers of utterly smooth body cream. |
| 0:16.0 | 800-345-7339 on the web at utter cream.com. |
| 0:30.9 | What if ticks, fleas and biting flies and biting flies could transmit an infection that's hard to detect? |
| 0:36.9 | It's not hypothetical. |
| 0:38.4 | It's Bartonella. |
| 0:40.1 | This is the People's Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Graydon. |
| 0:50.9 | Bartonella is mostly known, if at all, as the germ that causes cat scratch fever, but there's |
| 0:56.5 | growing evidence that it's also transmitted by fleas, lice, ticks, and even biting flies. |
| 1:03.7 | The infection can cause symptoms as varied as nerve pain and joint inflammation or balance |
| 1:09.4 | disorders and brain fog. Why is it so hard to diagnose? |
| 1:14.7 | Is there any treatment for this chronic condition? Coming up on the People's Pharmacy, we'll learn |
| 1:20.2 | more about this mystery epidemic. First, this news. |
| 1:37.3 | In the people's pharmacy health headlines, episodes of low blood sugar may put an older person at risk for dementia. |
| 1:45.1 | Researchers followed nearly 800 patients with diabetes. They were at least 70 years old at the start of the study, which lasted for 12 years. Those who needed to be treated for hypoglycemia had double the risk of developing |
| 1:51.8 | dementia during that time. Hypoglycemia is severe low blood sugar and often results from |
| 1:58.1 | aggressive treatment for diabetes. If too many medications are taken, |
| 2:02.6 | or the dose of diabetes drugs is not adjusted properly, hypoglycemia can be a common complication |
| 2:08.9 | of treatment. Guidelines have often encouraged physicians to lower blood sugar into a normal range, |
| 2:14.4 | but such recommendations may result in more hypoglycemic bouts. |
... |
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