SPEAKER_01 0:23

And welcome back to another exciting episode from Water Guy Unfiltered. I'm Paul, your water guy. I'm Ethan, your audio guy. And later on, we'll have a special guest. We'll let him introduce himself later on. But it's been a it's been a minute, as the kids say. A brick is what they all say. A brick, oh great. So it's been a brick since the last one. A lot has happened, so as you know, we're always looking to try to never duplicate a prior episode if we can avoid it. And there is some hot stuff going on right now, and I'm gonna start it off with some little quiz. You don't even know where I'm going with this. I don't know where you're going with it, no. Have you heard of uh Cyclospora? I believe I have, yes. What do you call two Cyclospora? Parasite. I know. That's that's that's good. I like that. Yeah, that's it that gotta kick it off with a terrible dad joke. That was a homemade one, too. I didn't steal that from anyone else. Yeah, so cyclospora is a parasite. No, no joking on that one though. Um Cyclospora's full name is Cyclospora chiotinensis. Yeah, that's a mouthful. But you don't want it in your mouth because bad things happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Now, remind me, is is this the parasite that was found in uh that lettuce and stuff recently?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yes, yes, you know exactly. See, I told you this was a hot one. We have not we have not been uh been talking prior to the show, so he came in completely blind. And yes, this was this is all what all the excitement has been about for literally the last month. But uh cyclospora is, yeah, for those of you that have kind of vaguely heard about it, and to be honest with you, I think everybody, if you're in America listening, uh by this point, 47 states all have at least one reported case of cyclospora infection, which is known as cyclosporesis. So, yeah, it's bad stuff. So I it number one, this blows my mind that this late in the game, I just had a birthday yesterday. 56. Happy birthday. Well, thank you. Not once in my entire 55 years had I ever heard of Cyclospora until now. And I'm I'm pretty much a nerd when it comes to knowing some really bizarre animal and bug facts. So this caught me completely by surprise that there was something out there that I knew nothing about. So, yeah. Cyclospora. Well, we've heard of you know the lettuce outbreaks where you not not lettuce outbreaks, but lettuce due to an outbreak where you're not gonna eat it because of usually we hear about E. coli, you know, that's like oh, another E. coli outbreak, no big deal. Taco Bell pulled all their lettuce off of their shelves for like two weeks. Recently, just now. You know why? Because they got their lettuce from Taylor Farms, Taylor Farms. New Mexico, yes. So, and we'll talk about that later because I don't want to get sued the way I I kind of lay out the the whole liability thing here, because it's it's very gray how this whole thing plays out. But yeah, so Cyclospora is it's a parasite. And this parasite is actually a relatively new parasite. The uh I had the I had the note. I was gonna talk about it later. Oh, we'll talk about it now. It was actually first described by scientists in 1979. Oh, so it's new new. New new, yeah. 79 is not that old, right? It's like 47 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

So that's when it was first figured out. But they didn't have a name for it until 1994. So this thing, I was thinking about that. I'm like, that's 15 years. It was 15 years old before it even had a name. So that just to me seems a little weird that you're walking around as a mid-teenager and you still don't even know what to call yourself. So it's only been around for, yeah, like 30 years at this point. Um with an official name. And this one, there's not a lot that is known about it. It's a really, it's actually fascinating because you cannot grow this thing in a lab. It doesn't, it won't let you grow a culture of it. Really? Yeah. So it's it's super hard. You know, if you can grow it in a lab, you could study it, you could do mass-produce these things, but when you can't grow it in a lab, you're limited to human studies. Right. Which are very, you know, slow, and there's ethical, you know, those pesky ethical delights.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Morals and such.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah, morals get in the way. So you they don't like a lot of human testing. And it's funny because you're probably wondering, well, there's gotta be some animal that you could test this on. This bizarre little little parasite, humans are the only definitive and major natural host. We are the only thing that keeps this thing alive. We're just so good. We're so good. We are so specialized, they've got they're like, people are it. Yeah, we just gotta get in people's buttons. Those those guys, that's what I want. Yeah, that's that's what's exactly right. And another little fast fact, their complete life cycle, their internal, endogenous life cycle, happens inside the host, meaning us. And that includes both asexual and sexual reproduction. So they have mastered all sorts of sexuality, and they only do it inside us. That's wild. So bizarre. Also very terrifying. Yeah, it it is. The more I prepped up for this over the last few weeks, the more terrified I got because I was like, number one, I didn't know anything about this, but the more I learned, the more I'm like, oh my gosh, why why are we not all a little more cautious about things? Right. So I mentioned animals. And uh, yeah, you can't you the animals don't carry this, but there have been what they call spurious passages. Um, spurious passage is a nice scientific name for basically it passes through their digestive system without establishing a true infection or a biological reservoir. Basically, it doesn't like take hold, and they've only found this in dogs, chickens, and monkeys. So basically they they found it in their poop, but it did it was just because they ate it. It wasn't because they were infected. So, yeah, that's pretty bizarre.

unknown 7:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Huh. We have something today that we have never done before. Something very special. Very special. So you gotta bear with us, all you folks listening. We're gonna try to overcome the uh uh the communication and the and the audio. That's why we've got Ethan, he's a master at this stuff. It's a little clunky for our first time, but we're we're gonna work on it as we go. We're gonna get better. We are bringing in, via communicating with the telephone of all things. Yes, a special guest from the West Coast. West Coast. Yep, and this special guest is in the process of de-cyclosporifying himself. Detoxing from it. Detoxing. He's still got it, he is trying to get rid of it. Wow. Yep, this is and and that when you see how many people are infected, it's a big number, but to know somebody and to be able to get him on the show of somebody that's actively going through this was pretty doggone cool. So, and I didn't plan a show around him. He just happened to stumble in on the tail end of this, and then I realized, oh my gosh, he's perfect. So, give us we're gonna take a quick break, we're gonna do our audio magic, and we're gonna come back with his niece and nephew, call him Uncle George. I'm good. Good. How are you, Paul? Audio's looking good. Yes, it is. You are our special guest today, and you are our special guest because you are currently fighting off the cyclospariasis. Yes. Quite an quite an honor. You are one of the rare few that we that we could find that's actually battling this. So, how did you how did you end up catching this monster?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

So we actually didn't catch it in the US. Uh my wife and I went to uh Mexico, and uh when we came back, we we got it. Uh I mean we got it in Mexico, but it showed up when we got back to the US, thankfully, actually, because uh we didn't want to have it when we were there. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So, how soon after the exposure did you start to feel off?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, so we actually got it uh seven, six to seven days after we landed, after we came back from Mexico. So I'm assuming it's gonna be somewhere between seven and ten days uh after we actually uh, you know, whatever ingested, whatever we did, were when the symptoms started showing up. So probably seven to ten days.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

So the symptoms that you just mentioned, what what kind of symptoms? And you can be as graphical as you want, because we are we are now. Are you sure? Are you sure about that? Okay, it's water guy unfiltered, so go wild.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

So actually, um part of the challenge was that the the um the symptoms weren't the classical ones that uh you hear about all the time about cyclocoreiosis. Um so at first, or for a few first few days, it's like, well, is that it, or maybe it's not. So we we thought it might have been something else because we did not get the uh quote-unquote explosive diarrhea or anything like this, neither my wife nor I. Actually, I got mild diarrhea just once, uh like three or four days later, and kind of very similar to my wife. So it that's that's kind of it was kind of um uh confusing uh when we f finally found out that we did have cyclooperiosis. Um but I mean, main mainly we had you know bad stomach aches, you know, very, very nauseated. I mean, I I felt like I wanted to throw up all the time. I wish I could have, but I couldn't throw up. And extreme fatigue. Extreme fatigue. It was just like, you know, could barely walk across the room or go up the stairs to the second story. So that's basically how it hit us.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Um that sounds yeah, and I was uh all the research that I was digging up, it sounds like you you nailed almost every single box there. Um so so you you were there before all this uh what we call the Cyclospora season was really like kicked off to a strong start here. So you'd already kind of heard that you this might be a problem and you you presented that to the doctor when you went, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, we actually uh when we went to the doctor, I told him uh it's like, hey, we were in Mexico, and uh was when we went to the doctor, it was about maybe a few days, maybe a week or so after we got back from uh after we got the first symptoms because we were hoping that's just gonna go away. Um so we told him, it's like, hey, we were in Mexico, and uh, you know, we might have caught something there. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, anyhow, so that we we actually the first time went to urgent care and they did some tests, and um, but they did not test for psychoporiasis. So they recommended uh we go to a GI if the symptoms don't go away. A couple of days later, I mean they're still feeling bad. It's like it was getting worse, actually. Uh, by the way, lost a lot of weight, also, so that was another big thing. Not in a healthy way. So it's not like people who want to lose weight should be looking to get this because trust me, it's not a fun, a fun experience. Um, so we went to the GI and uh he he kind of, you know, I told him we were in Mexico and stuff. He's like, yeah, well, anyways, uh let me let me do an endoscope on you. So, you know, they want that's that's what he did. Um, kind of a cute story. I I I'll I'll be real quick. So he did the endoscopic thing and uh came back with the results and took some biopsies, three biopsies. Um a couple of days later, two or three, well, actually, three or four days later, uh, the report came back and like, well, you know, we found some stuff, there's inflammation, there's a lot of damage in the stomach lining. Uh, but you know, that's it. It wasn't, so there was something going on, they just didn't know what. And the uh both the lab, uh uh the director of the lab, whoever wrote the report, and and the GI, they both both thought that it it was uh that it was not psychoporiasis. Um so I actually uh took took that information, the information they sent me, and I put it in uh Chat GPT, believe it or not. And Chat GPT came back and said, Oh, this is probably psychoporoasis. Oh god. Uh so I reached out to him and I insisted on taking a uh you know kind of a test. So it's a stool test. I don't want to be graphic here, but so he he you know, he wrote me up kind of reluctantly, but he gave me a prescription for one. And uh long story short, uh the test came back negative. But in the um in the report, in the report that they in the lab report, they said, well, you know, you could get, it's very possible that you get false negatives because of the way the psychopariasis works, it's jets, apparently. So once in a while, maybe that's why sometimes actually, by the way, you feel you feel okay, like for a day or so, and then it gets really bad for three, four days. And apparently that's the way it works. Um, so it was negative. So reached out, so a doctor reached out to me, said, Hey, it's negative. And I told him, Well, still, by the way, oh, another thing, it took two weeks or at least 11 days to get the results back because they told me they were they were still busy. So imagine all this time is accumulating, right? Um, you know, he goes, Well, uh, we're gonna test for something else. He gave me another test he wanted me to do, stool test, another stool test for one other thing. And uh by that time, I was just kind of like, you know what, this is this isn't working. I I went and looked for another doctor um and ended up going to a hematologist. And they actually, she was really good. He gave me like dozens of tests, both stool, like you know, a full spectrum of testing. Um, anyhow, so this time when they when the test results came back, I was positive on psychoporiasis. And it's not you usually if it's you get a positive result, it's it's positive because they won't detect it if it's not there. So, anyhow, thank goodness she found this. And so by the time all this came back, that was like um either five or six weeks after we got back. So after we got the first uh first symptoms. So all this time I had I had the parasite in my in my body, right? Eating away. Um so I it started uh she put me on antibiotics, and within actually within uh I would say within two, three days, I started feeling much better. And now actually, today is my last day of the regime of the of the uh the uh antibiotics uh regime that I'm taking. So feeling much better now, but it it was it was a struggle. It was a struggle.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

How how long is is the like once you start the medication, how long, what do they tell you in terms of how long before you're 100% again?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Well, um it's so the medications for like uh it's usually seven to ten days. She gave me 10 days worth, and today is the last day. Um so I'm I'm feeling much better, but still I'm I'm not back to 100% by any means. And I actually had a doctor's appointment today, and he cautioned me to take it easy for a little while longer because he said that it can actually come back. Um if you if I you know kind of strain myself too much or kind of work out or do whatever, you know, kind of lots of exercises. He said, because your body is still recovering and there's still potentially some some of the some of the parasites in you to do. But now it's your body's job to kill the rest of it. So you gotta allow it to do that, even though I'm not taking the uh the antibiotics anymore. He said it's your body's turn now to finish the job. So it's gonna take probably another couple of weeks or so before, hopefully 100% back. And he he expects me to be 100% back. That's a different doctor, third doctor.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Oh my gosh. So since you've gone through three different doctors, in order to kind of skip the torture that you went through for over a month, any like words of advice of uh what should we be asking our doctor, or like just do you skip certain steps? I mean, it sounds like if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. You just need to to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, so I actually went to more than three doctors, but uh so I had to take my wife also because she was feeling bad and it was kind of because she was feeling good, she was she got better, and then she got worse again. And again, that's how apparently this uh this thing works. And fortunately, he was he was a pretty good doctor, he was an ER doctor. And uh we went in there, we told him what happened, we told him, hey, we're in Mexico, and uh I'm you know, I I have it. And he, without hesitation, he said, okay, I'll write you a prescription, uh, with no testing or anything. So basically, he like so we were talking to him, and he told us it's like when somebody presents themselves like this and we hear, I mean, it's all all over the news, uh, the first thing we should do, a doctor should do, is put you antibiotics. And if you want to take the test, actually, it's probably a good idea in parallel, take the test. But given that it takes so long to get the test results, it could take, like I said, it took me 10, 11 days. I mean, you don't want to suffer for 10, 11 days. It's not, it's miserable. So uh what I would say, if there is good clinical evidence or decent clinical evidence that you have this, get find a doctor who will write you a prescription. I mean, it's at at first to be taken a dibiotics, it's not a fun thing, neither to take a diabiotics if you don't have it. But you know, take the test in parallel, uh, just in case. So, I mean, that's what I would recommend because I you know it took me almost two months before where I am today. It's been like two months.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Um actually, yeah, it's been actually today, yeah, actually a little over two months. Right now it's uh almost 10 weeks. And you know, from what I understand, sometimes it goes up, it goes away on its own, but with us, with me at least it didn't. I mean, like I said, it's been over two months. So definitely recommend if you have kind of uh if if it looked like you have it, uh I would strongly suggest you. I mean, I'm not a doctor, obviously, but see if a doctor can can write your prescription somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, no, what you say makes absolute sense. There was actually uh there's a cyclospora season, I didn't even know this, uh May 1st through August 31st every year. So yeah, they uh we're like ending peak season here, and as the numbers got bigger and bigger, they had actually shifted over to exactly what you said is they were uh the from what I gather on the CDC website and and actually uh University of Michigan put something out there that basically said if you at all suspect it, put them on the medication. Don't don't wait for the test.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, it it it makes sense, Paul. It makes sense. Uh like I said, I I suffered for two months, and given how long it takes to get that stack, I mean some other people it might be even worse, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

So yeah, well, two people have died so far in the US.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Yeah, yeah, I heard.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

So yeah, that that's uh that's pretty crazy. But uh well, we're glad you're you're on the uphill, uh the uphill side of of uh of recovery here. Uphill meaning good thing, not downhill.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Thank you, thank you. Well, thanks for thanks for educating people about this because I wish I knew this from day one. Um if I had this advice, I would I probably would have been better, you know, five, six weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Yeah, you just lost a month of uh for no reason, so that's that's crazy. Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for your uh your all the info and insight you give us on uh what you're going through. All right, thanks, Paul. Thank you very much. See you down the road. All right, thanks, everybody. Hi, I'm Paul, host of Water Guy Unfiltered. If you're looking for fun topics like landfill juice and the history of coffee mixed in with things like halo acetic acids and the forever chemical PFOS, you've come to the right place. Check out Water Guy Unfiltered and learn the raw truth about water stuff. Where it's educational and informative with a shot of humor just to keep it fun. We started as a weekly radio show, and now we're podcasted everywhere. Join us.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

It's crazy because for for those of us, you and me, that have only heard of it and haven't like experienced it, it was really interesting to get a get a perspective on from somebody that is going through it.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

Yeah, and and they can give you, especially someone you know so personally, um get a a true account of what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Yeah, it was funny because I was on I had no idea. So without divulging too terribly much, he's he's a member of the family, and we didn't know that he was dealing with all of this up until this week. So really? Yeah, he'd kept all of this hit. He was so sick that he was basically like he felt he was gonna he he probably he thought he was gonna die at one point. It was that bad. Wow. And he just didn't want, he didn't want us to, you know, he just wanted to kind of encounter and keep it all to himself over there, gratefully, so he didn't have the energy to go ahead and just kind of start broadcasting this. He just did his own, you know, tuck into the ball and just try to gut through it, which he did, uh thank goodness. But uh she was uh my my wife was on the phone with him, and uh, and it was like I said, it was this week. This episode was already a done deal, we already decided on it. And and he mentioned what he was going through, and my first thoughts were he's got cyclospore because he was talking about like you know what what he was dealing with, and he's like, Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So I was like, oh my gosh, he's gotta be on the show. This because I this really hit home. Yeah. So yeah, this is a you got it, you got a good account from a real life person that caught it and uh and basically is uh uh is dealing with the after effects of it. But the okay, it's a parasite that only affects people, which is bizarre in itself. Right. Um and it it from from when you're exposed to when you first start to have symptoms can take anywhere from two days to two weeks, which I you know, I would I wanted to hear what he had had to say, and he was saying, yeah, within a few days of getting back, he didn't feel quite right. So that that matches absolutely with with everything else. Um, and then it was funny where I I had when we just asked him, you know, what were your symptoms, the official symptoms from the CDC watery diarrhea, loss of appetite, weight loss, cramping, bloating, increased gas, nausea, fatigue. So he'd nailed like almost every single one of those things, except the the watery diarrhea part. Yeah. So yeah, it just ugh, it's a terrible thing. And the whole fatigue part, he just it sounded like it just like beat him down, uh almost tried to beat him senseless. Body was working too hard to fight it off. Yeah, well, uh, yeah, it's crazy. So this little this little nasty bug, I learned a whole bunch about how the whole life cycle works. Because I said before we got him on the phone, that the whole life cycle happens inside the person. So what ends up happening here, and I'll try to condense it so that it's like less science-y and more like user-friendly, but it's it's a parasite. Think of it like uh like a I don't want to say a worm because it's not really a worm, but like these floating around cells, these things maybe it's a single cell parasite. But what ends up happening is let's just start with you eat something that has these spores on it. So a spore is basically four parasites inside well, inside every spore, there's four parasites. I don't know why why there's like a perfect number of four. Maybe it's like the you know, like a pecan where there's always two halves, but there's four parasites in a spore. And if you eat a fresh spore, it's not gonna hurt you. The spore has to sporulate. Yes, I didn't make that word up. That's a new vocab word. It's a new vocab word. Uh when I read that, I was like, okay, what the heck is sporulate? Are you sure Dr. Pitts didn't say that? Yeah, I'm like, this sounds a little hokey. But sporulation takes between seven and fifteen days. So, yes, I had to look up sporulate because I was like, okay, now I feel dumb. That's a fancy way of saying that the the cell that has the four parasites in it, it's basically it's really delicate. And it sporulates, and that's the process of forming a hard shell. And I my assumption is because the hard shell protects it from the environment, that it's gonna be, who knows, it's gonna be laying out there in the in the field, in the lettuce field, for example, for who knows how long in the baking sun. So it's got to have a little shell of armor. It also has to have a shell of armor because if it's successful and this cell, this this spore ends up being put on a piece of food and eaten, now it's gotta survive our initial stomach, right? So it's got to survive the stomach acid so that we don't just eat it and digest the whole doggone thing. So sporulation takes one to two weeks, basically. So if you eat some fresh spore, you're probably not gonna get uh cyclospora. But if you have a hardened one, one that's had a chance to sporulate, what ends up happening is it gets into your digestive system, cracks open, and these four parasites come out. Sounds like something out of aliens, doesn't it? And they they basically like they stick to your intestinal wall, and then they start to reproduce. And what ends up happening is they'll produce, and that's the asexual part of it, right? They're just popping off other pieces, but then they start producing males and females, which is I know it's really bizarre, really bizarre. So there's male and there's female parasites, and here to make it even weirder, the female parasite burrows itself into the tit the cellular tissue of your intestines, right? Oh so the female doesn't move, she stays in there, she kind of gets all you know hunkered down for the fight. Nice and comfy, nice and comfy, and the males are mobile, the males are running around searching for the females. Yes. So that kind of makes sense because he was talking about don't over exert yourself because it could come back. Because apparently, like it sounds like you're you're you're kind of eradicating all the males, but the female, it sounds like some of the females are probably still in your tissues, and that's what I think what he was referring to about your body trying to take care of them as you know a foreign body at that point. Um you've knocked out most of them, but you could get a resurgence of of these uh this parasitic outbreak. So yeah, so they reproduce, they the female lets out these fresh spores, and these spores get excreted in the in your turds, and then the whole cycle gets repeated, and it only affects people. Crazy. I know. So yeah, that that is so bizarre. So, way back at the beginning, I didn't really jump into a lot of the details, but this thing came to a head. There's a there's a beautiful graph on CDC website actually about the number of cases, and there are these this this spike that happened back in June, middle of June, and middle to the third week of June. And then it kind of dropped off a little bit for a week or two, and then there was this huge spike at like around July 10th. Um, and that's when that's when the poo hit the fan, literally. That's probably what happened down there in the lettuce fields. But on 717, Taylor Farms de Mexico issued an official recall, and I can say that because that's they did. I'm holding a copy of it here, so don't don't sue me for you know for for blaming this on Taylor Farms New Mexico. They all I'm saying is that they issued a recall voluntarily. So there was some really confusing stuff that was going on, and they were trying to test lettuce. Because obviously everybody wants the smoking gun. You want to go, oh, it was your lettuce for this field that got everybody sick, you're in some deep poo. So I'm just full of humor today. The interesting thing is they did have a positive test, but it was a false positive. Oh. But it came out and everybody was like, oh, it's them, and everybody's pointing fingers, but then it found it came back that it was actually a false positive. So there was an apology for the accusation over the false positive, but it's it's interesting that even with no even without a con a confirmation that you actually had a parasite on the original lettuce from the farm, there's enough there's enough evidence. It was actually beautifully written. What was the crap? We'll have to cut that part out. Uh there's enough anecdotal evidence that it proves that it came through a certain a certain stream. And when I say stream, I'm not talking about like a lake or a river or anything like that. So lettuce. Lettuce was the culprit on this one. That's what they firmly believe at this point. Now, I will tell you that there are there is reporting required in almost every single state of the U.S. back to the CDC for cyclospora. So if if they suspect that you have cyclospora or you're confirmed, there's a 12-page thing that your doctor has to fill out or and a questionnaire. And it's more than just lettuce. And I'll get back to the lettuce. But I got a whole printout of this, and this one page, page seven, is really pretty interesting because you know, for those of us who are like, ah, I just won't eat lettuce. Well, what about sweet basil, purple basil? What about the parsley, oregano, thyme, mint, dill, sage, rosemary, other fresh herbs? Yeah, that was just on one page, and that really got me thinking. I was like, oh my gosh, the amount of places that we could be eating this could just be crazy. You got you got strawberries, you got blueberries, you got blackberries, golden raspberries, boysenberries. You get the point. Apples, oranges.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

I mean, anything that humans touch could actually be carrying these spores. So it's a pretty bizarre thing. So what they try what they do is when there's a whole spike of cases, they they start to interview these people and they they by putting it on a form where they're able to kind of have some consistency, then they start to go back. And what I found really interesting about this form, there's a line on there that has your loyalty number, your shopper's number at the grocery store. I never even thought about that. But they have, they basically want to know like your over here we have food line and and Kroger and stuff like that. They want to know your food line number and your Kroger number so that they can see exactly what purchases you made because it's a perfect history. It says, Oh, he got, you know, a half a pound of blueberries on July 12th, and we know exactly what brand they were, which is actually pretty doggone helpful when it comes to trying to what they call backtracing, trying to figure out, you know, where did all this stuff originate from? Track everything down. Yeah, track it back, see if you could figure out where the source is. Well, in this one, it was definitely all tracked back to one source, which was that Taylor Farms, New Mexico. So they can't like legally say you're responsible, but they know definitively that it's it was something from the ground on up. And and you got to remember that first you got the growing part. So that is a very high probability that that's where it happened, because lettuce takes a lot of water, and that's why we're covering it on today's show. Because this parasite gets spread around most likely because of water, because of irrigation water. And since it only comes from people, guess where the contamination into the irrigation water comes from? People. All the portagons that are sitting out there in the lettuce fields. Maybe one got rained on it, or one got tipped over, or maybe it was just nasty. It got full. Nobody emptied it. Uh nobody emptied the thing on time. And uh, you know, sorted creeping out. Started creeping out, gets down there in the irrigation water, which gets sprayed over and over on the lettuce. And next thing you know, you got a field of cyclospora babies. Then it gets it gets harvested. Now that obviously, there's any time it gets touched. Now, this could be people's hands, this could be cutting knives, this could be baskets, um, putting them on the, you know, the the the wagons, it could be the wagons. Then it goes back to the to the uh uh the processing plant, and in a lot of these cases, it was actually shredded lettuce. So basically they they shred this stuff all up. So it could have come from the shredding place. Yeah. We just we don't know for sure exactly what point it got contaminated, but we just know that it did. We can't prove it, but we know.

SPEAKER_03 37:18

You know, thinking about after we've taught chatted about it a little bit, it makes sense why they told us you have to cook it because washing it off won't fix it. If it spores and they've sporulated, is that the term? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they've sporulated, if they've created this hard shell, it's attaching itself to whatever is on there. So washing it off, that makes sense now. It's not going to get it off because it's it's attached to the item now.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

I don't know if it's attached or if it's just sprayed and it's just laying on there. I don't think it has little hooks. Right. But I think they're so tiny. They call them microscopic. So these are so tiny that they are on whatever it is. And you're in the crevices and stuff. The crevices. And especially a lot of this lettuce, you know, it's all wrinkly, it's got all sorts of little folds in it. You're you're not going to be able to clean it out. And furthermore, the sporulation that makes the shell, so to speak, makes it so that if you wash it, you know, you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna wash it in my my heavily chlorinated city water. Or if you're on a well, some people actually think, you know, I'll throw a little cup of bleach in my rinse water and I'll take care of it. The bleach is gonna eat up your lettuce before it's gonna eat through the uh the shell on these spores. Right. So you can't wash it off. And the problem is all those things, those herbs that I mentioned earlier, I'm talking about fresh herbs. I'm not talking about dehydrated and stuff like that, because obviously that would that would usually that process kills whatever else is on it. But anything fresh is by definition not cooked. So if you don't cook it, you're eating it raw. So you got everybody's worried about, you know, salmonella on chicken, and then you put a slice of lettuce on it that's raw, it you could make it, you know, a hundred times worse.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

But yeah, that's that's pretty bizarre though.

SPEAKER_03 39:11

Oh, can you imagine having salmonella and ospirosis that same time?

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Yeah, a parasite and a bacteria. Uh yeah, that that's funny you brought that up because I do have some uh some sheets that you know reminded us that we're very familiar with lettuce recalls because of E. coli. Yep. And E. coli is one of those that spread from fecal contamination. And the exact same thing goes on, but the spores are scary because at least a bacteria is gonna die. Right. But a spore, hell, that thing's gonna be like a seed. It could be laying dormant for a very long time. I didn't get any info on how long, because like I said, it's very hard for them to study these things because they can't grow them in a lab. It's not they got to use the samples that they find. Right. But uh yeah, cyclospora season is uh we are at the tail end of it, thank goodness. By the time this gets posted, we will probably be at the very end of it, so we'll know exactly what's going on. But I will tell you that as of August 13th, there were 9,481 confirmed cases. 398 people were in the hospital, and two people were dead from cyclospora. And this is confirmed. That was on 813. On 818, five days later, 15,716 infected. Those are lab-confirmed cases in the U.S. 828 people in the hospital from 398. Still two people dead. They're still dead, but no more, thank goodness. Now, 15,716, that's a lot of people. We just had one of them on the phone. That's that's what I was talking about. It's like when you realize that there's 300 million people in the United States, and only 15,000 of them have this. We just got one on the phone. Yeah. Uncle George. Uncle George had it. But last year, the 2025 season, the entire season only had 1,180 cases. So from 1,180, we are at 15,716. Plus, I'll throw this out there. There's an there's 11,841 additional case, additional tests that are pending. And I wondered what that meant, but after talking with George and finding out that yes, it took you know a week and a half in order to get a result, I'm I'm gonna be shocked at by the end of the official season if we are not well over 30,000 cases. So pretty bizarre. Um, yeah, that's that's a huge difference from 1180. So it's a national reportable in 40 47 states plus DC, Puerto Rico, and New York City. Um the only place right now that I'm aware that does not have any cases is New Mexico and Hawaii. So, go figure. I guess Hawaii doesn't import a lot of lettuce. That would probably be expensive. A lot of spam goes over there, I think, though. Yeah, sure. But uh yeah, that is uh that's bizarre. Treatments. So if you think you have it, it's the safe answer, actually, especially when we're dealing with the spikes, um, was to actually do the uh, what was it, empiric treatment, that's the official name for just give them the dose, which is what they should have done anyway. But uh, and I'm not a doctor, I don't claim to be a doctor, I'm just giving you the information as it's out there. Try trimethhoprim, sulfamexosole. That is the tried and true thing that they are finding that works on this. So, pretty uh pretty good stuff. Uh, they have their dosage. I mean, it's it's for doctors, they've got it all spelled out. What I found really interesting is that um anecdotal or unpublished data suggest that the following drugs are ineffective. So basically, they put out there what not to use, and that list is actually pretty doggone big. Albenidazole, a zitromyosin, so a Z pac, for those of you that have ever had a Z pac, it's not gonna work on this. Um Diloxinide furate, doxycycline, I've heard of that one before. Metronidazole, I've heard of that one. Um uh nalodixic acid. Quino crine, tetracycline, I've heard of that for sure, uh, tinnadizol, and trimethoprin when used as a single agent. So interesting that if your doctor puts you on those, you might say, hey, the CDC says that this doesn't work. That doesn't work. Why am I going on that? So just wanted to share some information with you. Uh-huh. Was that? Wow, we rolled right through. Wow. Rolled right through it. Yeah. Most of it was just so exciting we got through it so quick. I got so pumped up. I hope I didn't just butcher this one. But I I did skip over a lot of the process. I got into where we were shredding. Um, but there's other places of where. So once you shred the lettuce, then it goes to the distributors, right? This is where it gets really interesting because this is how you take a batch of lettuce and you spread it throughout a massive part of the U.S. Um, so one distributor, it the lettuce may not it one distributor may not be covering the whole US, and one farm, think of it like this a big old tub of lettuce doesn't just come from one farm. It could come from ten different farms. Right. And if nine of those farms is great and you got one of those that has some cyclospora, now all of a sudden you've contaminated the entire batch. Yep. And then that batch gets moved up and gets gets distributed, gets shredded, maybe gets mixed in with something else, or the shredder actually gets used on some some other kind of uh vegetable, and it gets, you know, from other farms that aren't affected, and then they get shipped off somewhere else. So there are there's so many ways that you can introduce the contamination that is it is impossible to 100% pinpoint, you know, you did this, but we pretty much know it came from Mexico, not just Mexico, but there's like this one specific section where all of this stuff seemed to originate from. Um yeah. So don't worry. If you have been to Mexico, I would say, based on Georgia's story, if you've been to Mexico anytime between May 1st and the end of August, and you don't feel good, and I've been to Mexico and uh in some pretty nice places.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

And eventually you get what we all just referred to as Montezuma's revenge. It's it's one of those things. And it seemed like if we were there for a week, most of us were good for maybe four days, and then all of a sudden, boom, it would hit us, and your guts would just be screaming at you. Yeah. But you'd you'd get back over it. Usually in, you know, two days. You wouldn't feel good. But it it wasn't the end of the world. But if you don't get over it in a couple of days, then you definitely want to go ahead and bring all of your history into the doctor, and hopefully they could put you on something. Um the the interesting thing, there was there was some some stuff because I kept running into some information that was it was a little bit conflicting here. Uh let's see here. That wasn't there. It is. On one hand, I'm gonna quote one of the one of the sources, and these are all pretty reputable sources. It is possible to get over a cyclospora infection just normally without taking anything, but it takes a long time and dehydrates you. So it is possible. Doesn't make it sound like it's very probable. And then there was another quote that said, most people will eventually recover.

SPEAKER_03 48:09

Eventually.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Eventually. So you know, it's one of those things, it's a parasite. I don't know how you would just it as long as they keep reproducing inside you. I just don't know. I didn't get enough detail because there's not enough detail on this particular thing. It's like, how many times can these things reproduce inside you and let spores out before they're just worn out and then they just die off? Because you have to get it, sounds like you have to get some fresh spores back inside you to kind of restart the colony. I that's the only thing that I could think of that would actually just time them out where they just die of old age.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

Right. Because like we we have no measure of their of their uh their lifespan, like like like the like a single parasite.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Yeah, we don't even study it in the lab. Can can they can they let you know like a million spores go and then they just die because they're completely empty? Or do they just keep popping them out and until they're killed? Um it sounds like eventually you you you'll you'll time them out. I I hate to put it like that, but yeah, you'll just make wait for them to die of old age, but they may be trying to wait you out too, because in the process they're they're messing you up. Because when they looked in um with with George, they thought he had celiac disease. That's he didn't say that on here, but I remember him talking with me before. I mean, there there's some serious damage that these things are causing. Yeah, so it's pretty crazy. But most people will eventually recover. So if you just try to gut it out, I I guess if you can gut it out long enough, yeah, you'll you'll get past it. Yeah. Just don't don't uh don't do home gardening where you're trying to recirculate your own human waste. Otherwise, it's gonna be a long, ugly cycle.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

Yeah, that that is that is bad.

SPEAKER_03 50:03

So moral of the story I'm hearing today is if you think you got it, go to the doctor. Go to the doctor and get the medicine.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Get the medicine. Oh, I almost forgot. I went to a sub shop, I won't say the name. And this was just this week. So of course I'm prepping, I'm in like cyclospora mode, and I'm starving, and I go, give me the gargantuan. And he's like, Yeah, you want it with blah blah blah. And I he says lettuce. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, shit.

unknown 50:34

Dang it.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

Lettuce. I'm like, I know better than to say yes. And I looked at him and I was I was like, is it, you know, lettuce? Is the lettuce okay? And he's like, Yeah, I eat it. I haven't had any problems.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

And I can't say the name of this of where I got it from because go back five minutes, actually, go back 10 minutes, go back 15 minutes. We 15 minutes earlier, I went in there because I was doing a job in an adjacent uh adjacent restaurant, and they didn't have any any restrooms set up. So I was like, number one, I'm starving, I need to wash my hands, use the bathroom, and get some food. So I walked in, and the door, the men's room was locked. So I'm outside, waiting for whoever it is to finish using it, and they were in there for 15 minutes. Oh no. And I know this because I was on the phone the whole time outside, like, you know, doing the pee-pee dance. Like, I gotta get in there. And uh, and the guy that says he didn't have any problems was the one that came out of the bathroom. So it was all I could do when he said, Ah, I haven't had any problems for for me to say, really, it seemed like you had some problems for about 15 minutes in the bathroom, so maybe I shouldn't get the lettuce. Oh, but I did get the lettuce because a sub without lettuce just isn't quite as juicy. Yeah. So, where I'm going with all this is that the big outbreak that they have contained with the recall, if that lettuce was still out there in the supermarkets and in the restaurant supply chain, it would have expired on or around August 3rd. So here we are, way past that point. So I'm pretty confident that all of the rest of the lettuce is not part of this contaminated batch. Probably out of the woods. So you're probably safe. Probably out of the woods. Probably out of the woods. So it's probably safe to eat lettuce. I'm not gonna stick my neck out there legally, but I'm just telling you that the facts say that all the lettuce that was impacted should have expired out by now. And if you've still got lettuce in your fridge from two weeks past its expiration, it's probably mushy.

unknown 52:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

So you're probably safe.

SPEAKER_03 52:41

You know, I had a uh I had an experience. Um, a couple of my coworkers and I a few weeks ago went to Texas Roadhouse for lunch. Um, and and out of uh out of habit, I just got the Caesar salad as one of my sides. Like I love the Caesar salad at Texas Roadhouse. It is a good salad, and I stand by that. Uh and I get halfway through eating it and I look at one of my coworkers, I'm like, we're supposed to be avoiding lettuce right now, huh? Um so I start I start uh Googling my Doom, right? Oh no. Um not only did I learn that Texas Roadhouse locally sources their produce. Oh. So that that was kind of cool. But also, someone someone stated in a forum that I read, quote, Texas Roadhouse is the only salad I trust right now, end quote. Which was hilarious to hear. But no, I I had one of those scare moments too, where I'm like, oh crap, well, whatever happens, happens. I'm just gonna keep eating this.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

Well, it we I think we've all probably had that. My wife, Diane, just went out with a girlfriend and she gets a salad. She didn't even think about it.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

Brings out the salad, and of course she knows all about this episode. They bring it out and she goes, Oh my gosh, it's iceberg lettuce. And she's like, I literally became sick to my stomach. I couldn't, I couldn't even think about eating it because I was just so I would I knew that I was gonna be poisoning myself. So they ended up taking it back and gave her all her money back. Oh but it was it's so sad actually that the the lettuce market just got poisoned for all of us for a little while. But hopefully we're past that. Cyclospore season officially ends on the 31st of August. Yes. And if everybody learned anything, take it with you, not just uh for the end of this season, but for next year. And I sure as heck learned a whole bunch prepping up for this one. So uh clean water, clean water for irrigation is very, very critical. Um and that's about it. We will wrap this one up and uh see you on the next episode. Stay safe and uh uh stay cool.