August 30, 2012 • 27 mins
Possibly the most horrifically-named disease anyone could contract, flesh-eating bacteria can lead quickly lead to amputations and death. Learn about how this disease works and how to prevent it in this episode with Chuck and Josh.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me is always
this Charles W. Chuck and Bryant. Uh. He's given me
(00:23):
the A O K symbols, So we're all set to go.
Let me have a bowlful of dinosaurs in front of us.
Pants are off? Pants are off? Mike's are on? Yes,
that should be our motto, all of them should be.
That's just great on a T shirt. But um, the
the all of our open wounds have been treated according
to the stuff by step process included in this article. Yeah,
(00:47):
did you read that sidebar? It's gruesome. Yeah, And you
know what this is like. This kind of thing can
strike fear into you when it's in the news, which
it has been lately in Georgia and nationwide. But um,
it's rare and we can't say that enough true, So
don't freak out and don't start slathering yourself with antibacterial
(01:08):
gel and um. To the writer's credit, it is pointed
out in this article it's like five cases of this
a year worldwide, right, I didn't get that either way
still even in the US now and like maybe and Dora,
that'd be huge yea. Um, but chuck, after researching this
(01:30):
plushaming bacteria scares out of you exactly. Yeah, we can't
beep any longer. It's sad you just did. Man, you
just found a work around said beep. So that's not
the same thing. Yeah, it's it's pretty scary because it's
um silent and it can the silent killer, it can
(01:52):
creep up on you. And in the case of Amy Copelan,
who will get too sadly like she was going to
the hospital for three days before they diagnosed it and
by that time it was too late, too too late,
because she survived obviously. But yeah, people, I was reading
an article about her and she's just like tough as nails.
They said, like, we're gonna have to amputate your leg,
(02:14):
and she said, like, let's do this. That's what she said.
She couldn't even talk. She mouthed it far braver than me.
I would have been, like, let's end this, right example,
she wouldn't plug me right. Yeah, I heard now that
she's up in about the first thing she did was
take like a half gallon shot of Scotch and punch
out at doctor just for fun. Alright, so we'll get
(02:36):
to her tragic but inspiring story, okay, um, I was
going to use her as an intro. Go ahead, then,
all right, so I get to it right now, Amy Copeland.
She's Um twenty four. She's a Georgia lady, um, and
she was on a zip line at a friend's house
and fell off. I don't know if the zip line
broke or if she like go or whatever, but it
(02:57):
was it was a malfunction. It wasn't. It was over
like a raveni creak over some brackish water. And in
brackish water, actually in all fresh water, there is a
bacteria called aromonous hydrophilia or a hydrophilia, and it's everywhere. Normally,
if you ingest a little bit of this, you it's
(03:17):
through swallow water and it gives you the poops. That's it.
The reason why just diarrhea is because you have whole
colonies of bacteria and antibodies in your stomach that are
designed specifically to take on a hydrophilia and put smack
down on it. It's part of your immune system, right, thankfully.
The thing is with Amy Copeland, she had a gash
(03:41):
in her leg from when she fell and the bacteria
got in that way, and that is a whole different
host of problems. Exactly. Your body is not used to
fending off bacteria through wounds, and there are certain types
of bacteria which are generally known as flesh eating bacteria
that basically mounts the largest, most vicious, virulent campaign of
(04:06):
any bacteria around in your human body. This is what
I didn't quite get though, because you did this part
as additional research, which I appreciate, but I'm not quite sure.
Is it a dummy attack is going on? You want
to get into this? This is how flush eating bacteria.
I mean, we might as well go ahead and tackle
this and then we'll finish up Amy story then get
into it. Okay, So um, what happens? What happens? This
(04:31):
the bacteria which is again a a hydrophilia. It's everywhere
and where our bodies are used to it strep the
same group a strep. Yeah, that's what gives a strep throat.
It's everywhere of people are carriers, right, These things are
everywhere and normally when they get into our body through
(04:51):
normal channels. Our body knows how to ward it off.
When they come in through a wound, you have potentially
big trouble. Um and these bacteria are capable of producing
um toxins. There's entero toxins, which are cytotoxins, meaning like
they directly go and like kill cells, they like weaken
(05:13):
the membrane or something like that. So um they can
go and attack tissues. And then another thing that they
might express genetically is um exotoxins. Right, these are the
ones where if you if you have a bacteria that
expresses exotoxins, No that I thought that prompts the immune response.
(05:35):
It does. The problem is that these bacteria are are
prompts are setting off almost it seems like purposefully an
immune response from your T cells, but it's too big
and this huge response comes about and it's like this big, lumbering,
clumsy response from your T cells. So your T cells
are going haywire because this basically dummy attack has been
(05:58):
launched by this bacteria to this rack the T cells.
So this is what I don't get. Are they are
the T cells attacking the wrong thing. The T cells
aren't attacking anything. The T cells going on high alert signal,
the production of cytokines, which are like signals. They're like
triggers like histamines are. They're an immune response trigger. Cytokines
are the cytokines In turn, UM overproduced or over excite
(06:23):
macrophages and those things go and like eat cell detritus
or detritus. Actually listen to the pronunciation actually detritus okay,
so eats cell detritus. So they're going, hey wire and
then um, last, but not least, they promote the release
of free radicals, which normally go and target bacteria. But
(06:46):
in this huge undirected immune response, bacteria has purposefully triggered UM.
The free radicals are attacking all this tissue. So you
have cytotoxic um in taro talk sense that the bacteria
is producing directly, and then it's also indirectly affecting this
healthy tissue by promoting the release of free radicals. It
(07:08):
does seem purposeful. It very much like it sits around
and reads the art of war and decides, this is
how I'm going to take you down exactly, and it
works like a charm. So you have your tissue that's
being destroyed, right yeah, which is where you get the
term necrotizing faciitis, which is the correct term for um
(07:28):
flash eating bacteria. That's right, and um you it also
promotes something called toxic shock syndrome. Is that when your
organs starts shutting down. That's part of it. Wow, yeah,
all right, well that makes sense. And that's scary. And
the scariest part of all this is that it starts
out by something really tiny, like it can be a
pin prick of an open wound. It doesn't have to
(07:50):
be some big gash on your leg. And it starts
out of something small and turns into something big, which
is really scary. And you know, if you if you
have a cut on your hand, on your leg, and
you actually if even if you haven't been in any
kind of brackish water, if you just if it starts
to hurt a lot worse than you think it should,
then it's probably not one of the five cases, but
(08:13):
you should probably start looking into it. Well, what was
surprising to me was it doesn't even have to be
a cut, man, it could be an abrasion, a bruise.
How could a bruise I don't get that. I I
don't know if your skin is thinned out at that
site really like so thin it and just get through
the outer dermots maybe, um, but yeah you can, And
it doesn't just have to be like you said, brackish water.
(08:34):
Like if you have a cut an open wound on
your finger and you're around somebody with strep throat, yeah,
you could conceivably. All the stuff is in place for
you to to contract necrotizing fasciitists and it can go
person to person for sure, but without an open wound,
it's pretty unlikely, right, Like that's how they get in. Yeah,
(08:58):
and they eat the fat that the tissue, and then
they start to consume your organs. Right, And the reason
the flesh eating bacteria is clinically the clinical term is
necrotizing fasciitists, which means the killing of fascia. Fascia is
like this membrane that access connecting tissue between your skin
(09:19):
and fatty layer and your muscles and joints and tendons
and ligaments and bones and organs, and it's this uninterrupted
membrane that covers your entire body beneath your skin. It's like, um,
one of those what are they called, the one guy
sent it to us. We have a green screen one.
(09:41):
Oh the root suit, Yeah, the body suit. It's like
a root suit, but it's been between your skin and
your muscles. This is where this infection takes place. And
since it's uninterrupted, it can go everywhere. It's just basically
chugs along and separates your skin from your muscles by
killing all the tissue around it. Well, and the other
(10:02):
scary part is it's really really really fast. Like this
football player from the University of Tulsa died in a week. Uh.
Big healthy tight end, you know, like you don't have
to be weak, and you don't have to be old
or a child like you can attack anyone that gets
it and take you out pretty quickly. Yeah. Uh and
and just a matter of days, like you said, he
(10:24):
can go from a pin prick to you know, you
just lost your leg. Yeah, well, which is what happened
with Amy Copeland. I mean, it's a miracle that she's
alive right now, but she ended up having her left
leg completely amputated, her right foot, both of her hands,
and part of her torso. And she got out of
(10:45):
the hospital and like I mean, it took a while,
but then I think two or three days later she
was already had taught herself about to eat. This company
has thrown in to build like a thirty addition to
our home for like rehabilitation stuff, and uh yeah, it's
pretty amazing. Like her, her spirit, her dad has been
(11:06):
um posting like crazy on like Facebook and on her
website they started. And she's a bad man, majamma, way
better than me. She's tough, very inspiring. Um, so wouldn't
let's say if it's also crazy, Chuck, It's not just her.
There was another dude from Cartersville, Georgia, who had another
(11:26):
necrotizing fasciitis case, and they were actually in the rooms
next to one another at one while there at I
think a burn center in Augusta. Was it because this
place is like one of the one of the few
places in Georgia that like knows what they're doing with
necrotizing fasciitists. Um, and so you know, how do you
treat this thing? Well, the first thing you do once
(11:49):
it's diagnosed is like huge, huge, heavy doses of antibiotics
to obviously to try and kill it. But like we're
not talking like Papa pill every six hours, no, like
cons then tripped just basically flooding your body with it
um and immunoglobin globe and immunoglobe, and Jerry thought that
was funny. Yeah, I heard. Uh. So they want to
(12:12):
remove like any of the dying flesh and try and
try and isolate it and remove the bad parts, which
is what they were doing with her, and it just
spread so quickly. You know, they were like fighting a
really uphill battle in her case. I read a case study.
Have you seen any pictures of this stuff? Um? No,
m hm. So I wrote a case study of this
(12:34):
woman who came in and she had it in her
arm and um, you could just first of all, her
arms swollen. It was like cabbage patch kid's army. But
then there's like splotches of like purple splotches of black,
and then um, what's called desquamation, where like the top
layer of skin is just peeling off. And all of
(12:56):
this had happened to her like over the course of
hours and as they were treating it. One of the
things that they'll do before amputation is called the bride
mint where basically they take the the limb that's infected
or the area that's infected and they just scrape the tissue.
I read about that, Um, I saw a picture of it.
(13:16):
It's horrific. Yeah, I didn't look at the pictures. Um.
And then after that they have to treat it with
skin grafts, after after it's been after they got all
of it, hopefully, if they that's what she did on
her torso yeah, okay. And if they can't get it,
then they amputate. Yeah, it's a pretty serious condition. Okay.
(13:36):
So what the lookout for. We said, if you have
like a a smallish wound that's like disproportionately painful, you
should go on high alert. If it becomes like swollen
and red and hot, that's a really bad sign. If
you get typical things you might associate with bacteria and
back to your own infection, like diarrhea and fever and chills,
(13:58):
nausea and vomiting, that's a really bad time too, especially
if you have just a small cut on your arm,
So that nausea, vomiting, all that stuff could be the
result of UM, the infection. It could also be the
infection leading to toxic shock syndrome, which in and of
itself is pretty interesting. Apparently we've only known about that
since nineteen Yeah, Um, do you remember like associating it
(14:20):
with tampons. No. Well, when it first came out, like
almost all the case studies of this toxic shock syndrome,
which is like basically your organ multi organ failure, which
is three or more UM, lowered blood pressure, all this
other stuff. Um, all of the cases were of people
(14:41):
who are using like high absorbency tampons. They were women.
Then they started to look more and more and they
realized that that didn't hold true when you looked at
more of the case studies are a lot of men
and everything. And now they realize that it's the result
of an infection. So like the lower blood pressure is
like your body mounting this huge immune to ends and um,
(15:01):
so histamines are released, so your blood vessels dilate, so
your blood pressure decreases to a really dangerous level. It's
basically your body having this enormous allergic reaction to an infection.
And it had nothing to do with tampons. No, it did.
It still did, but they thought it was just tampons
that triggered toxic shock. Yeah. Even still there's like warnings
(15:23):
on boxes. I think that like toxic shock syndrome warning. Jeez,
that's pretty scary. I had older sisters. I did too,
but I didn't get in her business. UM. So in
the first twenty four hours, you know you're gonna feel
these pains. UM the second I'm sorry, three to four
days in, UM, there's gonna be some swelling, and that's
(15:46):
when you might get this purply rash or like blisters
that are filled with a dark fluid. That's not a
good sign at all. And UM, your skin even at
that point, even three to four days in might start
to flake off and turn white or dark, and that
is definitely a bad sign. That's the disquamation. UM. Then
(16:07):
four to five days in, that's when the toxic shock happens.
And you're pretty lucky if you haven't been treated at
this point to to make it out alive. All right,
toxic shock alone of cases are fatal with UM flesh
eating bacteria. Overall, the thirty to forty I saw is
the lowest of cases. So should we talk about wound care? Sure,
(16:31):
I've never cleaned a wound like this, Well, then you
haven't been cleaning your wounds correctly. This is one of
the ways to prevent flesh eating bacteria. That's right. You
want to flesh your wound with cold water initially, no soap,
and in fact, you don't even want to get soap
into the wound. Apparently you want to clean around it
with with soap and the cloth and then get some
(16:53):
alcohol and put it on your tweezers. Use the tweezers
to clean out any gunk that's in there in the
woon site. Yeah, I've never stuck tweezers in one of
my cuts ever. Well, that means you didn't have anything
in there, or you didn't you didn't know it. No,
I didn't. I was like, I'm not putting tweezers in there. Uh.
(17:14):
Then you want to apply a bandage if it's a
place that can be exposed to dirt. And they say
to ask a doctor whether or not to bandage, because
sometimes wounds are better unbandaged and heal quicker. Sometimes they're
better bandaged. And then the old antibodyquintment we'll always do
you right, don't forget that. Well, yeah, I almost always
(17:35):
put a band aid on. I've never had a wound
where I'm like, well, I probably shouldn't put a band aid.
Symbolic band aid. Um, what else you got? I've got
some other stuff like risk factors, Um, you can be
totally healthy. Just from the badness of Amy Copeland, I
assume she's probably a healthy person. Yeah. I think a
(17:58):
lot of people typically are healthy. UM. So you can
still come down with flashing in bacteria necrotizing fascitists as
a healthy person. Um. But there are some risk factors
that that would put you in the higher likelihood camp. Um.
If you've had an infection recently, especially with a rash
like chicken pox. That's one. Cuts, abrasions, those are big ones. UM.
(18:23):
Steroid use. You don't want to be using steroids anyway,
but even if they were prescribed and you have a cut,
I think steroid um steroids prevent cuts from healing is fast.
So I think those two combined make you at a
higher risk if your immune system is lower. Sure you've
(18:44):
been sick, yeah, Uh, diabetes is a big one. Yeah. Yeah.
And then if you are a black tar heroine user.
There have been outbreaks of um necrotizing fascitists among heroin
user before. There was one in the late nineties in
San Francisco, and black tar in particular, Uh, set you
(19:06):
up for it because it's like this lower purity heroine
that's gummy, it's gummi er than regular heroin, so it
collapses your veins like almost immediately. So people who shoot
black tar heroin do what's called skin popping, where they
shoot it just under the skin or into their muscles um.
And then because it's not the least bit refined, that's
(19:26):
why it's gummy um. There's often impurities, and sometimes some
of those impurities are Claustralia, which is a kind of
bacteria that can be a flesh eating bacteria. So basically,
if you're shooting black tar heroin, you're running the risk
of directly injecting flesh eating bacteria. And there's people who
have lost arms, shoulders, ribs two flesh eating bacteria by
(19:48):
shooting black tar heroin. I think the stuff you should
know advice is to not do heroin. Let's just go
ahead and just throw that out there. I could get
behind that. You're avoiding a whole host of problems if
you don't do heroin the age. So what else can
you do to prevent it? We'll keep the wounds clean,
wash your hands a lot, and that means warm water
(20:09):
and soap and like fifteen to twenty seconds of good scrubbing,
like you're going into surgery, get between the fingers, dry
it off really well. And then after you dry it off,
don't go and put your hand back on the faucet
to turn it off in a public bathroom or even
your own bathroom, although I don't know if I would
do that in my own home. No, I think your
(20:31):
own homes, Okay. I feel like there should be some
sort of I mean, it could lead to a resident superbugs,
but we already faced tho, so what do we have
to loose? But I feel like there should be more
um cleaning products handy in like public bathrooms. Well there
are increasingly you see those little hand sanitizer machines. I mean,
(20:53):
like here's a bottle of like bleach water and just
go ahead and spray that toilet seat or well. I'm
not like a Hour Hughes type, but I definitely after
I wash my hands in the bathroom in public, like,
I don't put my hand on the door handle or
anything like that. Always try and muscle my way out
or put a paper twel between me and the thing.
I'm extremely conscious of that too, especially at the gym. Yeah,
(21:15):
I've been more conscious about it, which pops up with
your character in an episode in our TV show that's
coming out. That's right, a little uh teaser, Yeah, big
teaser right there. That's true. You got anything else? Uh? No?
I mean Amy Copeland's story has been prominent lately obviously,
and they are accepting donations, and I think we would
(21:37):
be remiss if we didn't announce that. Um, she spells
her name a I M E. So it's a I
M E E c O p E l A n
d dot com slash donations and just go to the
website anyway, and just her stories on there and her
progress is on there, and it's uh both frightening and
inspiring in her case. So uh, it's definitely I think
(22:02):
that triggered our desire to do this, right or did
it well? Yeah, I mean just that. Not only that,
but it seemed that, uh, nobody really had a good
idea of um, what flesh eating bacteria does. Loudly local
news reports yeah, and I mean not even local, like
(22:22):
the national stuff too, is like, you know, um, really misinformed.
Like they're like each through your tissue. It doesn't eat
through your tissue. No nobody dug into how it really works.
It's very frustrating, you know why, because it's way easier
just to scare people with things with non facts, right,
But this is one of the ones where it was
(22:43):
like the more I looked into it, the more scared
I became. Even people are lazy. Um oh, I got
a little more alright at more so Like. It wasn't
until nine two that somebody used the term neckartizing fasciitists
and we really started to understand that it was bacteria
or whatever. Um. But the we knew about it since
(23:05):
the Civil War. Wow, that's crazy what they call it
though in the Civil War. Uh well, they used to
name it, according to the doctor who reported it um
so like. And it was also based on the area
of the body that was infected. So like if you
had furniers or Fournier's gang green, it meant that you
(23:25):
had flesh eating bacteria around your genitals. If you had ludwigs,
um angina meant your head, flesh eating bacteria around your
face or mouth or jaw. Yeah. And then they figured
out like, oh wait, we should classify by the kind
of bacteria and that these are not separate things like
this is all the same thing. These people have had
(23:45):
like a cut around there that this got into boy,
you're in big trouble back then too. If you're in
big trouble now, imagine back then pretty scary. Well. The
first guy to described as a Confederate Civil War surgeon
named Joseph Joe, and I'm sure he was like, I
can't do anything for you, man, right, he retired to
the country. So that's it. Flesh eating bacteria. UM. If
(24:10):
you want to learn more about it, you can type
that in flesh hyphen eating bacteria uh into the search
bar at how stuff works dot com and that will
bring up listener mail. I am going to call this uh.
We love the Irish as always, Uh, Josh and Chuck
(24:32):
and Jerry. Just a short note from an old geezer
UH living in Limerick in Ireland, who is one of
your most devoted bands for the last number of years.
When walking my dogs every Sunday on the mountains of
Oreland and alpine areas, occasionally I'm listening to stuff you
should know in the iPod. My biggest problem is that
I've not been able to source a set of earphones
(24:53):
that will suit my border collies, who was cool, intelligent
piece would easily tune into you. Laid back Southern dudes,
so he wants his dogs to listen. That's nice. I
thoroughly enjoyed the show, in particular You're Easy symbiotic style,
and I've recommended it wildly. In particular, I enjoyed the
shrunken head show because I used to have one. How
(25:14):
you might ask, My sister worked in Columbia in the
seventies and eighties and brought me home a present of
a shrunken head. It looked very real, so the first
question I asked was is it real? No, it's not,
she said, but added, if you really want a genuine head,
I'll bring one next time. Needless to say, I decline,
which was a big mistaken. The original head is still
(25:35):
hanging behind the bar of a pub on the west
coast of uh CEO dot Claire. Is that county County Claire?
All right, that's what they do in Ireland, CEO and
that is from Mike keys uh. And then Judy and
Glenn are the dogs. He named his dogs Judy and
Glenn ver I know. And he's just marching around Ireland.
(25:59):
Let's and THENTO us also with the shrunken head around
his neck. I guess we'll keep marching Glenn and Judy
and Mike is the human Mike human. Thank you very
much for writing in on behalf of all three of you.
It's pretty cool. Um, so this one was a unior request.
If you have a request, we want to hear it.
We're always looking for good topic suggestions. UM. You can
(26:22):
tweet to us s y s K podcast topical request
is less than a characters almost every time. Uh. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff. You
should know unlimited characters there, or you can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for
(26:47):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
reinvented tooth and twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me is always
this Charles W. Chuck and Bryant. Uh. He's given me
(00:23):
the A O K symbols, So we're all set to go.
Let me have a bowlful of dinosaurs in front of us.
Pants are off? Pants are off? Mike's are on? Yes,
that should be our motto, all of them should be.
That's just great on a T shirt. But um, the
the all of our open wounds have been treated according
to the stuff by step process included in this article. Yeah,
(00:47):
did you read that sidebar? It's gruesome. Yeah, And you
know what this is like. This kind of thing can
strike fear into you when it's in the news, which
it has been lately in Georgia and nationwide. But um,
it's rare and we can't say that enough true, So
don't freak out and don't start slathering yourself with antibacterial
(01:08):
gel and um. To the writer's credit, it is pointed
out in this article it's like five cases of this
a year worldwide, right, I didn't get that either way
still even in the US now and like maybe and Dora,
that'd be huge yea. Um, but chuck, after researching this
(01:30):
plushaming bacteria scares out of you exactly. Yeah, we can't
beep any longer. It's sad you just did. Man, you
just found a work around said beep. So that's not
the same thing. Yeah, it's it's pretty scary because it's
um silent and it can the silent killer, it can
(01:52):
creep up on you. And in the case of Amy Copelan,
who will get too sadly like she was going to
the hospital for three days before they diagnosed it and
by that time it was too late, too too late,
because she survived obviously. But yeah, people, I was reading
an article about her and she's just like tough as nails.
They said, like, we're gonna have to amputate your leg,
(02:14):
and she said, like, let's do this. That's what she said.
She couldn't even talk. She mouthed it far braver than me.
I would have been, like, let's end this, right example,
she wouldn't plug me right. Yeah, I heard now that
she's up in about the first thing she did was
take like a half gallon shot of Scotch and punch
out at doctor just for fun. Alright, so we'll get
(02:36):
to her tragic but inspiring story, okay, um, I was
going to use her as an intro. Go ahead, then,
all right, so I get to it right now, Amy Copeland.
She's Um twenty four. She's a Georgia lady, um, and
she was on a zip line at a friend's house
and fell off. I don't know if the zip line
broke or if she like go or whatever, but it
(02:57):
was it was a malfunction. It wasn't. It was over
like a raveni creak over some brackish water. And in
brackish water, actually in all fresh water, there is a
bacteria called aromonous hydrophilia or a hydrophilia, and it's everywhere. Normally,
if you ingest a little bit of this, you it's
(03:17):
through swallow water and it gives you the poops. That's it.
The reason why just diarrhea is because you have whole
colonies of bacteria and antibodies in your stomach that are
designed specifically to take on a hydrophilia and put smack
down on it. It's part of your immune system, right, thankfully.
The thing is with Amy Copeland, she had a gash
(03:41):
in her leg from when she fell and the bacteria
got in that way, and that is a whole different
host of problems. Exactly. Your body is not used to
fending off bacteria through wounds, and there are certain types
of bacteria which are generally known as flesh eating bacteria
that basically mounts the largest, most vicious, virulent campaign of
(04:06):
any bacteria around in your human body. This is what
I didn't quite get though, because you did this part
as additional research, which I appreciate, but I'm not quite sure.
Is it a dummy attack is going on? You want
to get into this? This is how flush eating bacteria.
I mean, we might as well go ahead and tackle
this and then we'll finish up Amy story then get
into it. Okay, So um, what happens? What happens? This
(04:31):
the bacteria which is again a a hydrophilia. It's everywhere
and where our bodies are used to it strep the
same group a strep. Yeah, that's what gives a strep throat.
It's everywhere of people are carriers, right, These things are
everywhere and normally when they get into our body through
(04:51):
normal channels. Our body knows how to ward it off.
When they come in through a wound, you have potentially
big trouble. Um and these bacteria are capable of producing
um toxins. There's entero toxins, which are cytotoxins, meaning like
they directly go and like kill cells, they like weaken
(05:13):
the membrane or something like that. So um they can
go and attack tissues. And then another thing that they
might express genetically is um exotoxins. Right, these are the
ones where if you if you have a bacteria that
expresses exotoxins, No that I thought that prompts the immune response.
(05:35):
It does. The problem is that these bacteria are are
prompts are setting off almost it seems like purposefully an
immune response from your T cells, but it's too big
and this huge response comes about and it's like this big, lumbering,
clumsy response from your T cells. So your T cells
are going haywire because this basically dummy attack has been
(05:58):
launched by this bacteria to this rack the T cells.
So this is what I don't get. Are they are
the T cells attacking the wrong thing. The T cells
aren't attacking anything. The T cells going on high alert signal,
the production of cytokines, which are like signals. They're like
triggers like histamines are. They're an immune response trigger. Cytokines
are the cytokines In turn, UM overproduced or over excite
(06:23):
macrophages and those things go and like eat cell detritus
or detritus. Actually listen to the pronunciation actually detritus okay,
so eats cell detritus. So they're going, hey wire and
then um, last, but not least, they promote the release
of free radicals, which normally go and target bacteria. But
(06:46):
in this huge undirected immune response, bacteria has purposefully triggered UM.
The free radicals are attacking all this tissue. So you
have cytotoxic um in taro talk sense that the bacteria
is producing directly, and then it's also indirectly affecting this
healthy tissue by promoting the release of free radicals. It
(07:08):
does seem purposeful. It very much like it sits around
and reads the art of war and decides, this is
how I'm going to take you down exactly, and it
works like a charm. So you have your tissue that's
being destroyed, right yeah, which is where you get the
term necrotizing faciitis, which is the correct term for um
(07:28):
flash eating bacteria. That's right, and um you it also
promotes something called toxic shock syndrome. Is that when your
organs starts shutting down. That's part of it. Wow, yeah,
all right, well that makes sense. And that's scary. And
the scariest part of all this is that it starts
out by something really tiny, like it can be a
pin prick of an open wound. It doesn't have to
(07:50):
be some big gash on your leg. And it starts
out of something small and turns into something big, which
is really scary. And you know, if you if you
have a cut on your hand, on your leg, and
you actually if even if you haven't been in any
kind of brackish water, if you just if it starts
to hurt a lot worse than you think it should,
then it's probably not one of the five cases, but
(08:13):
you should probably start looking into it. Well, what was
surprising to me was it doesn't even have to be
a cut, man, it could be an abrasion, a bruise.
How could a bruise I don't get that. I I
don't know if your skin is thinned out at that
site really like so thin it and just get through
the outer dermots maybe, um, but yeah you can, And
it doesn't just have to be like you said, brackish water.
(08:34):
Like if you have a cut an open wound on
your finger and you're around somebody with strep throat, yeah,
you could conceivably. All the stuff is in place for
you to to contract necrotizing fasciitists and it can go
person to person for sure, but without an open wound,
it's pretty unlikely, right, Like that's how they get in. Yeah,
(08:58):
and they eat the fat that the tissue, and then
they start to consume your organs. Right, And the reason
the flesh eating bacteria is clinically the clinical term is
necrotizing fasciitists, which means the killing of fascia. Fascia is
like this membrane that access connecting tissue between your skin
(09:19):
and fatty layer and your muscles and joints and tendons
and ligaments and bones and organs, and it's this uninterrupted
membrane that covers your entire body beneath your skin. It's like, um,
one of those what are they called, the one guy
sent it to us. We have a green screen one.
(09:41):
Oh the root suit, Yeah, the body suit. It's like
a root suit, but it's been between your skin and
your muscles. This is where this infection takes place. And
since it's uninterrupted, it can go everywhere. It's just basically
chugs along and separates your skin from your muscles by
killing all the tissue around it. Well, and the other
(10:02):
scary part is it's really really really fast. Like this
football player from the University of Tulsa died in a week. Uh.
Big healthy tight end, you know, like you don't have
to be weak, and you don't have to be old
or a child like you can attack anyone that gets
it and take you out pretty quickly. Yeah. Uh and
and just a matter of days, like you said, he
(10:24):
can go from a pin prick to you know, you
just lost your leg. Yeah, well, which is what happened
with Amy Copeland. I mean, it's a miracle that she's
alive right now, but she ended up having her left
leg completely amputated, her right foot, both of her hands,
and part of her torso. And she got out of
(10:45):
the hospital and like I mean, it took a while,
but then I think two or three days later she
was already had taught herself about to eat. This company
has thrown in to build like a thirty addition to
our home for like rehabilitation stuff, and uh yeah, it's
pretty amazing. Like her, her spirit, her dad has been
(11:06):
um posting like crazy on like Facebook and on her
website they started. And she's a bad man, majamma, way
better than me. She's tough, very inspiring. Um, so wouldn't
let's say if it's also crazy, Chuck, It's not just her.
There was another dude from Cartersville, Georgia, who had another
(11:26):
necrotizing fasciitis case, and they were actually in the rooms
next to one another at one while there at I
think a burn center in Augusta. Was it because this
place is like one of the one of the few
places in Georgia that like knows what they're doing with
necrotizing fasciitists. Um, and so you know, how do you
treat this thing? Well, the first thing you do once
(11:49):
it's diagnosed is like huge, huge, heavy doses of antibiotics
to obviously to try and kill it. But like we're
not talking like Papa pill every six hours, no, like
cons then tripped just basically flooding your body with it
um and immunoglobin globe and immunoglobe, and Jerry thought that
was funny. Yeah, I heard. Uh. So they want to
(12:12):
remove like any of the dying flesh and try and
try and isolate it and remove the bad parts, which
is what they were doing with her, and it just
spread so quickly. You know, they were like fighting a
really uphill battle in her case. I read a case study.
Have you seen any pictures of this stuff? Um? No,
m hm. So I wrote a case study of this
(12:34):
woman who came in and she had it in her
arm and um, you could just first of all, her
arms swollen. It was like cabbage patch kid's army. But
then there's like splotches of like purple splotches of black,
and then um, what's called desquamation, where like the top
layer of skin is just peeling off. And all of
(12:56):
this had happened to her like over the course of
hours and as they were treating it. One of the
things that they'll do before amputation is called the bride
mint where basically they take the the limb that's infected
or the area that's infected and they just scrape the tissue.
I read about that, Um, I saw a picture of it.
(13:16):
It's horrific. Yeah, I didn't look at the pictures. Um.
And then after that they have to treat it with
skin grafts, after after it's been after they got all
of it, hopefully, if they that's what she did on
her torso yeah, okay. And if they can't get it,
then they amputate. Yeah, it's a pretty serious condition. Okay.
(13:36):
So what the lookout for. We said, if you have
like a a smallish wound that's like disproportionately painful, you
should go on high alert. If it becomes like swollen
and red and hot, that's a really bad sign. If
you get typical things you might associate with bacteria and
back to your own infection, like diarrhea and fever and chills,
(13:58):
nausea and vomiting, that's a really bad time too, especially
if you have just a small cut on your arm,
So that nausea, vomiting, all that stuff could be the
result of UM, the infection. It could also be the
infection leading to toxic shock syndrome, which in and of
itself is pretty interesting. Apparently we've only known about that
since nineteen Yeah, Um, do you remember like associating it
(14:20):
with tampons. No. Well, when it first came out, like
almost all the case studies of this toxic shock syndrome,
which is like basically your organ multi organ failure, which
is three or more UM, lowered blood pressure, all this
other stuff. Um, all of the cases were of people
(14:41):
who are using like high absorbency tampons. They were women.
Then they started to look more and more and they
realized that that didn't hold true when you looked at
more of the case studies are a lot of men
and everything. And now they realize that it's the result
of an infection. So like the lower blood pressure is
like your body mounting this huge immune to ends and um,
(15:01):
so histamines are released, so your blood vessels dilate, so
your blood pressure decreases to a really dangerous level. It's
basically your body having this enormous allergic reaction to an infection.
And it had nothing to do with tampons. No, it did.
It still did, but they thought it was just tampons
that triggered toxic shock. Yeah. Even still there's like warnings
(15:23):
on boxes. I think that like toxic shock syndrome warning. Jeez,
that's pretty scary. I had older sisters. I did too,
but I didn't get in her business. UM. So in
the first twenty four hours, you know you're gonna feel
these pains. UM the second I'm sorry, three to four
days in, UM, there's gonna be some swelling, and that's
(15:46):
when you might get this purply rash or like blisters
that are filled with a dark fluid. That's not a
good sign at all. And UM, your skin even at
that point, even three to four days in might start
to flake off and turn white or dark, and that
is definitely a bad sign. That's the disquamation. UM. Then
(16:07):
four to five days in, that's when the toxic shock happens.
And you're pretty lucky if you haven't been treated at
this point to to make it out alive. All right,
toxic shock alone of cases are fatal with UM flesh
eating bacteria. Overall, the thirty to forty I saw is
the lowest of cases. So should we talk about wound care? Sure,
(16:31):
I've never cleaned a wound like this, Well, then you
haven't been cleaning your wounds correctly. This is one of
the ways to prevent flesh eating bacteria. That's right. You
want to flesh your wound with cold water initially, no soap,
and in fact, you don't even want to get soap
into the wound. Apparently you want to clean around it
with with soap and the cloth and then get some
(16:53):
alcohol and put it on your tweezers. Use the tweezers
to clean out any gunk that's in there in the
woon site. Yeah, I've never stuck tweezers in one of
my cuts ever. Well, that means you didn't have anything
in there, or you didn't you didn't know it. No,
I didn't. I was like, I'm not putting tweezers in there. Uh.
(17:14):
Then you want to apply a bandage if it's a
place that can be exposed to dirt. And they say
to ask a doctor whether or not to bandage, because
sometimes wounds are better unbandaged and heal quicker. Sometimes they're
better bandaged. And then the old antibodyquintment we'll always do
you right, don't forget that. Well, yeah, I almost always
(17:35):
put a band aid on. I've never had a wound
where I'm like, well, I probably shouldn't put a band aid.
Symbolic band aid. Um, what else you got? I've got
some other stuff like risk factors, Um, you can be
totally healthy. Just from the badness of Amy Copeland, I
assume she's probably a healthy person. Yeah. I think a
(17:58):
lot of people typically are healthy. UM. So you can
still come down with flashing in bacteria necrotizing fascitists as
a healthy person. Um. But there are some risk factors
that that would put you in the higher likelihood camp. Um.
If you've had an infection recently, especially with a rash
like chicken pox. That's one. Cuts, abrasions, those are big ones. UM.
(18:23):
Steroid use. You don't want to be using steroids anyway,
but even if they were prescribed and you have a cut,
I think steroid um steroids prevent cuts from healing is fast.
So I think those two combined make you at a
higher risk if your immune system is lower. Sure you've
(18:44):
been sick, yeah, Uh, diabetes is a big one. Yeah. Yeah.
And then if you are a black tar heroine user.
There have been outbreaks of um necrotizing fascitists among heroin
user before. There was one in the late nineties in
San Francisco, and black tar in particular, Uh, set you
(19:06):
up for it because it's like this lower purity heroine
that's gummy, it's gummi er than regular heroin, so it
collapses your veins like almost immediately. So people who shoot
black tar heroin do what's called skin popping, where they
shoot it just under the skin or into their muscles um.
And then because it's not the least bit refined, that's
(19:26):
why it's gummy um. There's often impurities, and sometimes some
of those impurities are Claustralia, which is a kind of
bacteria that can be a flesh eating bacteria. So basically,
if you're shooting black tar heroin, you're running the risk
of directly injecting flesh eating bacteria. And there's people who
have lost arms, shoulders, ribs two flesh eating bacteria by
(19:48):
shooting black tar heroin. I think the stuff you should
know advice is to not do heroin. Let's just go
ahead and just throw that out there. I could get
behind that. You're avoiding a whole host of problems if
you don't do heroin the age. So what else can
you do to prevent it? We'll keep the wounds clean,
wash your hands a lot, and that means warm water
(20:09):
and soap and like fifteen to twenty seconds of good scrubbing,
like you're going into surgery, get between the fingers, dry
it off really well. And then after you dry it off,
don't go and put your hand back on the faucet
to turn it off in a public bathroom or even
your own bathroom, although I don't know if I would
do that in my own home. No, I think your
(20:31):
own homes, Okay. I feel like there should be some
sort of I mean, it could lead to a resident superbugs,
but we already faced tho, so what do we have
to loose? But I feel like there should be more
um cleaning products handy in like public bathrooms. Well there
are increasingly you see those little hand sanitizer machines. I mean,
(20:53):
like here's a bottle of like bleach water and just
go ahead and spray that toilet seat or well. I'm
not like a Hour Hughes type, but I definitely after
I wash my hands in the bathroom in public, like,
I don't put my hand on the door handle or
anything like that. Always try and muscle my way out
or put a paper twel between me and the thing.
I'm extremely conscious of that too, especially at the gym. Yeah,
(21:15):
I've been more conscious about it, which pops up with
your character in an episode in our TV show that's
coming out. That's right, a little uh teaser, Yeah, big
teaser right there. That's true. You got anything else? Uh? No?
I mean Amy Copeland's story has been prominent lately obviously,
and they are accepting donations, and I think we would
(21:37):
be remiss if we didn't announce that. Um, she spells
her name a I M E. So it's a I
M E E c O p E l A n
d dot com slash donations and just go to the
website anyway, and just her stories on there and her
progress is on there, and it's uh both frightening and
inspiring in her case. So uh, it's definitely I think
(22:02):
that triggered our desire to do this, right or did
it well? Yeah, I mean just that. Not only that,
but it seemed that, uh, nobody really had a good
idea of um, what flesh eating bacteria does. Loudly local
news reports yeah, and I mean not even local, like
(22:22):
the national stuff too, is like, you know, um, really misinformed.
Like they're like each through your tissue. It doesn't eat
through your tissue. No nobody dug into how it really works.
It's very frustrating, you know why, because it's way easier
just to scare people with things with non facts, right,
But this is one of the ones where it was
(22:43):
like the more I looked into it, the more scared
I became. Even people are lazy. Um oh, I got
a little more alright at more so Like. It wasn't
until nine two that somebody used the term neckartizing fasciitists
and we really started to understand that it was bacteria
or whatever. Um. But the we knew about it since
(23:05):
the Civil War. Wow, that's crazy what they call it
though in the Civil War. Uh well, they used to
name it, according to the doctor who reported it um
so like. And it was also based on the area
of the body that was infected. So like if you
had furniers or Fournier's gang green, it meant that you
(23:25):
had flesh eating bacteria around your genitals. If you had ludwigs,
um angina meant your head, flesh eating bacteria around your
face or mouth or jaw. Yeah. And then they figured
out like, oh wait, we should classify by the kind
of bacteria and that these are not separate things like
this is all the same thing. These people have had
(23:45):
like a cut around there that this got into boy,
you're in big trouble back then too. If you're in
big trouble now, imagine back then pretty scary. Well. The
first guy to described as a Confederate Civil War surgeon
named Joseph Joe, and I'm sure he was like, I
can't do anything for you, man, right, he retired to
the country. So that's it. Flesh eating bacteria. UM. If
(24:10):
you want to learn more about it, you can type
that in flesh hyphen eating bacteria uh into the search
bar at how stuff works dot com and that will
bring up listener mail. I am going to call this uh.
We love the Irish as always, Uh, Josh and Chuck
(24:32):
and Jerry. Just a short note from an old geezer
UH living in Limerick in Ireland, who is one of
your most devoted bands for the last number of years.
When walking my dogs every Sunday on the mountains of
Oreland and alpine areas, occasionally I'm listening to stuff you
should know in the iPod. My biggest problem is that
I've not been able to source a set of earphones
(24:53):
that will suit my border collies, who was cool, intelligent
piece would easily tune into you. Laid back Southern dudes,
so he wants his dogs to listen. That's nice. I
thoroughly enjoyed the show, in particular You're Easy symbiotic style,
and I've recommended it wildly. In particular, I enjoyed the
shrunken head show because I used to have one. How
(25:14):
you might ask, My sister worked in Columbia in the
seventies and eighties and brought me home a present of
a shrunken head. It looked very real, so the first
question I asked was is it real? No, it's not,
she said, but added, if you really want a genuine head,
I'll bring one next time. Needless to say, I decline,
which was a big mistaken. The original head is still
(25:35):
hanging behind the bar of a pub on the west
coast of uh CEO dot Claire. Is that county County Claire?
All right, that's what they do in Ireland, CEO and
that is from Mike keys uh. And then Judy and
Glenn are the dogs. He named his dogs Judy and
Glenn ver I know. And he's just marching around Ireland.
(25:59):
Let's and THENTO us also with the shrunken head around
his neck. I guess we'll keep marching Glenn and Judy
and Mike is the human Mike human. Thank you very
much for writing in on behalf of all three of you.
It's pretty cool. Um, so this one was a unior request.
If you have a request, we want to hear it.
We're always looking for good topic suggestions. UM. You can
(26:22):
tweet to us s y s K podcast topical request
is less than a characters almost every time. Uh. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff. You
should know unlimited characters there, or you can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for
(26:47):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
reinvented tooth and twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.