Transcript:

Spencer
Hello.

Tyler
Hello.

Tyler
Hi. This is Info Dump, a podcast hosted by two siblings who love to learn shit and then tell each other about it. I'm Tyler.

Spencer
I'm Spencer.

Tyler
And this is our first official episode. We put out an introductory episode. We might redo it. We might go ahead and post it for now. TBD.
Okay, okay. I'm not showing feet.

Spencer
Yeah, put the toes in the frame. Put the dogs away.

Tyler
I think we just jump in.

Spencer
Let's do it.

Tyler
My topic that I'm going to present this episode is the journey of a microbe, specifically rhinovirus, which is a super prevalent cause of the common cold.
And I know it sounds super boring, super boring pathogen, but the whole point of doing this as a topic is to kind of illustrate, what all factors go into, like the transmission of a microbe, someone actually getting sick from it, what happens during the illness itself, how the body reacts, and how you eventually get rid of the microbe. So, I'm just using Rhinovirus as an example because even though it's a kind of a super boring pathogen it's something that most people are familiar with. Everyone has had Rhinovirus and maybe this will be like, “oh I didn't know that was all happening. I just felt like shit for a few days and then it was done.”
So that's why I picked it rather than, like, something cooler like Ebola, which we'll cover one day because it's super interesting.

Spencer
Ebola is one of my favorite topics.

Tyler
Right?

Tyler
So wanted to go over kind of why this topic was important for understanding future content. I love infectious disease and so I'm probably going to do a lot of episodes regarding this type of information. And this will give a good overview of factors that influence the transmission of microbes, the different transmission routes, infectious dose, like what that means and how it differs between pathogens. There is tissue and cell tropism, or specificity. Starting to a little technical there, but it just means what types of cells and tissues that a particular pathogen infects. Aspects of the immune response. Immunology is... It goes hand in hand with microbiology. So there would be a little bit of that.
And then how having other chronic conditions can leave you at risk for certain illnesses. So. to diagnose or not to diagnose, like, does it even matter for every little illness that you have and then to treat or not to treat. Like, let it take its natural course. So just a few things. Feel free to jump in with questions, comments, concerns, etc.

Spencer
Where does rhinovirus get its name from? Are you gonna cover that?

Tyler
Nope. Are you?

Spencer
I googled it just now because I was curious.

Tyler
Cool. I was wondering what you were tip tapeting.

Spencer
Yeah. Rhinovirus gets its name from “rhino-“, meaning nose…

Tyler
Oh my God, yes.


Spencer
…which is the same thing that rhinoceros gets its name from. Literally rhinoceros literally means nose horn. So.

Tyler
OK, yeah.

Spencer
I was curious if that if that was why and it is why. Yeah, they get their name from the same thing.

Tyler
That makes perfect sense. I even took medical terminology as a college course and I didn't even think about the “rhino-“. I was like, “was it discovered in rhinos?” somehow but no, yeah, the prefix of “rhino-“ meaning nose exactly.
Which, another fun word:” rhinorrhea”, which is like diarrhea of the nose. It just means like a runny nose. Rhinorrhea.

Spencer
That’s interesting. I was thinking more like rhinoplasty.

Tyler
Rhinoplasty, yeah. That's a good one too.

Spencer
I've never heard rhinorrhea before.

Tyler
We only, or I only really knew of it because we get specimens in the lab with all sorts of source descriptions and “rhinorrhea”, “otorrhea” for like your ear, and other “-rrheas”. It's just a common term for like the oozing of various parts. So, like the prefix changes based on what the part is and then you have like the liquid ooze part that's the “-rrhea” like diarrhea.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Yeah.

Tyler
That's a fun fact. That's a fun fact.

Spencer:
Is there a “pussy-rrhea?”

Tyler
Oh my god.

Spencer
You can cut that one out.

Tyler
No, I will not. Is that just…
I can't think of another joke. We'll just move on.
A little brief overview about rhinovirus: Rhinovirus is the cause of about half of all common colds

Spencer (05:24)
Is corona... I thought the common cold was a coronavirus. Is a coronavirus a rhinovirus or are they both causes of the common cold?

Tyler
That. They are both causes of the common cold. So, like there's a shit ton of different strains of rhinovirus and there are a shit ton of different strains of coronavirus, including the higher pathogenic ones.

Spencer
Is it true then that like the common cold is more the name of like a collection of symptoms from a few different pathogens?

Tyler
Yes. Yep. A common cold does not refer to one pathogen. Colds as a disease are caused by several different pathogens.
But yes, it's a collection of pathogens that cause one disease.
Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Yes.
So, Rhinovirus is the cause of about half of all common colds and also asthma/cystic fibrosis/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations. Exacerbations. Those are not all the same thing. That's not what the slashes mean. It just means those three conditions can be exacerbated by this virus.

Spencer
Okay.

Tyler
Which kind of makes sense because they're all respiratory conditions.

Spencer
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler
I'm sure you can name off some symptoms associated with a rhinovirus infection.

Spencer
Runny nose…
Stuffy nose…

Tyler
I was like, my God, there's no way.

Spencer

Runny nose, fever, cough?

Tyler
Mm-hmm. And actually, fever didn't show up.

Spencer
Really?

Tyler
Yeah. So, I think more often than not, common colds are not going to cause a fever.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
The exception is for very young children or infants. But yeah, it's got like the runny nose and nasal congestion, headache, cough, sneezing, sore throat, malaise, which is just feeling crummy. Croup, which is like a barking cough in infants. And that's because their lungs and lung passages are so small that they build up mucus quicker and so they have to cough harder to get it out. In addition to upper respiratory tract infections, rhinovirus can also cause otitis media- ear infections or inflammation. And sinusitis. So kind of everything up in here.

Spencer
Okay.

Tyler
Anything that tunnels along in those passages in our face. Yeah.
And then there are complications or more severe outcomes that rhinovirus can cause. It is the second leading cause of pneumonia and bronchiolitis in young children and immunocompromised adults, according to one source. It can cause hospitalizations for croup in infants. So, kind of like I said, they can get clogged up a lot faster than people with larger internal body parts. And so sometimes they need hospitalization to help suction some of those secretions out or help manage their airway or even just to monitor them make sure they don't decline.

Spencer
Makes sense.

Tyler
Yeah. There can also be secondary bacterial infections. So, because there's all this inflammation going on it damages your tissues and kind of leaves them susceptible to other pathogens and a lot of times people have pathogenic bacteria that just exists as normal flora within your nasal passages or mouth, skin, whatever.
But then when you damage those tissues, you leave them susceptible and then your immune system might also be distracted by the rhinovirus and yeah, you can get a bacterial infection on top of a common cold sometimes.
And then in kids, multiple rhinovirus infections may cause enlarged adenoids, which they're like glandular tissue. They're also at the back of your throat. So sometimes…

Spencer
I've had a few things at the back of my throat. Oh, I'm just kidding. That's terrible. I still have all of my... I had strep throat so many times as a kid that one of the last times I had it, the doctor told me if I get it one more time, she's going to schedule me to have them removed altogether. So, I stopped going to that doctor and I don't, like, I still have my tonsils. In hindsight, I should have gotten rid of them when I was a kid, because I've heard that having them removed as an adult is horrific and I've looked into like some of the complications from it and it’s scary. So, I'm just like praying I never have to deal with it because…

Tyler
The scabbing part, yeah.

Spencer
But some of the things that you've called out, I've, I don't know if it was a cold or what, but I did have like some sort of respiratory illness that developed into like early pneumonia at one point. And I had kind of a chronic bronchitis at a different time from a respiratory thing.

Tyler
That's right. You were getting all sorts of shit when you were living in Florida.

Spencer
Yeah. It was not fun. I think the weirdest thing that I experienced was, like, taking a deep breath and you can feel the crackling in your lungs. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of that.

Tyler
Oh my God.

Spencer
Yeah.

Tyler
I thought that was something that they could really only detect like with a stethoscope and you can hear the crackles. I didn't know you could feel it.

Spencer
I could feel it. If you, like, would open your mouth wide and breathe out really slow, it kind of sound like Rice Krispie treats.

Tyler
I have heard that. Like when I was a phlebotomist in the ER, I definitely heard that in patients.

Spencer
Disgusting. Phlegm and vomit are my two no-no's.

Tyler
Luckily we don't get too much vomit in Micro but phlegm, like sputum samples, all the time. It's still one of those where I know I'm making a face when I'm culturing it.

Spencer
Gross.

Tyler
Yeah.

Spencer
Let's talk about something not gross.

Tyler
Okay. Well, I don't know if that'll happen, but we were talking about enlarged adenoids from, usually, repeated infections. Which when you're a kid, you don't have much immune memory to pathogens yet. You're seeing everything for the first time. So, you are going to get repeated infections from slightly different strains until you develop immunity. So yeah, they're going to be exposed multiple times. And if it's like back to back, you can get enlarged adenoids because those are immune system tissues, your adenoids and tonsils. And if those get enlarged, sometimes they might go in to take them out. Usually not after just one occurrence It's usually after repeated bouts of strep, you know, things like that. Or maybe they develop an abscess and they're like, “no, that needs drained”. But it can also block your sinus passages if those get too enlarged and make breathing very difficult.
So before you can even get sick with a pathogen, you have to be exposed to it. You have to get the pathogen. And that's where transmission comes into play. There's a few things that go into the transmission of a pathogen. It's going to include seasonality, reservoirs or vector exposure; sometimes animals or insects will be carrying pathogens. That's what those refer to. For diseases with vaccines or that have less serotypes, herd immunity might affect whether you get sick or not. There's different modes of transmission or transmission routes. So risky behavior, depending on the route, might leave you more susceptible. “Infectious dose” is how many infectious particles or organisms it takes to actually cause illness. If you get exposed to even one viral particle, is it going to cause disease? Or does it take 10 or 100? Or 10,000 or 100,000? It varies for each disease.
And then there's features of your immune system that could make pathogen entry more difficult. So, if any of those systems are compromised or not could help determine that. And then if you're a high-risk group or not.
So I'm going to go a little bit into detail about each of those.
Okay, so the first thing I mentioned was seasonality, which is like the likelihood of coming into contact with an infected person kind of overall. A lot of infections occur year-round, but there's certain times of year where they're more frequent, frequently encountered. So, there's always a cold and flu season, typically around winter time, fall, winter, that sort of thing. And we can kind of predict that seasonality based year to year. Maybe it migrates a little forward or backward, whatever. But there's usually a seasonality to most pathogens. Worldwide, it accounts for more than 80 % of common colds during high prevalence seasons, like in autumn between September to November in temperate climates. Influenza virus and RSV, among other more significant respiratory viruses, predominate in the winter, outcompeting the less virulent rhinovirus. So, it kind of seems like rhinovirus is more of like a fall pathogen, whereas these other more severe ones are more winter. But with the weather being super weird in recent years, we have seen some flexibility in that. And I don't know that weather really has a direct correlation. to anything, but it's probably just like, are more people out and about, or are more people huddled in their homes? Is there travel going on?

Spencer
Right.

Tyler
Are people going shopping and things? So, it's not so much that the cold temperature gives you colds. It's more of like, are people interacting or not? That sort of thing.
Reservoirs or vectors: For Rhinovirus, it's only found in humans. So, it's not something you can get from your dog sneezing in your face or into your mouth when you're talking. And it's not something you can get from a tick or, you know, things like that. You can only get it from other humans.
And for Rhinovirus, there is not a vaccine. There are way too many serotypes, which is another word for strain. That's a more common word. They're just genetically different enough that your immune system doesn't necessarily have immunity to it. And there's just way too many. There's no way we can vaccinate for them all. And it probably mutates so fast that it wouldn't matter anyway.

Spencer
Yeah, well and with the kind of low-ish typical severity, it's probably not top of list to even look into or invest in. You know, research and development into it. It’s a common cold.

Tyler
Exactly. Yeah. Whereas influenza is not just a common cold. It has a lot more severe outcomes a lot more frequently, etc. So yeah, definitely worth attempting vaccines even though this year, the efficacy of those vaccines was… they didn't hit the mark. It happens. But there's been a lot of flu this year, hospitalizing young, healthy people.

Spencer
I got mine anyway.

Tyler
Me too.

Spencer
This was my first flu shot I've ever had in my life. Not because I was against them, but because I had just… it was one of those things where it was like, well, I never had one before, so I didn't really feel super inclined to get one.

Tyler
Go out of your way for it.

Spencer
Yeah, but my doctor offered it at my last visit and I didn't want him to think that I was an anti-vaxxer. So, I felt like I had to get it just to prove that I'm on the right side. So, I did get it and I didn't have any symptoms from the vaccine or anything, which was great.

Tyler
That's good.

Spencer
Yeah. I feel a little better for it. Knowing that I didn't have any reaction to it, maybe it will be something I get yearly.

Tyler
Because they make it pretty easy for you to get it. They offer it like everywhere, like every pharmacy for free. yeah, they make it really easy. There are some people that get more symptoms than others, but it's not because there's live virus. You're not actually getting a living virus. The symptoms that you're feeling is your immune system reacting to viral particles, like pieces of the virus, and you’re putting up an immune response, which is what you want. That's what creates memory.
Anyway, side tangent, but it's good. I have to get one every year because I work in healthcare. You're around immunocompromised people and whatnot. And you don't want to get your coworkers sick either in a healthcare setting, because that shit spreads super fast. And if nobody's there to work, people are going to die.

Spencer
Right

Tyler
So, yeah, I get mine every year. You can choose not to, but then you have to mask up for the entire flu season. So, yeah.

Spencer
Mm.

Tyler
Yeah. Anyway, that was, for diseases with vaccines or that has less stereotypes. That was the concept of herd immunity. And it could impact your ability to get Rhinovirus.
And then we have modes of transmission or the transmission route. of rhinovirus. So, what kind of behavior is going to put you more at risk for getting something like this anyway? Different transmission routes include that respiratory route like I talked about, the droplets of saliva or mucus or what have you that come out of your face. And then for other pathogens, you might see fecal-oral routes. Sounds disgusting, like you're eating shit straight out of an asshole.

Spencer (19:28)
That's great.

Tyler
That's so great. But that's not necessarily the case. Kids are notorious for getting GI bugs. Cause they're so freaking dirty. They could be itching their asshole…

Spencer
Never eat the food that's offered to you from a toddler.

Tyler
No, no. They love to like try to shove food into your mouth. Don't take it.

Spencer
That scared me.

Tyler
I know. The speaker was shutting down, I'll probably cut it out. Because it's loud.
Yeah, they don't wash their hands, of course, because they're children. And then they go around and touch a bunch of things and put their hands in their mouth or put their hands in your mouth and voila, you've got norovirus or rotavirus or whatever. So, fecal oral routes you don't have to eat a turd for. It's like little, little microscopic bits that you would never even know are on hands or food or contaminate the water or whatever.

Spencer
Like E. coli.

Tyler
Like E. coli, salmonella, cholera. We had a cholera patient recently.

Spencer
Really?

Tyler
Yes.

Spencer
That's interesting.

Tyler
It still happens, but it's pretty rare and severe and so we have to report those to the state. That was interesting.

Spencer
Well water?

Tyler
I don't know. The patient history didn't mention any specific exposure or like travel history or anything. So yeah, I was going to follow up on that one, but it is interesting. Yeah. Cholera is typically from contaminated water, potentially contaminated food sources. Rhey also had salmonella. So I'm leaning towards contaminated food product potentially.

Spencer
That sounds like a rough time.

Tyler
Yeah. Very rough. So that was the fecal-oral route. You can also have direct contact with infected material. So, like if kids are playing with blocks or whatever, or maybe they wipe their boogers on the door handle or something, those are called “fomites”- any inanimate object that has icky shit on it, essentially. Viruses and bacteria live for a certain amount of time outside of a body. And if during that time you touch that object and then introduce it into your body, there you go. You got exposed, you're infected. So fomites is a fun, fun new word. Yeah.

Spencer
Yeah. I've never heard of that before.

Tyler
Yeah. And then there's also bloodborne infections, which can be HIV, HCV. Ebola is also transmitted through the blood, but also like every other body fluid type for that particular virus.

Spencer
Hepatitis…

Tyler
Yes. Yep. HCV.

Spencer
Oh, that's what HCV is?

Tyler
Yep. Hepatitis C virus. Yeah. There's also HBV, HAV, HEV. I think HD... That might be a slightly different one though. They're not all blood born.

Spencer
Excuse me. I need to brush up on my acronyms. I had not heard those before.

Tyler
Yeah. So, it's like hepatitis A, B, C, E. And a couple of those are blood-borne, but a couple of those are fecal oral, believe it or not. Yeah.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
And then the last one ⁓ is vertical transmission. Which, if I give you something, that's horizontal. If a mother gives something to her fetus or baby during breastfeeding, that's vertical.

Spencer
Interesting. Breastfeeding only or also like in utero?

Tyler
In utero, yeah. So, fetus in utero, sometimes during the birthing process because there's a lot of like bleeding and if you have a condition that produces rash in that area too, that's also an exposure route. So, like for herpes.

Spencer
Yeah, herpes, HIV.

Tyler
HIV via bloodborne, potentially vaginal secretions too.

Spencer
Although now there have been, you know, some successes recently of HIV positive mothers not transmitting the virus to their babies. Yeah, which is really interesting.

Tyler
Yeah, they're getting pretty good with the antivirals.

Spencer
Yeah. I'm really excited to see where they progress with that. They've come out with so much new medicines and technologies around HIV lately, which is hopeful to see.

Tyler
The prophylactics are cool too. Wasn't there... there's been a couple cure cases, yeah?

Spencer
Yeah. I am pretty sure I saw an article where they successfully, um, eradicated HIV in an individual using CRISPR.

Tyler
That's cool. And that's going to be one of our topics because there are so many uses for CRISPR. And is it, did they use CRISPR to cut out one of the genes that is a cellular target for HIV entry into cells?

Spencer
You know, I don't know. I didn't… I like skimmed the article, but I didn't read through the whole thing because it was something, it was something I came across on TikTok. And usually when I see these things on TikTok, I'm like, “Okay, how true is this if at all”? And I make a mental note to go look it up later and I didn't in this case. So I saw that it happened. I don't know how yet, but I will look it up because yes, CRISPR is a very interesting topic.

Tyler
I only asked about the specifics because we're learning about it in class right now.

Spencer
Oh really?

Tyler
Yeah. And there are people that are more resistant to HIV infection because they have a natural mutation in one of the cellular receptors for it.

Spencer
That's cool.

Tyler
It's really cool.

Spencer
Yeah, they did just come out with not really just, but within the last couple of years, a once every three month injectable HIV prevention medicine. Yeah, they had the they had the prep out for quite a while now, which is like your daily pill. But now, yeah, they have the once every three month injectable with the same efficacy.

Tyler
That's cool. And I guess while we're talking about all this, I just want to put the PSA out there that like just because you're like on prep and stuff doesn't mean you should necessarily like raw dog every single time. You still need to take preventive measures or protective measures.

Spencer
Well, there's a lot out there. Yeah. Prep is not a prevention for everything. There is still a lot of nasty shit that you can get other than HIV.

Tyler
Syphilis is coming back in some populations, which is very fucking nasty.

Spencer
Yeah. Syphilis, if left untreated, can lead to lot of, like, severe neurological damage.

Tyler
You can get like bone degradation if, if it's left untreated and all that good stuff. It's horrible, but I just wanted to make a mention that yes, Prep exists, like, the prevention, exists; viral treatments do exist. But still try to protect yourself. We're advocates for safe sex.

Spencer
And if you're not on Prep and you think you got exposed, go talk to your doctor about PEP.

Tyler
Oh, PEP, yes. That's... was like, is PEP?

Spencer
Post-exposure prophylaxis.

Tyler
Yes. Yep. We've got to worry about that too for like needle stick injuries and whatnot.

Spencer
Sorry, I keep distracting from your topic.

Tyler
No, that's fine. I want this to be a conversation. We may go on tangents, maybe a little banter, but that's what I want this to be. If people aren't interested in it, they can have a more formal podcast, maybe somewhere else, or just hit the 15 second skip. Still listen to our podcast if you would. Anyway, but yeah, that was basically all I had for transmission. I just wanted to touch a little bit on each one since this was the very first episode.
But for rhinovirus, obviously it's a respiratory virus that spreads via respiratory droplets. Moving on to the next little topic: infectious dose.
So again, how many of those pathogens need to enter your body for you to get sick? I have a few examples. The first one is measles. It's considered one of the most contagious diseases out there. Probably the most contagious disease because it takes one. There's some other stuff where it takes like 1 to 10 or something, but it takes one measles virus for you to get sick.

Spencer
That's wild.

Tyler
It's wild. Yeah. For norovirus, which is a gastrointestinal virus. I can't remember if that's the one that makes you shit more or puke more, but it's one of those.

Spencer
From what I have heard, norovirus is the one that will cause you to shoot projectiles out of both ends horrifically violently for like... what, like 12 hours and then… or 12 to 24 hours and then you're perfectly fine afterwards.

Tyler
I think norovirus is the cruise ship one, unless it's rotavirus. I always get them mixed up, but yeah, projectile from both ends. Oh my God. I have to tell you a little story. So, before you came here, um, the dogs had been playing outside and getting, like, wet and muddy and I let them back inside. Whatever. They have a tendency to drink out of the toilet and I just like “whatever it is probably cleaner than your dog bowl”. So, it's not something I strictly enforce. Anyways, I had to make sure that before you came, I went and cleaned off the toilet seat. Because they were wet and muddy, their dirty chest hair got on the rim of the toilet seat and it looked like I projectile shat out of my vagina or something.

Spencer
That's terrible yeah,

Tyler
It was all over the front of the toilet and like dripping down the side.

Spencer
That would have been quite the scene.

Tyler
I was like, I don't want him to come in here and look at this and try to wonder what was happening, whether like, “was she sitting backwards on the toilet like horsey style?” or…

Spencer
That's so bad

Tyler
So I just had to mention that since we were talking about projectile shitting it reminded me of that.

Spencer
That's funny. There was a school, a nearby school, within the last couple months. It was a mix of norovirus and I think the flu, but they didn't specify which. They had such a high percent of their student and faculty population that was sick at the same time that they ended up closing the school down for like multiple days to try to prevent the spread. It was that bad.

Tyler
That's crazy.

Spencer
Yeah, and that was that was here, local.

Tyler
It makes me wonder because usually it doesn't spread that effectively like, you know, everyone's sick all at once. Usually it's like a domino effect of sorts. But with norovirus, the incubation time is very short…

Spencer
It's also super, contagious.

Tyler
Yeah, it was the next one: It takes them just about 18 to 20 viral particles [to make someone sick]. Yeah, which is nothing, essentially. It still makes me wonder though. I wonder if their cafeteria food or drink or something got infected; a water fountain. I don't know.

Spencer
If one of their cooks had it? They could have, you know, given it to a lot of people that way. Or yeah, I mean, in a school everyone kind of touches all the same stuff all throughout the day.

Tyler
You're, like, switching classrooms and using the same desk with someone else. That's interesting though.

Spencer
Yeah. Norovirus is one of the top ones that I am fearful of. Stomach viruses.

Tyler
You don't like puking.

Spencer
I am terrified of puking. I will take a cold any day over puking once.

Tyler
See, I puke enough from like anxiety and shit. It's just like, “if I do it, I'll feel better”.

Spencer
It just hurts.

Tyler
It does, it can. I know, poor baby.
So that was kind of infectious dose of a couple things. Smallpox is another virus and it takes between 10 and a hundred. So, measles is more contagious than smallpox. Think about that for a minute. Crazy. But then we can skip to rhinovirus and I really couldn't find good numbers, because like we were saying earlier for vaccinations, it's not severe enough of a disease to have massive studies on it. And so, do I have it here? Okay. I have it as a lot of sources saying it's 10 or less. So, 10 or less viral particles. It's right up there with smallpox, surprisingly. It kind of makes sense. Everybody kind of gets colds at the same time.

Spencer
Yeah.

Tyler
And then can having certain conditions change the infectious dose? Can certain things leave you more susceptible to getting infected with perhaps less than someone else? Smoking, and there are some genetic factors.
That's really all I wanted to mention there, which it kind of makes sense. If you're smoking, there's like some inflammation. I think there are quite a few cellular receptor changes that occur.

Spencer
Yeah. It does weaken your immune system also.

Tyler
I think it paralyzes your *cilia in like the lower respiratory tract too. That is something that I'm going to have to fac- checked. Oh my God. Fac-. Fac-, fact check?

Spencer
Man, you left a letter out on almost all of those. Fact check.

Tyler
Anyway, but yeah, I want to say it paralyzes your *cilia, which are like little tentacles on your lower respiratory cells that beat or move mucus up and out. So if those aren't working, yeah, then you can't get the yuck out.

Spencer
I would be interested to know if that's what causes, you know, that chronic smoker's cough where, you know, people are constantly having to hack up mucus is because it's not getting pushed out naturally.

Tyler
I'd be willing to bet. Yeah. Assuming that what I said was correct.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Yeah. All right. Other factors that affect transmission or if you get sick: features of your immune system that may make pathogen entry more difficult. We have an innate immunity, but also adaptive immunity. It's two big broad categories. Your innate immunity is something that's always present. It doesn't really change much *and also doesn't produce memory. So that can be your physical barriers like your skin, mucus, etc. Whereas your adaptive immunity is what's going to adapt and change over time and produce memory, etc.
Your physical barriers, like I said, includes skin and mucus, but also those *cilia, which were on the lower respiratory tract cells, that kind of move things up. I'm not, I'm not tickling balls. I'm using my fingers to demonstrate. But then also like coughing and swallowing, I guess they are also considered physical barriers. If, if you're an MVP…. very motivated person?
What is that? What's an MVP?

Spencer
Most valuable player? Is that what you were trying to say?

Tyler
I don't know. I guess. Maybe not. I was gonna make a joke, but I ruined it.
There are also receptors on your cell that recognize various components of pathogens. I don't really want to get more specific than that because it's very dull. And my topic's already long enough. But there are receptors on your cell that say, “Hey, this is a virus” or “this is a piece of a virus”. And then they start communicating and signaling other cells that information.
And then we have innate immune cells. So, these are cells that don't necessarily have memory, although we're learning more that some of them might have a little memory, which is cool. But this includes white blood cells like macrophages, dendritic cells, neutrophils, natural killer cells. Those are more of the innate immune cells. And then we have things like T cells and B cells that are part of the adaptive immune system, which, it's too much. It's just too much to go into today. But we've got those physical barriers, your cell signaling, and then your white blood cells. Great.
So what are a few ways that rhinovirus can work to evade some of these defenses?
Rhinovirus can infect cells that are among the first line of defense. So you're mucus membrane, membrane epithelial cells. That's what they like. And they're right there. They don't have to make it past anything to get further.

Spencer
Quick and easy.

Tyler
Quick and easy. Yep. So that's one way that they can kind of avoid some of these physical barriers. Kind of immune cells too. They just sneak in before they even have time to react.
And then viral load. If you get sneezed on with a bunch of viral particles all at once, you know, like baby in your face or like the open mouth kid coughing. That can introduce more viral particles. And if you have more viral particles, they have a greater chance of them making it [to their target cells].
And then once the virus gets into cells, they can work to suppress some immune system reaction stuff. Cells like to communicate when they have a virus in them. They say like, “hey bro, I'm infected. I'm going to kill myself. But then also, y'all should ramp up your responses”.

Spencer
That's great.

Tyler
Yeah. But rhinovirus has been found to suppress some of these communications. If anyone cares, one of those that's involved/is down regulation is interferon one. It's a cytokine, which is an important communication protein.

Spencer
“Oh, so you're sick. Have you tried killing yourself?”

Tyler
Yes, exactly. And if they don't kill themselves fast enough, another cell will. So…

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Yeah, it's good stuff. I like that.

Spencer
Violent.

Tyler
I guess cell death doesn't necessarily happen all the time, but a lot of the time. Yeah, it does.
My other point was another immunosuppressive thing that the virus does, but this time it's with TGF beta. Who cares? Anyway, we've got some high risk groups. As I said earlier, asthmatics, people with cystic fibrosis, people with COPD, that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and then other chronic lung diseases. Immunocompromised people. With these people, it's not necessarily their respiratory tract that's not doing its job, it's their immune system. So that kind of makes sense.

Spencer
People on chemotherapy, HIV, a lot of different things. Post-transplant, people who are on immunosuppressants…

Tyler
Yeah, yeah. Steroids, not the muscle building ones, but the ones that suppress your immune system can cause that.

Spencer
Right. Malnutrition.

Tyler
Malnutrition, yeah. Pregnancy can suppress your immune system. Yeah, you can catch more things during that. All sorts of things.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Yeah. I want to say liver and kidney failure can also affect your immune system as well.

Spencer
Makes sense.

Tyler
I mean, if your organs aren't functioning properly, It's probably going to affect other parts of your body too. Yeah.
And then, children under seven are also a high risk group. Also kind of self-explanatory. They haven't been exposed to a lot. They don't have a lot of memory and they're fucking gross.

Spencer
Yes. Heavy on that part.

Tyler
Yes. Which I got to put it out there. I love kids. I'm not a kid hater, but they are gross. Like you can love kids and also acknowledge that they're disgusting.

Spencer
Yeah. I hate some kids to be fair, but it's at the fault of the parents, not the kids.

Tyler
There you go. Bad parenting can do that too. So that was my section on transmission. Any comments, questions, concerns? Need to take a shit? Anything like that?

Spencer
I think I asked all of mine during.

Tyler
Cool. Okay. I'm going to move on to the cellular tropism of it all. So what kind of cells do they like to get into and what do they do in them? To define it, cellular or tissue tropism is the range of cells and tissues that support the growth of a particular pathogen. And this tropism depends on the available cell surface receptors, accessibility of the cells, like can they physically get to it, and then sometimes cell cycle phase, too. So, if a cell is not actively dividing, sometimes viruses can't reproduce in them because they need machinery that the cell uses to replicate for the virus to replicate. If the cell's not replicating, that machinery is not active. Yeah, so that's really interesting. That's why there's not a shit ton of viruses that infect the nervous system directly. Because they have to encode genetic information to get those cells going again. Or at least the machinery for them. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Those are the kind of things that determine cell tropism.
Something that I haven't even mentioned yet, but is important for cellular tropism, is why it even matters.
How do I want to say this? So for bacterial diseases, they don't necessarily have to get inside of cells. There are intracellular bacteria, but more often they're like on the surface or between or on a matrix on the surface. But for viruses, they have to get into cells. Do you know why?

Spencer
No.

Tyler
These particles are so incredibly small, including their genetic code, that they simply do not encode the machinery needed to replicate themselves. So, if they don't have access to this machinery, they can't make more copies of themselves. By getting into cells, they can use the cell’s machinery to make copies of themselves, but they can also use resources within that cell, like their lipid membranes to create an envelope for the viruses or their nucleotide bases to literally create their DNA because viruses don't create those themselves. They take them from a cell. So that's kind of why cells have a hard time when they get infected with viruses. Because the viruses are taking over all their machinery and they're taking their resources. And when viruses leave, they can bud out like a bubble or they can just accumulate to the point where they pop the cell.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Even if they're budding from the cell at a low rate and not really affecting the membrane that much, they can take over the machinery and resources enough over time that the cell is like, “nah, I can't go on, I'm out, I'm gonna die”. So that's kind of why viruses need to get into cells. And in order to get into cells, they have to bind receptors on the cell and basically trick the cell into letting it in. It can't just cross the cell membrane willy-nilly. Why are there even viral receptors? That seems kind of stupid for a cell to have receptors for a virus so it can get in. Cells are not creating surface receptors for viruses. These receptors have other functions for the cell other than letting viruses in. The viruses are just exploiting these receptors to trick a cell, if that makes sense.

Spencer
It makes sense, yeah.

Tyler
Another point to make: none of the viruses are doing this intentionally. They have just evolved to do that. They don't have consciousness that says, “yes, I'm going to trick this cell. I'm innately evil by wanting to do this”. They don't want anything. They just happened to have a genetic code that produced a particular structure on the outside of the virus that happens to link to a structure on a cell that then takes it in.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
So that's important to keep in mind. It's like these viruses don't want to make you sick. They just...

Spencer
It's just happenstance.

Tyler
It just happens. Cellular tropism matters for viruses. And then every virus has a slightly different receptor or even co-receptors. Sometimes there's two that they have to bind to. And in order for a virus to get in, those cells have to express those receptors. Not every cell expresses the same things on the surface. I'm sure that makes sense. overall.
Oh my God. You know that fun fact you told me about Rhinovirus's name?

Spencer
Do you have it?

Tyler
I have it right here!

Spencer
That's hilarious. You put it in there and didn't even remember?

Tyler
I wrote these notes a long time ago.

Spencer
That's funny.

Tyler
Kooper wants his pets. he made it in the video! He's tall enough. Yes.

Spencer
Hi, Kooper. You're gonna make my dog jealous when I go home.

Tyler
Yes, yes, Good boy. That was a good overview. For rhinovirus specifically, they like that nasal airway mucosa. I kind of talked about the mucous membranes in there. They're right on the surface. If anyone gives a shit, the major serotype of rhinovirus uses the cell surface receptor intracellular adhesion molecule one or ICAM-1. That happens to be a very, very common receptor for viruses overall.

Spencer
Sounds like we should just get rid of it.

Tyler
Remember they also have cellular functions. And then some others in this group also use a different receptor called heparin sulfate. This receptor is found on airway epithelial cells, kind of like we already said. A couple of specific examples are adenoid and nasopharyngeal tissues. Nasopharyngeal means nasal and pharyngeal is throat. So, like right at the back of your throat where the cum goes.

Spencer
That’s nice.

Tyler
I thought so. The minor group of rhinoviruses use low density lipoprotein receptors. Your lower respiratory tract can also express the ICAM receptor. It makes sense that it can go from up here to down here. I think I talk about that a little bit. And then for how it enters the cell: If your cells have the receptor, it can bind it. And then it's just a cellular reflex of sorts to bring it in. Sometimes the virus escapes that little bubble inside the cell immediately. Sometimes it waits a little bit more and there's like certain changes within that bubble, like pH or something, that allow it to escape. One way or another, it gets out of the bubble and into the cell. Like into the cytosol, swimming around.
And then it does its thing. It replicates. It uses the host cell machinery to express its proteins that it needs to replicate its genome and then also build, physically build, the viral particles. So that's what it does and then it builds more viral particles.
We already talked about how diverting cellular resources can negatively impact cells. But then another thing that can negatively impact cells is the immune system response. We still want an immune system response, otherwise we're never going to get rid of anything. But sometimes that immune system response can also harm infected cells, which whatever, but also healthy cells nearby, because it's not always very targeted or specific.
Infected cells know they are infected, at least at some point, maybe not immediately but at some point they know they're infected they can signal other cells this fact.

Spencer
Just like giving a heads up; a warning. When the other cells are told that there's an infection, do they do anything to try to strengthen themselves or prevent or…? What good is the warning?

Tyler
If it's warning neighboring cells, I'm not sure that there's necessarily anything they can do about it. I'm sure they do. This is not something I've looked up in detail. There might be gene expression changes that happen to fortify things, but I think what more often happens is that they just continue this signaling cascade. They just pass on the message like telephone. Eventually this message is going to get to white blood cells though, and those are the ones that will have direct effects on the troops. Yeah. And they'll be the ones to actually do something about it.

Spencer
Interesting. Makes sense.

Tyler
I thought so. This chain reaction can produce various antiviral agents, whether those are like proteins or enzymes that can help destroy a virus or a virally infected cell. It can directly attack, like the white blood cell itself can attack, the cell. So, it's either products of the white blood cell or the white blood cell itself. And then inflammation is a major factor as well. An inflammatory response is something additional rather than like the cell itself. It's less specific. You don't have to have memory to initiate inflammation. There's a bunch of various signal molecules involved with the production of inflammation. They're called cytokines
Hmm how involved do I want to get with this? I don't know. Let's just say that there's a bunch of signaling going on and some of that is pro-inflammatory the inflammation can help kill cells and all that good stuff, but it's also going to harm cells that are not infected.
While this cell signaling is going on, the virus just keeps doing its thing. It doesn't really change what it's doing. And so it's getting out of cells. It's spreading. It's disseminating throughout the body or just the parts of the body that it's able to infect. How rhinovirus specifically gets out of cells is that it aggregates to a point where it bursts the cell open. So, it's like exploding cells. That’s probably why you have a lot of inflammation in your airways during the rhinovirus infection.

Spencer
Like filling a balloon with too much air.

Tyler
Exactly. Yeah. And during inflammation, it's also like dilating your blood vessels, allowing fluid to leak out. Like your tissues get swollen and painful, things like that.
Rhinovirus dissemination: Rhinovirus typically starts around the nasopharynx, so like your nose and throat. It can spread forward, further into your nose or your sinuses, or backwards into like your lungs. Some of the factors that influence this travel is maybe if you're blowing your nose a lot, you might push it forward into your nose or into your sinuses. Young children seem to be more prone to ear infections during colds. That is suspected to be because their paranasal sinuses are not fully developed yet, so not a lot is getting in here.

Spencer
I was kind of... I kind of assumed it was just... back to the point of kids being gross and picking their nose and touching their ears and...

Tyler
Potentially. But we have these like Eustachian tubes that travel from our throat to our ear internally. If it's traveling internally, they think that a lot of sleeping, like laying horizontally… Because kids nap a lot… Yeah, that can... help with that spread from like the throat to the ears.
And then you have spread outside of the host in addition to inside. It seems like the highest viral load is at like a day or two after symptom onset. It's starting to affect your cells, explode things, but then it's also traveling to other cells and has started exploding those. And then it kind of tapers off after about a week, week and a half. The higher rhinovirus viral load was associated with more severe respiratory symptoms. Kind of makes sense if you have more cell damage, it could be because there's more viral release.
How it gets to the lower respiratory tract: It's not completely clear, but it could have something to do with inhalation during coughing fits. You could inhale them. Mucus drainage; if you're not getting all of it out, like spitting, blowing your nose or swallowing if you're a swallower. You could be inhaling mucus accidentally.
And then inflammation; it could just be like a traveling inflammation and it could make easier cell access. There's also evidence that rhinovirus can actually cause cells to upregulate that cell receptor, too, that they need.

Spencer
Really?

Tyler
Yeah. It's kind of unclear exactly how or why, but it something during the signaling cascade of all of this might accidentally increase the expression of that cell receptor they need. So that sucks.
So all of this battle going on between rhinovirus and your cells, of course, leads to disease symptoms.
I didn't necessarily need to do a whole different section for this because I felt like it was obvious but it's important to note that that battle in the cells that it's affecting is what is causing your symptoms during disease. So, it can stimulate pain in those areas. The cough, sneeze reflexes, vasodilation, which was the expanding of your blood vessels. That can create that stuffiness and heat. Perhaps maybe not enough heat to be considered a fever… And then you have -this is a fun sentence- transudation of plasma AKA plasma transudate. When your blood cells dilate enough, they might become leaky. And so the liquid part of your blood can ooze out into your passages. So, it's like blood plasma.

Spencer
It started off as a little funny and then it got gross.

Tyler
It wasn't all just gross?
Yeah, so your blood vessels are getting leaky and leaking the liquid component of blood into your extracellular space and eventually to the lumen of your nose. So that might be why you get watery snot.

Spencer
That's nice, sweetie.

Tyler
Yeah, I think this stuff is so interesting.

Spencer
Like it's interesting.

Tyler
It's stuff happening at a microscopic scale that’s leading to your nose pissing. It's great.

Spencer
Most people, including myself, I have never heard 90% of this before.

Tyler
Kind of looks like the bottom of my shake right now.

Spencer
I would assume the majority of people don't realize all of the complexities that are at play with just something like a common cold, so this is really interesting.

Tyler
I hope so. I hope it's not, like, painfully boring.

Spencer
I swear. keep yawning. And by the way, it's not because I'm bored. I just like... I don't know what it is. There's something in about me like sitting for too long to where I can't control it. I just will like yawn back to back. So ignore that.

Tyler
Oh yes, we talked about the plasma leaking. Oh, and then there is increased glandular output of secretions from goblet cells. They're specialized cells in your mucus membranes that produce the mucus.

Spencer
Harry Potter and the leaking of his goblet cells?

Tyler
Yeah! So, between the plasma leaking and then these goblet cells ranking up production of mucus, you get snot and then, ooh, when you have that super vibrant green snot, yeah, you've got white blood cells galore in there. Those are all your soldiers fighting.

Spencer
Interesting.

Tyler
Uh-huh. It's so when you when you have colored snot like that, you're fighting something.

Spencer
And sometimes when you have really clear, runny, thin, watery, whatever you want to call it, snot discharged from your nose, it's actually CSF.

Tyler
I knew you were going to go there. That is your cerebral spinal fluid leaking out of your brain cavity. Yeah, no, I definitely scared myself on vacation one time because I like bent forward and a bunch of water came out my face.

Spencer
I've had that happen, too. Mine was not clear. It was yellow. It was like neon colored. So it was not that. But yeah, I leaned forward and it just like, poured out and I was like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. I scared the piss out of myself.

Tyler
I guess mine wasn't clear either. It was bright yellow, but I didn't know that at first. It took me a few times of that happening when I bent over for me to finally see what color it was. And it was bright yellow. And I had a sinus infection at the time.

Spencer
Yeah, mine was so bright colored that it was like if you had cut the tip off a glow stick and poured it out, it was like a very unnatural, weird color. It was, yeah.

Tyler
That might have something to do with the fact that the plasma that leaks out, it is yellow in color, but normally like straw yellow, like hay yellow. Mine was also neon though, and I don't know why.

Spencer
Yeah, same. It sounds like we had the same experience almost.

Tyler
I wonder if it was bilirubin, which is a byproduct of red blood cell breakdown. It can turn like neon yellow and brown and whatnot. So, I wonder if that had anything to do with it. Interesting. Breakdown of red cells. Super fun. Cool. I don't know about cool. It really did scare me. Because during that same vacation I had one of the worst migraines I've ever had in my life. So I really thought I was looking CSF for a second.

Spencer
That tracks.

Tyler
It was bad. Oh my God.
One of the complications that I talked about, the secondary bacterial infections, rhinovirus can allow for easier bacterial invasion by several mechanisms. It can disrupt cell barriers. So, if you didn't know, cells throughout your body are not just floating around in an ocean of cells. They're literally cemented to each other, either with goo between the cells or like there are direct connections cell to cell. Viral infections can disrupt those connections and make them like leakier or prone to damage and whatnot. It also allows for white blood cells to kind of travel between those cells easier. It's a pro-con for the virus.
Inflammation can lead to that vasodilation. I keep bringing up the leaky fluid, the edema, which is swelling due to fluid, airway congestion. Again, this allows for immune cell movement and allows for nutrients for tissue repair. So if your blood cells are dilated, stuff can get to that site easier. There are increases of platelet activating factor receptors on tracheal epithelial cells. The increases of these receptors on tracheal epithelial cells actually help the adhesion of a particular bacteria.
Where am I in this?

Spencer
Good question.

Tyler
It doesn't tell me what page. I am at the last, like, quarter. I'm at the last quarter. We're in the last quarter of the game.

Spencer
Nice.

Tyler
Sports. Is that the last quarter of the game? Something has quarters. One of them has quarters. Baseball, maybe? Those are innings. Fuck. Football? I think football has quarters. said baseball, it's definitely football.

Tyler (1:03:30)
It doesn't tell me what page. I am at the last like quarter. I'm at the last quarter. We're in the last quarter of the game. Sports. Is that the last quarter of a game?

Spencer
Something has quarters.

Tyler
Okay.

Spencer
One of them has quarters.

Tyler
Baseball maybe?

Spencer
Those are innings.

Tyler
Fuck. Last quarter. Football?

Spencer
I think football has quarters.

Tyler
I said baseball is definitely football.

Spencer
I think you're right. Yeah, I think it's football.

Tyler
Oh my God.

Tyler (1:03:58)
Yeah, I think it's football. Oh my god. Surprise, surprise, we don't know things about sports.
Back to this platelet activating factor receptors that increase on your airway. These receptors help aid in the adhesion of a particular pathogen, a bacterial pathogen called Streptococcus pneumoniae. Can you guess what it causes?

Spencer
Mm, pneumonia?

Tyler
Correct. So it's a bacteria. It doesn't necessarily need to bind and enter cells. But a lot of bacteria do have things on their surface that make them attach to cells and tissues easier so that they can stick around in the environment. It helps to be sticky. If you're constantly like flowing from one place to another, it's pure chaos. So, they want to stick, they want to hang around. So the cell surface receptor helps this pathogen stick around. This is something that you can have just normally in your respiratory tract or oral cavity or whatever. But if a bunch of them are sticking in one and your immune system's already distracted with a virus, you could potentially get a secondary bacterial pneumonia from Strep pneumoniae.
And then it does this similar thing with other epis and other locations of the respiratory tract. Blah blah blah. I don't care to go on.
One of my favorite things that I wanted to talk about that I get to talk about now is what happens to the destroyed viral particles. What happens to them? Where do they go?

Spencer
Oh! Let me give you a couple guesses and I'm gonna see if I'm right. Okay. You piss them out?

Tyler
Damn, son.

Spencer
Is that true? Really?

Tyler
Yeah. You piss 'em out.

Spencer
I don't even need to continue guessing.

Tyler
Did you get that from John Green? Or not John Green, Hank Green?

Spencer
I might have. I do follow Hank Green on TikTok. Cause he made it ⁓ apparent. You piss out your cancer.

Spencer
I don't even need to continue guessing. Did you get that from John Green? Hank Green? I might have. I do follow Hank Green on TikTok.

Tyler
Because he made it apparent that you piss out your cancer.

Spencer
Yeah, right. Yes. I remember him talking about that. I think that is where I got that from. Yep.


Tyler
Because like when chemo kills cancer cells, they get broken down, filtered out and you piss them out. And that's pretty much what happens to viruses too, but I'll give some more details.

Spencer
Interesting. Okay.

Tyler
Yeah. So like, oh my God, this is so cool. This is what we were talking about before we started recording where the detox of the body is your liver and kidneys and you'll piss it out. Some immune cells and other cells, like epithelial cells, die. And when they die, so do the viral particles because now they don't have any active machinery or whatnot. And these dead cells accumulate in the tissues or mucus they die in. That is some of that booger content. If it happens in tissues, other white blood cells called phagocytes will likely clear the…

Spencer
Fag?!

Tyler
Sorry, I know can't say that. What have I done?

Spencer
Sorry, you're gonna have to reread that one.

Tyler
Oh my god. That was good though. Good job.

Spencer
Couldn't help myself.

Tyler
If in tissues, white blood cells called phagocytes will clear them and they do this by acting like an amoeba and like, nomming them, engulfing them in like... help! They engulf them. Yeah. That's, they phagocitize them. God. And so now it's just in another white blood cell, which also might die. And so it's kind of a cycle when it gets to that point.
However, if it happens in mucus, the accumulation of white blood cell corpses can turn it thick and yellowish green. Then you can cough it, swallow it, spit it, blow it, sneeze it, or pick it out. You know? Whatever, whatever suits ya.
Also cells, like your body cells, regularly produce waste that needs to be discarded or recycled. They need to use a process called autophagy to identify broken down components and unused proteins and wrap them up for disposal. So they kind of like bag up their trash to be taken out, if you will.
Then they use a similar process to dispose of viruses. So, their trash, but also viruses, which are trash, they bag them up and then they flag them for disposal. When this trash is bagged up in the cell, these bags interact with lysosomes and it's another bag of enzymes, essentially. These two bags are bubbles, like, fused together so that the digestive enzymes can work on the trash and break it down further. Yeah, it's like dissolving a corpse with acid.

Spencer
Good comparison.

Tyler
That's what I thought. After digestion, these are either recycled and used again, because you can use various components again (cells are always building things), or you can export them from the cell. If the debris can't be used as building blocks, then they can be spit out in a cellular process called exocytosis. It's a very general term that's used for a lot of different specific processes, but essentially the cell is causing something to exit.
And I don't want to read that sentence because it's stupid. I'm to have a lot of editing to do.
This will be, this is probably gonna be one of the longest topics that I do. There's a lot of information to share. Some people like longer episodes. You don't have to listen to it in one sitting. But I bet people are just about tired of listening to me. So. This is a house cleaning episode, not a car ride episode. Car trip episode. There we go.

Spencer (1:10:18)
This is probably going to be one of the longest topics that I do. There's a lot of information to share. There is. There's a lot. Some people like longer episodes. You don't have to listen to it in one sitting. Yeah. But I bet people are just about tired of listening to me.

Spencer
This is a house cleaning episode, not a car ride episode.

Tyler
Car trip episode.

Spencer
There we go.

Tyler
Okay, so once the virus trash and debris is outside of a cell in the extracellular space, fluids containing this waste, because there's like fluids and shit outside your cells, they enter lymph vessels. You've heard of lymph nodes. There's a whole vasculature system just for lymph. So it can enter these lymph vessels at various points all throughout the body. And without going into too much detail, these lymphatic vessels eventually bring fluid to be dumped back into circulation; into your blood vessels. It gets picked up by lymph vessels and then it gets dumped in your bloodstream. So, you have a bunch of fucking waste in your bloodstream.
And then once it's there it gets filtered by various organs including the kidneys and that is where virus and other debris are turned into piss. And then kidneys work to remove certain waste products along with excess water and excrete them as urine.
Yeah, that's cool. Whatever you don't like blow out your face, you blow out your dick.

Spencer
That's nice.

Tyler
Alright. Some quick points to end this topic. Immune memory for rhinovirus: You do create memory, but there are over 100 antigenically distinct serotypes or strains. There are so many that you can't build immunity to them all. You probably haven't been exposed to them all yet. So that's why you can get rhinovirus multiple times throughout your life. All the different strains as well as, like, mutations that make it suddenly a new strain.
Diagnosis: Do you think a doctor gives a shit if you have rhinovirus?

Spencer
No.

Tyler
Not under normal circumstances. Because there's not treatment for it. Not specific treatment for it. It's not severe enough in healthy people to even research treatment for it. You just have to let it take its course. Keep hydrated. Don't get other people sick. Eat like normal. There's a whole thing like, was it, starve a fever, feed a cold, or vice versa? That thing’s false. You have to eat normally in both situations.

Spencer
Your body needs fuel in order to fight off infection.

Tyler
Yes, yeah fasting while you're sick is a good way to stay sick or get sicker.

Spencer
Yeah, which we'll talk about.

Tyler
I'm excited So yep eat drink if you have a fever take some Tylenol. If it's a low-grade fever you don't even need to do that. If you want to take decongestants and shit, go for it. Not gonna hurt ya. Although, taking a bunch of nasal spray, which I believe has steroid in it, can be bad after a while. You have to follow the directions on that.
If you are someone that has chronic lung conditions or immunocompromised status, you can potentially get sicker during a rhinovirus infection. You don't have to see your doctor right away for it, but if you start getting fevers or if you start getting symptoms of a lower respiratory tract infection, it's probably a good idea to get seen. Cause while they can't directly treat rhinovirus, they can treat secondary infections. Or if you end up like severely dehydrated or something they can give you fluids. It's like supportive measures, I’m not gonna say it's not important. They might not do a respiratory panel to identify it but…

Spencer
I would assume that testing in most cases for this would not be testing for the rhinovirus but more so, testing to make sure it's not one of the other big ones. Then once those are ruled out, they're like, “eh, it's probably rhinovirus”.

Tyler
Yes, exactly. A lot of the testing that happens in doctor's offices and the ER is to rule out big, bad, and scary things. Exactly. They're not going to try to get a positive test for a common cold virus. They're making sure that this infant doesn't have a Bordetella pertussis whooping cough, because they can go downhill very fast and die. You know, things like that. So you're exactly right.
Any testing that does exist for rhinovirus is typically like a PCR test that does polymerase chain reaction of the genetic makeup. There’s not really any commercially available antibody tests for the antibodies that your body produces. There are also not typically viral cultures done. And that's a whole other topic by itself. You can't culture viruses like you can culture bacteria using standard, easy to work with stuff. You have to have living cells to culture viruses and it's just not something that we do on a routine basis.

Spencer
It sounds fun though.

Tyler
It is. And, like to tell viruses apart, there's different effects that they can have on cells. And it's also dependent on what kinds of cells they can infect. It's really interesting. We'll have to cover it sometime.

Spencer
Yeah. Cause I have a bunch of questions about that.

Tyler
I know. I'm sorry. I brought it up here. I'll write it down because I don't think I have it as a topic.
Okay. And for treatment: Just over the counter stuff; supportive measures. You cannot treat viral infections with antibiotics.

Spencer
I knew we were going to go there.

Tyler
Yes, that is the last major point I want to make.

Spencer
Stop getting fucking antibiotics for everything.

Tyler
Yes. Could you have a bacterial infection? Sure, you could. Let a doctor decide that and don't demand antibiotics. Sometimes the doctor's wrong. It does happen. Advocate for yourself. But for common colds and cold-associated sinus infections, things like that, antibiotics are not gonna help you. In fact, they are going to encourage antibiotic resistance and I am a staunch advocate for antimicrobial stewardship, which just means use antibiotics wisely, use them correctly and use them only when the situations absolutely call for them. Because what's going to start killing a lot of people is antibiotic resistance. We're going to get infections that we don't have anything that works against them. That was my last point.

Spencer
You're fucking it up for the rest of us.

Tyler
Exactly.

Spencer
If you're one of those people that has antibiotics at home so that you can take them when you start feeling sick.

Tyler
You should not have antibiotics at home.

Spencer
Yeah, throw that shit away. You should never have extra antibiotics. Even when you start to feel better finish them. You're fucking it up for the rest of us.

Tyler
Even if you feel better, there are still bacteria left and it's usually the more resistant ones too. So take your full dose, your full prescription. Don't save them just in case, and don't take animal antibiotics. They're not for people for a reason. And that could be because they have side effects that you're not even aware of, or they don't work against our pathogens.
So that's my PSA. I'm sure you'll hear more about it in future episodes.

Spencer
The more you know.

Tyler
Do we need any sort of break before you start your topic?

Spencer
I don't do you.

Tyler
I don't think so.

Spencer
A good segue into my topic is a common misconception that taking echinacea, which is cone flower, tea or extracts, powdering it and put it in capsules. They used to believe that that prevent and treat the common cold. A lot of people still believe that. There is no scientific evidence to support that claim other than Echinacea tea can contains antioxidants and can help the immune system, but kind of sort of the same as most teas and fruits, you know, just like eating healthy like you should be anyway.
My topic for today is alternative and natural medicine. Plant-based, plant-derived, some common misconceptions and things that are either not proven or disproven.
So we have some fun stuff to go through here, a little less technical.

Tyler
Yeah, more conversation.

Spencer
There's a lot of this that

Spencer (1:19:51)
we have some fun stuff to go through here. A little less technical. So feel free. real conversation. There's a lot of this that you know already or that you can add onto. So, you know, interrupt away please. We're going to start with though, derived or plant based medicines either do work as treatments or medicines or boosting the immune system or just helping the body in general. I am going to read off a list throughout some of this because I was a little selective in the examples that I chose to include and I want to make sure I don't forget any of them because I will think about it all the rest of the day if I do. Okay.
So fun fact, 40%, about, of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from natural products such as plants, bark, or fungi.

Tyler
40?

Spencer
Yeah. That's a pretty high percent. That's almost half.

Tyler
And you said Western? So like, developed country, like America, us, 40%.

Spencer
What the typical average American is getting at the pharmacy.

Tyler
That's a large proportion. And this is pharmaceuticals even, not over the counter vitamins and stuff?

Spencer
Yeah. It's a, it's a mix of, you know, prescription medications, there are supplements, there are over the counter treatments. OK, a mix of kind of all of…

Tyler
You said things with an FDA label?

Spencer
Yeah. Is that wrong?

Tyler
Supplements are not FDA approved. Which means they don't have to have proven science behind them.

Spencer
Which I do talk about a little bit.

Tyler
Okay, perfect.

Spencer
Willow bark was historically used for pain relief. However, it caused a lot of stomach issues; a lot of irritation and upset, and was kind of doing more harm than good. Willow bark used to be like aspirin. And then because of all these stomach issues, was causing a chemist developed a synthetic version that oes the same thing, but without those side effects. And that's what we know as aspirin today.

Tyler
Can the stomach pain be explained by the inability to control dosage when you're just chewing on bark or like powdering it like the concentration can vary?

Spencer
It could other chemicals that are present in the bark that are irritants to the stomach lining. Could be, you know, just rough. Could be too fibrous any number of things.

Tyler
That makes sense. Yeah. Ok. Do you know if they made it into teas or just, if they chewed on it directly at points?

Spencer
They had chewed on it. There was various different methods when I was looking up a little bit more background information last night. It seems anything from chewing on the bark directly to powdering it to making like teas or tinctures with it. It's pretty, yeah, kind of sort of anything except for I didn't see that they were injecting it. Which…

Tyler
Okay, cool. Hopefully not most of these.

Spencer
Another interesting one: quinine from the, I might be pronouncing this wrong…

Tyler
That's how I would.

Spencer
No, not that, the tree. Quinine from the cinchona tree, (that I might be pronouncing wrong).

Tyler
I think that's also close, if not accurate.


Spencer
While it's no longer a first-line treatment, is still an effective treatment for malaria. It is just now reserved for more severe cases and typically in combination with antibiotics.

Tyler
Yeah. I think there is a ton of derivatives from that medication or tree.

Spencer
Opium poppy, kind of duh. That's where morphine comes from. That's one of the more well-known ones.

Tyler
And opium.

Spencer
Right. And for drugs.
My next one is Pacific yew bark. It's a major chemotherapy medication for ovarian, breast and lung cancer.

Tyler
No shit?

Spencer
Yeah. Velvet beans contain high amounts of L-Dopa, the precursor molecule to dopamine, which is the primary medication used to treat Parkinson's. And research has shown that individuals who were consuming these beans were receiving the same or even more effective dosages of this L-Dopa than while if they had just taken like the Parkinson's medication itself. Parkinson's is a disease that is widely attributed to the lack of dopamine in the body.

Tyler
Fun fact, one of my next topics, I don't know if it is the next one, but one of them: encephalitis lethargica has also responded to L-Dopa. Even if it was just temporarily, that's like one of the only things encephalitis lethargica patients respond to is L-Dopa.

Spencer
Interesting. Get some velvet beans.
Okay. We also have... so these next ones are not plant derived medicines, but kind of just plants or herbs themselves. I'm using the word plant kind of generally throughout this. I’m talking about green things that grow in the ground… Not necessarily green, but ginger, the root, treats nausea particularly well for pregnant people and people who are going through chemotherapy. So not necessarily a medicine but definitely an aid.
Garlic lowers cholesterol and blood pressure; good for heart health.

Tyler
Make sure your pasta is extra garlic-y to counteract the fats.

Spencer
Not saying to rely solely on garlic for your heart health. Take your heart medication if you are on heart medication or need it. Go talk to a doctor.

Tyler (1:25:45)
Like baby aspirin and, or... what's the other one? Fish oil. There's all sorts of things that might work better than garlic, but if it has properties to help lower cholesterol, great.

Spencer
Maybe don't take it as a treatment But, you know regularly eat some garlic and it might you know help to keep your heart healthier over time.

Tyler
Do you happen to know if cooking it ruins that property? Sometimes when you can cook like proteins out of stuff…

Spencer
I don't know. Admittedly, I did not look that up.

Tyler
I guess, I mean, usually you're not eating raw garlic, but I didn't know what they…

Spencer
Some people do but that's not for me. I do use copious amounts in my cooking though. I get one of those big jars of diced/minced garlic. Yeah, and I'll go through one of those big jars every couple weeks. I go through a lot of garlic. Love garlic.
Another one: lavender. Good for reducing anxiety, helping you sleep. Nothing extreme but you know, provides some benefit.

Tyler
Got some teas, obviously with lavender, and then the essential oils. That's one of the few things I will say essential oils are good for. It's the very few that actually have a calming effect.

Spencer
Yeah, well and not just calming, I did see that lavender aromatherapy does help some, not all, people with managing their migraines or to help treat their migraines. Probably depends on the cause of them, the severity, when you use the lavender. If it's just starting to come on or maybe you know one's coming in advance and you’d like try to get it ahead of time. But if you're like in the middle of an extreme migraine, it's probably not going to add much benefit to you.

Tyler
Gotcha. Yeah. Interesting.

Spencer
And then we have turmeric, which is anti-inflammatory.
Just because they're natural does not mean they're 100 % safe. Many foods, plants, herbs can interact negatively with a lot of prescription medications, which is what I'm going to go into next. I would

also like to add here, again, I touched it a little bit a minute ago, but I am not in any way advocating for people to replace medications with any sort of herbal remedy at all. These should be supportive, not necessarily alternative. And it's not going to work for everybody.

Tyler
Yeah. And dosage matters. It's the dose that determines if it does nothing, is helpful, or is a poison.

Spencer
Exactly. let's see. Okay. So, some things that can negatively interact with, like prescription medications: garlic. Garlic can actually increases bleeding risk when eaten excessively while on blood thinners.

Tyler
Really?

Spencer
Yes. I found that very interesting. Good for your heart health, also if you're on blood thinners, maybe not the best. Yeah, maybe chill a little bit. Bananas or potassium supplements, if taken with certain diuretics, can cause your potassium levels to be too high and lead to heart arrhythmias.

Tyler
Okay, yeah, because diuretics, those affect how much water you're excreting. And if you concentrate your blood by controlling how much water is in it, yeah, I can see how your potassium will get fucked up from that.

Spencer
Yeah, exactly.

Tyler
You don't mess with potassium.

Spencer
Coffee or caffeine can reduce the effectiveness of asthma medications.
This one is one that's actually pretty commonly spoken about, which is grapefruit.

Tyler
I've heard about this.

Spencer
Grapefruit, specifically like grapefruit juice, negatively interacts with over 800, I think over 850 prescription medications to date. Probably even more since the articles I read came out. Grapefruit fucks with a lot of stuff.

Tyler
Why?

Spencer
Well, that's what we're going to say next.

Tyler
Oh good. Okay. I didn't know if you knew why.

Spencer
I added this specifically for you because I knew you would ask why. Um, grapefruit negatively interacts with over 800 medications such as calcium channel blockers for blood pressure, immunosuppressants, anti-anxiety medications, and various cancer medications. It inhibits an enzyme, preventing the body from properly breaking it down medications in the intestines, which leads to higher concentrations in the bloodstream. Typically, the typical or more common interaction with grapefruit and medications is increasing the potency [of that medication] in your bloodstream, which can be very dangerous for a wide variety of medications.

Tyler
That's not what I have expected. It makes sense, though, because when developing these medications, they have their like pharmacokinetics down to a T and it's like how your body processes them, breaks the medicines down to, when and where. And yeah, if you have a reaction that's causing it to not break down like normal, it's not going to be absorbed like normal. It's not going to processed like normal.

Spencer
It will very commonly make the effects of your medications stronger, more amplified.
On the complete opposite end, for antihistamines like Benadryl and stuff, it reduces the effectiveness. Yes, so grapefruit is a very weird one. It's not just limited to grapefruit, but other similar citrus fruits can have similar effects as well. Yeah, so always read your prescription labels. Be very familiar with your drug interactions of any medications that you're regularly taking. You would hate to find out about an interaction by accident after the fact.

Tyler
Yeah, yeah scary stuff. And then your doctor's like, trying to figure out what's going on and you don't think to mention you had a grapefruit for breakfast.

Spencer
Some people may not even think about it. Another really big, common plant derived thing that interacts with medications, not just limited to prescription, is alcohol. Kind of a duh and some people are going to say, that's not plant-based. It kind of is.

Tyler
Yeah, we might be stretching the definition but yeah.

Spencer
I put it in here anyway. I think it is important. I think the majority of people know but I will stress the importance at least that mixing alcohol and medications is typically a pretty big no-no. While it doesn't interact with everything, it can very negatively interact with some pretty serious things. Depressants.

Tyler
Have like an additive effect.

Spencer
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler
Is the majority of the effects caused by impairment of the liver or other things?

Spencer
So there's a few different effects they can have on the body. If you're on medications that are processed by the liver, like I'm on Vyvanse, which is processed by the liver, or Tylenol is also processed by the liver, drinking excessively while on medications that also have an effect on the liver can increase the chances of limer da-, I can't say liver. Leemer. Limer damage.
Drinking alcohol while on other medications that also affect the liver increase your risks of liver damage.

Tyler
And this isn't like, a chronic thing. Like, “every time I'm on this medicine, I drink”. This is like, even if you do it once, you can experience some of these effects. You can have an overdose by doing this. Yeah. Like Tylenol or otherwise.

Spencer
Yeah. Alcohol can also increase like side effects of medications like anti-anxiety medications. If you're on Xanax and you drink alcohol it could cause you to black out for periods of time, or worse.

Tyler
We have known people in that situation for sure.

Spencer
I myself have been in that situation, admittedly a few times, when I was in high school. Speaking from experience, don't buy into it. It's not worth it.

Tyler
It's not fun. It's not a party drug. It's potentially deadly or can cause harm.

Spencer
Yeah, absolutely. So that was my little PSA about alcohol and drug we talked about some plant based or just plants in general that do work as treatments or medicine. Now we will talk about some that don't.
So we have the saw palmetto, which was believed to treat prostate health issues. It was later disproven and has basically come out as having no more effectiveness than a placebo.

Tyler
Shit, okay.

Spencer
So maybe it does work through the placebo effect, but it's not working on its own.

Tyler
So if you just believe it does …

Spencer
Right. That. Anything's possible if you just believe. The one that I kicked this off with, echinacea, coneflower, was believed to treat and prevent the common cold.

Tyler
Gotcha. Pretty hard to treat something if it doesn't have any antiviral properties.

Spencer
Castor oil was claimed to treat various cancers.

Tyler
I have... Hold on.

Spencer

No shit. Here we go. That's crazy.

Tyler
[Presenting] Castor oil. Yeah, I don't think this was for cancer, but it's a pers- not a prescription. Pharmaceutical.

Spencer
Interesting.
Kava was claimed to be an effective anti-anxiety treatment. Has no scientifical evidence to back that up. Is Kava word? Okay. Scientifical, Yeah. No, it's not a word. Kava was claimed to be an effective anti-anxiety treatment, has no scientific data to back that claim up. Is scientific? Is “scientificical” a word?

Tyler
Yeah, no. Not a word.

Spencer
Onion in your socks before bed is a pretty common practice for detoxing. A lot of people put, like, a slice of onion in their kids sock if their kid is getting sick thinking it will like draw out some of that sickness and help them to feel better.

Tyler
Potatoes too, I've heard.

Spencer
Potatoes too, yes. Again, there is no scientific evidence to back that claim up.
We're going to talk about detox in a little bit, you're not pulling anything out of your body with an onion.

Tyler
They're changing color because one, they're on your fucking dirty feet. Minimal, but got to mention it. But oxidation, especially potatoes, are very prone to oxidation. Like, you know, when apples turn brown after you cut them up. Yeah, that's that's what's happening. Potatoes turn brown when they're exposed to oxygen for a long time.

Spencer
I mean, put onions in your socks if you want to, but all it's going to do is make your feet smell like onions. And potentially provide a lovely playground for fungus and bacteria to cause further issues.

Tyler
That's what I was just going to say, especially potatoes. They're so carbohydrate-y.

Spencer
Yeah. And they're like literally covered in dirt. Yeah, not going to do much.
And then we have St. John's Wort, which is a very common supplement that is taken for a wide variety of different claims such as depression. And anxiety is a very common one. St. John's work is also thought to be an alternative herbal solution for inducing abortions. The support of that claim is 50/50. While St. John's Wort has a lot of warnings out there for pregnant persons about the risk of miscarriage, there are also studies that show women that were taking St. John's Wort and women who were not (pregnant women), had the same rate of miscarriage and that there was no actual effect by the St. John's Wort. So I'm not saying it's not true. I still would advise against taking it while pregnant just in case. But the verdict's about 50/50. It's advised not to consume St. John's wort during pregnancy due to it stimulating and increasing the muscle tone of the uterus, which can lead to miscarriage.

Tyler
Interesting.

Spencer
This is one that I am really interested to circle back to at a later date and see if more research has come out. There was so much varying information that I even myself couldn't draw my own opinion on if St. John's Wort is or isn't risky, is or isn't effective. So I'm interested to revisit this in the future. St. John's Wort can, however, reduce the effectiveness of birth control and also can be passed to babies via breast milk and cause colic, fussiness or drowsiness.
This next one is not a plant, it is not plant derived, but it is natural, which is why I included it. And I see a lot of this, especially recently online. This has become one of the next big trends that makes me roll my eyes every time that I see it. So this is going to be a fun one. You're going to love it.

Tyler
I don't know what you're about to say.

Spencer
We're going to take a second and talk about alkaline water. Yeah, okay brace yourself. So alkaline water has many unsupported health claims such as detoxifying your body, liver, or blood, treating or preventing cancer, slowing aging, boosts immunity, that it hydrates better than regular water, being used for weight loss, etc. List something, someone out there's probably claiming that it can be treated with alkaline water.

Tyler
Nothing's detoxing you except your liver and kidneys. First of all.

Spencer
Alkaline water is treated by the body as… water. The body maintains a tight pH ra... Fuck! I can't talk.

Tyler
You almost made a good point.

Spencer
The body maintains a tight pH range and in most individuals, does that very well.

Tyler
Your kidneys are very good at controlling things.

Spencer
Yeah. Your body when functioning properly, is really good at regulating itself. It knows what it needs. It knows what range it needs to be in. The fact that people think that you should be changing the pH of your blood to treat, illnesses, ailments, whatever, first of all, that's like near impossible to do through ingesting anything. And second, it’s fucking stupid. Sorry, I honestly, I don't even care if I offend you with that part.
When alkaline water is drank, your stomach immediately neutralizes it. It turns it into regular water. It produces more gastric acid, which is necessary in order for digestion.

Tyler
So you might get heartburn from alkaline water?

Spencer
Well actually, alkaline water, as soon as it hits your stomach, it interacts with your stomach acid, reduces the concentration of that stomach acid and can very temporarily relieve symptoms of things like acid reflux. Very temporary.

Tyler
When you said it increased the production of stomach acid, it's not to a level [of causing acid reflux]?

Spencer
No, typically not. As soon as it hits your stomach, your stomach is going to detect it. It's going to detect the pH and it's going to say, “this isn't right. This isn't what I want”. It's going to put more acid in there to get it to the proper pH so that your body can process it.

Tyler
So it doesn't even make it to the small intestine and large intestine where the majority of water is absorbed?

Spencer
Yeah. It's useless and it's a waste of money.
Detoxing your body is the next thing. Detoxing your body is not… I lost my words.

Tyler
There's nothing extra you can do except maybe hook yourself up to a dialysis machine. If you have fully functioning liver and kidneys, you don't need to worry about this. If you truly want to detox somehow, and that's like body-wide, maybe not even whatever's in your blood, you have to change your diet chronically, maybe exercise. But like, whatever you're gonna mention. We'll just, make comments when we get to them.

Spencer
Your body has detox included as a factory default. Your liver and kidneys, your lungs, your intestines. You're breathing out [gaseous waste]. Toxins don't build up in your liver or kidneys and require flushing by means other than your piss. You're not going to take supplements that are going to flush your liver and clean out your liver. It just doesn't work that way. If you want your body to detox and detox properly, then take care of your liver. Don't pack it full of sugar and alcohol. Eat healthy, stay hydrated, stay active, get good sleep. That is how you detox your body. There is nothing that you're going to take over the counter or drink or strap to your body or anything that is going to pull toxins out of your body.

Tyler
Not better than your liver and kidneys. I do want to say we're not those people that are like gym bro, athletics, pure diets and blah blah blah. We have the shittiest lifestyle in some ways. We don't exercise besides doing our like yard work or hiking.

Spencer
I'm not going to the gym. I eat pretty healthy, but I do eat out a fair amount to...

Tyler
…Forget to eat.

Spencer
Yeah. So, I'm not saying any of this trying to preach any sort of diet or anything of sorts. I'm just saying, don't fall for the detox supplements or other trends. Stop paying $8 for a bottle of fucking alkaline water that your body's just going to turn into regular water. It's just pointless.

Spencer
Okay, moving on from alkaline water. We'll talk about cancer diets.

Tyler
Can we pause? Because I need to detox my body and take a piss.

Spencer
Go piss, girl.
To segue into the next little the claim that alkaline water treats anything is bullshit because it's just your body just treats it as and turns it into regular we're going to take a second and talk about some cancer treatments.

Tyler (1:46:40)
To segue into the next little section, the claim that alkaline water treats anything is bullshit because your body just treats it as and turns it into regular water. So, we're going to take a second and talk about some cancer treatments that were proven to be ineffective, such as alkaline water.
We have the alkaline diet, which is a low or non-acidic food diet.

Tyler
Might help your teeth, but I don't know about anything else.

Spencer
I think it's either Bruce or Bruss diet, B-R-E-U-S-S, which is based on vegetable juice and tea. Fasting and/or intermittent fasting to starve the cancer. That doesn't work. Your body needs fuel and strength and you need to be eating, especially immunocompromised people fighting major illnesses. You definitely need to eat and without eating it all has a pretty detrimental effect on your immune system.

Tyler
I think that's part of what led to our grandmother's passing. You're trying to fight cancer, you're undergoing chemotherapy, but if you don't feel well enough to eat or drink, it's detrimental. And if you feel well enough to eat or drink, but you're not doing so because you're intermittent fasting, same thing.

Spencer
Yeah. You're not depriving the cancer. You're depriving your body. It'll kill the cancer… by killing you.

Tyler
Yeah. There’s one thing I wanted to say about that, that has a little bit of truth to it. Cancer does use a lot more resources than your other cells because it's uncontrolled cell division. So rapid, very rapid, using a lot of energy. So yes, while it may sound possible that starving it would harm it, you're harming yourself more.

Spencer
And that totally makes sense. Like, there's a couple of these where I was like, I could see why people would believe that. That, you know, seems logical. But again, we're looking at evidence and like actual anecdotal research that proves that that's just, it's unfortunately not the case.

Tyler
Wish it was that easy.

Spencer
Yeah. So we have raw food diets, ketogenic diets, macrobiotic diets, which are a restricted diet composed of grains and unrefined foods, juicing, a diet consisting of just juiced fruits or vegetables or a combination thereof…

Tyler
I wonder what the reasoning behind that is. It seems like some of these were like based in liquids. I don't know if it's just easier to digest in that form, but you can't cut out food groups.

Spencer
I think in some cases from what I was reading it's more so the concentration of like antibiotics , no not antibiotics, antioxidants? The concentration of like antioxidants and vitamins and stuff is more potent in like liquids and juice than if you were to consume [the full thing]. But I don't even know if that is true or not because when you juice a fruit or a vegetable and you're throwing out the like solid part of that. You're also throwing nutrients away with that.

Tyler
Are they throwing away the solids or are they blending?

Spencer
We're not talking about smoothies, we're talking about juice.

Tyler
Oh, shit! Yes, thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, there's definitely nutrients in the solid parts. Fiber is important for gut health as well. Yeah. So all the fiber in fruits and vegetables…

Spencer
A lack of fiber in your diet is attributed to colorectal cancer. Drink your juice. I'm not saying juice isn't healthy. I'm saying don't have a diet that is literally just juice.

Tyler
Yeah, no, that's not good.

Spencer
It's also probably really irritating for your digestive system. Especially considering a lot of these juices are pretty like highly acidic. That's not gonna feel good. You're gonna give yourself like inflammation, diarrhea, which is gonna lead to dehydration and then we go back into, you know, the unhealthiness of not having enough water throughout your body and diarrhea is going to cause your food to move faster through the digestive system, so you're not absorbing it at the correct rate. And it's just a cascade of bullshit.

Tyler
So if you're doing this while you're also trying to fight cancer, you're...

Spencer
You're tiring out your body and you're depriving it of what it needs.
We also have cannabis. People use it for things like controlling tremors, pain management, sleep nausea, all sorts of things. It can also have the opposite effect on everything that we just listed and exacerbate those symptoms. So it can be used as kind of like a supportive measure…

Tyler
Symptom management.

Spencer
Yeah, symptom management, but it's not a cancer treatment. That has not been proven to be a cancer treatment. Same with cassava, castor oil, ginger, kombucha, soursop, walnuts. These are all things that have been claimed to be effective cancer treatments and have no data to back them up or data to back up the exact opposite.

Tyler
Gotcha. Yikes.

Spencer
People take what they see online and they run with it. Some evidence suggested papaya seeds helped to treat certain intestinal parasites. This is because papaya seeds contain compounds like benzyl isothiocyanate and carpane which are thought to have anti-parasitic properties. These studies involved dried ground papaya seeds mixed with honey and most studies were small and/or animal studies. Long story short, someone, a group of people, multiple people, whatever, made a post or whatever regarding these claims. And then a huge trend blew up online of people eating spoonfuls of raw papaya seeds or just papaya in general. The point of the claim to treat intestinal parasites. People who didn't even know if they did or didn't have intestinal parasites were just eating spoonfuls of papaya seeds. And I saw the same shit with yellow dragon fruit also. Like people see one thing and they're like, my God, I need to do this immediately. I need to go treat myself for parasites. Do you even have any symptoms of having parasites or are you just making some bullshit clickbait on TikTok for likes and views?

Tyler
And like the people that were saying, “yeah, I did this and then I shit out a bunch of worms and such”. They could just be straight up lying.

Spencer
They could be lying. And you know what? They could be telling the truth. Maybe it does work. But as of now, there is no substantial actual evidence that supports that.

Tyler
And a lot of people using TikTok are not so afflicted by parasites that they're going to shit out straight worms. So I have a hard time believing that.

Spencer
There is a large, surprisingly large percent of the population, including in the US and in developed nations, that have kind of sort of benign intestinal parasites. It's very common. You can get it through a million different methods. Just because they're there doesn't necessarily mean that they're causing a large amount of harm.

Tyler
…symptomatic disease…

Spencer
I don't think you need to regularly take anti-parasitic measures. If you have symptoms or severe complications or irritation or anything like, if it's causing discomfort or pain or affecting you in any way, go talk to a doctor about it. Have tests run, whatever they need to do, and your doctor will decide what is the best course of treatment for you. But other than that, you don't need to go eat spoonfuls of random seeds to try to shit out some parasites you may or may not have.

Tyler
And like with seeds specifically, if you're just eating them whole, your body can't even digest that. Not properly. You're just asking for irritation. And if you eat enough of those seeds, you're going to cause an intestinal blockage.

Spencer
Well, not to mention there's a lot of fruit out there where if you eat the seeds in high enough concentrations, it's like very toxic.

Tyler
Poisonous, yeah. Because like with apple seeds, not that I can even compare them to papaya seeds because I don't know the content, but like with apple seeds, your body processes that into cyanide, or a component into cyanide. So don't just go around eating fruit seeds if you don't know what the effects gonna be.

Spencer
I'm getting through this like kind of fast.

Tyler
That's okay.

Spencer
While we're on the topic people just taking shit and running with it from social media, we have Belle Gibson.
Belle Gibson was an Australian social media influencer who claimed to have multiple cancers. Brain, blood, spleen, uterine, liver, and kidney.

Tyler
You'd be dead pretty fast if that was the case.

Spencer
Yeah, she also claimed to have suffered like heart attacks and strokes and gone through open heart surgery, without having like any scars from any operation and all kinds of shit.

Tyler
That’s hard to do with open heart surgery; not have a scar.

Spencer
But she claimed,this is gonna piss you off, she claimed that those cancers were a result of a reaction to the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine.

Tyler
Please, that is a cancer prevention vaccine.

Spencer
That is very harmful misinformation to be spreading around, you cunt.

Tyler
Yeah, no, so for people that don't know.

Tyler (1:57:14)
Yeah, no. So for people that don't know, Gardasil is a vaccine against human papillomavirus strains. It is not directly against cancer. It's preventing infection with these viruses and these viruses can induce cancer. And it is a highly effective vaccine. It does not cause cancer at all. Has nothing to do with cancer besides protecting you from a cancer-causing virus.

Spencer
Belle cleemed, fuck, Belle claimed to have treated and managed her cancer including claiming that she cured some of her cancer through diet exercise and alternative medicine, alone.

Tyler
We'll pause and say that there have been case studies, very rare circumstances where people can fight and cure themselves of cancer without treatment. It is extremely rare, incredibly rare. I would never bet on it. And if she had as widespread of cancer as she claimed to? Impossible.

Spencer
Yeah, half of the shit that she claimed to have would have been like imminently terminal. Yes. At the end of the day, choose whatever treatment you want. It's your journey specifically with like cancer. A lot of people talk about, you know, attacking cancer with dignity and doing it your way. Some people don't want to go through extensive treatment because it's very hard on the body. It's hard on your mental. It's hard on your family and all of that. I respect whatever choice you choose to make. I would just suggest that you make that choice based on actual evidence.

Tyler
The problem with this person...

Spencer
She had these claims and she very loudly and widely vocalized them and other people took that as truth and followed behind her which is so dangerous. And people very likely died from maybe not her specific claims like coming from her mouth, but following similar treatment plans and paths. So it is dangerous.

Tyler
I don't know if that was the end of your rant on her?

Spencer
No, I have some more.

Tyler
Okay, I will hold my tongue.

Spencer
She launched a diet app centered on how she was managing her cancer through diet. Similar, her app was along those lines. It was very much about raw foods; A raw diet. Eat this, don't eat this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It actually became pretty popular. She was very popular online. She had hundreds of thousands of people that followed her. She was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations which she… not only donations, but also like revenue from her app that she claimed to have donated to charities and didn't. She...

Tyler
Allegedly.

Spencer
Yeah, allegedly.

Tyler
No legal stuff here.

Spencer
She was, she in my opinion, was a pretty shitty person. She did a lot of shitty things, but most notably is what I'm talking about here today is the pseudoscience aspect of it. She promoted a lot of pseudoscience that is not backed by any actual evidence. And a lot of it was, it has actually directly been disproven. Such as, she was an anti-vaxxer, she advocated for drinking raw milk, which...

Tyler
Oh, she's just hitting all the current trend buttons and that's when you really know people are talking out their ass like yeah, you just happen to believe all these current topics.

Spencer
Yeah, and then the most, in my opinion, controversial of all of them was that she, herself, followed and promoted Gerson therapy. Gerson therapy or the Gerson method. It's not probably a term that you're super familiar with because it's fucking stupid. Okay, it evolved from being a claimed tuberculosis treatment into being a cancer treatment. Is based on the belief that cancer is caused by a weakened metabolism and impaired liver function. Therapy emphasizes detoxifying the liver, which we have already talked about. You're not detoxifying your liver. A strict, raw plant-based diet. No canned frozen or refined foods at all. The hourly consumption of vegetable juice. Juice, not smoothies again. Regular enemas, sometimes multiple times a day, of coffee, castor oil, or this will be your favorite one, hydrogen peroxide.

Tyler
Are you asking all your normal flora to just fuck off and die? Because that's what you're doing. That's horrible for you. Enemas period much less with those things.

Spencer
Including ozone enemas, which I went down the rabbit hole of what ozone enemas are.

Tyler
Is it like you're sticking your ass in the air? Like, “come on, ozone layer”.

Spencer
It's not ozone as in like the sky. It's ozone as in like, what I was reading, I guess, is some sort of electric reaction with the air. It was actually kind of confusing. It was hard to find a bunch of information on it because when searching ozone 99% of the results are THE ozone and not this bullshit ozone treatment that has proven to be like quite harmful in a lot of cases. But yeah, ozone enemas were in there and I wish I had more information on it, but it was quite hard to research.

Tyler
Yeah, you know when things are hard to find research for that they're super effective, right?

Spencer
Also in this diet, berries, salts, nuts, and vegetables, sorry, vegetable oils, are completely banned. You cannot eat any of those under any circumstance ever at all during the course of this quote unquote treatment.

Tyler
I thought that you were gonna say they're instructed to eat a lot of those. And I was like, okay, that doesn't sound horrible.

Spencer
Here’s arguably the best one. Another thing that you're explicitly forbidden from consuming during this ⁓ treatment is… water.
All of your fluid intake comes from the hourly consumption. Not a sip.
So that is not even all, but what I thought were the most notable points about why Gerson therapy is problematic and bullshit. Part of something that’s included in Gerson therapy was consuming raw extracts of calf liver, as in like baby cows. But that part of the study resulted in like all of the patients being hospitalized like developing sepsis, like some horrific infections, and in a lot of cases or I think even most cases died.

Tyler
So here's the thing. I'm pretty sure consuming liver, period, can be poisonous because of like the quantity of I don't know if it's like vitamin *A or something. There's something in liver where if you consume an excessive amount of liver, it's bad fucking news. So, if you're doing extracts of liver.

Spencer
Raw.

Tyler
Raw, yeah. And if you're, if you have poor harvesting techniques, like from an animal, there's a lot of bacteria on animals that are harmful pathogens. And that's why raw milk is so bad.
There's just too much. It's too much. I couldn't even say anything about the water because I don't have the words.

Spencer
This is why I left her story for the end of this. It’s because I think it can show the severity of what misinformation can do to people or a community of people. All in all, this is a frustrating end to the Belle Gibson story. I'm sure there are plenty of things that are like exaggerated and conflated, but Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix is this [story]. It's about this story of Belle Gibson. It was pretty good. It was a frustrating watch well, obviously.
To cap that off though, she was taken to court for touting her false claims. She was fined just shy of like half a million dollars, which she never paid.

Tyler
You mean all the money that she made from her app and all the donations? She must have really actually donated them if she couldn't pay her fine, right [sarcasm]?

Spencer
They tried multiple times to come and collect on those fines. As of, I think the last update I saw was as of 2025, still unpaid. Basically, she got away with it. She lost the app, she deleted her Instagram, she lost her following, but she kind of made it out unscathed, which is what pisses me off more than anything because how many lives did she ruin by either directly or indirectly convincing people to do this same bullshit? And she didn't even have cancer, but the people who were following her were real cancer patients taking her treatment advice.

Tyler
That's fucked. That's so fucked.

Spencer
I will end this by saying, trust your doctors. I said a lot of stuff here and a lot of this is my opinions based on research that I did and evidence I saw. But I always advise everyone to go out and do their own research. Try to find unbiased sources and articles that are actually evidence-based and not opinion-based. And at the end of the day, talk to your doctor, trust your doctor. Even if you're considering an alternative-ish treatment, talk to your doctor. A lot of them are supportive of it.

Tyler
That's what I was gonna say.

Spencer
Or are supportive of it in combination with pharmaceuticals or other treatment methods. Trust your doctor. Even when it comes to doctors, don't just blindly trust them. Feel free to question them. Get second opinions. Go to multiple specialists. Talk to different specialists. Don't trust chiropractors.
When I say don't trust a chiropractor, that is specifically in reference to people going to a chiropractor for treating like heart ailments and cancer and stuff like that. A chiropractor is going to pop your back…

Tyler
…realign stuff maybe do some musculature stuff. They're not going to cure your depression. Well, unless your depression is linked to pain.

Spencer
It's also like very questionable the effectiveness of their actual scope of work because there's plenty of evidence that shows chiropractors have caused things like strokes in their patients from the improper handling of the spine Yeah, so I personally don't like chiropractors if you can't tell but I…

Tyler
I would hate to offend because I know a shit ton of people use chiropractors and they love their chiropractors, and that's fine but they need to stay in their lane.

Spencer
Yeah. No chiropractors for cancer treatments. That's the main point right here. But that rounds out my chat on herbal and plant-based medicines that do and don't work.

Tyler
It was a very good topic, very interesting, and I feel like it opened a lot of doors for future topics.

Spencer
There are a million related things I wanted to but refrain from straying off on.

Tyler
Because you guys can tell at 2 hours and 42 minutes of recording, granted, it's going to get cut down, we can talk about this stuff for a long time. So we'll do spin-offs or like specifics.
So something we wanted to do at the end of episodes was to leave it on a good note. I know that one in particular was frustrating. Not all of our topics are going to just be, like cool, awesome, fun facts. Some are going to include harsh realities. So we wanted to leave episodes on a good note by saying something that we're excited for in like the near future. Do you have anything off the top of your head?

Spencer
My most immediate one is, well today's March 5th, which means spring is right around the corner. On the website and in the intro episode I talked about being into gardening. I have so many plants that are starting to throw out buds or even some of them are blooming already or throwing up some new blooms and everything's starting to get a little bit of green and I am so, so, so excited to see everything bloom and see some color return back into the yard for some warmer weather. There’s some growth on my trees that I planted last year. I'm very excited to have some out time side. Out time side? Some outside time in the near future. What about you?

Tyler
That's cool. The things I'm most excited for actually revolve around getting this edited and posting, launching our website. I'm gonna kind of pack all of our website and socials into the outro music, so I won't worry about doing that now, but yeah, launching this, launching this podcast, launching our website. I'm so excited because I feel like it has gone really well so far. I'm glad we're finally sitting down to do this. It's taken a long time. But now that we've actually started recording things, I think we can see that it's actually fairly easy, but...
It's taken a lot to finally do and I'm proud of us.

Spencer
Yeah, it was a lot of prep work, a lot of discussions, a lot of back and forth. And it’s nice to sit down and… actually it took us a while to get here.

Tyler
This has been years in the talking. And like, why hasn't it started in town now? We both have full-time jobs. We both have hobbies. Life happens. I'm in school. But this is what I'm excited for. So I'm going to leave it on that.

Spencer
I like that.

Tyler
All right. Well, we don't have a sign off yet, but I hope you guys enjoyed our discussion. Listen to the next episode. So…

Spencer
Thanks for watching…

Tyler
…or listening! Bye!