Kevin: 0:00

Welcome to our podcast with life issues. I'm Kevin Henry in my partner in climate life is palm free. I have her disease from the spinal cell power ataxia. Which is like neural muscular disease. This has left the ability to display spee with a speech impact of the noise-induced anxiety.

palmi: 0:33

Living with these disabilities for over 20 years, we have developed helpful hints and life lessons that we would like to share with you that has made our life easier and possible in some cases. We consider ourselves disability advocates and intend to educate ourselves and you about other disabilities and issues, and also talk about things we find interesting and frequently encounter when we're out and about. Thank you. Enjoy. Hi again. This is When Life Gives You Lemons. I'm Palmy.

Kevin: 1:47

I'm Kevin.

palmi: 1:48

And this episode we're gonna do a little out of our comfort zone here. Um it's not exactly about disabilities, it's a lot of um Kevin's really into history and he's been um researching three controversial conditions from our past and present. Um remember neither host is a physician, and any um medical opinions are um are made by other opinions as to historical facts. So the three controversial conditions are the dancing plague, golf war syndrome, and long COVID. Why don't we the one I found most can uh interesting because I had never heard anything about it, was the dancing plague.

Kevin: 2:38

Yeah, it's uh fairly well documented in history. Um it's kind of overshadowed by the bubonic plague or the Black Death. As it should be that tends to grab a lot more headlines than say the dancing fever. Which does not seem like it would be a bad thing unless you died of it.

palmi: 3:06

Yeah, it doesn't seem really that bad, but apparently people did die from it. So yeah.

Kevin: 3:12

So here's some facts. Um there the outbreak began in July of 1518 when a woman um from Strogenburg. Strasburg. Strasburg, Kevin's the pronouncer, uh started just started dancing continuously and it went on for weeks and weeks straight. And the funny part, not funny, but the interesting part was that immediately or as it lagged on, um more and more people came down with this illness, they called the dancing chaos. It has said to claim 400 victims where the dancers would dance until they collapsed, dying of either a heart attack or I imagine heat stroke or um you know dehydration. I imagine there's a lot of things that that could cause. But by that early September, the outbreak began to subside, and the dancers were that had not perished were sent to a mountain shrine to pray for absolution. So we have to kind of keep our mind in the times period that um we're talking here, which is 1518. So during that time period, we were experiencing the plague, the Black Death. People were going hungry. There was a lot of stress, just everyday stress, I imagine. People were dying all around you. So that contributed, they think, to the this disease. There were several um opinions on what had caused it. Do you remember what they are, Ken?

palmi: 4:55

One of them was a fungus that infects grains. Basically, it forms a uh ergot. Ergot, it forms a uh substance similar to uh LSD. And it's basically the L drug LSD when it was synthesized, was using ergot as a model. So it's psychogenic for sure.

Kevin: 5:25

So that I mean that seems plausible because here we we are looking at the black plague and people are starving to death. There's not a lot of food, and I imagine they were willing to eat just about anything. I think you made a joke when we were preparing for this ep episode that you know the five-second rule did not apply back then. It was more like eat it when you find it.

palmi: 5:46

You do it where and when you find it.

Kevin: 5:48

There you go. Another one of the um speculations on how it was how this happened was um mass histosis or mass hysteria. Yeah, that that has happened a lot in the past.

palmi: 6:06

I know there were several episodes where Which kind of seems more feasible. I mean, if you do people with LSD, yeah, odds are they don't all have the same hallucination.

Kevin: 6:23

Right that was what the doctors concluded too.

palmi: 6:26

Yeah, present doctors. I mean, it's it's possible that you know someone would come and oh, I hear music, I must dance. And that would impress upon others to have the same auditory hallucination.

Kevin: 6:45

Similar to the um the witch child trials of Salem.

palmi: 6:49

Yeah, there's some speculation that ergot played the role in that as well. But I think that was more a case of somebody doing something unusual, and that times were such suspicious medical science, you know, progressed to a point where they'd slap leeches on you or bleed you to bounce your humors. Not you know, and there was no such thing as mental illness, and nobody understood any of the core principles of what we now call mass hysteria or mass hypnosis. So because this was a while ago, there is no way to for two tests for the drug-induced or god three, if you will.

Kevin: 7:53

Yeah, they jumped right to demon um demonic possession. Demonic possession, yeah, and divine judgment. So that would have been a scary time. That lady that we talked about, uh that started the dancing, she was not the first in history to to have that happen. There were several times in the medieval ages in the 11th century in Saxony, where it was believed that a woman was bitten by a tarantula and the venom made her her dance convulsively. So there's a lot of mis, you know, you hear stories and they may be fish stories where you know it may not have been as bad as it was, or um, you know, she wasn't really dancing, she just was having uh convulsions on the on the ground.

palmi: 8:41

No, they pretty uh conclusively determined they weren't convulsions because of the long time it was affecting people, like a week or whatever it was.

Kevin: 8:56

Yeah, that is a long time.

palmi: 8:58

Whereas if you had convulsions, it would not last that long, and whatever it was that was causing them would have either killed you or presented it in the other way by then.

Kevin: 9:14

Makes sense. What I found interesting was these events have expi inspired movies, books, songs. Specifically, a couple of um songs were written about this. In the uh 2022, the song Cormania by the Florence and the Machine. Uh, it's on the third track of the album Dance Fever, and which took its title from the song. They it we listened to it, and it was pretty interesting, and you could definitely tell it was based on that kind of s disease.

palmi: 9:55

Yeah, earlier than that, Kate Bush had a uh song that was called The Red Shoes.

Kevin: 10:02

Yep, that's what it was.

palmi: 10:04

Unfortunately, we can't play either one of those because they're both under copyright.

Kevin: 10:10

But go and go and listen to them yourself. They're very interesting, very different, totally different uh gender. Junya? Genre. There you go. Um, and then they said that this um for Kate Bush, she said uh in our her notes that the song was inspired by the characters in Michael Powell's uh film of the same name, Red Choose, which itself was inspired by fairy tale by the same name by uh Hans Christian Anderson, which we all know he's tons of fairy tales. And they all had weird songs lessons for children.

palmi: 10:48

And they were kind of like morology tales, if you will, for children.

Kevin: 10:54

Beware tales.

palmi: 10:55

But would you explain a little bit about the significance of red shoes?

Kevin: 11:03

Oh, yes, that's right. Back in that episode in the 1518 or yeah, 1518, the people, um, those who were that were danced were ordered to go to the shrine of Saint Vistas, and they were made to wear red shoes that were sprinkled with holy water and painted crosses on the toll tops and soles. They also had to hold a small cross in their hand and incense and um do Latin incantations as part of this riss ritual um to uh be forgiven by Victorus, Saint Victorus. Of course, the church took credit that the uh dancing plague had ended by the results saying that their rituals were successful and able to uh eliminate it.

palmi: 11:54

Well, imagine uh back in that time with the uh the sway that the church had in everyday life. If they said something like that, it you know, people just generally accepted it as being true. Right. Okay, next on the list is Gulf War Syndrome.

Kevin: 12:19

Yeah, and you know a lot about that.

palmi: 12:21

Well, I do because I read a lot about it while I was in the army. I was in the army during the Gulf War, I think it was a statistic we're reading where one-third of the deployed soldiers came back with Gulf War Syndrome.

Kevin: 12:41

Correct, yep, that's correct.

palmi: 12:42

And that is a medical nut that doctors never cracked. What exactly caused it? It even got so scary to the point where not just you would get it, but when you came back home after war, which was very brief as wars go, potentially you gave it to your family as well.

Kevin: 13:11

But here we're looking at, you know, the symptoms were very vague: fatigue, muscles, skeletal pain, cognitive problems, skin rashes, diar uh diarrhea. Again, this is not not this is not intended to be all comp compac um all composing. All inclusive inclusive, yeah. But um here again, if we were looking at our the symptoms back in the day with the dancing fever, mass hysteria.

palmi: 13:40

Well, I think there's a better explanation for it. You know, it can manifest in uh soldiers and aggravate or be amplified by PTSD, so it's all in your head. And then when they get back home, you don't hear a lot about this, but when you actually deploy to war, of course, your family back home is very worried about you, your safety, and all that stuff. And also they have a lot of stuff that previously you had to deal with, and only you, the military would only let you deal with it, and so it was totally brand new to them to have to solve these riddles on their own.

Kevin: 14:34

Yeah. They were ex these veterans were also exposed to a lot of stuff while they were over there. It was a very short war, but time-wise, but um there was a lot of uh chemical warfare agents, uh, particularly nerve nerve gases and other mustard gas and stuff like that that was had been used previously. Um they looked for the what was it were they looking for? Was the mission?

palmi: 15:03

They were looking for weapons of mass destruction, which this was a Bush senior era. And it basically was like over in uh last night on the ground side, but they did undergo a very long period of airstrikes and artillery strikes before the ground forces moved in. So basically they wanted to take out as many enemy forces as possible before our forces. It was actually a coalition of many nations became involved in the actual shooting part of the war. That, like I said, lasted a day, and at that point the goal of making Iraq leave Kuwait was accomplished, so we didn't invade Iraq after that, we just liberated Kuwait. So Saddam Hussein was in power at the time, and yes, he did use chemical weapons against several villages in some country, so we knew he had them for the later war, but we don't know if he managed to guide them well enough to never be found, or perhaps he just used them all up.

Kevin: 16:49

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of uh psychological factors in that too, where you're you know being told that there is, you know, weapons of mass destruction. So for the veterans that were there uh and their families, there was a lot of stress, post-stress um trauma. PTSD PTSD, that's right.

palmi: 17:09

Yeah, imagine being uh it's a uh charcoal laden suit along with your gas mask. It's hot in cold weather. So I can't imagine wearing it in hot weather like you in conquered the desert.

Kevin: 17:31

And then there was um stuff like the oil well, uh oil drill, the drills that were were um set on fire. So there was a lot of exposure to that kind of those chemicals, what god only knows what are you know they're burning and they were breathing into their bodies.

palmi: 17:49

So that brings us to long.

Kevin: 17:52

Well, let's talk about what they're doing as for um for there is no cure, of course. There's all three of these have the same issue. There is no cure. But by on behalf of the Department of the Veterans Affairs, uh they conducted a study and released a report recommending that veterans who were experiencing symptoms related to the CMI, an integrated system-wide long-term management approach should be uh implemented. And what they do is they are basically treating the symptoms. Right, yeah.

palmi: 18:30

Which is what uh all three of these have in common. They just have well, in the case of like the medieval dancing plague, it they did their best to treat the uh symptoms. Of course, they were still worried about things like demonic possession and uh lack of medical knowledge at the time. So the Department of Veterans Affairs didn't slap leeches on anybody, did the best of my knowledge.

Kevin: 19:10

Okay, here it is. The approach is called cognitive um behavior treatment, which it may help the patients with non-specific symptoms lead more productive lives and by actively managing their symptoms. So that was their band-aid for that. And so the third thing we're coming to is the most recent, what, three years ago now?

palmi: 19:34

Yeah, well, that varies, but yes. Yeah, it's been around a while.

Kevin: 19:41

So it's COVID, COVID 19. Da da da.

palmi: 19:50

Most people caught COVID and you know, got sought medical treatment and went along their And have returned to normal by now. But uh a very few people, it seems like never really ditched COVID. And doctors aren't sure why.

Kevin: 20:17

And this is called long COVID.

palmi: 20:20

It's more of a a uh term developed by people who associated with it because they feel the underlying cause was COVID and long COVID because, well, the symptoms never really went away.

Kevin: 20:42

They still have things like uh fatigue, uh shortness of breath, causnitive problems, symptoms that come and go, which can compact can impact someone's everyday life and can't be explained by other health issues. So COVID, SARS, COVID-2 can attack the body in a range of ways, causing damage to the lungs, heart, nervous system, kidneys, liver, and other organs. Um, the mental health problems can be arise from the grief and loss and unresolved pain or fatigue or the from post-traumatic stress syndrome syndrome after being treated in the ICU. So we we really don't know, they really don't know um when you get a light case of it, you know, what exactly is infected and or is affected in your body. You could have long um have had damage um and it not have shown up until one, you can't smell or taste anything. That's a very common complaint with a lot of COVID um sufferers and long COVID sufferers also.

palmi: 21:51

Or you might have a uh altered sense of taste or smell. Uh things you like taste of before kind of like repulsive seamless smells. You might have had a favorite smell that just didn't do it for you anymore.

Kevin: 22:16

And that doesn't happen with everybody either. So big question was did COVID vaccines cause um prevent does it prevent the long COVID? Basic um education is that getting a uh vaccination will lower the risk of the infection. While breakthrough infections are possible, fully vaccinated and boosted is the most effective way to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death due to COVID. Uh research is going on in how long COVID affects people who have had outbreaks of COVID, but it is likely that being vaccinated reduces that risk.

palmi: 22:56

Yeah, one thing that I was pretty sure of is it was uh because it was a pandemic and affected the entire world. We learned in history class about something called the Spanish flu, which wasn't really Spanish, but killed a lot of people. And it was similar in that there were a lot of the same arguments in our country surfaced. I remember sitting in history class taking out saying, I am so glad that we are smarter enough not to do this again. But that's mobile, that's exactly what we did again.

Kevin: 23:45

That's why we should learn learn about history. So we don't repeat it.

palmi: 23:49

Well yeah, the problem with learning about history is then you have to watch everybody else repeat it.

Kevin: 23:57

Yeah.

palmi: 23:59

But uh one thing that all three of these had in common, then that was the theme we were going for. Someone says there's a problem with me. There is a problem. And in all three of these, all they could do was treat symptoms. They couldn't find a cause, or they haven't found a cause yet in the case of long COVID.

Kevin: 24:29

So and the Gulf War Syndrome.

palmi: 24:32

Yeah, they just end up, you know, saying, okay, fatigue, take a nap, or we can give you less drastic medication, perhaps.

Kevin: 24:46

So what we're stressing is, you know, um the doctors, medical professionals should really dig down in and make sure, not just tell you it's all in your head. There's many, uh there's quite a few of diseases that you know had to be stressed and pushed and um researched in order for us to come up with the diagnosis in the end. Um, and so we just we we thought we were better than that, but it's been going on for s you know since the Middle Ages. Same thing.

palmi: 25:22

Yeah, the uh outlook for uh long COVID sufferers, I don't think it's looking really good because science nowadays needs firm data and a lot of it to make a study correctly using the scientific method. Same with the Gulf War. A, there's not a lot of uh long COVID sufferers, and B, it seemed like every state, every county, every hospital had a different way of sorting data. So it was like it turned out to be almost impossible for medical researchers to get COVID data. Accurate accurate COVID data that works with their studies scientists to uh basically I think uh initially there were a couple studies of COVID that were published, but then later had to be retracted because they found out the data wouldn't match up with their data. So it kind of invalidated their conclusions scientifically, I mean.

Kevin: 26:55

And unfortunately, the sufferers are the ones that you know have to end up dealing with it on a day-to-day basis.

palmi: 27:04

And as we all know, there are several medical uh conditions that people claim to have certain symptoms, like uh some of the rare diseases. Uh some of them may have some sort of connection to a mental problem. That a lot of the brain problems have not really been researched adequately to address that, whether or not that is a cause. But uh it's extremely frustrating to go to a physician or a medical professional, say, hey, I've got this problem, and they'll tell you, you're just making that up.

Kevin: 27:58

Or it's in your head, or do this and you'll feel better. Take this pill and it you'll feel better when there's something bigger that they need to investigate and figure it out what it is.

palmi: 28:09

And that insult injury, there are people out there that'll sell you snake oil to fix all your problems, but it's just that it's fake. If that is in your head, I guess that would fix your problem. But uh if you think it works, but as far as actually fixing a real condition, no, it won't.

Kevin: 28:39

I think we talked about all three, and uh I learned quite a bit from it. Um, I hope you guys did too. Uh, we'll be coming back with our fourth episode here. We're doing a little jumping around and getting some people have suggested some um episodes for us, and so we're digging into the research now and gonna get those ready and ready to go. We'll download.

palmi: 29:04

The um the very next episode was inspired actually by my wife dragging me to see the Barbie movie.

Kevin: 29:17

So and he loved it, didn't you?

palmi: 29:20

It was entertaining, but I wouldn't say loved was the correct word.

Kevin: 29:26

I had to use one of my uh chick-flick movies.

palmi: 29:34

Yeah, she only gets a few of those here, so just be forewarned that we'll be talking about Barbie stuff. Barbie overlays itself, and maybe you already have you know seen what we're gonna talk about. If you've already seen this movie or not, it's not about Barbie.

Kevin: 29:56

The episode will be about how disabilities have been integrated into this uh modern society, basically. Yeah, but Barbie's a good we noticed it.

palmi: 30:06

That's a good example because we noticed it there, and it was we got some hard data from it. So instead of just going by opinion or how it makes us feel, we'll talk about what we saw and why it was that way, and when this was in the past and what it is now.

Kevin: 30:32

Hopefully it's getting better.

palmi: 30:34

That's all you know for.

Kevin: 30:36

Yep. Well, bye now. We'll talk to you later.

palmi: 30:39

See you next time.

Kevin: 30:41

We are always looking to improve the podcast. So if you want to hear a specific topic, have a different opinion, want to add something to the conversation, drop us an email. Our contact information is listed on our website. It's www.whenlifegivesolemons.net. We have recently added a companion YouTube channel called Making the Lemonade. If you enjoy the podcast, continue your enjoyment by joining us on YouTube.