How Worried Do You Need To Be About Brain Eating Amoebas

The Scishow team told me that  Floating down the river is a  

beloved summertime pastime here in Missoula.

Just a lazy summer afternoon  with a drink in your hand…

Then you wipe out, get some water up your nose.

No big deal.

Except a week later… you’re dead.

Ok, so don’t let me scare you too much…

but if you get infected by a so-called  brain-eating amoeba, this really can happen.

It doesn’t mean you have to  let them keep you up at night.

These amoebas are deadly, but there  are a lot of reasons not to panic.

So here's why you should,  and shouldn’t, be terrified.

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Let’s start with the basics.

An amoeba is a type of single-celled  organism called a protist – not related  

to the bacteria and viruses  that cause most infections.

Lots of them live in the environment, recycling  organic matter, while others are parasitic,  

giving animals belly aches and bloody stools.

Then there’s the amoebas that normally live  a long and happy life in the environment,  

but if they get into you, things can  go very very wrong, very very fast.

One of those is the brain-eating amoeba  Naegleria fowleri, which acts super fast,  

doesn’t care how healthy you  are, and is found worldwide,  

though it causes the most trouble  in the US, Pakistan, and Australia.

It causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis,  

or PAM, which is pretty much every  doctor's worst diagnostic nightmare.

It’s hard to identify, and incredibly deadly.

Symptoms can start within a day, and usually  progress to death by day 5 after that.

That’s not a lot of time for  doctors to jump in and do something,  

even if you’re able to seek treatment quickly.

Plus, PAM has nonspecific symptoms  like stiff neck, headache, fever,