What’s Lyme Disease and Why Does It Seem Like Everyone in Hollywood Has It? Dear Media Hosts Weigh In

On Taste of Taylor, host Taylor Strecker sat down with comedian Emma Willmann for a chaotic, hilarious, and unexpectedly vulnerable episode. They talked about feeling like an imposter, the awkwardness of being “kind of a prude sometimes,” and a fleeting genius-level thought that “was going to change the world”—until Strecker forgot it mid-sentence and started cracking up.

But then came the unexpected drop: “Emma’s got Lyme disease.” Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen “Lyme disease” and “Justin Timberlake” show up in the same sentence at least once this summer. And if you haven’t? You might be fake-nodding while pulling up a health article like “Okay, wait what is this again?”

In other words: It’s having a moment—and not in a good way.

What exactly is Lyme disease?

According to the CDC, Lyme disease is a bacterial infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi. You get it from a tick bite, specifically from tiny black-legged ticks, sometimes called deer ticks.

If a tick latches on and passes that bacteria into your bloodstream, you might notice flu-like symptoms—fatigue, fever, chills, headaches, body aches, and sometimes a red, bullseye-shaped rash called erythema migrans. That rash shows up in about 70 to 80 percent of cases, but not everyone gets it. And that’s part of what makes Lyme disease so tricky to catch.

According to Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner who hosts The Art of Being Well, there are actually two main categories: acute Lyme and chronic Lyme.

Acute Lyme is what most people think of—the textbook version that gets diagnosed with a blood test and typically responds to a round of antibiotics like doxycycline. But then there’s chronic Lyme, which Cole says can look like “very debilitating, chronic fatigue type symptoms,” and can even “trigger different autoimmune type issues.”

So, Justin Timberlake has it?

After wrapping his Forget Tomorrow World Tour, the 44-year-old “SexyBack” singer dropped ab Instagram post announcing his Lyme disease diagnosis. He shared how “living with this can be relentlessly debilitating, both mentally and physically,” and admitted that the diagnosis came as a shock, but it finally made sense of all the nerve pain and fatigue he’d been pushing through on stage.

A family friend told PEOPLE that he’d been dealing with unexplained symptoms for months before getting answers, and that having a diagnosis brought much-needed clarity, especially for him and his wife, Jessica Biel, who could tell “something was off.”

It’s not just Emma and JT

Lyme disease has been making the rounds in Hollywood for a minute. Avril Lavigne was one of the first to really speak up. Back in 2015, she told PEOPLE she was so sick she thought she was dying. Then in 2020, Justin Bieber opened up about his own diagnosis, saying he’d been dealing with skin issues, low energy, and brain fog—and that people just thought he looked “like sh*t” without realizing what was actually going on.

Then there’s the Hadid crew. Yolanda’s been outspoken about her chronic symptoms for years, even writing a memoir called Believe Me: My Battle with the Invisible Disability of Lyme Disease. Her daughter Bella and son Anwar also have it. Not too long ago, Bella actually stepped back from modeling to focus on her health, posting in 2023 that “this 100+ days of Lyme” flare had taken a major toll on her body and mind.

Shania Twain is another one. In interviews, the country-pop icon talked about how Lyme disease literally changed her voice. After being bitten by a tick in 2003 while on tour, she developed dysphonia (damage to her vocal cords and nerves) which made singing feel impossible. “I thought I’d lost my voice forever,” she said in her 2022 Netflix documentary Not Just a Girl.

Ben Stiller has also shared his experience, telling The Hollywood Reporter in 2011 he got Lyme while filming in the Northeast. And Kelly Osbourne revealed in 2020 that she was diagnosed after years of feeling unwell and dismissed by doctors.

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in the U.S.

About 500,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, according to the CDC—and that number might be low. Experts think plenty of people are walking around with it misdiagnosed as something else .

The kicker, though, is that even when people do get diagnosed and start antibiotics, treatment doesn’t always work. Cole explains that “as many as 25 percent of people still experience symptoms after the round of the conventional treatment.” That’s a lot of people still feeling sick despite doing everything their doctor told them to do. 

So, why doesn’t the standard doxycycline treatment work for everyone? According to Cole, the Borrelia bacteria are basically master escape artists. They can transform into different forms—like cysts—and hide in something called biofilm, which acts like a protective barrier that antibiotics can’t penetrate. They can also embed deep in tissue where antibiotics can’t reach them, and in some cases, the bacteria actually weaken your immune system, making your body a more hospitable place for the infection to stick around.

On top of that, the standard testing isn’t great either. Cole points out that conventional two-tier tests only catch about 44 to 56 percent of Lyme cases, meaning “about half of people are gonna fall through the crack of it, be misdiagnosed or not diagnosed.”

Climate change isn’t helping matters either. Per Boston University, warmer winters and wetter springs mean ticks are out earlier, stay active longer, and show up in more places than before, including areas that didn’t used to be high-risk.

Why is Lyme so hard to pin down?

Lyme disease is what Cole calls one of the “great imitators” or “great mimics.” It doesn’t just show up as a neat set of flu-like symptoms and call it a day. Instead, it can trigger a cascade of inflammation that looks like a dozen other conditions.

“They’ll be labeled with things like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivities and autoimmune problems,” Cole explains. “But why is the immune system creating that molecular mimicry? What’s causing the autoimmune response?” For many people, the answer might be hiding in a tick bite they never even noticed.

Cole says it’s often not just Lyme. About 30 percent of people with Lyme also have co-infections—other nasties like Babesia and Bartonella that can hitch a ride in the same tick bite. These co-infections come with their own symptoms and complications, making the whole picture even murkier.

The tricky part is that not everyone who gets exposed will get sick. Cole sees patients who test positive but feel totally fine, while others get completely knocked out by it. It comes down to what he calls “that perfect storm”—your genetics, your immune system, your stress levels, and how your body handles biotoxins all factor into whether that tick bite becomes a major health crisis or just flies under the radar.

The mental health connection

If you’re dealing with chronic Lyme, the mental and emotional toll can be just as brutal as the physical symptoms. Cole sees this daily in his practice, where the “bi-directional relationship between our thoughts and emotions and spiritual walk and your physiology” plays out in real time.

When your body is fighting chronic infection and inflammation, it impacts your mood, but the reverse is also true. “Toxic work environment, unhealthy relationships, past childhood trauma, that stuff impacts your physiology. It raises inflammation levels up and perpetuates that cascade and flare ups,” he explains.

Elizabeth Endres, who hosts The Wellness Process, discovered this connection firsthand. After testing positive for “Lyme, mold, parasites—I had it all,” she realized there was “an emotional route” to her chronic symptoms that started during the isolation and stress of COVID. Her journey eventually led her to understand that for some people, especially those who are “type A, perfectionistic, sensitive,” the body can manifest physical pain rather than deal with underlying emotional stress.

How do you keep ticks from turning you into their next meal?

First step: Don’t panic. Second? Prevention. The CDC recommends wearing long sleeves and pants when you’re in grassy or wooded areas, but let’s be real, that’s not always feasible. Here’s the rundown:

• Stick to the center of trails. Ticks love tall grass and bushy edges. You don’t need to be an off-trail adventurer to enjoy nature.
• Spray up. Use insect repellents that contain DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Even for short walks.
• Post-outing tick check. After you’ve been outside, do a once-over behind your knees, around your ankles, near your waistband, and in your hairline. Basically anywhere they’d think, “Oh, cozy.”
• Shower ASAP. Not just for funsies. Showering within two hours of being outside can help wash off ticks before they latch on.
• Treat your items. Toss your clothes in the dryer for 10 minutes on high.

You don’t need to live in fear of grass, but a little tick-awareness can go a long way, especially if you’re someone who loves a park nap or lives that golden retriever energy life outside.

Is Lyme disease contagious?

You can’t catch Lyme disease from someone else—it’s not contagious like the flu or a cold. The only way to get it is from an infected tick biting you and passing the bacteria into your bloodstream. That said, ticks don’t discriminate. If one person gets bit on a hike, chances are others in the group were exposed too.

And here’s an important reality check: This isn’t just a Northeast problem anymore. Cole points out that people often think “I don’t live in the northeast, so it’s not me,” but Lyme disease is now found “in every state.” It’s also not just deer ticks you need to worry about—there are many types of ticks carrying different infections. For example, the Lone Star tick can cause something called Alpha Gal Syndrome, which creates an allergy to red meat.

For more on Lyme, tune into Taste of Taylor, The Art of Being Well, and The Wellness Process, all streaming now wherever you get your podcasts.

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