The latest health concern/fad seems to be undiagnosed cases of parasite infection, especially intestinal roundworms. Is this just hype or is there anything to it?
I’d be interested in more information on this, if you happen to have it. On a related note, I belive that tapeworm eggs were sold decades ago as a slimming aid. Yuck!
Maria Callas, the great opera singer, was rumoured to have used tapeworms to control her weight.
So how is it a parasite that would be stealing nutrients from you would make you heavier?
I have an ad for this product from sometime early in the last century. We use it to help teach kids about parasitism. It’s great! In a sort of disgusting-fascinated kind of way.
Lumpy didn’t say heavier, just fat.
I know that in horses, where de-worming is a continuing neccessity, there is a condition known as ‘roundworm belly’. This is a swlooen, pot-belly appearance on the horse, at the same time that the horse is showing other indications of under-nourishment.
To an untrained person, the horse would appear to be ‘fat’, when in fact it was lacking feed due to an excess infection with roundworms.
I suppose this could also happen to humans.
If the people asserting this are trying to recommend ‘zappers’ or recipes for liver purges, then you can be reasonably confident that the claim is bullshit. Where did you hear about it?
I saw it last week on a magazine cover by the supermarket checkout. Can’t remember what magazine it was, though.
The whole thing’s a little ridiculous. Worms don’t make you fat. A parasitic worm will be *eating up * your nutrients, leading to vitamin deficiencies in some cases. Diphyllobothrium latum (fish tapeworm), for example, sucks up B12, the lack of which can cause anemia.
Ascaris lumbricoides, a roundworm that can infect man, will leave you with general abdominal discomfort, and in bad cases can lead to malnutrition or intestinal blockage. They can also get into the lungs, giving you some nasty respiratory symptoms. But these infections aren’t very common in the States or Canada.
Maybe I can see the connection between parasitic infection and a feeling of being bloated (general abdominal discomfort is a symptom of pretty much every worm infection), but saying that people aren’t fitting into their skinny jeans because of parasites, and not because of laziness and Big Macs, is just insane.
It was First for Women, one the the $2 recipe magazines. I can’t find a website, but the author’s website has a Q&A on the article which says it all.
http://www.annlouise.com/alg_article_details.asp?ArticleID=129
From that site:
There aren’t enough :rolleyes:
I so agree.
Remember that thread not long ago where we talked about crazy people we don’t want on our “side”? This is exhibit A for me: nutjob snake oil salesmen giving people an outrageously bad idea of proper medicinal herbalism. The problem is, these people really believe this shit. They’re (if I may armchair psychoanalyze for a moment) so terrified of being “invaded” that they imaging all sorts of invaders - in the gut, in the blood, in their colons, in their skin, in their auras, in their love lives. It’s endless. And all they want to do is purge, purge, sweat, soak, cleanse, steam and vomit themselves well. It’s absolutely pathological, and has no bearing in good herbal medicine.
“They don’t like bitter?” What the fuck ever. “They” don’t have tastebuds, Dahling!
Are there herbs that are great at getting rid of bugs, worms, etc? Absolutely. Spilanthes, wormwood, gentian - great vermifuges for people that really do have something they oughtn’t. But the number of people who do are so small as to be vanishing, in this country at least.
As for the weight loss claim - look at her recommendations: cut out all sugar, alcohol, white flour, white sugar (because these things “feed” on sugar). Well, guess what, sweeties, cutting out the crap from your diet is a damn good way to start losing weight! Miraculous! :rolleyes:
Her formula isn’t a bad one. If I were going to a third-world country with questionable sanitation, I’d consider taking it as a prophylactic if I couldn’t take my own. There’s some stuff in there that’s actually pretty good (though I don’t know why she doesn’t include spilanthes, really I don’t. Spilanthes is THE herb to prevent malaria.) But if you don’t have parasites (and most of us on this board don’t, because we drink clean water and eat clean food), then it’s not going to do anything to get rid of parasites!
So, uh, I guess my point is twofold: ONE, no, most of us don’t have parasites. TWO, please don’t take this woman’s ravings as the only possible way to be an herbalist and think I share this sort of fuzzy headed paranoia.
Oh, and I’d totally guzzle a tapeworm to lose weight. I’m that lazy.
Ah, the miracle diet - eliminate sugar and white flour (ie, empty calories) and you’ll lose weight! This is pretty much on par with any other “miracle diet” out there. Eat our pills, and follow a sensible diet & exercise program.
I love First for Women magazine. Every week they have a different “miracle diet” on the cover of the magazine, usually with a skinny woman holding up her “fat pants”. Every week the diet is just a different, gimmicky way to eat fewer calories than you burn (my mom used to buy them).
Sometimes they do have good recipes, though. Still, you’d do better with a subscription to Cooking Light.
Curley: What’ll ya have?
Moe: I’ll have four pieces of burnt toast and a rotten egg.
Curley: Why do you want that?
Moe: I gotta tapeworm and it’s good enough for him.
It’s quackery.
Parasites cause you to lose wieght. They are more common that you think, but if you have them, some odd OTC remedy is not the way to go.
“The Global Burden of Disease caused by the 3 major intestinal nematodes is an estimated 22·1million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) lost for hookworm, 10·5million for Ascaris lumbricoides, 6·4million for Trichuris trichiura, and 39·0million for the three infections combined (as compared with malaria at 35·7million) (World Bank, 1993; Chan et al. 1994); these figures illustrate why some scarce health care resources must be used for their control. Strongyloides stercoralis is the fourth most important intestinal worm infection; its nutritional implications are discussed, and the fact that its geographic distribution needs further study is emphasized. Mechanisms underlying the malnutrition induced by intestinal helminths are described. Anorexia, which can decrease intake of all nutrients in tropical populations on marginal diets, is likely to be the most important in terms of magnitude and the probable major mechanism by which intestinal nematodes inhibit growth and development. We present a revised and expanded conceptual framework for how parasites cause/aggravate malnutrition and retard development in endemic areas. Specific negative effects that a wide variety of parasites may have on gastrointestinal physiology are presented. The synergism between Trichuris and Campylobacter, intestinal inflammation and growth failure, and new studies showing that hookworm inhibits growth and promotes anaemia in preschool (as well as school-age) children are presented. We conclude by presenting rationales and evidence to justify ensuring the widest possible coverage for preschool-age children and girls and women of childbearing age in intestinal parasite control programmes, in order to prevent morbidity and mortality in general and specifically to help decrease the vicious intergenerational cycle of growth failure (of low-birth-weight/intrauterine growth retardation and stunting) that entraps infants, children and girls and women of reproductive age in developing areas.”
"To determine the efficacy and safety of albendazole for treatment of intestinal microsporidosis due to Enterocytozoon bieneusi, 29 patients with AIDS were studied. All had chronic diarrhea, weight loss, and evidence of malabsorption. After 1 month of treatment with albendazole (400 mg orally twice a day), the mean number of bowel movements decreased from 7.0 to 3.8 stools/day (P < .0001) and the mean weight gain was 0.56 kg (P = .259). Albendazole at this dose did not clear E. bieneusi on follow-up small-bowel biopsies, but ultrastructural studies revealed an apparent decrease in parasite burden in 2 patients and an increased proportion of dividing plasmodia in 5 patients. There were no significant adverse events associated with this dose of albendazole. "
There are many many many highly complex parasites out there:
It is possible that some human parasites might be able to stimulate hunger to the point where both the human and the parasites get fat. Have we observed this? I don’t know.
I too have seen a recent trend on this and wondered about it. The one article I saw was in a tabloid and led to an ad for some natural remedy. It may have been the same as discussed by other posters. Unfortunatly it didn’t discuss at all the supposed mechanism. I know that some parasites can cause bloating, and perhaps this is mistaken for fat.
On the other hand, there seems to be these polar extremes of opinion on the matter from the tabloid ‘parasites are everywhere and responsible for all ills and you can kill them with my product’ to the medical community which likes to pretend they don’t exist unless there is a 20 inch tapeworm travelling obviously just beneath your skin.
Common sense would suggest to me that there is a more common reality, in which a lot of humans have some parasites but don’t know about it because they never get strikingly obvious symptoms and so are never tested for it - but at the same time the parasites are probably taxing their system to some degree and although the people aren’t aware that anything is wrong with them, they might feel a great difference in their feeling of well being and health if they were to rid themselves of the parasites. If you are used to a certain level of energy and well being, you might not be aware that anything is wrong until you got below some kind of threshhold. Would it then be prudent to take some sort of preventative measures or undergo any sort of periodic testing?