Parasites

The most common types of parasites are:

- Roundworms, ascarids, hookworms - contagious intestinal parasites with the shape of an earthworm but smaller in size.

- Pinworms - appear as short white threads of 1/3 inch length or shorter. This is the most common worm problem for young children.

- Tapeworms - are from one inch to thirty feet in length and may live in the body for up to 25 years.

- Protozoa, flukes - names for specific types of roundworms.

Parasite infestations may be severe or mild and can be life threatening, especially for children. Parasites commonly lead to poor absorption of critical nutrients, which can cause anemia, growth problems and a weakened immune system. Parasites are often found in people with AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, candidiasis and many other disorders.

Possible Causes of Parasites / Worms
Parasites enter the body via the mouth, the skin and the bottom of the feet. Direct contact with the bodily fluids of a contaminated person can also spread parasites. Parasites can be found in contaminated soil, vegetables, meat, watercress and feces. Worm eggs or larvae are often ingested in partially or uncooked foods and they can become airborne.

Possible Symptoms of Parasites / Worms
Symptoms of parasites vary depending on the type and severity of infestation. The worms may go undetected for years with no apparent symptoms, but they may be seen in the stool. Other common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea. Weight loss and malnutrition can occur in extreme cases.

Symptoms of specific parasite infestations follow:

- Pinworms - may cause severe anal itching, insomnia and restlessness. These worms tend to migrate out through the anus at night to lay eggs.

- Hookworms - may cause the soles of the feet to itch. Bloody spit from the mouth, fever, rash and loss of appetite are also possible.

- Threadworms - may cause coughing, abdominal pain, diarrhea, gas and itchy red abrasions on the anus.

- Tapeworms may cause weight loss, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.

- Ascarids - may cause bloating, stomach pain, vomiting and shortness of breath.

- Microscopic Roundworms - may cause trichinosis leading to muscle damage and complications of the cardio and neuro systems.

Possible Lifestyle Changes for Parasites / Worms
Do not eat undercooked meat, fish or poultry. Do not walk barefoot outside in public areas. Wash hands after playing with pets and farm animals. Avoid drinking stream water when camping. People traveling to developing countries should avoid drinking tap water, eating uncooked foods, foods purchased from street vendors, ice and fruits that cannot be peeled. Eat a healthy diet made up of primarily of fruits and vegetables and drink plenty of water.


The Parasite Menace
The immediate question that comes to mind when people are informed of this situation is: How can a parasite possibly live in my body and I don't even know it is there? The answer to this is simple. The purpose of a parasite is not to make itself known. A smart parasite lives without being detected because if it is detected, of course, something is going to be done to eradicate it. If you think parasites are stupid, think again. They are highly intelligent organisms. Not intelligent in the same way humans are, but they are intelligent in their ability to survive and reproduce, which is of course the purpose of any organism on this planet. It sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? And in some ways it is. But, it can make life for humans very complicated.

So how can a parasite exist in the body without making its presence known? While the interesting thing is, if you know how to read the body and how to interpret its signals, then the presence of a parasite can be determined quite easily. However, if you accept that it is normal to have low energy levels and it is normal to have health challenges, it is normal to have skin rashes, pains, frequent colds, flue and constipation (the list is endless for the things parasites will cause) then you will never find out whether you have parasites.

In the book, "Animals Parasitic in Man." by Geoffrey Lapage, he states: "There is no part of the human body, nor indeed any part of the bodies of the hosts of parasitic animals in general, which is not visited by some kind of parasitic animal at some time or other during their life histories." This means parasites can occur anywhere in your body. No organ is immune from their infestation.

Parasites Hard to Detect and Hard to Get Rid Of!
If you were tested by a doctor for parasites, chances are the results would come back negative. Does this mean you do not have parasites? Unfortunately, medical testing procedures only catch about 20% of the actual cases of parasites. Over a 1,000 species of parasites can live in your body and tests are available for approximately 40 to 50 types. This means, doctors are only testing for about 5% of the parasites and missing 80% of those. This brings the clinically found parasites down to 1%. Now, if I had a 1% chance of winning in the stock market, I don't think I would invest.

Once you have established that you do have parasites, taking drugs to get rid of them may not always work. This is because a drug will often drive a parasite from one organ of the body to another. It's like people moving to better climates to make their living conditions more pleasant, or birds flying south for the winter.

The book, "Medical Parasitology," by Markell and Voge, points out that therapy to remove entire tapeworms from the small intestine is only successful if the whole worm is expelled. If the head remains, the entire worm will grow back.

Parasites Eat Human Bodies
How, then, do you determine if you have parasites? In order to understand how this is determined, you have to understand what a parasite does. A parasite eats, lays eggs and secretes. It sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? So let's look at the "eats" part. Depending on the kind, parasites will eat different things. Some parasites love sugar, for instance. If you are a person who craves sugar, you may have a sugar loving parasite. In fact, parasites are known to be one of the causes of diabetic tendencies and blood sugar discrepancies. These parasites live off the food that goes into your body. They exist mainly in the digestive tract, but can be found in the liver as well as throughout the body.

Other parasites actually get their nutrition directly from the cells of the body. They can literally attach themselves anywhere and suck nutrition out of the cells. These parasites are significantly more dangerous because they can travel to places in the body where they can do a lot more damage than a parasite living exclusively in the digestive tract.

As if it wasn't bad enough to have an uninvited guest living in your body, the parasites eat your nutrients before you do! They get the best nutrients, and you get the scraps and leftovers. They grow healthy and fat, yet your organs and skin starve for nutrition. What's more, parasites can remain in your body for 10, 20 or even 30 years.

To illustrate the longevity of parasites in the human body, consider this example. In 1979 a British study reported on 600 former prisoners from World War II. These men had been stationed in the Far East. Thirty years after the war, 15% were still infected with a parasite called Strongyloides that they had contracted during the war. This means you could have eaten meat 10 years ago that was contaminated, and still be hosting the tapeworms or other types of parasites that were in that meat.

Parasites Reproduce Quickly
Let's now look at the way parasites reproduce. First of all, we need to understand that there are two major categories of parasites: Large parasites, which are primarily worms and small parasites, which are mainly microscopic in size, including what are called protozoa and amoebae. Despite their almost invisibility, small parasites can be dangerous. Microscopic parasites can get into your joints and eat the calcium linings of the bone. This can lead to arthritic tendencies. They can also eat the protein coating on the nerves (the myelin sheath), and this can cause a disruption in the nerve signal from the brain. One type of tiny parasite which infects the colon is call Entamoeba Histolytica. This type of infection can also infect the liver, the lungs, and the brain. The disease is called amebiasis, and is often transmitted via contaminated food or water.

Large parasites ,which are the worm type are mainly large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Some can be up to 10, 12 or even 15 inches long and in most cases cannot travel to other parts of the body other than the digestive tract. Although, in tropical countries there are cases of worms actually burrowing out of the digestive tract into blood vessels and muscles of the body where they can do significantly more damage. This is incredibly rare in North America. It never ceases to amaze me, when I hear of an adult, passing a worm in total amazement that they could have had such a creature living inside of their body for possibly years.

The smaller organisms, the protozoa and amoebas. can function almost like a bacteria by traveling through the blood stream to virtually any part of the body. They reproduce without laying eggs and behave more like an infection in the body than do the larger parasites. The larger parasites are worms which reproduce by laying eggs. Eggs are deposited in the intestinal tract, where they stick to the walls of the intestines, and when they hatch, the young feed on the food that we eat and eventually grow into adults. The adults then repeat the process. In some species the eggs pass out of the body before they hatch. The smaller parasites reproduce without the process of laying eggs. They reproduce by duplicating themselves in a manner similar to bacteria or viral reproduction.

Parasites Secrete Toxins
The third thing that parasites do is secrete. all organisms secrete something, whether it be lubricants, waste materials, protective liquids for warding off viruses, bacteria and other harmful organisms or secretions to help attract food. No matter what the secretion is -- the secretion can be a toxin to the host organism. Simply put, the secretions from parasites in our bodies are poisons and toxins that our bodies are forced to deal with by increasing the process of detoxification.

Anyone who has experienced food poisoning or dysentery will tell you how debilitating these toxins can be. Once on vacation in Mexico, I lost 12 pounds in 12 hours, I could not walk and was totally delirious. Within two days of the parasite leaving my body, I was back to my regular weight and feeling perfectly normal. This of course is an extreme case of a very high level of toxins from an acute parasitic infection.

On the other end, a chronic parasitic infection secreting low levels of toxins can create an extremely stressed immune system which may allow varied health challenges to develop. When the immune system is stressed over a long period of time, it of course, becomes weak. When the immune system becomes weakened, our bodies become susceptible to infections of other kinds. This can be extremely dangerous in this day and age because we are more exposed to more viruses than ever before. Also, they are changing and adapting at a very fast rate as are the bacteria, many of which are now resistant to antibiotics and other artificial measures that are used to combat them.

A healthy immune system is one of the primary sources of energy in the human body. People with a weakened immune system tend to feel tired all the time; some people refer to this as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. If this sounds like you or someone you know, you may want to seriously consider the possibility of a depleted immune system caused by chronic parasitic infection.

If parasites secrete toxins into our bodies that the bodies have to neutralize, and we happen to be one of those people who drinks alcohol, smokes cigarettes, eats junk food and breathes polluted air, the extra stress and strain on the body's cleansing system can be enough to push the body into what we call toxic overload.

Toxic overload occurs when the four cleansing systems of the body have been pushed too far by simply an overload of toxins in the body. Parasite toxins in the body are simply one more thing a toxic body does not need.

There are four cleansing systems of the body: the lungs, kidneys, skin and bowel. With toxic bowel syndrome, the excess of toxins absorbed from a clogged bowel goes to the liver. The liver is then overburdened and eventually the liver cannot cope with the toxic load and the toxins start to spill into the bloodstream.

Once this happens, the kidneys, lungs and skin have to take over the job of cleansing and they too become challenged in their ability to remain healthy. So you see, parasites can be one of the most damaging health factors threatening the world today.

Many types of worms: Many types of Damage
The following are some descriptions of just a few of the worms that can get into your body and cause disease and toxicity.

"The Essentials of Medical Parasitology," by Thomas J. Brooks, says, "The tape worms are among the oldest parasites of the human race. Indeed, some species have become so well adapted to live in the human intestine that the host (man) may be entirely asymptomatic." This means you may have a tapeworm and not appear to have any symptoms.

The fish tapeworm is the largest of the human tapeworms, reaching the length of 33 feet or more. There can be 3,000 to 4,000 segments in one worm. It can produce more than 1,000,000 eggs a day. This type of infestation can cause anemia because of interference with vitamin B12, says Dr. Brooks in his book. Also, the weight challenges of some people can be directly attributed to tapeworms. This is especially true of weight loss programs that don't work. The person may be hosting a tapeworm which is eating all the food and making the person constantly hungry. Tapeworms can also cause water retention.

Besides tapeworms from beet, pork and fish, there is also a type of dog tapeworm you can get when dogs lick your face or hands.

Pinworms are very infectious and can cause a lot of itchiness in the anal area. "The worms deposit their eggs mostly at night, contaminating pajamas and bed linen," writes Dr. Brook. "The eggs are readily transported through the air, and it is not uncommon to find them in every room of the house....Complications are much more common in women than in men" . Pinworms can also be found in the vulva, uterus and fallopian tubes because the female worm loses her way while trying to return to the anus after depositing her eggs.

Another type of roundworm that can be present in humans is whipworms. These insidious creatures actually inject a digestive fluid which converts the colon tissue into liquid which the worms sucks up. Dr. Norman Stoll, a former worm expert at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, estimated that the roundworm infects about 644 million people in the world. This was in the 1940s and there are no doubt a lot more people infected with roundworm now! Dr. Brooks believes nutritional deficiencies are seen in heavy roundworm infections.

Hookworms bite and suck on the intestinal wall, which can cause bleeding and necrosis (death of the tissue). In severe infections, iron deficiency becomes a therapeutic problem because of all the iron that is lost to the hookworm. Dr. Brooks says that, "hemoglobin levels as low as 15% of normal have been seen in patients with severe, long-standing hookworm disease. One species of hookworm in North America is called "Necator Americanus," which means, "American Murderer."

How Do We Get Parasites?
So how do we get parasites? Well, let's have a careful look at this. If 85% to 90% of the adult population have parasites, and the parasites goal in life is to live and reproduce, then the parasite needs to find a new place to live when its host perhaps isn't going to be around anymore. As I mentioned earlier, parasites are not stupid, and their sole goal in life is to live and reproduce at our expense.

Here is a list of ways parasites can get into your body. Shaking hands, sharing somebody else's soda can, kissing, (even on the cheek), intimate sexual contact and believe it or not, you can get parasites by inhaling dust which contains the dried form of these organisms.

You can get parasites from drinking the water of any of the thousands of lakes, rivers, streams and creeks in North America. Giardia Lambia, which causes Giardia, is very common, for example. You can get parasites from eating meat. Do you really think government inspectors are able to inspect every animal that goes to the slaughterhouse? Another source of parasites is salads. Dr. Brooks estimates that the overall incidence of E. Histolytica in North America is between 3.9% and 10%.

The distressing thing about parasites is that if you can get rid of them, you can easily be reinfected. Married couples tend to have them together; and when one person is treated for the parasitic infection, they are often reinfected by their spouse. It is extremely important that both be treated at the same time, and in many cases, the children should be treated along with their parents.