The Silent, Dangerous Burden On Our Immune Systems That Nobody Is Talking About...
Parasites!
From the Desk of Keith Scott-Mumby MD, MB ChB, HMD, PhD:
I’m here to tell you the facts. They are not pretty.
Parasites are bad news for us. In their award-winning documentary program, The Body Snatchers, National Geographic reported, “Parasites have killed more humans than all the wars in history”. [Season 1, episode 17]
Parasites are probably the most diverse of all biological forms and yet by definition remain implacably hostile to humans. Of the 7.8 billion acres of potential arable land on Earth, only 3.4 billion acres can be farmed; most of the rest cannot be developed because of parasites (malaria, trypanosomiasis, schistosomiasis and onchocerciasis).
That’s less than half the farmable land of our planet available to us, because of these critters, at a time when humans need food resources like never before.
In Africa alone, an area the size of the USA cannot be farmed because of trypanosomes and many millions in South America have never had a healthy day in their lives because of this protozoan parasite. Horses, dogs and cattle are killed very quickly. Humans may survive but trypanosomes invade every organ and tissue in the body, having a predilection for the lymphatic system and the brain, with disastrous consequences (sleeping sickness).
Lymphatic swellings, especially at the base of the skull, were regarded by slave traders as a sign of certain death and slaves bearing this mark of trypanosomiasis were routinely thrown overboard before reaching the Caribbean destination.
Beware: A different form of the trypanosome parasite has just surfaced in the USA and is now found in “kissing bugs” in Arizona and California. It’s a time bomb, waiting to go off.
Successful and Abundant
Parasites are some of the most successful and abundant creatures on the planet. It has been said that one group (the nematodes) are so plentiful that if everything on Earth was removed except them, you’d still be able to see the shape of the hills, the animals, trees and humans!
Parasites are all around us: in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Every single living organism can be infected by these super-beasts.
Here are some gruesome facts:
4.5 billion worms exist. They can be found in both unsanitary and sanitary conditions, around the globe. So if you were thinking that you didn’t have to worry because you live in America, Japan, Germany etc, and in sanitary conditions, you would be wrong. Very wrong.
For example, around 40 million people in the United States are infected with the Enterobiasis pinworm. Pinworms affect an estimated 5.5 million children within the United States.
Toxocara infects at least 14% of the U.S. population, which is a parasite that is passed to humans from cats and dogs.
Each year there are many outbreaks of the waterborne parasite cryptosporidiosis. The largest parasite outbreak ever was recorded in the USA. It was caused by this one evil organism.
The Trichuriasis roundworm infects an estimated 800 million people in the world. The Trichuriasis roundworm is frequently found throughout the southern parts of the United States.
The truth is that parasites are a universal part of daily life. Only those with the most vibrant immune systems can hold them at bay. In fact, parasites are very tricky and have ways of getting under the radar of even the most competent immune systems.
We don’t need them but they need us (that’s the definition of a parasite). Their egg forms lurk everywhere and you can become infected at any time.
Nobody Is Safe
Most people think that if you are clean living and take precautions, like frequent hand washing, you won’t get parasites. That’s not true. You can pick up an egg or cyst anywhere. Just touch a door knob and you could pick up an egg. Just one egg can kill you!
There is a well-known medical history of a strict, clean-living, orthodox Jew from New York. He was admitted to hospital with what’s called a “space occupying lesion” in the skull. That usually means a tumor, starting to squeeze the brain and producing strange symptoms.
But when operated on, the neurosurgeon found a large growing cyst from a pork tapeworm. It was an easy, if revolting, cure and the man had cause to be thankful the diagnosis was as lenient as it was. But the striking part of this story is that the man never ate pork in his life… I mean ever!
He had touched a door knob or telephone or some other object at some time, which was infected with eggs. Probably touched his mouth or lips later and that was it: the worm was inside him and travelled to his skull. It only takes one egg to make a cyst the size of a baseball. This condition is called “cysticercosis”.
Cysts can linger in the brain for years without symptoms. You could have several in your skull right now and not know it. Eventually, when the cyst grows to a certain size, symptoms can include seizures, occasional focal neurological signs, headaches, nausea, vomiting, lethargy and altered mental status from increased intracranial pressure.
These brutes can actually kill!
Some Parasites Can Kill, As Well As Cripple
Parasites can be very dangerous. As I said, people die of cysticercosis. One major infestation goes by the scary name of Necator americanus; that means “American murderer”!
One notorious parasite of the developed world causes 1.5 million new infections each year in the U.S. alone, where it is the third leading cause of death due to foodborne illnesses. Over a million people are year are facing blindness because of this nasty predator. You are at risk (I’ll be telling you what it is and how to avoid it inside).
One fish tapeworm will drain so much of the vitamins and nutrients from your body, notably B12, that you could die of anemia and other deficiency states. This particular tapeworm is the biggest of all and can grow to over 30 feet in length (yes, you figured it out: it will hang out of your anus like a strap as you walk along).
Some parasites can walk through your eye orbit and get into your eyeballs. That’s not nice and can result in pain and blurred or disturbed vision. They walk through the brain and cause headaches or other unpleasant sensations. Parasites treat us as if we were a footpath and just walk around our tissues…
The scale can be massive. Infestations can be in the hundreds, or even thousands. Worm infestations can be so overwhelming, the host organism cannot cope.
To the right is an image of a bunch of Ascaris worms taken from a patient at operation (yes, one patient).
Children
The sad part of the story is what our children have to endure. Their small frame means a gang of worms would have far greater damaging impact on their bodies that would be the case for fully grown adults. Yet parasites don’t respect children; they don’ t play fair!
Children of all ages can develop parasitic diseases such as giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis from swallowing contaminated water during swimming, playing, and other activities in contaminated recreational water (e.g. pools, fountains, lakes, rivers and streams, etc.).
Milk is a notable source of many infections and of special relevance, since most people believe the idiocy that children should be pumped full of milk intended for a completely different animal.
Pets and other animals can be a potential source of parasites that can affect children, because of a child’s habit of being intimate with pets and their body fluids. Toxoplasmosis is spread by ingesting soil or litter-box contents with infectious cat feces (incidentally, children can also be born with this infection if their mother was infected during pregnancy).
Strongyloidiasis, caused by a worm infection that is of particular danger for children with an impaired immune system. It is acquired when larvae (immature worms) in soil contaminated with infected human feces come into contact with and penetrate the skin.
Visceral toxocariasis is spread when children ingest soil contaminated with dog or cat feces containing the eggs of cat or dog roundworms, and cutaneous larva migrans, transmitted when children walk barefoot on soil contaminated with cat or dog hookworm larvae that penetrate their skin.
Drug Treatment Can Be Bad Too
Anti-parasite drug treatments are unpleasant, with very nasty side-effects.
Even holistic remedies have to be pretty toxic, to kill the critters. It really is no fun being “wormed”, whether with rhubarb and sulfur, or a mixture of poisonous herbs.
That’s apart from the result of having half dead worms, several inches long, crawling up your gullet, into your nose and wriggling out of you nostril as you speak to someone. Yes, that actually happens, trust me. These things are shudderingly horrible.
The Myth: Parasites infect only dirty people and foreigners
This is the #1 myth and it is nonsense. You can pick up an infection on the slightest contact, such as water used to rinse your salad. A 1978 study showed about 75% of all sewage sludge samples sampled in United States urban catchments contained Ascaris ova, with rates as high as 5 to 100 eggs per litre.
The biggest parasite outbreak ever recorded was right here in the USA (1993). Over 400,000 of an estimated 1.61 million residents in the Milwaukee area became ill with the stomach cramps, fever, diarrhea and dehydration caused by the pathogen Cryptosporidia. Over 100 died. Parasites don’t know they are not supposed to kill people in “nice” friendly countries!
Besides, parasites do not remain in the country of their origin.
China supplies a huge amount of food to the Americas and other Western societies ($27 billion food exports in 2006). US supermarkets buy millions of tons of “fresh” produce and meats from China every year. Yet Chinese food hygiene standards are notoriously lax.
But it’s worse than that. I found a study review showing that in certain regions of China (such as the Yangste basin) over 50% of the population were infected with helminths. That group includes roundworms, pinworms, flukes, Trichinella (nasty!) and tapeworms.
A high number of Chinese were infected with the “unholy trinity” of intestinal nematodes: Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, and hookworms Ancylostoma duodenale and Necator americanus — an estimated 531 million, 212 million, and 194 million cases, respectively. Of the 374,753 children under 12 years of age tested for E. vermicularis, 26.4% were infected.
[Xu L-Q, Yu S-H, Jiang Z-X, Yang J-L, Lai C-Q, Zhang X-J, et al. Soil-transmitted helminthiases: nationwide survey in China. Bull World Health Organization 1995;73:507-13].
Meat isn’t so much a worry. Pork meat frozen at minus 30 degrees for a week or more will be cleared of all living Trichinella. The real danger is “fresh” produce, such as leaves, fruits and roots, which cannot be deep frozen.
I don’t want to turn readers Sinophobic but, as I said, China’s own poor hygiene standards call for caution on our part.
See how complicated and wide open this issue has become in today’s world?
So What Do You Do About Parasites?
1. First, You Get Educated.
2. Get A Diagnosis, If Needed
If there is any doubt, you’ll need to know what tests to call for and what each means. Unfortunately, most hospital laboratories have very poor diagnostic standards and routinely miss serious parasite infections (young, inexperienced lab technicians, who can’t grasp what they are looking at, or they explain it away as an artifact).
I list the laboratories that are good and the tests that count, so you can be in no doubt.
Finally, many people embark on a course of antiparasite treatment without a clear diagnosis and get a very good result.
It’s like pets: don’t we “worm” our cats and dogs regularly? Humans should do the same. In the old days that meant rhubarb and sulfur or brimstone and treacle! Almost as bad as the disease!
Fortunately, there are far better options today! I explain all your choices in this report.
3. You Take Steps To Eliminate Parasites In Your Body
There are literally scores of things you can do and I have rounded up all the good ones that work, from time-honored herbal cures to remarkable electronic machines that can seek out the frequency of a critter and “zap” it.
But nothing is simple with these monsters. They’ll be back in a week, if you don’t know what you are about. Diet is crucial and some dietary elements are just asking for trouble, particularly sugar and vitiated foods (junk).
I’ll also tell you about terrain and how to make your tissues as hostile as possible for them, instead of a luxury hotel. Heavy metal poisoning (mercury, lead, aresenic, aluminium, etc.) is an open invitation to these brutes to step right in and set up a comfortable home inside you, snacking on your body, tissues and maybe even brain. Uuugghhh!
4. You do the same with your family
Otherwise they will just infect you right back again.
We are talking HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS critters. They just hop from person to person, or from your beloved pooch or pussycat, right into your mouth, without you even knowing it. It’s called the fecal-oral route (no, don’t even go there); but you can’t beat it, no matter how much you scrub and wash. One unguarded moment when you stroke your pet, or touch a door knob, and then touch your face unthinkingly, and they are in!
It makes sense therefore to be sure you are living with clean pets and clean family, so that you don’t keep bouncing eggs and cysts backwards and forwards.
The only answer lies in knowledge: knowing what you are up against and being constantly aware of the problem. That’s why I wrote this book..
Here's What You Need To Do:
Click the "Add To Cart" button below and get yourself a copy of this stunning and informative report. It will tell you everything you need to know to become knowledgeable about parasites and how to get protection from them. Ignorance is not really an option.
$29.95
(no shipping remember, it's a download)
What You Will Learn
There are several crucial sections in this book. I lay out the extent and sheer scale of the problem and get you past the “complacency” stage.
You’ll learn how parasites are transmitted and how to minimize that process, without becoming obsessed with hygiene.
I provide a HUGE list of symptoms, what to look for, that could be indicative of a parasite infection: everything from itchy ears and sleep disorders, to altered mood and physical incapacity.
Thing is, these brutes are pretty subtle. Talk about “stealth” pathogens. Parasites are the passed masters of disguise and concealment.
You’ll learn about a parasite’s life cycle. Humans are not always the intended target; we are just collateral damage, as the parasite seeks its definitive host (toxoplasmosis, for example, is supposed to be a cat pathogen, and humans get it only because we fawn around cats).
Of course there are sections on diagnosis and treatments of all kinds.
Knowing The Enemy
I lay out a superb “rogues gallery”, grouping and listing the main parasites we face. I don’t even waste time on tropical pathogens, like malaria, no matter how vile and dangerous. I don’t need to. I have page after page of parasites that maim and kill and that are found abundantly in the developed world. Trust me, there are plenty.
For example ameba: this is a protozoan parasite that causes colonic and liver disease. Approximately 50 million people are infected annually resulting in 100,000 deaths per year making it the second most common cause of parasitic death in humans. The disease is predominantly seen in developing countries, of course, BUT IT’S RIGHT HERE IN THE USA.
Did you know there is a “brain eating ameba”, so-called? The ameba, called Naegleria fowleri, infects humans and is more than 95% lethal. True to its name, it migrates to the brain and devours it. It can be picked up from swimming in warm, freshwater lakes, rivers
So, are you ready to do battle with the beasts?
Click the "Add To Cart" button below and get yourself a copy of this stunning and informative report. It will tell you everything you need to know to become knowledgeable about parasites and how to get protection from them. Ignorance is not really an option.
$29.95
(no shipping remember, it's a download)
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