Posted on 06/30/2012 10:01:39 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
How to Kill a Parasitic Worm Living Inside of You
Parasitic worms are the stuff of nightmares — worms as big as twelve feet long can rummage through your intestines, and then leave in the middle of the night. Urban legends tell tales of tapeworms carried by diet pills. Some of the weird schemes for removing these parasites include a combination of duct tape, candy bars, and bodily orifices.
What is the reality behind these parasites? And how can you really get rid of one, without the need for extreme measures?
Tapeworms hide in your food Obtaining a beef or pork parasite is rather easy, but also easily avoidable. Undercooked meat is a common way to ingest both Taenia solium and Taenia saginata, whose larvae often live inside pigs and cows. Either species of tapeworm can grow up to twelve feet and live inside of a human host for several years.
Tapeworms can cause a variety of health problems, including seizures, obscured or blurry vision, and a swelling of the brain if larvae move to that region. Most infections are asymptomatic, however, with the patient only realizing they are harboring a tapeworm when they pass a wiggling section of the worm while defecating. Manual removal of a tapeworm through the mouth is also possible, but not fun.
Hookworms lay traps in the soil The hookworm is much smaller than a tapeworm. These parasites are rarely more than a centimeter long, and burrow into your small intestine to feast on your blood. Since hookworms latch onto your small intestine and divert nutrients away from the bloodstream, they're actually more problematic than tapeworms. Hookworm infection can lead to anemia, slower cognitive growth, and malnutrition.
Hookworms infect over a billion people worldwide. The vast majority of these people live without advanced sanitation, amidst subtropic and tropical climates. Transmission of hookworms is quite devious and more involved than tapeworm transmission. When the soil cools off at night, hookworm larvae extend out of the soil, waiting to latch onto any human foot that passes overhead. Local sanitation problems come into the equation when larvae are passed through feces, allowing them to infect humans through both direct contact and contaminated water.
Pinworms sneak out of your anus at night Tiny pinworms lay eggs around a host's anus, leading to an itching sensation, which creates a vicious cycle if your fingers come in contact with your mouth — since this allows the eggs to enter the digestive tract.
Pinworms are found worldwide, and they're the bane of many North American elementary schools, as infections often begin through human contact or through recently used surfaces like toilet seats, faucets, and doorknobs. Thankfully, the symptoms of a pinworm infection are not nearly as severe as a hookworm invasion, — the worst pinworm symptoms include itchiness, irritability, and weight loss.
A common test for pinworms involves taping the anal region of a possible host, and inspecting the tape for eggs after a good night's sleep. (If you can sleep in that condition.) Pinworms don't just travel to the anus and lay eggs as part of a cruel joke — they need access to fresh air for their eggs to mature.
Killing the unwelcome guests within A number of pharmaceutical treatments are available to rid humans of unwelcome worm guests. These drugs are called anthelmintics — and this includes several different types of drug, each with different methods of killing worms. (Prior to the development of small-molecule pharmaceuticals, people used to eat tobacco, pineapple, and honey to rid the body of worms.)
Benzimidazoles are the largest and most versatile class of anthelmintics. This class of drugs starves the worms by cutting off their ability to absorb glucose. Benzimidazoles bind to the protein beta-tubulin, which disrupts any processes that make use of microtubules.
Albendazole is the MVP of this class of drug — it works against pinworms, hookworms, tapeworms, and a variety of other worm infections. The broad spectrum application and low cost of albendazole makes it a first-line defense against parasitic worms.
Ivermectin is an increasingly important drug used for treating parasitic infections. Ivermectin interferes with a parasite's neurotransmitters, paralyzing the invaders indiscriminately, and eventually leading to death.
Unfortunately, Ivermectin does not work against tapeworms, but the drug's method of action allows it to eliminate most intestinal worms, as well as external parasites like scabies and lice. Patients can also wait three months to a year between doses of ivermectin. The infrequent dosage and wide scale application of ivermectin make it the anthelmintic of choice for treatment of parasites in Third World countries.
Albendazole and ivermectin are only two of a legion of available anthelmintics. But just like antibiotic-resistant infections, we're starting to see parasites that have resistance to anthelmintics. That's why there's a wide variety of other drugs to fight parasitic worms. But any strategy for fighting parasites has to include more personal hygiene and sanitation, as well as dosing family members with anti-parasite drugs — as these worms tend to pass from family member to family member.
You’ve got to be kidding... serious?
I remember reading a story about a pig farmer who had 7 children and giving his children pig wormer. He got the dose of the youngest child off and she got little sick and HHS took the kids. I thought how disgusting, Then I found out the ingredient was the same in human wormer but the pharmacy charges $25 and pig wormer is about $0.25. I was still disgusted.
My Mother (who will turn 85 this year) told me a story about a little girl she knew as she was growing up who was becoming extremely weak and malnourished, and the doctor in town told her parents that she had a tapeworm.
Told them to give her nothing but water to keep her hydrated for three days, then he made a house call, and directed the parents to literally tie her firmly to a tree out in their back yard, and he proceeded to wave a saucer of milk under the girl’s chin, near to her mouth. The tapeworm came UP from the child’s intestines and stomach, leaping out of her mouth, wild to get to the milk, and the doctor (with the parents assisting) grabbed the tapeworm and pulled it all the way out, it measured almost 10 feet.
The girl recovered, none the worse for wear.
Decades later, that story still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
How do you think the cows got ‘em?’ Cows get them from eating grass, since they don’t eat meat...
I thought she was just going to have me go fetch eggs from the hen house or something. Had no idea THAT job was coming. And she was right, the worm did come out for air and the second time it poked out I caught it and pulled it out. Couldn't sleep for well for weeks thinking about brain worms!
Yep. By being vegetarians.
I don’t suppose you want me to tell you the story of the time I found one of our angora kids in the pasture with a 6 inch tape worm hanging out of its butt...Missed the wormer that kills tapeworms...some wormers take care of bloodworms, some tapeworms etc...Use a different wormer every 3 months and in a years time you have hit all the worms...then you start all over again. :O) GG
I read this joke on FR many years ago - can’t remember who posted it, so hat tip to whomsoever.....
(I’ll try to keep it as PG-13 as possible)
Guy goes into doctor’s office, says he wants a cure for his tapeworm. Doc tells him to get a dozen hard-boiled eggs, eleven lemon-flavored cookies and a hammer.
Doc tells him to once a day insert the egg into his butt, followed by the lemon cookie.
On the twelfth day, just insert the egg, and when the tapeworm comes out and says “Where’s my g-d cookie?” you hit it with the hammer.
You get a prescription for pin worms from the doctor and everyone in the family has to take it...Happened every October until my last kid got out of elementary school...They can pick up the microscoptic eggs from toys, book etc in school....
I could have done without that enthralling story. Sleep is penciled in for Tuesday. Since I'm already doing penance for something.. I'll take it.
WTH do you do when you have a goat with 6 inches of tapeworm partialy defecated?
Besides pass out or launch and nuke from orbit?
/johnny
I wonder how you can tell that a parasitic worm is living inside you.
I had to walk the whole pasture with a shovel and bucket to find and piles of tape worms laying in grass....sometimes the whole worm comes out, but hey they are called tapeworms cause they looks like white scotch tape and about the same width...I hope you don’t remember that each time you use scotch tape......I am sorry for being a bad girl....:O)
I GOTTA be more careful on the threads I click on.
/johnny
My mind briefly went there in science mode and came screaming back that "YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!", and fell quivering in my arms.
So I'm not asking again.
Damn sure don't ask Goat Granny.
/johnny
Having worked for several years in the pharmacy of a large state run hospital I can appreciate your story more than most.
Thats why they make Preparation H taste bad—so you won’t lick your fingers.
Damn it gave me the heebie-jeebies now.
Yeah, but then you get nematodes. :^)
We have scorpions here on our hill.
The DE is sprinkled near all doorways. Any stinging scorpions that do get inside have all been very sickly, not very spry or acting like they are able to move at all. Highly recommend it. Downside is you have a powdery substance around your doorways that gets on your shoes and tracks in the house. Still better than chemicals.
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