Avoiding colon parasites
You can reduce your risk of parasitic infection through simple, common-sense behaviors. Becoming vegetarian is a good start! By not eating meat, you avoid the common parasites that are passed on through undercooked food, and you won’t have all of that slow-to-digest meat hanging around your colon and providing a breeding ground for toxic bacteria.
Wash Your Hands Frequently. Carefully washing you hands several times throughout the day can remove the parasites and their eggs with which you may have come in contact. It’s extra important to wash your hands after using the toilet, handling pets, cooking, or changing a baby’s diaper, and before before eating or handling food.
Avoid contaminated water. Unclean water is a common source of parasitic infection. Use bottled water for drinking or cooking if you don’t trust the source of your water supply – and don’t bathe in water that may be infested with parasites.
Wear shoes outdoors. Going barefoot is a pleasurable experience, but some colon parasites can enter the body through the soles of the feet. Be sure to wear shoes, especially if you are in an area like the beach or a park where there may be animal feces on the ground.
Wash and peel all fruits and vegetables. A quick scrub will remove parasites from fresh produce, and it’s important that you do so before you eat them.
Brain-eating worms
Some parasites can move to the human brain, and the results are quite horrible. It’s not especially easy for a parasite to make it to the brain – brain parasite’s life does have its hardships. To begin with, the parasite has to find a way into the brain – there’s a protective barrier between the bloodstream and the brain fluid, called the blood-brain barrier that creates a tight seal so that substances from the bloodstream, including bacteria and parasites, don’t leak into the brain. Even if a parasite does make it into the brain, it still has to battle the body’s immune system, which attack foreign bodies to protect us from harm. But some very tenacious parasites have found ways to fight back, evolving as tough warriors that can overcome the immune system. And these are the parasites that also do the most damage once they beat the odds.
Millions of people around the world are infected by brain parasites, mostly in non-industrialized countries where sanitation is poor. Many of these brain parasites cause debilitating conditions and sometimes even death. One of the most debilitating of these is the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium, which is also one of the most common disease-causing brain parasites. Infecting over 50 million people worldwide, Taenia solium is the leading cause of brain seizures.
Usually contracted from eating undercooked pork, the parasite attaches itself to the intestine and grows several feet long. The especially tenacious worms that make it to the brain don’t grow nearly that large, but they can do irreparable damage, even causing death. The risk to the brain comes when the eggs of these worms are swallowed – if ingested during their larval stage, the worms attach themselves to the intestine, but if eggs are swallowed, they hatch in the stomach and – for reasons that are still a mystery to researchers – can break through the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain. Some scientists believe that the larvae release enzymes that are able to dissolve enough of the blood-brain barrier to create a passage into the brain.
Once they reach the brain, the worms attach themselves to either the brain tissue or to cavities through which brain fluid flows, causing a disease called neurocysticercosis. The disease is the result of cysts in the brain created by the parasites. The symptoms exhibited by victims of neurocysticercosis depend on the part of the brain in which the cysts form.
When attached to brain tissue, then victims usually experience seizures. If the larvae attaches to the brain-fluid cavities, however, victims headaches, nausea, dizziness, and altered mental states – in addition to seizures! – because the flow of the brain fluid is blocked by the larvae. The lining of the brain-fluid cavities also become inflamed, further constricting the flow of the brain fluid and creating pressure on the brain. This increased pressure forces the heart to work in order to pump blood to the brain, which increases the pressure even more. If left untreated, parts of the brain begin to die from a deficiency of blood and serious brain damage occurs.
It can be a very slow process, often undetected for years – many people play host to brain parasites for a long time before showing any symptoms, as the worms have a sophisticated method of breaking down any antibodies in their vicinity and actually using them as a food source, effectively turning the body’s tools for fighting them into a way for them to actually flourish!
One way to avoid contracting Taenia solium is to make sure that any pork you eat is thoroughly cooked. But an even better way to avoid these nasty, brain-eating worms is to become a vegetarian – why play Russian Roulette with the health of your brain when you can simply skip eating animal proteins entirely and get all your nutrition form a plant-based diet?
Cleaning out the pipes
One way to maintain colon health is to occasionally treat yourself to a colon cleansing. This can be administered by a professional, you can purchase herbal products designed for the purpose at a natural foods store, or you can ask a nutritionist to advise you on a good colon cleansing method.
A colon cleanse isn’t the same thing as an enema or dosing yourself with laxatives. There are drawbacks to both of those practices. Enemas, while fine when administered correctly on an occasional basis, can actually creat as many problems as they solve. If you use tap water, for instance, more problems that they solve. For example, if you use tap water, you may be injecting more parasites into your intestine. Enemas also only cleanse the larger, lower part of the intestine and do nothing to clean out the small intestine where many parasites dwell.
Laxatives may seem to be doing a great job of "blowing out the pipes" they’re also ineffective at cleaning the small intestine, and irritate the sensitive lining of the bowels. Overuse of laxatives leads to inefficient absorption of important nutrients and acts as a diuretic, increasing the risk of dehydration. The body can also become dependent on laxatives, ultimately causing more constipation than before.
Talk to your nutritionist or ask at your natural foods store for recommendations on doing an herbal colon cleanse. After flushing the toxin-producing parasites from your body, you’ll feel much better!
