It doesn’t take
much for tapeworms to take root in humans. A rare piece of fish.
A glass of tap water in a developing country. An unwashed tomato
from your own backyard garden. You’d never even know you’d
ingested the eggs and larvae lurking in your food and water. You
might not even know you have a tapeworm several yards long in
your system, since infestations can be asymptomatic.
But while these parasite infestations
may not show many harmful effects outwardly, they can be nothing
short of menacing. Weakness, malnutrition, nausea, diarrhea,
stomach cramps, headaches, and loss of appetite are a few the
maladies caused by human tapeworms.
In humans, where tapeworms can grow up to 30 feet long and live
for several decades, they can invade muscles and organ tissue
causing cysts and related diseases. For instance, Cysticercosis,
most common in people who have consumed contaminated pork in developing
countries, is the development of cysts on the brain. According
to the Center for Disease Control, the syndrome is developed when
pork tapeworm eggs hatch, penetrate the intestine wall and travel
to the brain through the bloodstream where they form cysts.
The many types of tapeworms
that infest humans including, Taenia
saginata, Taenia
solium, Echinococcus
granulosus, Diphyllobothrium
latum, and Hymenolepsis
nana, can be simply treated using chemical or herbal options.
However, chemical treatments can produce harsh and uncomfortable
side effects and gentler herbal treatments can also eradicate
a wider range of parasites, including round worms, pin worms,
flukes, and others.
Once you have a clean bill
of health, reinfestation can be avoided by cooking meat thoroughly,
washing produce, avoiding tap water in developing nations, and
performing a parasitic cleansing twice a year.
