Parasites (not a metaphor)
A few of my new-parent friends started having terrible gut problems and figured they have colon cancer. Their doctors agreed it’s the first thing to check. But the colonoscopies were negative for colon cancer. The tissue was inflamed though. One doctor called this “pre-cancer” (??)
Hmm what could be causing inflammation in the colon, but wouldn’t show up on camera after you fasted and had medically-induced diarrhea for 24 hours?
The babies were born over a year before symptoms appeared, so it can’t be related to pregnancy. No change in diet. No family history.
What happens a year or two after a kid is born? They go outside and immediately eat as much dirt as they can. What lives in dirt? Everything!
Me and my boy’s mother ate some combantrin 3 months ago and have been clear since.
I’m currently trying to convince my friends that they didn’t all get colon cancer in the same year at a young age. If I get them to eat the poison chocolate, then I’ll write a follow up post in a few months.
I’ve actually had some very odd food issues since 2019 (eg seizures & fainting after garlic) which disappeared since the combantrin.
So if you randomly got food/gut/brain issues one day years ago you should consider taking a dewormer. Note that all the tests suck (insensitive) and the medicine is cheap and safe and sold online without prescription. (Albendazole available too but slightly less safe.) Worms are much easier to kill than bacteria, viruses, fungus, etc.
Also note that at least 5 million people in the US (ie 1.5%) have parasites according to the most conservative estimates offered here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7847297/ (table 1, the big table)
This seems to be a blind spot. No doctors or friends or family ever considered this or even mentioned the word “parasite” to me in the last 5 years.
Kind of funny that dewormers took off in poor countries but not here.
Edit sept 2: I think I am slowly gaining weight. It is well-known that malnourished kids gain weight after deworming. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1502184/ Good for them, but if you have overweight family members, you should do a cost-benefit analysis.
Are parasites so low-status that doctors do not want (even in their own minds) to offend the patients?
BTW, why didn’t the worms show up on the camera? Were they flushed out by the medically-induced diarrhea (but presumably some survived in some other part of the body and then returned back)?
We didn’t get colonoscopies, but some worms are pretty hard to see in stool (hence the insensitivity of the tests), so I think they’re extra hard to see in a completely empty colon. (Can’t find hard data on this.)
As for the survival, these things spread from a couple eggs left in the dry dirt or wherever, so yeah unfortunately 1 day fast usually won’t eliminate an infection I’m pretty sure.
I’m glad your symptoms went away! Sudden onset seizures sound terrifying.
What made you think in the first place that the problem might be worms? Do you have any risk / exposure factors like the paper mentions?
It never occurred to me that my problems might be due to worms. I took the dewormers because my butt was itchy one day.
But it should have occurred to me! My symptoms in 2019 started after I was working on this really dirty farm for a bit. Definitely had my face in the dirt plenty.
Why wouldn’t doctors just tell everyone to take antiparasitic drugs every five years, if those are net-positive given a 1.5% chance of having a parasite?
I’m not sure but people seem pretty sensitive about it for some reason. Maybe this is some very very old-fashioned stigma.
well there is the story that certain worms lower risk of auto-immune disease. Parasites may downregulate overeager immune systems.
This is why I love LessWrong.
Thanks, I’m saving this if I ever get any symptoms, and I’m also considering taking some mebendazole as a purely preventative measure (I don’t remember that I’ve ever taken it, and I’ve been exposed to dirty work for years and years now).
My whole family takes a round of ivermectin every year or so for the same reason. Anti parasitics don’t really have bad side effects (often have good side effects such as -inflammation) so it’s just positives all around.
Interesting point about the medical assessment aspect. Where are you located by the way?
I did some quick searching just to find out a bit about combantrin. This and this have some good information about just what you would be taking. (Side note, I’m in the US and both these are US based sources but my initial search got hits primarily from Australia so might be other people would be more comfortable with or even that provide additional aspects for consideration.)
While might go without saying here, I’ll say it anyhow, there are some indicated risks but that is all probably very conditional on the person so I would not just go out and give this a try. The other thing that I notices was that combantrin/pyrantel seems primarily to target pinworms but the information mentions it might be used to treat other types of worms. I didn’t dig deeper on that to see if perhaps other anthelmintics might be more effective for other worms.
The way it works was also a bit interesting. The drug paralyzes the worms which are then expelled duing a bowel movement. I’m not sure if that leaves open the possibility that any worm not expelled could recover and you’re still dealing with a problem. If so then perhaps a laxative after taking the pyrahtel would be a good idea. Or perhaps follow the pre colonoscopy proceedures.
For some that might not matter as one of the listed side effects of the drug is diarrhea.
Yeah albendazole might be better if you’re not a baby or otherwise medically high-risk. I think it’s probably good enough that you can give up on parasites being the root cause after trying it for a week. (Rather than being stuck on an endless journey of trying everything like the SIBO, candida, etc self-diagnoses.) The farm where I worked when my symptoms started was in Central Valley in California. The doctors I saw were at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
Huh, did you experience any side effects?
Head felt kind of buzzy and weird for one day
I tried this a week ago and I am constipated for what I think might be the first time in years but am not sure. I also think I might have less unpleasant stomach sensation overall.
Thanks for reporting. Would be curious to know if still happening in a week
It’d be funny if stomach gendlin focusing content was at least partially related to worms or other random physical stuff
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