We can’t escape the fact that of the 100 trillion cells in our bodies, only 10 trillion of them are human cells. This means that 90% of the cells in our bodies are not human. So what are they?
Our bodies have a number of viruses, fungi, bacteria and parasites.
Some of these organisms have beneficial effects on our bodies, some of which are crucial to our health.
However, in many instances, some of these organisms can cause serious problems.
In this post, I am going to focus on parasites (parasitic worms). Parasites are organisms that live in (endoparasites) or on (ectoparasites) a host (us) and use the energy (food) of the host to feed.
Parasites are categorised as Protozoa, Tapeworms, Roundworms and Flukes.
Some of the pathogenic parasites include:
- Acanthamoeba
- Anisakis
Ascaris lumbricoides- Botfly
- Balantidium coli
- Bedbug
- Cestoda (tapeworm)
- Chiggers
- Cochliomyia hominivorax
- Entamoeba histolytica
- Fasciola hepatica
Giardia lamblia- Hookworm
- Leishmania
- Linguatula serrata
- Liver fluke
- Loa loa
- Paragonimus – lung fluke
- Pinworm
- Plasmodium falciparum
- Schistosoma
- Strongyloides stercoralis
-
Mite
- Tapeworm
- Toxoplasma gondii
- Trypanosoma
- Whipworm
- Wuchereria bancrofti
Parasites can cause symptoms such as:
- Loose, foul-smelling stools
- Diarrhea
- Mucous in stools
- Abdominal cramps and gas
- Loss of appetite
- Distended abdomen
- Coughing
- Fever
- Vomiting
- Listlessness and generally feeling unwell
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Vomiting
- Nausea
- Abscesses
- Insomnia
- Skin Problems
- Anal itching
- In extreme circumstances, Death!
It is believed that over half the world’s population have at least one type of worm infection. Whilst this is commonly believed to be mainly in the developing world, my experience is that this figure may well be true in developed countries too. In fact, through stool testing with sophisticated laboratories in the USA, I rarely ever see any test results where the person doesn’t have an infection.
For this reason, I always suggest people have a parasite cleanse. In the next part of this post, I will be logging the start of my own parasite cleanse.
So stay tuned…