Parasite free Milly, our favourite new feline; parasite toxoplasmosis gondii and crazy cat ladies; neither a cat person nor a dog person; cat ladies and witches; the Victorian tapeworm diet; lazy and not-so-lazy bitches; parasites and the full moon
Our extended household has a feisty new kitten, now almost fully grown. This feline addition to the family glories in the name of Milly (or Bob, or Milly-Bob Thornton). Milly is a contraction of the names of granddaughters Mia and Holly.
Cat-loving daughter-in-law Carrie acquired her to replace lovely Ollie, who died of old age last year. (Teddy the Schnauzer and Tinky the ball-mad Yorkie, below, complete the immediate menagerie.)
I’m not much of a pet-lover, never having had one of my own. Apart from mice, when I was about nine. That lasted until they gnawed a hole in the corner of their school suitcase “cage” and nested in my mother’s laundry cupboard. Then there were a couple of adorable rabbits, brutally slain by the neighbour’s dog after just two days of pet-dom. Enough, Mother decreed. No. More. Pets.
Cat Ladies & Witches
The “crazy cat lady” stereotype is an eccentric woman who lives alone with one or multiple cats. Rather like the witches of yore. There’s no doubt that Carrie is a witch… and I mean that as a compliment. I too am a witch (except for the cat thing).
Instead of toad eyes and newt-tongues, our healing arsenals comprise: cooking really good food like bone broths from scratch, a staggering array of health and wellbeing supplements too numerous to mention; essential oils; sauna therapy, circadian rhythm regulation, photo-biomodulation (red and infra-red light), sun-bathing and grounding; lymphatic drainage, massage and more.
We consult naturopaths, chiropractors, osteopaths, remedial masseuses, an amazing nurse-practitioner for hormone balancing, shamans*, and medical GPs and specialists when necessary.
- only joking – so far, anyway
In the 1600s, we could have been burnt at the stake, or drowned in a ducking pool. Just for the record, here’s how ducking worked: A suspected witch would be thrown into deep water, and if she floated she’d be declared in league with the Devil and burnt at the stake; if she sank to the bottom, she was innocent. Catch-22, several centuries before the novel.
Crazy about Cats?
One TED-Ed video asks: “Is there a disease that makes us love cats?” And apparently there is. Toxoplasmosis gondii (or toxo) is a parasite excreted in cat poo that can influence the behaviour and brain activity of cats, rats and other animals – including humans.
I hesitate to call Carrie* a crazy cat lady – mainly because, well, if she is, I might be putting myself in harm’s way. (There’s also that thing about witches and spells.)
That’s a joke! But it’s no joke that a third of the world’s population are infected with toxo, mostly without knowing it. Studies have shown connections between toxo and aggression, OCD, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. (Weirdly, it also seems to protect against multiple sclerosis.)
Another fascinating fact about toxo is that it affects human behaviour, making men more aggressive and women more sexually promiscuous. The reason? It inhibits neurotoxin production in the brain.
The toxoplasma parasite’s life-cycle needs a rat to eat infected cat poop, whereupon the parasite lodges in the rat’s brain in such a way that the rat loses its fear of cats. Specifically, it becomes strongly attracted to cat urine – not a good idea, Jerry! Then, of course, Tom eats Jerry, becoming a new host for the parasite.
And you don’t only get it from direct contact with a cat: you can pick up toxo from playing in a sandbox, exposure to contaminated water, or eating unwashed produce or undercooked meat.
Time to deworm?
Carrie is fully aware of parasite dangers, regularly “deworming” the entire family – canine, feline and human – every three months. For the humans, Combantrin comes in the genius guise of chocolate squares… not that the granddaughters are strangers to swallowing all sorts of supplements on command. Their mother has an even bigger arsenal of therapeutic agents than I do, and is not afraid to wield it.
But, as they say, that’s not all! Toxo is just an introduction to the fascinating world of parasites.
Could you be Riddled?
How might you suspect you have a parasite? For me, it was a slightly bloated belly that refused to flatten. To be honest, I was looking for something to fix that didn’t involve eliminating sugar or alcohol. (Noooooooo!! Don’t take away my wine and chocolate!)
I’d just listened to a talk by Dr Todd Watts, DC, PSCD titled Parasites: The Common Energy Thief Hidden in our Bodies. The title struck a chord, as I’d been feeling a bit under-par energy-wise for some time.
It’s going to be pretty obvious if you have something like an intestinal giardia infection: bloating, cramping, diarrhoea and weight loss. Anal itching could be threadworms. But other parasites may be at the root of your headaches, seasonal allergies, joint pain or eczema (roundworms or threadworms); even fatigue, anxiety or depression; or – weirdly – an inability to feel satisfied even after a big meal. The list goes on.
And what if you actually want to be riddled… with tapeworm, for example?
The Victorian Tapeworm Diet – don’t try this at home!
Impressively, these flatworms grow as long as 10 metres and lay as many as a million eggs a day.
Women’s obsession with being thin is nothing new. Popularised in the early 1900s, and actually used in clinical practice (!), the tapeworm diet involves swallowing a tapeworm (or its eggs, or larvae). It hatches or continues to grow, while you lose the weight and effortlessly keep it off. You can also acquire tapeworms accidentally through eating undercooked, contaminated meat.
I’ve never seen a tapeworm, but I heard about this tapeworm diet way back in my teens. For a while, I quite fancied the idea of having a pet tapeworm of my own. A friendly one to keep me thin while I continued living on chips and chocolate and spent most of my time lying on the sofa, reading rubbishy novels. Anyway, moving on.
Tired all the time?
If you (like Roy) didn’t take Biology at school, and you hear “hypochondria” when you read “mitochondria”, feel free to skip the next paragraph – especially if you’re fortunate enough to have plenty of energy.
Here’s how parasites may be responsible for your fatigue, without any other more obvious gut-related symptoms. Studies show they create an enzyme that inhibits the energy-generating Krebs cycle (or citric acid cycle) within the cell and damages mitochondrial function. Without high-functioning mitochondria, we lack the necessary fuel to do anything, including detoxing, supporting our immune system, regulating cortisol and more. So it makes sense that sub-par mitochondria would cause tiredness and low energy.
Comparisons are odious – or are they?
It can be difficult to know whether the tiredness one feels is normal or abnormal. How much should we be able to do before running out of steam? You could compare yourself to others around you – but to whom?
To make this even more difficult, we tend to get used to and even accept lower energy levels. There’s no shortage of people (including doctors, who IMO should know better) to blithely point out that you’re getting older, and this is just what you should expect to happen… when you’re still in your thirties or forties, for crying out loud!
For me, the most obvious points of reference are my similarly aged gym friends here in Perth. But this bunch of strong, fit women are so way above average that I’m not sure how useful they are for purposes of comparison.
The super-energetic Yvette, for example (far right), does at least one vigorous Pump, Tone or other class at Craigie Leisure Centre almost every morning… and then rounds off every day with a brisk 10km walk. She has incredible musculature, too, and is also not above applying a bit of peer pressure to under-performing human beings like myself. (I’ve learnt to accept “lazy bitch” as a term of endearment.)
Parasite Facts
- Parasites come in all shapes and forms: tapeworms, roundworms, pinworms (threadworms), hookworms, liver flukes.
- All types of meat can have tapeworms or tapeworm eggs. (Not just pork.) Roy and I eat just about any sort of meat – though I swore off kangaroo many years ago after having one disgusting bite of a stinky roo-bab from a stall called Roadkill at Mindil Market in Darwin.
- Parasite infection is rife everywhere, all over the planet – not just in South America or Asia. They’re in our food, in our water… including municipal water.
- As many as 50 percent of children may have pinworms. Even these gorgeous grandkids of ours. In fact, especially them, living intimately with pets and by no means averse to a bit of face-licking.
- Chronic urinary tract infections have been known to be cured after doing deep parasite cleanse.
- Dairy allergies may also be due to a parasite, such as a tapeworm.
- Doing a protocol in the right order, with systematic steps, can make it pretty easy to get rid of them.
According to Laura Frontiero (laurafrontiero.com), if you’re struggling with your health, and the doc says “It’s Lyme disease”, or “it’s mould toxicity”, he or she is wrong. It’s never just one thing – it could be both of those, plus toxins, plus emotional trauma, a variety of things. Nothing replaces exercise, a positive way of thinking. And get rid of all parasites in your life, including human ones.
Full moon
In a podcast interview – it was possibly Ari Whitten’s The Energy Blueprint – Laura tells the story of clearing a sinus blockage by blowing her nose so vigorously that she ended up pulling a long, fat white worm out of her nostril. Once heard, never forgotten… and now you, too, are stuck with that revolting image. (Sorry.)
Parasitic infection symptoms may be worse at full moon, she explains in this article, making this a good time to do parasite cleanses. And if that sounds as crazy as the cat-lady story, here’s the reason:
In the worm’s life cycle, larvae come out from the lungs, up into the mouth and south through the oesophagus into the intestines. Different pulls of gravity in various parts of the body excite them into activity, thereby causing flare-ups.
Depending on the species, they head for the small or large intestine. There, they mature and become adults. They use our gut seratonin to help them communicate, mobilise and move.
ParaStrike
According to the excellent Dr Will Cole, almost everyone has one or more forms of parasites – even healthy people with no symptoms. Apparently, standard medical blood tests probably won’t pick them up.
So, with nothing to lose – apart from a bunch of wriggly intestinal worms, possibly – I picked up a bottle of ParaStrike at the Health Kick store in Lakeside shopping mall, Joondalup. Formulated to eliminate pinworms and threadworms, it contains wormwood and black walnut, essential oils of oregano and thyme, plus barberry to support liver function.
I followed the instructions to the letter. To break the life-cycle of the worms, you take it three times a day for 14 days; then take a break for 14 days; then resume taking it for another 14 days. So that was what I did.
Carrie had warned me to expect a die-off reaction from parasite elimination, but I felt no different at all. And 42 days later, my tummy was still sticking out. So maybe there were no worms to start with.
And yet… a month or two later, I suddenly started feeling a bit more energetic. It seemed to happen from one day to the next. I’ve pulled out my old Garmin watch from the back of a drawer and started jogging around twice instead of once a week … and pushing myself a bit more.
They’ve opened up the coastal pedestrian path north from Burns Beach to Mindarie, a nice 6.5km run from our door to Sista’s café where Roy can join me, buy me a Sunday morning coffee, and then drive me home. What would I do without him? (A rhetorical question that I hope stays that way.)
Meanwhile, I have some cleaning up to do. Milly has pulled another roll off the toilet-paper holder and shredded it into a mountain of confetti. This is quite normal behaviour, apparently… so why does it drive me bonkers? Maybe, just maybe, she’s turning me, too, into a crazy cat lady.
Coming up next: Since writing the bulk of this post, I may have solved the mystery of my bloated stomach. It was probably caused by a festering appendix that recently landed me in hospital for a scary 11 days, and from which I’m still recovering.
