2023-07-02 23:10:44
Some recommend deworming regularly to preserve your health by getting rid of many parasites that inhabit our environment. Is it really relevant?
© Ivan Ivanovich | Unsplash
Our environment is full of micro-organisms, bacteria, viruses or worms just waiting for a suitable environment to develop.
Parasite infestations are part of the daily risks that should be purified regularly to maintain good health. Some personalities, such as Doctor Jean-Pierre Willem, recommend deworming regularly, once or twice a year.
Because these parasites (pinworm, giardia, ascaris, amoeba, taenia…) would cause us health concerns without attracting too much attention, and developing silently in our body to better poison us.
There is the idea of solving fairly diffuse health problems. Headaches, bloating, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome…
We can almost blame everything for a parasitic infestation and get closer to treatments to get rid of it.
Because the numerous treatments, effective on very many parasites with few undesirable effects.
So there’s no real reason to deprive yourself of it or to have doubts… except that it’s not as simple as that.
Symptoms or not?
Getting rid of parasites regularly in the absence of symptoms… doesn’t really help. Dr. Willem’s recommendation to deworm twice a year without giving more details seems superfluous.
For what ? Because it is always preferable to start treatment following a symptom suggestive of a disease with a precise diagnosis.
It’s as if I recommended that you go once a month to see your osteopath, without any health problem… or your doctor. This has no therapeutic value, and could even have negative consequences for patients.
Work has shown that a check-up every year with your doctor does not bring any benefit to patients. It was quite the opposite! Because by dint of looking, we end up finding details or minor concerns that will have very real consequences.
On parle d’incidentalome.
This reasoning with parasites could be modeled on cancers. Would you take chemotherapy every year to eliminate any small cancers lurking in your body? Of course not (the risks are not the same, we agree).
But the idea is there. First of all, you must:
Have symptoms that trigger a search for a culprit Effectively find a parasitic infestation and therefore treat it
The risks of being infested
I had one of these infestations as a child. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had been playing all day in the garden, with my hands full of dirt, which probably allowed the contamination.
The symptoms are not mild. It itches, it stings, it burns. In short, we know that there is a problem and the problem is quickly resolved. It was most likely a pinworm.
For the little anecdote, my grandfather would have released a verse in the toilet of which I have no idea of the origin or the veracity. But he was a lover of raw garlic, at the rate of several cloves a day and known for its deworming effects (without serious scientific validation to date)
But today the risk of having parasitic infestations is very low in our developed countries. Thanks to our generally higher than average hygiene, water and waste seasoning services, or even a certain distance to tropical latitudes which abound with these charming parasites.
In other words, we are perhaps the least well placed to resort to preventive deworming. And I must say that I struggled to find official figures in France. There is no real estimate of the prevalence of these infestations, they are so low.
On the other hand, we find such estimates for countries closer to the tropics and often much poorer.
This prevalence was estimated around 25% among nearly 30,000 schoolchildren in Africa for protozoan parasites. But these figures vary greatly from region to region.
A summary of 83 studies and more than 56,000 human faeces samples show a 48% prevalence of parasite infestations in Ethiopia.
A review of over 140,000 cases in Iran shows a prevalence of around 14% among food preparers.
In fact, we have known for a while the dtwo main causes of these heavy parasitic infestations :
MalnutritionPoverty
These diseases linked to parasitic infestations can therefore spread depending on the situation… as in the USA. Studies show that the poorest states have high rates of parasitic infections.
Because if lWHO recommends deworming widely popular in underdeveloped countries, she points out that this is not the only solution.
“Improving basic hygiene, sanitation services and health education, and the supply of clean water are also essential to address the health and nutritional problems caused by intestinal worms”says Dr Francesco Branca, Director of the WHO Department of Nutrition for Health and Development.
ivermectin is also an extremely common anti-parasitic in developing countries to fight against river blindness.
Risky travel
Traveling to tropical countries exposes you to risks, especially if these countries are developing countries with few sanitations. You can take protective measures, but sometimes there is not much you can do to “purge” yourself or get rid of parasites.
For example, I had the chance to do a few exploration sessions in the Guyanese forest… with its maddening lot of possible parasitosis. In the end, the most common were malaria, leishmaniasis or macaque worms (a fly that lays its larva in our skin)… for which it is useless to “deworm”.
There are of course many others, and the French soldiers expatriated on these equatorial lands very often find themselves infected with multiple parasites.
To remember
Parasitic infestations can appear sporadically in the population, especially among disadvantaged groups where access to drinking water is not guaranteed with living conditions and delicate hygiene.
But these situations can lead to the appearance of symptoms, especially digestive, which allow you to embark on a medical course with appropriate diagnosis and treatment.
The idea of deworming regularly in a developed country and living in suitable hygienic conditions is not really of interest. Even if effective and less dangerous treatments exist, the benefits would be non-existent.
The German naturopath Andreas Mortiz, now deceased, also offered to carry out liver cleansing cures as well as regular deworming to purge himself. In addition to the doubts expressed by this article on the interest of the practice in the absence of symptoms and diagnosis, the products offered are not really useful for “worming”.
Anyone can therefore catch parasites. You can catch the famous “tapeworms” or taenia because of improperly cooked beef or pork.
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