by Suzanne M. Skinner, Ph.D., RNC, HHP
There is hardly a subject that fascinates me more than worms and parasites in the human body. When friends speak of earthquakes, I speak of worms. When neighbors speak of grandchildren, I speak of worms.
My waiting room is lined with specimen jars containing my prized possessions.
Many years prior to setting up my holistic health practice, it was inconceivable to me that we could have worms. Oh, perhaps in some far away foreign country where the sanitation was poor, but not in the United States and especially not me . . . well, I was in for a big surprise.
I had read a little article in an obscure magazine recommending a special concoction to release worms from the colon. For some time I had been taking colonics and had never seen a worm. However, the article stated that some intestinal worms have teeth with which to dig in and hang onto the walls of the colon, thus making them immune to passing from the colonic action.
After taking the recommended remedy, I began to feel strange in my middle. Thinking it was my imagination, I went about my studies for the day. That night I took my regular colonic and felt I had passed far more than the usual amount of bulk, which seemed to come out endlessly. After an hour, I looked down and literally froze. I backed up, hit the wall and ran from the bathroom.
Some time passed before I found the courage to take a second look. I peered slowly around the corner, took a deep breath and looked in the toilet. There were hundreds of them — ivory-colored and thick as pens, ranging from two to 42 inches in length. The bowl was full of them, and they were transparent enough that I could see their inner parts.
This nightmare was repeated for six months. Day after day, month after month, I continued to pass six to seven hundred worms daily.
After researching “orthodox” medical treatment, I realized that the worms might live and I might not. My chiropractor recommended supplements to “digest” them. However, the infestation was too large. I tried every remedy there was, to no avail. Finally, after six months, I found a grapefruit seed extract that worked. Unfortunately, the FDA has since removed this brand from the market, apparently because it also turned around most prostate trouble.
This ordeal amazed me. Having always been the picture of vitality, I asked myself, how can this be? With most parasites, there are very few symptoms, if any at all. The only symptom I had was bloating around the middle.
After several years of research, I have found that there are thousands of varieties of worms, parasites, protozoa and amoebas. After years of infestation, severe breakdowns occur in a patient’s health.
With time, symptoms may increase. Symptoms include diarrhea, (sometimes alternating with constipation), an ashen complexion, gas, a gurgling or growling stomach, an increase or decrease of appetite, anorexia, bulimia, an inability to gain or to lose weight, low grade fevers, coughing, hyperactivity or lethargy, grinding of teeth at night (bruxism), fatigue after eating, allergies, asthma, snoring, abdominal pains, restlessness, anemia, nausea, dizziness, seizures, rectal itching, insomnia, vaginal itching, shortness of breath, intestinal bleeding, hair loss, low grade infection, blood sugar problems, colon blockages, tumor-like masses, irritability (especially around the full moon, when most parasites are active), hair thinning or loss, bad breath, body odor, mucous in stools, joint pains, abdominal pains, rashes and a multitude of others. If you have parasites, you may have one or more of these symptoms or none at all. By the time symptoms appear, breakdown has occurred.
In my practice I always find parasites and worms associated with the following diseases: Diabetes, hypoglycemia, juvenile diabetes, anorexia, asthma, depression, anemia, chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS, cancer, tumors, bulimia, colitis, epilepsy, hyperactivity syndromes, learning disabilities, baldness, prostate trouble, appendicitis (the appendix is a favorite place for parasites), elevated white blood counts, Hodgkin’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), psoriasis, some eczemas, leukemia, lymphoma, arthritis, leprosy, ulcerative colitis, low hemoglobin, poor blood quality, iron deficiencies and most bowel disorders.
How do we become infested?
Infestation can come from a number of sources: Walking barefoot in contaminated soil; eating unclean fruits and vegetables (especially water-cress), rare meat, raw fish (sashimi — raw fish sushi); drinking contaminated water supplies; sexual intercourse, auto-intoxication from poor nutrition, liver flukes, kissing pets, working in the garden, mucus-forming foods (milk products), lack of proper bowel flora or proper digestive enzymes.
Why don’t we hear more stories like mine?
It is not a subject the general public discusses, either because of embarrassment or people not knowing that they have parasites. Ninety percent of my patients have worms and yet are totally unaware of it. They know they have diabetes, cancer, etc., but not that parasites directly or indirectly caused or contributed to their disease. For example, cancer is simply a symptom indicating a body that is auto-intoxicated with parasites, worms, yeast, virus and other bacteria, and whose colon lacks beneficial flora.
Let’s look at an example of a common parasite.
The pin-worm, found mostly in children, lives in the lower intestine and rectum. The female worm comes out of the colon to lay her eggs (mostly at night, thereby contaminating pajamas and bedding as well). A single female may deposit 15,000 or more eggs, which are infective in a few hours. The crawling of the worm on the skin of the area surrounding the anus itches. The child scratches this area and contaminates his nails and hands with the eggs. The eggs are also transported by air currents, therefore other family members are easily contaminated. Statistics claim that one in five children today have pin-worms. What about the ones not diagnosed?
Parasites and worms can travel anywhere in the body. If the infestation is in the colon, the body puts a protective barrier of fluid around them to keep them corralled off (the bloating I spoke of earlier), to try to prevent them from traveling to other parts of the body.
In diabetes, worms are in the pancreas. With epilepsy, they are in the brain. In multiple sclerosis, they are what is eating the myelin sheaths off the exposed nerve endings (it is a misconception that the immune system of the body is attacking itself in MS).
Parasites are seldom picked up on blood tests, as they largely travel at night, not in the day when blood tests are generally given. Since they live in the liver, pancreas, lungs, bile duct, brain, muscles, joints, appendix, small intestine, large intestine, prostate, uterus, fallopian tubes, vagina, and gall-bladder, they are difficult to detect.
Unfortunately, too, allopathic medicine deals largely with the relief and/or masking of symptoms, rather than eliminating the root causes of symptoms.
That is why it is important to eliminate these parasites from the body before there is a full-blown disease such as diabetes or multiple sclerosis.
Parasites and worms feed on the good nutrients from food, and their excrement then circulates in the bloodstream.
Following are a few precautions to help avoid parasitic infestations:
- Never drink tap water, no matter how safe a water supply appears to be.
- Never drink from rivers, creeks or streams, no matter how clean the water looks.
- Salad bars may contain improperly washed produce, which carries spores that will later hatch in the body.
- Many aged cheeses are crawling alive when looked at under a microscope. It is best to avoid aged cheese.
- Keep a healthy environment in your colon. This is the main breeding-ground for a variety of parasites.
- Never swallow mucus that has been coughed up.
- Never go barefoot at the beach, horse stable, or in soil. Spores penetrate the skin.
- Avoid raw fish (sashimi — raw fish sushi).
- Avoid raw or undercooked meat.
- Avoid German steak tartar.
- Always wash hands thoroughly after using the bathroom.
- Parasites can be transferred through intimate contact.
- Use separate feeding dishes for your pets — never yours.
- Use separate cutting boards for meats, veggies and breads.
- Clean cutting boards with Clorox or hydrogen peroxide.
- Properly cleanse cutting knives used on meats, etc.
- Rinse off your meats, poultry and fish, and then soak them in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water or Clorox and water. A very small amount to a gallon of water is all that is necessary.
- Don’t let your pets sleep on your bed.
- Have your pets de-wormed on a regular basis.
- Avoid refined sugar products and soft drinks. Worms and parasites love sugar and sweets.
- Clean your pet’s bedding often and thoroughly.
- Clean your carpets often.
- Wash hands thoroughly immediately after gardening.
- After your pet licks you, thoroughly cleanse your skin.
- After handling raw meat, wash properly.
Many of the above precautions are just plain common sense. However, sometimes we are a little short in that department. In fact, I used to eat fresh fruit on the way home from the grocery store — and then, after I arrived home, thoroughly wash whatever was left. Rather like closing the barn door after the horse got out.
Here’s a partial list of ingredients in remedies that help remove parasites and worms for some individuals (but not for others): raw garlic, pumpkin seeds, juice from raw onions, wormwood tea, cayenne pepper, Jerusalem Oak, American Wormseed, special enzymes, and the sap of a Latin American Fig tree.
Each of the above must be used with special preparations to be effective. Also, certain time periods are better than others. Consult your doctor before trying any, and remember that treatments will vary for each individual. There is no universal treatment.
It is also important to note that some of these special preparations only knock the body of the worm loose, leaving the heads intact, and some preparations drive the worms from one area of the body to another.
As in my case, colonics alone had no effect. Prior to that I had fasted for 30 days and never saw a worm. One patient passed a fistful of worms on her 39th day of a fast. Remember — fasting without the supervision of a doctor can be harmful or even fatal.
Parasitology is a complicated science and it is even difficult to find a good laboratory. One of the most common parasites I have seen still remains unidentifiable by many local laboratories. It looks like a spider to me, wrapped around an egg sack. It has many long black legs. In some patients the legs are green, in others they are red.
Hopefully, you are one of the lucky ones — parasite free. If you suspect you may have worms or parasites, it is important to eliminate them from your body before you have a full-blown disease such as multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS, or sugar diabetes.
Happy Hunting!
Warning! Raw onions can be extremely harsh and possibly damage the colons of some individuals; they can kill your pet. Never give raw onions to your pet.
Reprinted with permission from: Perceptions Magazine, Volume 1, Issue Number 5, Summer 1994
(Note: Perceptions Magazine is no longer published.)