PARASITES and Creatures that may be FEEDING inside you!

By Naturopath, Jess Valencia

What are intestinal parasites?

Parasites are organisms that can live in the human digestive tract. They feed off the host and can cause nutritional deficiencies and digestive issues. The symptoms can be vague and can easily go undiagnosed. Some types of parasites include pinworms, roundworms, tapeworms and flukes.

Infections can cause various issues and common symptoms are:

abdominal pain
diarrhoea
anal itching
nausea
nutritional deficiencies such iron anaemia
fatigue and generally feeling unwell.

How do we become infected?

contaminated food: sometimes the larvae can sit on vegetables/salads not washed properly (which is why we always recommend washing your fruit & veg with a good quality, low-tox fruit + veg wash)
contaminated water: sometimes exposure to drinking water or exposure from swimming/falling into a lake/river can be enough to ingest larvae.
travel to new places and new foods/water/environments can make you open to exposure to new creatures like parasites.
poor hygiene: contaminated surfaces and touching from hand to mouth.
contact with contaminated soils

Suspect an infestation?

See a Naturopath and / or request a test.

Your Naturopath can help identify if your symptoms indicate a parasite cleanse is needed.

In addition, your Naturopath can issue a stool analysis test for an extensive check on the bugs that live inside you! Some of the key investigations through STOOL testing can identify if you have parasites/worms/bacteria/yeast/fungus that may be at the root cause of symptoms.

Treatment & PARASITE CLEANSES:

There are a few key herbal medicines that target and eradicate parasites and worms.

A personalised blend can be prepared considering your key symptoms. It is recommended to ‘cycle’ the dose. This means that your Naturopath may ask that you take the medicine daily for two weeks and then take a break for two weeks over a 6-week course.

This strategy is important as the parasite community are very clever at ‘hiding’ from the medicine once detected. So, to ‘trick’ the parasites an ambush attack is created-CYCLING the medicine. When the parasites detect the medicine has stopped during the pause period they will re-emerge from hiding.

Then the second round of medicine will complete the full eradication of the infestation.

CASE STUDY: Here is a Parasite Story ! Eeek!

A client with digestive issues and not feeling well had some joint tenderness and wanted some support. Her blood test showed some inflammation and liver tests showed slightly elevated markers.

We started a DETOX program, and she commented that she noted what seemed to be a small worm in her stool 3 weeks into treatment. We embarked on a PARASITE CLEANSE.

One week after taking an herbal blend preparation a large 5cm roundworm appeared in her stool. EEEK! The next thing she did was take a photo and of course I wanted to see it! Impressive!

She had new energy and inflammation settled and her digestion significantly improved. The PARASITE course takes 6 weeks of cycling to ensure to get rid of the eggs and any other suspect parasites and friends.