Parasites Cleanses: A Fad for PTs to Know About

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, PT, DPT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, CNPT, Cert-DN

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Here's the transcript:

Hey, it's Dr. Wells here from St. Augustine Beach, Florida. Just wanted to talk today about parasites and how there's a popular trend going around for parasite cleaning. In fact, one of my wife's friends were bringing it up and just thought I would kind of touch on some of the research on it.

There's definitely some sort of trends going around that there's a fear that certain parasites can cause issues like inflammation, allergies, skin problems, fatigue. I guess the notion is that you could take some herbal concoction and sort of shed them. There's some research looking at pumpkin seed and things and fibers that will sort of push some of the worms out of the intestines and things.

Overall, the research shows that if you have intestinal worms, you probably would know about it. You would be really ill. You'd have leukocytosis.

You'd have multiple problems with bloating, weight loss, and things like that. Usually, it's linked to not only those marked symptoms but some type of travel, particularly overseas. For the most part, here in America, in the westernized world, we're pretty good in terms of parasites, like trichinosis was well-controlled in pork.

Even those that maybe say, oh, I had a parasite from sushi or something, usually our healthy bodies can flush those out and take care of those on their own. The big risk with this is that those herbs are completely unregulated. You don't know what's going into them.

Some of them actually may even contain active ingredients. That's kind of a scary thing to think about. Even if you think it's an herb, it may not be something that your body can tolerate.

You may be allergic to it as well. It's funny how these trends go. There's people that want to deworm.

Now, there's research in the peer-reviewed literature that there's people actually adding worms into their gut. The idea there is that the worms add an extra layer of biodiversity or something like that. It seems like I can never stay up with the trends.

It's trending to be dewormed. It's trending to be wormed. I think the best case scenario is just eat good food, healthy food.

If you feel ill, go to the physician and talk to them and have them run some blood work. Otherwise, stay clear of the TikTok and the Instagram influencers. Have a good day.

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