9 ms·

Stuff like this makes me wonder if I should deworm once a year just to be safe. In the U.S., the recommendation is that "healthy individuals do not need to dewo

Stuff like this makes me wonder if I should deworm once a year just to be safe. In the U.S., the recommendation is that "healthy individuals do not need to deworm". But then I see stats from the CDC on infection rates. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0508-npi.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0508-npi.html - More than 300,000 people living in the United States are infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease - At least 14 percent of the U.S. population has been exposed to Toxocara, the parasite that causes toxocariasis - 60 million U.S. citizens are infected with Toxoplasma Gondii - The Trichomonas parasite is extremely common, affecting 3.7 million people in the United States A healthy individual is far more likely to be asymptomatic if they do have a parasite infection. That makes me question the recommendation for healthy individuals to avoid deworming.

appplication 3y ago
Usually the recommendation to not undergo unnecessary medical action is because the action itself can be not great for you. Killing parasites can be difficult because, unlike most bacteria and viruses, parasites are eukaryotic (same as us). This means drugs designed to target parasites may also be likely to target our cells to some degree. Most of the time treatment is fine, but in some people the side effects can be quite severe. This is the root of the recommendation to not do so unless you know you have a reason to.
- arcticfox 3y ago
  Other countries recommend routine deworming. So it must be a fairly close call. And honestly I am very pro-science but the “do no harm” bias in medicine makes me fundamentally question a lot of the recommendations. If it was just slightly better to deworm, do you think they’d recommend it? And then face accusations after any side effects (even if it was statistically the right call to do).
  - jabroni_salad 3y ago
    Those countries have very different risk factors. How many people in your community would you say do not have access to a plumbed toilet? clean water?
    - xp84 3y ago
      Not trolling, but in certain cities the amount of human waste in the streets suggests the answer could be far from zero. These unsanitary conditions seem to me to be an additional risk factor that probably wasn't taken into account when the risk factors for 'wealthy countries' were being calculated. IDK whether this is significant to the original question (de-worm or not) because I'm not qualified to speculate, but I think it certainly suggests that at least for some cities, the evidence should be re-evaluated with realistic sanitation conditions in mind.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    > And honestly I am very pro-science but the “do no harm” bias in medicine makes me fundamentally question a lot of the recommendations. It's really not that - people have a fundamental desire to take action to mitigate tail risk even when that action poses more actual risk. You have to look at risk-reward tradeoff across the population. Treating the entire population for a disease very few of them have will almost certainly yield more (and potentially more harmful) realized side-effects than the actual primary effects being caused by the disease itself. Especially when patients aren't seeking treatment, so are most likely asymptomatic. Ditto testing low-risk populations for all sorts of conditions they mostly don't have. Even a test that is 99% accurate in a high-incidence population is going to be utterly ineffective when applied to the general population. Bayes theorem tells us this. The side effects up to and including death of investigating or treating these false positives adds up to a real net-negative situation. If it was even an eency weency bit better to treat in the US I would say they would overwhelmingly do so because they'd be sued into the ground otherwise. tl;dr: especially when it comes to treatments, action is not always better than inaction. Generally, the US medical system tends towards action.
    - landemva 3y ago
      > Even a test that is 99% accurate in a high-incidence population is going to be utterly ineffective when applied to the general population. I read that sentence a few times. 99% accurate seems quite high. WSJ recently opined about the 1-in-5 cancer misdiagnosis rate. https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-sure-you-have-cancer-diagnosis-drug-treatment-trial-drug-383cb293 https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-sure-you-have-cancer-di... "Are You Sure You Have Cancer?"
      - rovolo 3y ago
        The WSJ article is behind a paywall so I can't double check this, but you can have a 99% accurate test with a 20% misdiagnosis rate. The difference is that 99% is per-person, and 20% is per-positive-result. A rare condition will have more false-positives relative to true-positives than the test accuracy would indicate. It's a bit easier to understand if you think of the extreme case: if the disease is completely eliminated than all positives are false-positives.
  - tomtheelder 3y ago
    Firstly, not all worms are created equal. The most common worms in NA and Western Europe (like pinworm) just aren’t that serious. Second, absent actual testing, the risk/reward of deworming is very much a function of the likelihood that you actually have one or more of these worms. That probability is too low in, say, the US to give routing deworming positive expected value. It’s telling that even routine testing isn’t worth the time/cost. Thirdly, it’s not like… _exactly_ clear that all of these parasites are a problem in the first place. Many of them are frequently asymptomatic with negligible long term consequences. There are even those who believe that the near eradication of hookworm and its minor gut immunosuppressive effect in the developed world is the explanation for much higher rates of inflammatory bowel disease. I that one, but the general idea is that a lot of these worms just don’t actually cause much harm. And lastly, deworming medications aren’t exactly a joke. They can have serious risks associated with them. Overall it just doesn’t make any sense to routinely deworm in the developed world.
  - autokad 3y ago
    it actually has nothing to do with individual patient health. The reason why 'we' don't recommend it is because we want to spend money and resources on others. Its about cost. providing the cheapest treatment for everyone so that you 'maximize coverage'.
71a54xd 3y ago
I had the same thought!
orangepurple 3y ago
Probably safer to get a cheap CT scan done in Mexico if you are worried about parasites inside your skull than to take dewormers. That said, Ivermectin is a very safe medication that you can try with minimal side effects.
- 71a54xd 3y ago
  You're probably right - however I've recently found a number of papers indicating a heightened risk of parasitic infection post cdiff which I had earlier this year.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  Getting on an airplane, flying to a foreign country, getting a dose of radiation, then flying back is significantly more risky than your risk of having adverse parasitic infections in a developed country. This is a good example of how logic can completely break down in the face of a little bit of medical knowledge about obscure edge case stories.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    But it is a) a nice vacation and b) saver for ypur health (assuming you take a MRT, but then CTs are very low radiation now). All in all better than taking medication without proper indication to do so.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    You’re getting a dose of radiation for the airplane flight anyway might as well pitch an umbrella and a lounger on the beach in Mazatlán while you’re at it
  - orangepurple 3y ago
    All depends on how desperate you are to find out based on your own risk assessment.
ramraj07 3y ago
The medicine iirc is quite harsh on your kidney. And worms aren’t all bad. Your body’s immune system likely welcomes its presence. Our th1-th2 balance is supposed to have evolved with an assumption of helminth infections happening over the course of your life, so having a worm or two is likely a good thing. Supposedly. Don’t go around barefoot in feces to get hook worms. Not anymore than trying to deworm once a week destroying kidneys I suppose.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  I've wanted a Goa'uld for years.
- biogene 3y ago
  >And worms aren’t all bad. Your body’s immune system likely welcomes its presence. Our th1-th2 balance is supposed to have evolved with an assumption of helminth infections happening over the course of your life, so having a worm or two is likely a good thing. Supposedly What is the point of making a claim and then walking it back?
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  > Don’t go around barefoot in feces to get hook worms. You say that, but I've heard at least one story where someone did exactly that (and claimed that it cured their allergies and asthma): https://www.thisamericanlife.org/404/enemy-camp-2010/act-three-0 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/404/enemy-camp-2010/act-thr... I'll personally stick to allergy shots, though.
  - kortex 3y ago
    I did years of allergy shots (environmental), it helped a middling amount. When it came to dog and cat allergy, I could have gone for several more years of inconvenient shots. Instead, I got a self-applied treatment of Necator americanus that I found through the helminth therapy wiki. I found a marked improvement in my pet allergies, which is great since I live with a cat and two dogs now. It's not a cure but a marked reduction in symptoms. I used to have to take fexofenadine basically daily. Now I only need it under extreme conditions. I'm sure the worms have long since died off and I may need to re-up.
Aurornis 3y ago
There is no single “deworming” medicine, and the treatments to cover actual infections of some of those come with significant side effects and risks. Even treating an (unlikely) real acute infection can cause a cascade of inflammatory responses that can kill a person if not monitored by medical professionals. The idea of deworming in healthy individuals in developed countries is the domain of alternative medicine, where people tend to use questionable supplements or under dosed pharmaceuticals for peace of mind. However, even antibiotics aren’t as safe as some of these people think. One of my acquaintances died following complications of antibiotics that he purchased over the internet and self-administered. It was a rare outcome of using the antibiotic, but statistically it was several orders of magnitude more likely to cause problems than the condition he thought he was self-treating.
- russdill 3y ago
  Yup, and in general, the more benign the parasite, the more benign the treatment.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  It’s the ingrained thought that one can preemptively control outside forces on one’s health. That because there’s more than 1, the statistic must mean, me too. My recommendation is if you feel like you want piece of mind, to talk to your doctor about it. If your doctor recommends a treatment, follow it. Don’t just buy deworming medication because you fear you might have worms.
  - throwing_away 3y ago
    > My recommendation is if you feel like you want piece of mind, to talk to your doctor about it. If your doctor recommends a treatment, follow it. I don't know anything about worms, but I'm very certain that I could choose a doctor that would recommend treatment or one that would not, depending on what I've already decided I want.
    - mcguire 3y ago
      Most advice is given in the spirit of good faith, that you are not actually trying to hurt yourself. Further, if you do pick your doctor based on the fact that they will give you the treatment you want, at least someone other than you knows that you are taking medications with potentially bad side effects.
ransom1538 3y ago
[flagged]
- vikramkr 3y ago
  That is going to wreck your microbiome and if you aren't taking full dosages to kill everything each time you massively increase the already elevated risk of antibiotic resistance. Don't do this and if you're doing this definitely don't just take "some" - always finish the FULL antibiotic dose. But remember that you're massively weakening a system that you need to stay healthy each time
- IntrepidWorm 3y ago
  As a person who lives in an area known to have Lyme, and as an avid hiker, it is not hard to do tick checks periodically. Ticks don't embed immediately, and generally there is a window of several hours up to about half a day where you can remove a tick safely with little to no danger of infection. Even then, not all ticks carry Lyme, and not all Lyme infected ticks will pass on the disease. If you do find an embedded tick, monitor the site after removing and disinfecting. Talk to a doctor. Getting treated for Lyme the moment symptoms become apparent (the characteristic bullseye) is going to be much better for your health (and everyone elses) than preemptively guzzling Amoxicillin every year.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  Honestly Lyme disease is blown way out of proportion. It’s not all that hard to check for ticks to avoid it, and the course of the disease with treatment really just isn’t particularly serious for most who get it. There’s even growing skepticism around the presence of some of the reported sequelae. The big things if you are in a Lyme disease area are to check for ticks and just go to the doctor if you either have the rash or symptoms. Regularly taking antibiotics is awful for your gut health, somewhat risky from an antibiotic resistance perspective, definitely risky from a C Diff perspective, and probably wouldn’t even help very much since you do need to take them somewhat promptly after infection.
- Roark66 3y ago
  As someone living in an area with lots of Lyme disease and tick borne encephalitis I recommend everyone in the same boat to get a vaccine for TBE. It's not expensive and it can save your life. At least with Lyme, if you notice it you can get pretty good treatment. There is no specific treatment for TBE. You're either lucky or you end up disabled for life or dead. Also, there are over the counter blood tests for Lyme. I buy one at least once a year just in case. Finally, let me comment on the practice of "tick testing". Many people (including myself) want to send their ticks for testing to various labs that claim "24h results" and modern methods. Unfortunately such testing is a bit pointless, because most ticks in endemic areas are infected and still one can get lots of infected ticks and be fine if they are removed quickly.
mint2 3y ago
As the article says on deworming, it’s not so simple: “Some medications for example could trigger inflammation as the larvae died off. An inflammation can be harmful to organs such as the brain, so they also needed to administer medications to counteract any dangerous side-effects.”
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rhplus 3y ago
If you’ve got kids in a daycare, then there’s a good chance your family may end up with pinworms at some point, which can stick around for months due to their lifecycles. If you get it though, you’ll know.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  That got me to google pinworms and related symptoms. Firstly, gross. Secondly, I'm surprised I've never heard about it before as we raised two kids through daycares, then pre-schools, and elementary school seemingly without ever getting it and not ever even hearing about it.
TrainedMonkey 3y ago
That is pretty sketchy data. However, deworming once a year might be an overkill. What is the health cost of deworming to individual? What is the cost to the environment?
postalrat 3y ago
Are you looking to have a dead worm in your brain? Because this is how people end up with dead worms in their brain.
- BossingAround 3y ago
  Is an alive worm in one's brain better?
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    possibly? a dead worm will start decaying. a rotting worm in your brain could easily lead to a sepsis state in one of the organs least able to deal with it.
    - giardini 3y ago
      The worm won't live forever -- eventually it will die and your body will have to deal with it.
      - taftster 3y ago
        Maybe it will try to make an escape before it dies? Honest question. Like for reproductive purposes?
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
Except ironically there's a theory that a lack of parasitic infections may contribute to autoimmune diseases: https://focus.science.ubc.ca/worms-ae3a1579c58c https://focus.science.ubc.ca/worms-ae3a1579c58c Humanity evolved with parasites. Like gut bacteria, excessive focus on hygeine may be more harmful than helpful.
- gigglesupstairs 3y ago
  As someone who grew up in mud and all kinds of filth while playing in a (stereo)typical Indian city, I have to say this makes sense. We kids were just left to play by themselves for hours at a time while we made merry in the dirtiest streets. Nobody was “clean”. There were open drains everywhere and let’s just say that a ball going into those drains never stopped an exciting game of gully cricket. And, this was most of India not just us.
bayouborne 3y ago
'60 million U.S. citizens are infected with Toxoplasma Gondii' US 2023 pop >> 340M .. so about 1 in 4 people you randomly interact with are allied beings.
anon84873628 3y ago
Yeah, this seems like a fairly reasonable precaution. Yet most doctors will think you are crazy and not entertain the idea.
giardini 3y ago
rybosworld says >"In the U.S., the recommendation is that "healthy individuals do not need to deworm"."< You quote something but provide no source. I believe the quote is at least not wise and probably is incorrect. People should periodically be checked for parasites. Otherwise they may be writing posts to YC under the influence of a worm!8-) Butt seriously, many individuals in the USA have worms. When I was a child in the southwest USA we were tested at least once a year for parasites including worms. That was decades ago. Yet today the topsoil is the same, the plants and animals are the same and the parasites remain. Children still put their hands into dirt, eat dirt and sand, and touch everything. Gardeners are just as bad. I had worms as a child and I likely catch them now and again. I take care of it. Some people "deworm" themselves in their work: e.g., ivermectin products are often applied to animals' skin. That ivermectin clears many parasites from the cowboy as well as from the cow.

appplication 3y ago

Usually the recommendation to not undergo unnecessary medical action is because the action itself can be not great for you. Killing parasites can be difficult because, unlike most bacteria and viruses, parasites are eukaryotic (same as us). This means drugs designed to target parasites may also be likely to target our cells to some degree. Most of the time treatment is fine, but in some people the side effects can be quite severe. This is the root of the recommendation to not do so unless you know you have a reason to.

arcticfox 3y ago
Other countries recommend routine deworming. So it must be a fairly close call. And honestly I am very pro-science but the “do no harm” bias in medicine makes me fundamentally question a lot of the recommendations. If it was just slightly better to deworm, do you think they’d recommend it? And then face accusations after any side effects (even if it was statistically the right call to do).
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  Those countries have very different risk factors. How many people in your community would you say do not have access to a plumbed toilet? clean water?
  - xp84 3y ago
    Not trolling, but in certain cities the amount of human waste in the streets suggests the answer could be far from zero. These unsanitary conditions seem to me to be an additional risk factor that probably wasn't taken into account when the risk factors for 'wealthy countries' were being calculated. IDK whether this is significant to the original question (de-worm or not) because I'm not qualified to speculate, but I think it certainly suggests that at least for some cities, the evidence should be re-evaluated with realistic sanitation conditions in mind.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > And honestly I am very pro-science but the “do no harm” bias in medicine makes me fundamentally question a lot of the recommendations. It's really not that - people have a fundamental desire to take action to mitigate tail risk even when that action poses more actual risk. You have to look at risk-reward tradeoff across the population. Treating the entire population for a disease very few of them have will almost certainly yield more (and potentially more harmful) realized side-effects than the actual primary effects being caused by the disease itself. Especially when patients aren't seeking treatment, so are most likely asymptomatic. Ditto testing low-risk populations for all sorts of conditions they mostly don't have. Even a test that is 99% accurate in a high-incidence population is going to be utterly ineffective when applied to the general population. Bayes theorem tells us this. The side effects up to and including death of investigating or treating these false positives adds up to a real net-negative situation. If it was even an eency weency bit better to treat in the US I would say they would overwhelmingly do so because they'd be sued into the ground otherwise. tl;dr: especially when it comes to treatments, action is not always better than inaction. Generally, the US medical system tends towards action.
  - landemva 3y ago
    > Even a test that is 99% accurate in a high-incidence population is going to be utterly ineffective when applied to the general population. I read that sentence a few times. 99% accurate seems quite high. WSJ recently opined about the 1-in-5 cancer misdiagnosis rate. https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-sure-you-have-cancer-diagnosis-drug-treatment-trial-drug-383cb293 https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-sure-you-have-cancer-di... "Are You Sure You Have Cancer?"
    - rovolo 3y ago
      The WSJ article is behind a paywall so I can't double check this, but you can have a 99% accurate test with a 20% misdiagnosis rate. The difference is that 99% is per-person, and 20% is per-positive-result. A rare condition will have more false-positives relative to true-positives than the test accuracy would indicate. It's a bit easier to understand if you think of the extreme case: if the disease is completely eliminated than all positives are false-positives.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  Firstly, not all worms are created equal. The most common worms in NA and Western Europe (like pinworm) just aren’t that serious. Second, absent actual testing, the risk/reward of deworming is very much a function of the likelihood that you actually have one or more of these worms. That probability is too low in, say, the US to give routing deworming positive expected value. It’s telling that even routine testing isn’t worth the time/cost. Thirdly, it’s not like… _exactly_ clear that all of these parasites are a problem in the first place. Many of them are frequently asymptomatic with negligible long term consequences. There are even those who believe that the near eradication of hookworm and its minor gut immunosuppressive effect in the developed world is the explanation for much higher rates of inflammatory bowel disease. I that one, but the general idea is that a lot of these worms just don’t actually cause much harm. And lastly, deworming medications aren’t exactly a joke. They can have serious risks associated with them. Overall it just doesn’t make any sense to routinely deworm in the developed world.
- autokad 3y ago
  it actually has nothing to do with individual patient health. The reason why 'we' don't recommend it is because we want to spend money and resources on others. Its about cost. providing the cheapest treatment for everyone so that you 'maximize coverage'.

71a54xd 3y ago

I had the same thought!

orangepurple 3y ago

Probably safer to get a cheap CT scan done in Mexico if you are worried about parasites inside your skull than to take dewormers. That said, Ivermectin is a very safe medication that you can try with minimal side effects.

71a54xd 3y ago
You're probably right - however I've recently found a number of papers indicating a heightened risk of parasitic infection post cdiff which I had earlier this year.
Aurornis 3y ago
Getting on an airplane, flying to a foreign country, getting a dose of radiation, then flying back is significantly more risky than your risk of having adverse parasitic infections in a developed country. This is a good example of how logic can completely break down in the face of a little bit of medical knowledge about obscure edge case stories.
- hef19898 3y ago
  But it is a) a nice vacation and b) saver for ypur health (assuming you take a MRT, but then CTs are very low radiation now). All in all better than taking medication without proper indication to do so.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  You’re getting a dose of radiation for the airplane flight anyway might as well pitch an umbrella and a lounger on the beach in Mazatlán while you’re at it
- orangepurple 3y ago
  All depends on how desperate you are to find out based on your own risk assessment.

ramraj07 3y ago

The medicine iirc is quite harsh on your kidney. And worms aren’t all bad. Your body’s immune system likely welcomes its presence. Our th1-th2 balance is supposed to have evolved with an assumption of helminth infections happening over the course of your life, so having a worm or two is likely a good thing. Supposedly. Don’t go around barefoot in feces to get hook worms. Not anymore than trying to deworm once a week destroying kidneys I suppose.

datavirtue 3y ago
I've wanted a Goa'uld for years.
biogene 3y ago
>And worms aren’t all bad. Your body’s immune system likely welcomes its presence. Our th1-th2 balance is supposed to have evolved with an assumption of helminth infections happening over the course of your life, so having a worm or two is likely a good thing. Supposedly What is the point of making a claim and then walking it back?
spondylosaurus 3y ago
> Don’t go around barefoot in feces to get hook worms. You say that, but I've heard at least one story where someone did exactly that (and claimed that it cured their allergies and asthma): https://www.thisamericanlife.org/404/enemy-camp-2010/act-three-0 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/404/enemy-camp-2010/act-thr... I'll personally stick to allergy shots, though.
- kortex 3y ago
  I did years of allergy shots (environmental), it helped a middling amount. When it came to dog and cat allergy, I could have gone for several more years of inconvenient shots. Instead, I got a self-applied treatment of Necator americanus that I found through the helminth therapy wiki. I found a marked improvement in my pet allergies, which is great since I live with a cat and two dogs now. It's not a cure but a marked reduction in symptoms. I used to have to take fexofenadine basically daily. Now I only need it under extreme conditions. I'm sure the worms have long since died off and I may need to re-up.

Aurornis 3y ago

There is no single “deworming” medicine, and the treatments to cover actual infections of some of those come with significant side effects and risks. Even treating an (unlikely) real acute infection can cause a cascade of inflammatory responses that can kill a person if not monitored by medical professionals. The idea of deworming in healthy individuals in developed countries is the domain of alternative medicine, where people tend to use questionable supplements or under dosed pharmaceuticals for peace of mind. However, even antibiotics aren’t as safe as some of these people think. One of my acquaintances died following complications of antibiotics that he purchased over the internet and self-administered. It was a rare outcome of using the antibiotic, but statistically it was several orders of magnitude more likely to cause problems than the condition he thought he was self-treating.

russdill 3y ago
Yup, and in general, the more benign the parasite, the more benign the treatment.
gabereiser 3y ago
It’s the ingrained thought that one can preemptively control outside forces on one’s health. That because there’s more than 1, the statistic must mean, me too. My recommendation is if you feel like you want piece of mind, to talk to your doctor about it. If your doctor recommends a treatment, follow it. Don’t just buy deworming medication because you fear you might have worms.
- throwing_away 3y ago
  > My recommendation is if you feel like you want piece of mind, to talk to your doctor about it. If your doctor recommends a treatment, follow it. I don't know anything about worms, but I'm very certain that I could choose a doctor that would recommend treatment or one that would not, depending on what I've already decided I want.
  - mcguire 3y ago
    Most advice is given in the spirit of good faith, that you are not actually trying to hurt yourself. Further, if you do pick your doctor based on the fact that they will give you the treatment you want, at least someone other than you knows that you are taking medications with potentially bad side effects.

ransom1538 3y ago

[flagged]

vikramkr 3y ago
That is going to wreck your microbiome and if you aren't taking full dosages to kill everything each time you massively increase the already elevated risk of antibiotic resistance. Don't do this and if you're doing this definitely don't just take "some" - always finish the FULL antibiotic dose. But remember that you're massively weakening a system that you need to stay healthy each time
IntrepidWorm 3y ago
As a person who lives in an area known to have Lyme, and as an avid hiker, it is not hard to do tick checks periodically. Ticks don't embed immediately, and generally there is a window of several hours up to about half a day where you can remove a tick safely with little to no danger of infection. Even then, not all ticks carry Lyme, and not all Lyme infected ticks will pass on the disease. If you do find an embedded tick, monitor the site after removing and disinfecting. Talk to a doctor. Getting treated for Lyme the moment symptoms become apparent (the characteristic bullseye) is going to be much better for your health (and everyone elses) than preemptively guzzling Amoxicillin every year.
tomtheelder 3y ago
Honestly Lyme disease is blown way out of proportion. It’s not all that hard to check for ticks to avoid it, and the course of the disease with treatment really just isn’t particularly serious for most who get it. There’s even growing skepticism around the presence of some of the reported sequelae. The big things if you are in a Lyme disease area are to check for ticks and just go to the doctor if you either have the rash or symptoms. Regularly taking antibiotics is awful for your gut health, somewhat risky from an antibiotic resistance perspective, definitely risky from a C Diff perspective, and probably wouldn’t even help very much since you do need to take them somewhat promptly after infection.
Roark66 3y ago
As someone living in an area with lots of Lyme disease and tick borne encephalitis I recommend everyone in the same boat to get a vaccine for TBE. It's not expensive and it can save your life. At least with Lyme, if you notice it you can get pretty good treatment. There is no specific treatment for TBE. You're either lucky or you end up disabled for life or dead. Also, there are over the counter blood tests for Lyme. I buy one at least once a year just in case. Finally, let me comment on the practice of "tick testing". Many people (including myself) want to send their ticks for testing to various labs that claim "24h results" and modern methods. Unfortunately such testing is a bit pointless, because most ticks in endemic areas are infected and still one can get lots of infected ticks and be fine if they are removed quickly.

mint2 3y ago

As the article says on deworming, it’s not so simple: “Some medications for example could trigger inflammation as the larvae died off. An inflammation can be harmful to organs such as the brain, so they also needed to administer medications to counteract any dangerous side-effects.”

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rhplus 3y ago

If you’ve got kids in a daycare, then there’s a good chance your family may end up with pinworms at some point, which can stick around for months due to their lifecycles. If you get it though, you’ll know.

sokoloff 3y ago
That got me to google pinworms and related symptoms. Firstly, gross. Secondly, I'm surprised I've never heard about it before as we raised two kids through daycares, then pre-schools, and elementary school seemingly without ever getting it and not ever even hearing about it.

TrainedMonkey 3y ago

That is pretty sketchy data. However, deworming once a year might be an overkill. What is the health cost of deworming to individual? What is the cost to the environment?

postalrat 3y ago

Are you looking to have a dead worm in your brain? Because this is how people end up with dead worms in their brain.

BossingAround 3y ago
Is an alive worm in one's brain better?
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  possibly? a dead worm will start decaying. a rotting worm in your brain could easily lead to a sepsis state in one of the organs least able to deal with it.
  - giardini 3y ago
    The worm won't live forever -- eventually it will die and your body will have to deal with it.
    - taftster 3y ago
      Maybe it will try to make an escape before it dies? Honest question. Like for reproductive purposes?

BaseballPhysics 3y ago

Except ironically there's a theory that a lack of parasitic infections may contribute to autoimmune diseases: https://focus.science.ubc.ca/worms-ae3a1579c58c https://focus.science.ubc.ca/worms-ae3a1579c58c Humanity evolved with parasites. Like gut bacteria, excessive focus on hygeine may be more harmful than helpful.

gigglesupstairs 3y ago
As someone who grew up in mud and all kinds of filth while playing in a (stereo)typical Indian city, I have to say this makes sense. We kids were just left to play by themselves for hours at a time while we made merry in the dirtiest streets. Nobody was “clean”. There were open drains everywhere and let’s just say that a ball going into those drains never stopped an exciting game of gully cricket. And, this was most of India not just us.

bayouborne 3y ago

'60 million U.S. citizens are infected with Toxoplasma Gondii' US 2023 pop >> 340M .. so about 1 in 4 people you randomly interact with are allied beings.

anon84873628 3y ago

Yeah, this seems like a fairly reasonable precaution. Yet most doctors will think you are crazy and not entertain the idea.

giardini 3y ago

rybosworld says >"In the U.S., the recommendation is that "healthy individuals do not need to deworm"."< You quote something but provide no source. I believe the quote is at least not wise and probably is incorrect. People should periodically be checked for parasites. Otherwise they may be writing posts to YC under the influence of a worm!8-) Butt seriously, many individuals in the USA have worms. When I was a child in the southwest USA we were tested at least once a year for parasites including worms. That was decades ago. Yet today the topsoil is the same, the plants and animals are the same and the parasites remain. Children still put their hands into dirt, eat dirt and sand, and touch everything. Gardeners are just as bad. I had worms as a child and I likely catch them now and again. I take care of it. Some people "deworm" themselves in their work: e.g., ivermectin products are often applied to animals' skin. That ivermectin clears many parasites from the cowboy as well as from the cow.