Parasites: Symptoms, Testing and Eradication

Hello and welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons. Today on the show, I'm doing a deep dive on parasites with Dr. Raphael D'Angelo, MD, who is a retired holistic medical doctor who provides thorough parasite testing through his business Para Wellness. Dr. D'Angelo has over 45 years experience in medical microbiology and parasitology. Cytology and conducts research in various aspects of infectious diseases. He's certified in integrative holistic medicine, medical technology, and clinical aromatherapy, and he practices as a Native American medicine man. But before we get to the show, just a quick reminder that I would really appreciate your support on Patreon. You can find the link in the show notes or go to patreon.com/theperfectstool. And my specialty is helping women lose weight without cutting calories or giving up any major food groups, so it's done in a healthy and sustainable way so the weight you lose stays off for life. So if you're needing some help in that area, you can set up a free 1-hour breakthrough session with me. There's a link in the show notes for that, or you can go to HighDesertHealthCoaching.com and look under Work With Me Health Coaching. Now on to the show. Welcome, Dr. D'Angelo, and thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. It's an honor to be able to talk with you and the audience.

So let's start by asking a very simple question, which is, what is a parasite?

Well, a parasite would be anything that derives its life substance or ability to reproduce from some other organism. That's a very basic definition.

And in the human gut, what types of parasites, what, you know, families, phyla, etc., do they fall into?

Well, there's so many things that can come through the gut, obviously. Because that's how we interface with our environment. But in general, you're going to have the possibility of getting worms, and worms can come in different sizes and, and shapes. You have roundworms, you have flatworms, you have what are called flukes, and then you have protozoas. Now, protozoas are most numerous throughout the environment, especially in in water. And so we can have quite a few different types of protozoa. And then of course there's protozoa carried by insects, like malaria for instance. So those are some of the things that we, we are aware of. I'm sure there's actually parasites being discovered every year that we never knew about that are written up by people in the parasite journals. So for the average person, one has to consider that they could be suffering from some type of worm or some type of protozoa. That's generally what I find in the testing that I do.

And where is— is a protozoa— is that a whole other kingdom?

Yeah, it is. It— these are one-celled organisms. Okay, protozoa are one-celled organisms. And they reproduce in different ways, predominantly by binary fission, which means they separate into two where there was originally one. And they're, they're just scattered throughout nature. In my practice of testing, I would say that for every out of 10 patients, 9 will have protozoa and one may have protozoa and a worm.

Okay.

That gives you some idea of the frequency a little bit.

Okay. So that means basically 10 out of 10 have parasites in your testing.

Right.

Okay. So in other words, pretty much everybody has parasites, at least those who are coming to you for testing.

Right. I would say this, that There are— if we were to examine healthy— a healthy population, we would probably find 1 or 2 types of protozoa in most everybody in small amounts.

And are they causing problems?

It's not causing problems. These are healthy people. They don't have any gut issues. They don't have any problems. And these may be transient. They come in, they live a little bit, and then they're passed out. And this, this happens. But the types of people that I work with have problems. They're usually having a lot of gut issues of one kind or another. And in these folks, I rarely find someone that doesn't have a parasite.

Okay, well, we'll get into some of the details of all that in a minute. But I'm going to ask you, how did you end up doing lab testing for parasites?

Well, I'm glad you asked that question. I— what happened to me after high school is I joined the Air Force, the U.S. Air Force. And they in turn made me a medic, and then from a medic they made me what is called a medical technologist. This is a person who does laboratory testing in hospitals and clinics on patients so the doctors can have a better idea of what's going on. And I did this and was also assigned to Vietnam for a year in a big hospital there, and I did parasite work and microbiology work. For a whole year, and it fascinated me. And I saw things that I'll never see again, some of the things that the GIs and some of the natives came in with. But when I got out of the military from that enlistment, I went into medical school with the idea of being a pathologist, which is a specialist that analyzes lab tests and tissue samples and was going to go into that field. But I also loved working with people, so I kind of compromised and became a family physician that also did a lot of lab work. And that's kind of how I got involved. The parasite part kind of took a little bit of a backstep because I had not a lot of time. To do lab tests, although I tried to as often as I could. And when I retired, I realized that there was a real need for good parasite testing because that's something that I was disappointed with in my work here in the United States as a physician looking for gut issues. We rarely ever had a positive parasite test.

And so why do you think that is?

Well, in my work in the lab, I find that there's a lot of issues in the microbiology department that does not involve doing parasite testing. There's bacterial testing, virus testing, fungus testing, all kinds of tests that have to be done. And the idea of parasites being a real problem in the United States is— does not really have a priority in the minds of doctors and the lab tests, the lab technicians that, that actually do the testing. So it's kind of a low priority test to begin with in labs. Then on top of that, labs have had to struggle with personnel departing for other jobs, and they've brought in a lot of inexperienced technicians lab techs of one kind or another to do a lot of the menial tasks. And I think bottom line is, is that they are looking for parasites, but they don't spend a lot of time, and they may not be as familiar with some of the deviant ways in which a parasite may look under the microscope. So I think that a combination of doctors really not thinking that there's a parasite problem in the US, and lab technicians not really spending a lot of time looking for it because they never find them anyway. That's really what's happened. So that's why I felt when I retired that this is an area that needs to be really looked at, and, and that's why I do what I do.

Okay. And so how do you do lab testing without being an official lab?

Well, by skills and tech— I have all of the skills and technology to do a lab test, and I find that there are standards that we have to follow that are put out by the CDC and other organizations, and we have to follow certain procedures for health and safety. And following all of those aspects, that's how one can do a lab test. As far as me, I am not considered a medical lab. I am considered a private program of research. And so people, they come to me through a private mechanism as opposed to like going to a public lab.

So it's not covered by insurance?

It's not covered by insurance. We try to keep the cost as low as we can to get an accurate result to the person, and, and that's how we kind of try to keep the cost down because I know they're paying out of pocket, right?

So you mentioned the deviant way that parasites can hide in the human gut. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, I can say that when I look at a parasite under the microscope, I'm seeing what has been produced in a sample that's been sent to me in a preservative that I supply. To the, to the person. And I am having to decide what I am looking at. Is this representative of what's up there in their gut? And so we find that actually we can see one form of a parasite. Let's take an example, a common parasite that some people— the name may be familiar— called Giardia. Giardia is pretty universally present in many animal populations, and it's certainly in the soil and water in what— in the wilds, and it gets into our reservoirs of water that we ultimately will consume. When it gets into the body and into the intestinal tract, the organism will be in one form, and, and then when they— it is passed out into the stool and hits a preservative, it forms an entirely different form. So the trophozoite is the active form that is infective in the, in the gut. And when it gets into the stool and under my microscope, it's a round ball, which we call a cyst. So that's one example of how A parasite actually in its infective stage is one form, but in its diagnostic stage where we can actually see it, it's in a totally different form.

Now you said it's in the form of a cyst. How large would that cyst be?

Well, they are different sizes depending on the different protozoan parasites. You would say, uh, maybe, uh 5 to 7 microns. Well, what's a micron? That's a very, very, very, very tiny measurement. It's— you can't see it with the naked eye. A red blood cell is considered to be about 7 microns in diameter. And so some cysts are smaller, some are about the same size, and many of them are a little larger.

I asked because someone told me a story where she had just— well, Candida, I guess, was the primary issue she kept treating for and just kept hitting harder and harder with, with, um, the antifungals. And then she said one day she passed two round embryo-looking things that were like a half inch wide. Does that sound like a parasite?

Well, it could be. It's hard to know. I get a lot of pictures from folks saying, is this a parasite? And most of the time you can't tell because either the— it's not close enough up to see it well, or it's out of focus, or it looks like it might be, but you just don't know unless you can stretch it out and kind of dissect it apart. I get a lot of folks that say, I've been passing eggs. If you're passing eggs, they are not parasite eggs. I don't know what you have, but they're not parasite Parasites wouldn't be able to see microscopic. Okay, let's see them.

Got it.

Yeah.

So sorry for this brief interruption, but you'll want to hear this. So as a podcaster on gut health, I get occasional requests to try out new products, and I agreed to try out this bread from Uprising Food that they call the Keto Cube. So it's made of 8 ingredients, you know, healthy things, the primary 3 being flaxseed, psyllium husk, and almond meal. If you're not familiar with psyllium husk, that's spelled P-S-Y-L-L-I-U-M, and it's what I recommend to many clients who need more fiber to help either with constipation or with soft stool, because fiber helps them both. And this bread has 2/3 of a tablespoon of psyllium husk per slice. So basically the bread is sold in a cube and you can cut it into 8 slices, and each slice has only 2 net grams of carbs, which means when you take your, your total carbs and you subtract your fiber, you get your net carbs. So if you're on a ketogenic diet, you could have 2 slices of this bread and only have 4 grams net carbs. But if you're just a regular person and you want more fiber in your diet, which we all need because we all fall far short of the recommended daily allowance for fiber of 25 grams for women and 30 to 38 for men, each slice has 9 grams of fiber, about half of which is soluble and half is insoluble. So a lot of gut issues can be solved by eating more fiber. So this is one possible solution. Also good to slip into your kids because kids are notorious for not eating their vegetables or high fiber foods. In terms of taste, I like the taste. It's a little sour but not too much. I'm not a fan of sourdough bread, and I'd say this is less sour than sourdough bread. And the texture is like a nice spongy bread, like normal bread tests, or maybe a hair, a hair, um, more dense, I guess, than the regular bread. The only drawback I would say is there's a little bit of a sandy crunch on a few bites per slice, and it would— that comes from the flaxseed. No, I don't mean like when you bite down it's like pure sand. I mean like you get one grain of sand in a few of the bites per slice, but it's definitely not a deterrent enough for me to not crave the bread, which I do. And I have to admit that once I started eating it, my stool did solidify a good bit more. And I'm always in the midst of trying a lot of different supplements on my gut, so I know I'm not a great test case for anything. But I did notice that when I started it, and I tried not to start or stop anything right away, although I have since, you know, taken some other stuff, but it has stayed that way. So they do have this 3-day toast cleanse challenge where you only eat their bread with some optional toppings for 3 days to clean out your system. So if any of you at the point where you're willing to try just about anything, you could give that a go. And if you do, I would love for you to write me and tell me how it went. And so anyway, you can find the bread at uprisingfood.com or check it out in the show notes. Check out the link in the show notes. I'm not getting anything if you buy the bread, so other than the 2 loaves they have already sent me, so you can trust me that this was my unbiased review of it. So yeah, give that a try. And now back to the show. So what are the most common parasites that you're finding in, in the samples you examine?

Well, there's, there's a lot of different kinds in the protozoa category, and I can kind of go through that if you, if you think that would be helpful.

Sure.

Let's kind of look at them. First of all, the most common protozoan parasite worldwide in other than malaria would be an organism called Blastocystis hominis, and this is found in the human intestinal tract. I find it in most people that have protozoan parasites. At least this one seems to be present a lot. It's found in contaminated food or water, can be transmitted from person to person, but you need to have terrible hygiene habits for that to happen. This can cause things like diarrhea, abdominal cramping. Occasionally, you know, they'll complain of nausea. Rarely do you have fever, but you could have some abdominal pain. And a lot of these people have irritable bowel syndrome. This is one of the things that we're seeing in the medical literature that's reported Lots of, of blastocystis is found with people that have been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. It has not really caused much trouble with obstruction of the intestine. This, that would be extremely rare. But there have been a few cases where people with arthritis that get swelling around the joints, the doctor goes in with a needle and pulls out the fluid. And when the the lab looks at the fluid, they find this particular parasite, Blastocystis, has been present in some infective arthritis conditions.

So are they looking for that? Is that part of the typical—

they would stumble upon it because you're looking, of course, to see if there's a bacterial infection.

Oh, okay. So is that a common way of testing when someone has arthritis?

If they pull out fluid from a joint then that goes to the lab and the lab will look at it under the microscope.

But do they typically pull out fluid when someone has arthritis?

No, it would have to be a real swollen joint.

Oh, okay. So it wouldn't be like the typical swelling. It would be like—

No, just a little painful joint with a little redness and inflammation. They don't put a needle in there usually.

And should they?

No, not necessarily. If what they call an effusion, that's a real big swelling of fluid around a joint. They got to pull the fluid off anyway, and they'll send it to the lab to have it looked at.

Yeah. So I've heard that Blastocystis hominis is notoriously difficult to eradicate. Do you, do you have a protocol that treats that?

I do. It is hard, no matter whether you use prescriptions or natural alternative methods. I use— being retired, I don't prescribe, but I've been very familiar over the years with So using various alternative botanicals and things of that nature.

And which botanicals are successful in eradicating it?

Well, it's combinations of things. There's— it's not like one drug types of treatments which we're more familiar with in traditional medicine, right? You have to combine things to work at it, and I generally combine a silver type preparation with a mixture of essential oils, and sometimes I bring in liquid preparations of herbs as well. So those are the things that I will combine to treat just about any of the parasites that I find, if we're going, you know, a more natural route.

And how long will the treatment take?

Well, that's a great question, you know. Here in the United States, a prescription is given. It's usually for, in some cases, one dose. In other cases, you take it for a week or two. But I find that sometimes that approach does not get what I call the stragglers. So can you give these types of treatments for a long period of time? Well, if you do, you run the risk of side effects that can really multiply and be a problem and be worse sometimes than the parasite you're trying to get rid of. So traditional medicine is good, and it's a good first step, but sometimes it come— the problem comes back because we didn't get everything. So in the alternative treatments, which I do now, I use 3 months The reason for that has something to do with how parasites work in nature. The moon cycle has a big pull on all bodies of water. Just look at— if you live near the coasts, you have tide charts. The tide will be high at this hour and then 6, 8 hours later, it'll be low or that type of thing. Well, our body also responds in our— the water in our body and the water in our cells also are somewhat under the influence of the pull of the moon. Well, parasites, the same thing is happening to them. And we find that when the moon is going from about— it looks half full to a full moon, and then from full moon to it's lost about half of its light That site— part of the cycle has a big effect on parasite activity. Consequently, they are more active. Therefore, their metabolism increases, and they want to consume more nutrients in order to be more active during that cycle of the moon. This is the best time to treat it because you can give smaller amounts of of what it is you want to use to get rid of them, and they will take it in voraciously. So I use 3 cycles, 3 months, and we start from when the moon is half full all the way through the full moon till the moon is half gone, and that's about a 20-day period. So I do 20 days on of remedies, 10 days off to give the body a little rest, And then we do 20 days on the second month and then 20 days on the third month. So it's a 3-month program. And this is not my invention, actually. I've— I have colleagues in other countries who treat parasites all the time, and some of them only have natural treatments available. And this is how they find that it really seems to work. And also I find that when I'm working with people that want this test, some of them will tell me, you know, when it comes time around the full moon, man, I am really, really sick. I really have a lot of problems. I have more diarrhea, I have more cramps, things of this nature. So I think there's quite a bit to say about timing the treatment to the natural moon cycle that affects the parasites.

So you mentioned blasto is the most common. What else after that?

Okay, well, let's look at some more. There's Cryptosporidium. Are you familiar with that term?

I've heard the name.

Okay, well, Cryptosporidium is an organism. It's a protozoan, and it's a— it's in contaminated water. What is contaminated water? Any water where any type of animal dropping, bird dropping, anything that can get into and dissolve in the water. What we found in the last few years— I'm going to give you an actual situation.

Oh, okay.

I have an actual situation I'd like to share with you.

Sure.

I was doing a lot of parasite work from places on the West Coast, specifically Oregon, Washington. And I was coming up with Cryptosporidium and Giardia a lot, and I was wondering what in the world is going on. I don't see this— I may see it sporadically in other, other samples from other places, but not to the extent I'm seeing it from people that live in that particular area of the Northwest. So I started talking with some of the practitioners and docs out there, and they said, oh yeah, we have, we have a problem with this Giardia and Cryptosporidium because the filtration system for the reservoir water that's going to go into homes, it's just not up to the standards that will completely filter out these parasites.

Wow.

So that was really a surprise to me that we had that going on. The other problem that comes up is that they are not treated by chlorine very well. So you have— now we are letting them into the home water lines, and now we can't kill them with chlorine. And so You know, that could— that's a problem. And I got to thinking about this, why those reservoirs in that part of the country. Well, if you think about it, they were inundated with a lot of floods. And when you have floods, you are washing whatever is on and in the little bit of the topsoil into those reservoirs. Well, all of your animal droppings, bird droppings, and what have you As long as these things have kept— are kept moist, they will live in cold raw water. So at any rate, Cryptosporidium is a bad guy because it's hard to get rid of also.

Let me stop you before you go on about that because I want to talk about the water supply here because I'm sure there's some people thinking, great, so I can't trust my public water supply. What you know, say there has been flooding in your area, is there something extra you can do to protect yourself during those times?

Well, during those times, if you will boil your water for 1 minute for every 1,000 feet of elevation above sea level, you will kill whatever's in that water.

Okay.

It'll be pure water. You can drink it, you can brush your teeth with it, that type of thing.

That's good to know. And how long does it take typically after the flooding to flush those parasites out of the water supply?

Well, that's a hard thing to say because they may still be in that water supply for a long, long time. In South Texas, they've had a lot of rain, a lot of floods, and I'm picking up more Giardia and Cryptosporidium in those areas now.

And is there anything you can do, or like, you know, informing the, the water supply keepers about this, or—

Oh, they know. They know, in fact, in Oregon, for instance, where it was really, really bad, they put out a bulletin saying, "We are revamping our filtration systems, but in the meantime, do whatever you have to do to try to keep your water clear." I mean, that's about how it's—

And can they revamp it to the point of being able to filter them out? Is it a matter of the size of the filter?

It's a matter of the size of the filter. And filtration is how most of your reservoirs throughout the United States filter. They filter out these protozoas and a lot of bacteria and what have you, rough matter. But what you have to do periodically is backflow the filter to clean it, right? That's when things can get through. And You know, nothing is 100%, and so having relatively good clean water is pretty much how most of us drink our water here in the United States. But if you have an under-the-sink reverse osmosis filter, for instance, nothing's going to get through. And that's— that would be a good— that'd be a good investment for people that live in areas where water contamination has been a problem.

And what about like the Brita type filters?

The Brita is not— doesn't have a small enough filter to get rid of protozoa.

Okay.

It's more cleans the water, gets some chemicals out of there, but it's not really set up to filter water. You'd need a 1 or 2 micron filter to get rid of protozoa. And there are some units out there that say that They, they are protozoa-tested and will filter out the water.

Some, some of the just the bottle-type units?

Yeah, well, and even under the counter.

And under the counter, okay, great.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so Cryptosporidium, you were talking about—

Cryptosporidium, I wanted to say about this one that it causes a heck of a lot of diarrhea when people get Cryptosporidium. Diarrhea is almost always present, and this one likes to live in the far upper part of the small intestine. This is an area where bile from the liver comes on down through and joins the intestinal tract to dissolve fats. The Cryptosporidium likes to be right in that particular area, and so it is very hard to find. On a test. I will say that we don't find very many of them if we are looking for them microscopically. There is a test where you can look for particles of the cell wall of the Cryptosporidium and do an antibody test against those particles, and if it comes up positive, that's an indicator that your body has at least very recently been exposed to Cryptosporidium. So I do that test in conjunction with a microscope test for those people that have diarrhea, because I, I want to be sure to catch Cryptosporidium. If I can't find it microscopically, at least I can find it on this other type of test.

Great.

So in, in a normal healthy person who gets Cryptosporidium, they will have a a big bout of diarrhea for maybe 2 weeks, maybe 3, and then it kind of tapers off and they get better. In an immunocompromised person, that'd be somebody with, you know, chronic diseases, diabetes, cancer, things of that nature, they may have a lot more difficulty getting rid of it, and it may become more of a chronic ongoing kind of parasite problem.

So it will naturally pass without any treatment?

It can, it can. Okay, but let's put it this way: 10 to 15 bowel movements a day where you have to rush to the bathroom to go, it's not very conducive to having a job and working.

Okay, so it's that kind of diarrhea.

They go to their doctor and they say, what's going on?

Right, right.

And hopefully they'll run some tests and find it.

Okay, so next, next one after that.

Okay, well, the next one I want to talk about is giardia, since I've already mentioned it a couple of times. I'll give you a little example of what happened to me when I first came to Colorado in 1991 and joined a medical practice here. I started having this kind of odd feeling in my, in my abdomen, and then a day or two later I started to have mushy bowel movements, and it had a sulfury egg smell to it. And I thought, what in the world is going on here? I don't think— I hoped I don't have Giardia. And sure enough, I passed that information along to my colleagues, and they said, yep, you've got it. And they put me on an antibiotic, and I got over it. Here in the United States, in our mountainous regions, we have a lot of animals that carry Giardia, and they— it eventually gets into the water and into the ice. Again, freezing doesn't kill it, so up in the high mountains with the ice packs, Giardia is kind of in a dormant state, gets into the water supply, comes down, gets into the reservoirs, and then eventually a little bit of it passes through into the— into your water. A few Giardia is not going to cause a problem in most people. The immune system takes care of that pretty quickly. But if you get a pretty good dose of it, you're also going to have kind of a mushy, foul-smelling bowel movements and kind of a rumbly tummy, just not feeling like everything is normal in your intestinal tract. And this is a very, very common organism that is found.

Now, is it rumbly all day long?

Off and on. It's off and on.

Like when you eat or when your stomach's empty?

After you eat, and it can be in between meals, you kind of get a rumbly tummy feel. Do I think I have to go? You go and pass a little bit of mushy bowel movement. Okay. Yeah, it's easily treated. I mean, People go to their doctor with this kind of description, and the doctor's going to say, well, we'll go run a lab test, but I think you have Giardia, and let's start you on some antibiotic. And, you know, 7 days, 10 days of antibiotic, you're just feeling fine again.

Now, you mentioned foul smelling. In my experience with being married and having a family and being around other people and sometimes smelling their the bathroom after they've exited. Foul smelling doesn't seem to be a strange occurrence. Should that be of concern to someone if their stool is foul smelling? Is that indicative of dysbiosis of some sort?

It is of some sort, and dysbiosis is a good term because it could be bacterial waste products that are adding to it. But it's a very specific, like sulfur— it's a sulfur smell.

Okay.

You know, burnt eggs would be an example, or something along that line. It's just very characteristic of Giardia.

Okay. And does that pass by itself, or is that something that pretty much always has to be treated?

Well, I find people that have Giardia that have no symptoms, very, very small amounts. So, you know, it can be that a person could be a carrier. Their immune system has learned to keep it in check. And they just have a few here and there, but it's, uh, the symptoms generally are there for 99% of the population. They got to seek out some help because they don't feel good and their intestinal tract is rumbling too much for them, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so then there are others, and rather than getting into every single specific one, I can just kind of go through them a bit. There's one called Cyclospora. Cyclospora caiadinensis is an organism that also causes diarrhea, and that one has a little interesting event that happened when I was doing my testing early on. I suddenly started seeing this organism, which I don't normally see, and I thought, hmm, That's interesting. And then it came up again and again, and I thought, this is really odd. Well, it turned out that other labs were reporting this as well, and the CDC got involved, and they found that this organism was coming in from a particular farm in Mexico where they were growing cilantro next to an agricultural farm, and the rains were washing the soil containing the waste products of the animals on into this cilantro farm.

I think I remember this.

Yeah, it actually hit the news and, and all that.

Yeah, I remember briefly having to avoid Mexican cilantro. Yeah.

So there's just an example of how our worldwide food supply for the United States is bringing all kinds of things into contact with us that we never had 50 years ago. And some of the docs that trained with me were not aware of parasite problems, and now all of a sudden, here in the last 10, 15 years, we see a lot more things going on parasite-wise that really weren't there in the past. So Cyclospora also causes diarrhea profusely. And usually antibiotics will take care of it. And I, of course, if I see it and they want a natural treatment, I'll use silver and essential oils and some liquid herbs and 3 months of it, and we'll get rid of it that way. Another one that we see frequently is Dientamoeba fragilis. This particular organism is found in the feces Contaminated food and water can certainly bring it on, but it also piggybacks onto roundworms. A person gets a roundworm, it may have come in on, on the surface of the roundworm. There's, you know, in— when it— when you start talking about protozoans, the ones that CDC says are pathogens are Giardia, Cryptosporidium, and to some extent they'll give Blastocystis a pathogenic title. But I find that a lot of people don't necessarily have those. They may have something like Dientamoeba fragilis. We see a lot of ones called Endolimax nana and others called Iodomyeba bushii. These are called nonpathogens by CDC, but let's talk a minute about what is pathogenic. Pathogenic means that it is, it is capable of interfering with some body process or tissue function such that it disturbs it in a way that can create temporary or sometimes permanent problems. That's what a pathogen is. Blastocystis, as an example, was thought to be not a parasite for many, many, many, many years. And over the last 25, 30 years, it's actually been shown that it can invade some tissues. It can be found in some infectious arthritis situations, and it's being more and more found in people with irritable bowel syndrome. So Is that really not a pathogen? No, it's probably a pathogen in those people, right? Same thing with, uh, Endolimax nana and Iodomyobushi. These are very common. You can find them in almost any water source out there, but in a particular given person, there may be enough of them to, say, block absorption. They're sitting on the intestinal surface and food and nutrients come through and they take their share, but they block your ability to take as much of what you need. So is that really not a pathogen? I don't know. I think it's certainly in the— it's in a gray zone. And when I see them, I recommend treating them. We don't necessarily know how much is up there in the gut. We only know what I see under the microscope. And so that's just an example of how many of these seemingly innocent protozoans may actually, in a given person, be a problem.

And so those are examples perhaps of parasites that when you test for them, you're going to show up as a positive test, whereas a traditional one through your insurance might not.

That is very correct. They're, they're trained to look for the pathogens. And they see some Entamoeba coli, Entamoeba endolymex nana, and some of these others. And, you know, those— that's normal. That's normal.

And when you do the testing, do you give recommendations for treatment?

I do.

I do. Okay, so you tell people what they could take?

I take them— I give them an option. In, in my report, I always list that they have a choice of no treatment, medical treatment, or alternative treatment. And we go through that. Well, you know, what, what's, what's the options there? Many people choose to take the report to their doctor and get a medical type treatment, and sometimes they'll follow up with another test to see "how did it go?" and, and we're able to tell them, "yep, treatment worked." Some cases it didn't work as well or enough, and maybe they want to do an alternative treatment again, try that. So yeah, these are things that are very individualized. People have to understand they have choices, and what are those choices, and why would they choose one over another. Sometimes it's cost.

Right.

Insurance will cover an antibiotic prescription.

Right. And how long after treatment should they— should someone retest? Is it— should they wait a little bit to let things reproduce if they're in there?

Well, yeah, I say, you know, wait at least 2 weeks, and then anytime between 2 weeks and even up to, say, a year from that testing that first testing. Go ahead and do a retest and see what, what you've got.

Or couldn't you just wait for symptoms?

Uh, no, not necessarily. Let's see, did we clean it out enough that there are going to be no symptoms from what we had found originally? A lot of people don't retest, and that's fine. They took their treatment, whether it was medical or alternative, and they got better, and I don't hear from them again, and I presume that they, they did well. But the ones that are still having some type of symptom, we have to figure this out. Could it be that we have incompletely yet treated them? They still need more treatment. Could it be that they somehow came up with a new parasite? Is it possible that they didn't take their treatment the way they should. There are a lot of issues when, when things aren't clear at the end of a treatment period that you have to kind of sort out.

Okay, what about the worms? We haven't talked at all about worms.

Okay, well, let's talk about worms. Worms are pretty common out there. When I was in Vietnam, it was not uncommon for me to see in a particular stool sample from one of the Vietnamese workers on our base, maybe 5 or 6 different types of worms and 4 or 5 types of protozoa. And they were fine. They were healthy. They didn't have any problem at all. Why is that, I wondered? Well, they live with them from birth on. And their immune systems are very, very adapted to taking care of and keeping in check the worm population. But here in our country, you could say that we are quite sterile in how we interact with our environment. Things that come in can cause us major issues. So the most common worms out there are pinworms and, and the large roundworm called Ascaris. Lumbricoides. Pinworms are very common in the smaller kids. They'll have— they'll be restless at night. They're scratching their bottoms a lot. They just have something going on. Mom suspects, I don't know what's going on with my child. They're just kind of a little bit irritable. They're constantly rubbing their bottom. And you find that when you do a take a piece of Scotch tape and press it against the anal opening area and area around that before they stir and get out of bed in the morning and look at that under the microscope, we see the eggs of the, of the pinworm. And that's the main way we diagnose it. But the other worm, the Ascaris, or Ascaris, either way, that particular worm comes in usually by the swallowing of an egg And the— that may come in off of food. It doesn't generally come in off of water, so it's usually handling some type of food, mainly meats. One of the things I tell folks, they say, well, how do I keep from getting worms again? Well, first of all, put on a pair of disposable gloves when you're handling fresh meat, slaughtered meat especially. If you're you know, out in the woods and kill a deer and come in, you're exposed to a lot of different parasites when you handle the internal organs of these animals. So wash your meat, run it under the faucet, get it cleaned up. So the eggs come in, then they set up shop in the intestinal tract, and during their— as their journey down goes they, the egg matures and a little tiny microscopic worm comes out, which we call a larva. This larva can penetrate the intestinal wall and get into the bloodstream, go to the lungs. There it matures a bit in the lungs. During this time, you may not have any symptoms, or you may have a little bit of a cough, and eventually the worm will work its way out of the lungs into the bronchial tubes and up into the area where, when you swallow, it would carry that worm down into the intestinal tract. Now it will grow there as an adult worm, and it will produce eggs. And they can produce various amounts of eggs, maybe 20,000 at a time, which, you know, that sounds like a lot, but I'm lucky when I look in the microscope to see one, maybe two in a stool sample. I mean, these 20,000 are spread over an area of an entire tennis court of tissue. But any rate, that's how I can make the diagnosis. Now, occasionally they send me the worm that they've passed, and we can then examine it by length and width and, and it's what we call the morphology or its shape. So that particular worm is the most common worm I'm finding, other than when I get a positive tape test for pinworms.

And what are the symptoms of the worms?

There may be none. That worm really is not interested in letting you know it's there, because if it— if you start having symptoms, you might want to get rid of it. And it's like they, they know that their livelihood is by staying stationary in that spot, usually in the upper part of the small intestine. And there they're perfectly content. They may live 6, 8, 9 months, and then they die and are passed out, or they decompose. The immune system is also constantly working on things that are down there. And sometimes the immune system does get an upper hand and decompose a particular worm, but there may be no symptoms. But there may be symptoms of a sense of something there, a fullness, a sense of some movement, although movement as a symptom can be 100 different things and not necessarily a worm. But if they get into the right spot in the upper part there of the small intestine, they may start to block 2 things: pancreatic juices being brought into the small intestine for digestion, or they may block bile somewhat. And then people start getting symptoms of their right upper quadrant of abdomen pain and things of that nature. So their location is usually the giveaway. If they are having symptoms, doctor does an X-ray, he may see the worm. Sitting there.

Really? Yeah, it shows up on a regular X-ray.

It can, yeah.

Wow.

And show up on an X-ray. And then they, they take a medicine to get rid of the worm, and many times the worm just absolutely disintegrates and you don't see anything pass. But sometimes you see dead worms come out. On my website, I actually have a picture of one of the dead worms that a A lady passed, and after her second month of treatment, I'm using the remedies that I had her get— take. And you can take a look at it, but some of these just come out. They just fall out into the stool and surprise somebody who hasn't been having any symptoms, and there it is. Interesting. They'll take a picture, send it to me, and I'll say, yeah, it kind of looks like a roundworm.

Well, we've been talking for a while, and I definitely want to get to a couple more questions. That are not specific, specific organisms. So let me ask you this. I've heard some other folks talk about the idea that parasites might cause food sensitivities. What can you tell me about that?

Well, I can say that food sensitivities can occur when there are disruptions of the integrity of the lining of the intestinal tract. So how do parasites fall into this, that category? Some of the parasites, for instance, Blastocyst— this is an example— they eat good bacteria. That's part of their diet. And they can basically strip an area of, of normal bacteria off of the intestinal lining. Now anything you take in food-wise has— there's no barrier there. They've stripped the mucus. They've taken care of everything there that protects you. So when you have an opening that food can get into, and then your immune system is now challenged with a protein of food that it never saw in that particular fashion, makes an antibody against it, you get an allergy against that food. So that is one way. Another way is that some— the parasites being an organism that take in nutrients and put out waste products. Those toxic waste products can also work on the lining of the intestinal tract and/or causing in cells of the immune system to pour out trying to clean that up, and in the process create allergic reactions that may sometimes, uh, also involve foods that are also in the area. So that's kind of how you can have food parasite interaction.

And so if you clear the parasite, how long would you wait before trying to eat that food again and seeing if you still had a reaction?

I would say a month.

Okay.

At least. Yeah, about a month.

Okay. Now here's another question. If you are not, you know, you don't have diarrhea 8 times a day, you're just sort of, you just generally, something's just not right in your gut. Maybe your stool quality, maybe it's more occasional diarrhea. And you get tested for parasites and you're, and you're positive, should you, your sexual partner be treated as well?

Well, I get that question often, and I think it's, it depends on that particular couple's situation. If, if there is some chance that there's been shared stool or urine or other bodily fluids, yeah, I think it's important to test the other person too. And the reason for that is you don't want to pass things back and forth, right?

Right. Okay. And how do you differentiate symptoms of a parasite from, say, SIBO or general gut dysbiosis or leaky gut or Candida or things like that?

Well, the only way I know is you would test for parasites And if the parasites are not there and you don't have excess yeast, then it's something else. And you— SIBO has specialized tests, and right, a leaky gut has other ways of testing for that. So it's kind of a process of elimination. A lot of people start with a parasite test, and when they are clean, then they, they can look at some of the other things as well.

And is there any harm in treating for parasites without first getting tested, like say the partner of a, of someone who was tested positive?

Well, I think there's not necessarily any harm. You, you hate to put people through a cycle of 3 months or even a 10-day course of prescription when there might not be a need for it. In my practice with folks, I say no, I don't want to treat people that I haven't looked at because When I did families, for instance, I found, let's say, take a family of mother, father, and 3 kids. The, the actual index person would be the mother. She's having all these problems. She has certain parasites. I might find that the father has one of those parasites, but not the others. I might find that one of the children has a different parasite than the parents, and the other 2 children are clear. So why would we treat the whole family for what I found in the mother?

Right. If you tested them all, of course.

That's why I won't do that.

Right.

Yeah.

And the other thing I've heard about recently is Mimosa pudica seed. Have you used that at all?

I have. I find it very helpful for resistant parasites, but I also find that there is a phenomenon out there called rope worm. I call it a phenomenon because we don't really know exactly what it is. What this is, but it is definitely out there and causing a lot of distress for a lot of people. And Mimosa pudica seeds seems to be the way that helps you eliminate this, this so-called parasite from the gut.

And what are the symptoms of that?

Just a rumbly tummy, and they're just constantly passing these big, long, ropey, mucousy, even stick-like items. I mean, it's really something else. There's some articles on the internet that people can put in rope worm and see what comes up. There's lots out there.

If they want to look at pictures of stool.

But the mimosa plant has been used for centuries by the indigenous healers for parasites. And so it's a very good anti-parasite for many different kinds of parasites.

Would that be a replacement potentially for the one, the formula you were describing?

Yes, I— you could, you could use that.

Okay. So are there any treatments that simultaneously treat for parasites and other gut conditions like SIBO or Candida?

I think most of mine do that because I do use the silver. Silver will usually get rid of a lot of pathogenic bacteria. And essential oils that I use, they are multifaceted in terms of their— how they work. And they can certainly get rid of SIBO and viruses and some other, other organisms that might be down there causing some of the symptoms, but not necessarily the parasite-type symptoms. So I have had experiences where people who had, say, SIBO and parasites got better on both accounts with the treatment for parasites. So yes, there are things that can cross-treat.

And that's more particularly with the herbal treatments?

That is correct. That is more the herbal treatments.

And what about Candida? Is there, is there crossover there or not so much?

Yeah, I think so. I look for excess yeast in the stool. Oh, you do?

Okay.

Yes, and in the urine. I always also do a urine test, and consequently I find about 40% of patients seem to have excess yeast. So consequently, when I treat for yeast, I am also especially including silver because silver is very good against Candida.

Oh, okay.

So yeah, it— we can get Candida at the same time that we get the parasites.

Great. And so what is the cost for someone to get their parasites and apparently Candida as well tested through you?

Okay, well, it's $316.95. That covers the shipping. There's a $10 membership fee because they become a member of my private association so that they can be tested in concert with the type of testing that I do. Then $297 is the actual test fee. So that $316.95 covers it. They can get it on the internet, and we're able to help them from that point.

Great. And would you like to share your website?

Sure, it's parawellnessresearch.com. You'll spell it P-A-R-A-W-E-L-L-N-E-S-S research.com, and they can just click on order a test and it will take it from there.

Okay, awesome. Well, this has been a lot of really useful and awesome information. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Well, thank you, Lindsey Parsons. I very much appreciate the opportunity to share and educate and hope that our listeners will— those that need it will take advantage of it.

I'm sure that they will. Well, thanks so much.

Thank you.

Well, that was probably more than you ever wanted to know about parasites, but I hope that that will help some of you get closer to finding a root cause for your symptoms. Don't forget to show me and the show some love by supporting it through my Patreon page, and you can also support the show by buying high-quality, vetted, practitioner-grade supplements through my affiliate account at Fullscript. You can find a link from my supplements and lab tests link on my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and also check me out on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Links are all in the show notes to my social media. And thanks for listening, and here's wishing you all The perfect stool.