Short dialogue exploring why parasitic infections are poorly understood. Speakers emphasize that humans host a microbiome (including mitochondria-derived elements), that ‘everyone has bugs’, and that parasitic disease arises when pathogenic species overgrow—often stealthily—especially when immunity or nervous-system stress allows them to dominate, producing a wide range of symptoms (including behavioral changes cited).
Increase in car accidents, increase in violence, and, yes, increase in suicide.
But why is it so poorly understood? And how many people do you think it actually affects in our country, maybe around the world?
Well, first of all, we all have to remember that a big part of our anatomy is our microbiome. So, of course, you know, not even our mitochondria are part of our own anatomy. So, you know, if you want to look at it broadly, we're full of bugs, full of good bugs, and we're also full of pathogenic bugs. So if you want to say, how many people is this affecting? Well, everybody has bugs. It's part of how you're alive. But what we're talking about when we say parasitic infections is a dominance or an overgrowth of certain species that are pathogenic in nature. And they come at a cost. They can drive a tremendous number of symptoms that are very wide ranging. And because they have such good strategies for being stealthy and easing into the body and then waiting for immune system to become compromised or waiting for your nervous system to go in too long a stress state, too great a stress state for too long, then, yes, they're going to set up shop and they're going to take over.
