An Iowa woman recently discovered something worse than being overweight: swallowing a parasitic worm in order to drop a few pounds.
The woman went to her doctor and admitted she’d bought a tapeworm off the Internet and swallowed it, says Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. The woman’s doctor, understandably, wasn’t sure what to do in such a situation, and so he contacted the state’s public health department for advice. Quinlisk relayed a warning and treatment advice in her weekly email to state public health workers.
“Ingesting tapeworms is extremely risky and can cause a wide range of undesirable side effects, including rare deaths,” Quinlisk wrote in the email, as the Des Moines Register reported. “Those desiring to lose weight are advised to stick with proven weight loss methods – consuming fewer calories and increasing physical activity.”
There are a few different kinds of tapeworms, but it’s the beef tapeworm, or Taenia saginata, that is usually used in these sorts of quick weight-loss schemes, Quinlisk says. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, advertisements touted “easy to swallow,” “sanitized tape worms” as a weapon against fat – “the ENEMY that is shortening your life,” as one vintage ad recently showcased by the National Women’s History Museum’s website reads.
More recently, reports surfaced that dieters in Hong Kong were swallowing tapeworms to lose weight. And in 2009, Tyra Banks did an episode of her talk show in which she interviewed women who said they would be willing to swallow a tapeworm if it really meant they could easily drop a few pounds.
Quinlisk says that the capsules sold in the past by snake oil hucksters, and online today, likely contain the microscopic head of a Taenia saginata.
“When people would order from snake oil medicine a weight loss pill, it would be the head of a Taenia saginata … and it would develop into a 30-foot-long tapeworm in your body,” Quinlisk says. “The worm would get into your gut – it’s got little hooks on the head – and it would grab onto your intestine and start growing.”
And, technically, this parasitic infection, called taeniasis, does cause weight loss.
“Tapeworms will cause you to lose weight because you have this huge worm in your intestines eating your food,” Quinlisk says.
Source: NBC News
