We All Have Parasites: The Symptoms & How You Can Cleanse Them

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: yes we all are subject to parasites, no you shouldn’t be freaked out just yet. This isn’t meant to scare anyone, it’s simply a fact, and it’s better we learn how to deal with parasites properly than simply ignore them and hope they’ll go away.

The good news is that cleansing parasites is not all that hard and can be done very affordably. The difference in the way you will feel after a cleanse, should you need to do a cleanse, will be astronomical. And so, in this article we’ll go through how we get parasites, what problems they can cause, the stories of real people’s health transformations and how we can get rid of them.

“Ninety percent of humans will have a problem with parasites in their lifetime.” – Dr. Oz

Intestinal parasites can infect the gastro-intestinal tract of humans and other animals. While they can live in different areas of the body, they mainly stick to intestinal walls. You can get parasites in a number of ways; they can come from the ingestion of undercooked meat, unwashed fruits and vegetables, or infected water. You can also get them while travelling, from contact with animals, or through skin absorption. 

There are a few types of parasites we can get:

Trichinella: Infection with the microscopic parasite Trichinella leads to trichinellosis, also known as trichinosis. This comes from eating undercooked meats.

Hookworm: Hookworm infects an estimated 576 to 740 million people worldwide and was once a common infection in the U.S., particularly in the southeast. This typically happens from walking barefoot on contaminated soil.

Dientamoeba Fragilis: This parasite is one of the smaller parasites that can live in the large intestine. It’s unclear how exactly  it is contracted or spread.

A study out of The University of Maryland states, “Parasites can live within the intestines for years without causing any symptoms.” This is why many of us have parasites without even knowing it.

Symptoms Of Parasites

Symptoms can range greatly and so it’s important to focus on some of the most crucial ones in order to understand how serious our infection might be.

1. Changes in the appearance or frequency of bowel movements, especially if you have excessive diarrhea or loose stools for two weeks.
2. Chronic exhaustion not resolved by a week of restful sleep.
3. Unexplained and sudden weight loss of at least 10 pounds over two months.
4. Itching around the anus for at least two weeks, especially if there is no rash.
5. Cramping and abdominal pain. 

Again, the 5 listed above are the more serious symptoms, but the following are also common: constipation, diarrhea, gas and bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, joint and muscle aches, allergies, sugar cravings, skin conditions – mostly irritation/itching at nose, ears, eyes, anus – but also potentially rashes, hives, eczema, acne, headaches, chronic fatigue, trouble sleeping, yeast and candida infection.

  Herbs for a complete parasite cleanse.”

• BLACK WALNUT HULLS (from the black walnut tree – juglans nigra): Used by the Indians of America as an anti-parasite, anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal remedy. Its active ingredients are juglone, tannin and iodine. The tincture of the green hulls of the black walnut kills the adult stages of the parasites.
• WORMWOOD (from the Artemisia shrub – artemisia absinthum): Known for its vermicidal properties and helps those with a weak and under-active digestion. It increases the acidity of the stomach and the production of bile. The wormwood capsules kill the larval stages of the parasites.
• COMMON CLOVES (from the clove tree – eugenia caryophyllata): Anti-parasitical, anti-fungal, antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties. It also removes pain. The clove capsules remove the parasite eggs.

Source:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intestinal_parasite

2. https://humaworm.com/How_We_Get_Parasites.html

3. http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2013/03/28/true-or-false-everyone-has-parasites-in-their-body/#farE1PCc95ulZv7D.99

4. http://www.doctoroz.com/article/parasites-could-they-be-making-you-sick

http://organicolivia.com/2015/02/19/yes-you-have-parasites-theyre-whats-killing-the-bees/

Health ministry needs to enforce prescription time frame validity to prevent medicine abuse & misuse: Dr Jagashetty

Health ministry should now look at enforcing time frame validity in doctor’s prescription to ensure that there is no medicine abuse and misuse. This needs to be applied for all drugs coming under Schedule H and those out of its ambit. Such a move could bring in both patients and medical practitioners under scanner on the drug purchase and prescribing practices respectively, said Dr BR Jagashetty, former national advisor (drugs control) to ministry of health & family welfare and former Karnataka drugs controller.

For this, the health ministry will now need to add a sub-clause in the Rule 65 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, he added.

“The time frame for prescription validity should be 48 hours. This is because patients will purchase usually drugs immediately for any conditions covering from fever, cough, cold to hypertension, diabetes, cardiac among others. The adverse drug reactions will also manifest within 24 to 36 hours giving the patient time to get back and revise his prescription and return the purchased drugs,” Dr. Jagashetty pointed out.

The prescription will also need to have the date to be signed by the medical practitioner. This is one way to stall the scanning of prescriptions and prevent online pharmacy sales. Another aspect is that consumption of drugs will be controlled and there will not be any chance for patients to be overdosed. Not only that medical practitioners should also be cautious while prescribing drugs. It would control the practice of prescribing more than a few drugs for a simple health complaint covering not just anti-inflammatory, antibiotics, anti-pyretic medicines but a range of multi vitamin and nutraceutical supplements which are more often beyond the affordability ambit of the patients. With the prescription audit and time frame validity, there will be a system in place and India needs such time frame validity in doctor’s prescription, said Dr Jagashetty.

Earlier mandating on the need for prescription audit which the health ministry is seriously considering, Dr Jagashetty had said that it would avoid unnecessary medicine usage and stall multi-drug resistance besides controlling medical expenditure. The Uniform Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) has now helped to stop brand promotion by pharma companies to the medical community, he said.

In fact the Medical Council of India's recently issued guidelines on standard prescription format is seen to be the first step to prevent  medicine abuse and misuse, he said.

Both prescription audit and its time frame validity would enable tough control across hospitals, nursing homes and clinics. It would create an environment of transparency, effectiveness and accountability among the medical professionals in the country. The health ministry now needs to look at enforcing prescription time frame validity to prevent medicine abuse and misuse in the wake of the online sales coming under the scanner, said Dr Jagashetty.
Source:Pharmabiz

'Fitness' foods may cause consumers to eat more and exercise

PUBLIC RELEASE: 23-JUN-2015'Fitness' foods may cause consumers to eat more and exercise

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

    SHARE

 PRINT  E-MAIL

Weight-conscious consumers are often drawn to foods such as Clif Bars and Wheaties, whose packaging suggests that they promote fitness. But according to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, such "fitness branding" encourages consumers to eat more of those foods and to exercise less, potentially undermining their efforts to lose or control their weight.

"Unless a food was forbidden by their diet, branding the product as 'fit' increased consumption for those trying to watch their weight," write authors Joerg Koenigstorfer (Technische Universität München) and Hans Baumgartner (Pennsylvania State University). "To make matters worse, these eaters also reduced their physical activity, apparently seeing the 'fit' food as a substitute for exercise."

The authors investigated the effects of fitness-branded food on consumption and physical activity in "restrained" eaters--eaters who are chronically concerned about their body weight. Participants were given trail-mix style snacks marked either "Fitness" or "Trail Mix." To make the "Fitness" snack appear even healthier, a picture of running shoes was added to the packaging. Participants were told to pretend that they were at home helping themselves to an afternoon snack, and were given eight minutes to taste and rate the product. Another phase of the study gave them the option to exercise as vigorously as they liked on a stationary bicycle after eating the snack.

For those who were specifically trying to watch their weight, the effect of labeling was significant, causing them to eat far more of the snack marked "Fitness." Snackers eating the "Fitness" brand also chose to expend less energy during the exercise phase.

"It is important that more emphasis be placed on monitoring fitness cues in marketing. For example, a brand could offer gym vouchers or exercise tips instead of just implying fitness via a label or image. Reminding the consumer that exercise is still necessary may help counteract the negative effect of these fitness-branded foods," conclude the authors.

Source:AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Knowledge about alternative medicine connected to education, income

People with lower educational levels and incomes are less likely to know about yoga, acupuncture, natural products and chiropractic medicine, according to a new study from San Francisco State University.

Studies on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) have typically focused on learning more about who use these types of practices and why. Less is known about trends among those who do not partake, which inspired new research by Professor of Health Education Adam Burke, published in PLOS ONE on June 17.

"It's very important to know why somebody is not doing a particular behavior," said Burke, who is also the director of SF State's Institute for Holistic Health Studies. "If your child isn't eating broccoli and you want him to, you need to know why. If it's just a matter of the pieces being too big, you can cut it up. But if you don't know why, the child will not eat the broccoli."

The research, based on the 2007 National Health Interview Survey, looked at data from more than 13,000 respondents who said they had never used acupuncture, chiropractic, natural products or yoga, four common CAM practices.

Lack of knowledge as a reason for non-use was strongly associated with lower education levels and income. Those who attended college were 58 percent less likely to indicate lack of knowledge as a reason for non-use, and individuals with higher incomes were 37 percent less likely.

"The implication of this study is that the lack of access to health knowledge is a root of health inequity," Burke said. "If you are poor, you have less access to health information for a variety of reasons."

Physical activity levels were also found to correlate with knowledge. People who described themselves as less physically active were significantly more likely to claim a lack of knowledge of all four complementary practices.

One finding of the study that surprised Burke was that the results held true for survey respondents who experienced lower back pain. Since back pain is the medical condition most commonly linked to use of complementary health treatments, Burke and his coauthors hypothesized that back-pain sufferers would have greater knowledge about these treatments even if they opted not to use them, as their pain would compel them to learn about a variety of remedies. But Burke found that the relationship between lower education levels and lack of knowledge remained -- in other words, back pain did not seem to be a significant enough motivator to seek out these common alternative treatments.

But it's especially important for people with back pain to know about CAM methods, Burke said. "Often, the solution for chronic pain is addictive prescription medications, which are problematic in all communities, especially in lower-income communities," Burke said. "Complementary methods have the potential to mitigate such addiction problems, and may help address the root problem rather than just managing the symptoms, which is a real benefit."

This study indicates a greater need among doctors to follow best-practice guidelines for sharing information about integrative practices, combining conventional western and CAM approaches, Burke said.

"It's highly likely that a lack of knowledge prevents some individuals from using these integrative approaches -- if they knew more, they would use them more," Burke said. "These are cost-effective treatments that have limited side effects and may actually help remediate people's problems. Especially in lower-income communities, it is important for health care providers to recommend them."

"Limited health knowledge as a reason for non-use of four common complementary health practices" by Adam Burke and co-authors Richard L. Nahin and Barbara J. Stussman of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health was published in PLOS ONE on June 17.

Source:SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

Ayurvedic Science Shows Way for New Nano-particle-based Drug for Diabetes

Indian researchers used ayurvedic metallic preparations known as 'bhasmas' to develop nano-particle-based drug to treat diabetes.

 Oral administration of zinc oxide nano-particles (ZON) resulted in significant reduction of blood glucose levels and increased insulin levels, they claim in a report published in a recent issue of the journal "Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine". 

"These results, reported for the first time, warrant further investigation for the development of ZON as an anti-diabetic agent," said, Kishore Paknikar, director of ARI and one of the authors. 

In Ayurveda, metals that go through a purification and incineration process that turns them into ash are called 'bhasmas', which literally means ash. They are indicated for the treatment of several diseases. For instance, zinc-based bhasma (Jasada bhasma) is mentioned in ayurveda as the treatment of choice for diabetes. 

To verify this, the ARI researchers synthesized Jasada bhasma using traditional method and carried out a study to evaluate its efficacy in treating rats in whom diabetes was induced chemically. 

In case of Type-1 diabetic rats, Jasada bhasma treatment showed reduction of blood glucose levels comparable to the drug glibenclamide, Paknikar said. 

In the case of Type-2 diabetic rats, treatment with Jasada bhasma was found to be comparable to the widely used drug pioglitazone. 

While the study confirmed the anti-diabetic effect of Jasada bhasma, its synthesis involves laborious and time consuming procedures, Paknikar said. Therefore, the researchers decided to look at the composition of Jasada bhasma. 

Using modern physico-chemical techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and X-ray spectroscopy, the researchers found that the traditionally prepared Jasada bhasma consisted of zinc oxide in the form of nano-particles of the size 200-500 nanometre (one nanometre is one billionth of a metre). 

"Since our studies clearly demonstrated the presence of ZON in Jasada bhasma, we hypothesized that ZON should also be able to exert anti-diabetic effects. An elaborate study was therefore undertaken to investigate this possibility," Paknikar said. 

For this study, zinc oxide nano-particles, of less than 10 nanometres in size, were procured from a company in the US. 

Oral administration of ZON, after four weeks of treatment, resulted in improved glucose tolerance, higher serum insulin, reduced blood glucose and reduced triglycerides in diabetic rats, the researchers reported. 

Most of the currently available drugs for the treatment of Type-2 diabetes are used in combination with each other or with insulin, increasing the treatment cost. None of them is free from adverse effects, Paknikar said. 

"A single, cost-effective, oral, anti-diabetic treatment with minimal side effects is the need of the day." 

According to Paknikar, it is evident from the rat studies that ZON can elicit potent anti-diabetic activity. 

Administration of ZON resulted in sustained release of zinc up to 24 hours -- which is a desirable pharmacokinetics profile -- and was found non-toxic up to 100 times the efficacy dose, he added. 

The researchers said that on the basis of their findings they were proposing "a new chemical entity - zinc oxide nano-particles -- as a promising anti-diabetic agent warranting further studies". 

The report further said that the bhasma-inspired drug discovery approach followed by them to identify a diabetic drug could also be used to develop metal based nano-medicines for several other diseases. 

"Once the active ingredients of bhasmas are identified, these metal oxides can be synthesized and evaluated as a new chemical entity in modern drug discovery." 

Source: IANS

 

Increase in Global Life Expectancy but Rising Incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases – 2013 Global Study

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 revealed that as life expectancy increases, the incidence of non-fatal diseases and injuries is on the rise.

 The Global Burden of Disease Study gathers data regarding the patterns and trends of health parameters and disease conditions. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the information provided by the study is useful for governments and policy makers to decide on budget allocations and make plans for providing health services to the population. 

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 compiled data for acute and chronic diseases and injuries, and years living with disability (YLD) from 188 countries between 1990 and 2013. YLD takes into account health issues that cause pain, decreased mobility, hearing loss and vision loss, but are not fatal. The study evaluated 301 diseases and injuries and their 2337 sequelae. Data was obtained through several sources like systematic reviews, household surveys, hospital discharges and publications. 

The study revealed some interesting facts:

Fifty-nine chronic diseases and injuries had a global prevalence of greater than 1%, but these were not associated with much disability. Eight of these affected more than 10% of the population. These were dental caries without pain,

a) Tension-type headaches, 

b) Iron-deficiency anemia, 

c) Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency trait, 

d) Hearing loss, 

e) Asymptomatic genital herpes, 

f) Migraine, 

g) and Ascariasis (a round worm infestation). 

A detailed look at the list will reveal that among chronic diseases, non-communicable diseases are becoming more common than infectious diseases.

Acute cases of diarrhea and upper respiratory tract infection continue to be common with over 2 billion cases in the year 2013.

The incidence of dental caries is astonishing. More than 200 million people suffered from tooth pain due to permanent caries. Chronic cases with permanent caries but no pain were present in 2.4 billion people. Dental caries can be easily prevented by educating the patient on proper teeth-cleaning measures. This patient education can be carried out at the primary level.

The number of ailments that a person suffered from also increased in the past few years. And multiple ailments are no longer a problem of the older population but is also affecting the young. This reflects the decreasing quality of health in young and middle-aged individuals.

The global life expectancy has increased from 65.3 years in 1990 to 71.5 years in 2013. Though the number of deaths is reducing, the number of non-fatal illnesses and injuries is increasing, which puts a larger burden on the healthcare system.

The number of years lived with disability (YLD) increased significantly from 537·6 million in 1990 to 764·8 million in 2013. This is a direct consequence of increased life expectancy, which brings with it diseases associated with aging. People are living longer and therefore suffering from more diseases.

The most common causes of YLD in 2013 were low back pain and major depressive disorder. Other common conditions contributing significantly to YLD were neck pain and other musculoskeletal disorders, iron-deficiency anemia, hearing loss, migraine, COPD, anxiety disorders and diabetes. HIV/AIDS was a leading cause of increasing YLDs in sub-Saharan Africa.

Thus, the aim of the health care policies should be directed not only at - live long but also - live healthy. A number of conditions that are associated with YLD can be prevented. Thus, the governments should direct their resources to these ailments to reduce the global burden of disease. 

Reference: 
Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 Collaborators. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. www.thelancet.com Published Online June 8, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60692-4