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Can You Eat A Tapeworm To Lose Weight? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
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Speaker 1: it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
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Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:03
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
1:06
Speaker 1: Chuck Chuck, Jane Chucker Bryant, and this is stuff you
1:10
Speaker 1: should know, the super gross, but I love it. Addition, uh,
1:17
Speaker 1: big time trigger warning for people. This is about tape worms.
1:22
Speaker 1: It is disgusting and super creepy and gross, and I
1:26
Speaker 1: knew that you would love it. It's so great, it's
1:28
Speaker 1: so great. It's just so crazy. We're going all the way. Baby.
1:32
Speaker 1: The word perianus comes up at least once, and not
1:36
Speaker 1: in a good way. Oh man, Perry As he was
1:40
Speaker 1: a good guy. He was that's I've ever had was
1:44
Speaker 1: Oh he was? Was he? Uh? Was he the one
1:48
Speaker 1: who who made himself everybody's secret saying every year that's right,
1:52
Speaker 1: you know, old perry Anus uh down on him and
1:56
Speaker 1: he would he would sign his name perianus parentheses saw ari. Uh. Well,
2:04
Speaker 1: if you don't know what perenus is, just buckle up, because,
2:10
Speaker 1: like you said, Chuck, it's going to be quite a
2:12
Speaker 1: ride because we are talking about tape worms, and we're
2:14
Speaker 1: not talking just about tape worms. We're talking about the
2:18
Speaker 1: idea of taking a tapeworm, ingesting it, and letting it
2:24
Speaker 1: live and grow in your body and the hopes that
2:27
Speaker 1: it will uh divert enough nutrients and calories away from
2:32
Speaker 1: you that you can just eat whatever you want and
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Speaker 1: lose weight at the same time because you're not getting fatter.
2:38
Speaker 1: The tapeworm is right, but we're mainly just talking about
2:42
Speaker 1: tape worms because well, I don't want to issue a
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Speaker 1: spoiler this really seriously, We'll save that for Act three.
2:50
Speaker 1: So tape worms. Uh. This is from our old house
2:54
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com website, which is nice to find
2:57
Speaker 1: one of these. It is a little hidden gym hanging out.
3:01
Speaker 1: This is a grab store article, originally just hidden in
3:05
Speaker 1: the anus, waiting for us to discover it. That's right.
3:08
Speaker 1: Actually it crawled its way out and dropped it at
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Speaker 1: my feet. So tapeworms. The very first line of this
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Speaker 1: article is a tapeworm is like something out of a
3:18
Speaker 1: horror movie, and it really is. It is this wormy,
3:22
Speaker 1: little ribbon shaped creature that is a parasite in every
3:26
Speaker 1: sense of the word. They can be very big. It
3:30
Speaker 1: can be as big as eighty ft long, and they
3:32
Speaker 1: can live in a host for up to thirty years. Yeah. Like,
3:38
Speaker 1: you could get a tapeworm as a kid, and that
3:41
Speaker 1: thing might be with you through every formative experience you've
3:45
Speaker 1: ever had, and you might actually be sad when it
3:47
Speaker 1: calls out of your anus and detaches itself from you.
3:51
Speaker 1: That sounds like a Simpsons episode or something kind of Yeah,
3:55
Speaker 1: maybe a little more like um Cleveland show. Um. The
4:01
Speaker 1: good news is, uh, if you don't live in a
4:04
Speaker 1: developing nation, then you probably don't need to worry about
4:08
Speaker 1: a tapeworm, although it can still happen, to be sure,
4:13
Speaker 1: but with good hygiene, good hand washing, good livestock practices,
4:19
Speaker 1: and good um just feak overall fecal and food handling practices,
4:25
Speaker 1: it's not likely to be an issue with you. Yeah,
4:27
Speaker 1: great practice livestock, great practice everybody. Yeah, So if you
4:32
Speaker 1: are in the developing world, Um, you there is a
4:36
Speaker 1: good chance that you can get a tapeworm because in
4:39
Speaker 1: some cases, uh, sanitation is not as great as you
4:44
Speaker 1: would like it to be, and there's more poop hanging
4:46
Speaker 1: around than then there should be, or that there there
4:50
Speaker 1: could be considering other modern practices. And then even beyond that, um,
4:55
Speaker 1: there's a lot more living among livestock then there are,
5:00
Speaker 1: and say like developed urban areas. Right, so even in
5:03
Speaker 1: the developed world, there there if you go outside of
5:07
Speaker 1: the urban areas and you start running up against pigs
5:09
Speaker 1: and cows and their poop and stuff like that, um,
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Speaker 1: you can conceivably catch the tapeworm fairly easily, especially if
5:17
Speaker 1: you're not really big into hand washing, sure, which you
5:21
Speaker 1: should be if you're around poop from animals or humans
5:25
Speaker 1: or any kind of poop. Yeah, just any time there's
5:28
Speaker 1: even any kind of coincidence of poop in your hands,
5:32
Speaker 1: even possibly, just take twenty seconds, recite the alphabet, and
5:36
Speaker 1: wash your hands, because if you don't, you might get
5:39
Speaker 1: some of that fecal material in your mouth and a
5:42
Speaker 1: board that fecal material can be um tapeworm eggs, and
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Speaker 1: that is how you get a tapeworm infection. One way.
5:48
Speaker 1: In the developed world, you're much more likely to get
5:51
Speaker 1: it from something like eating undercooked meat. Right. I've never
5:56
Speaker 1: even had pink eye. Oh really never. It's not a
6:00
Speaker 1: pleasant experience. Chunk, all right, pop, Yeah, I got some
6:05
Speaker 1: FeCO material in my own eye a couple of times,
6:08
Speaker 1: I guess poop by the sailor man. Yeah, Like I
6:11
Speaker 1: was sniffing my fingers and I guess I got too
6:13
Speaker 1: close to my eye. Then you got your nose confused
6:17
Speaker 1: with your eyeball right again, Right, I had a little
6:20
Speaker 1: itch and I was like, oh no, what have I done?
6:22
Speaker 1: And it was too late. So parasites, like I said,
6:26
Speaker 1: A tapeworms, like I said, are true parasites. Um. Everything
6:30
Speaker 1: that it gets that it needs it gets from its host, right,
6:36
Speaker 1: and like that's how it lives. Man. It just it is,
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Speaker 1: like you said, a true parasite in that, like all
6:43
Speaker 1: those things that you're supposed to be getting from the
6:45
Speaker 1: food you eat, some of it is being diverted by
6:48
Speaker 1: to the tapeworm um and they absorb nutrients like gangbusters.
6:53
Speaker 1: They actually don't have a mouth, which is weird because
6:56
Speaker 1: it looks like they have several mouths, but they actually
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Speaker 1: use those mouths to hang onto your intestines inside so
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Speaker 1: that they don't get flushed out by the paristalic action
7:05
Speaker 1: that you know, helps move poop and stuff along your intestines,
7:09
Speaker 1: and instead the tapewormage is kind of floating there absorbing
7:12
Speaker 1: nutrients in the matrix of your gut juices basically, and
7:17
Speaker 1: they absorb it. They absorb it through their skin um
7:20
Speaker 1: and they're just really good at it, so much so
7:23
Speaker 1: that there's at least one type of uh tapeworm out
7:27
Speaker 1: there that you can actually get from eating undercooked fish
7:30
Speaker 1: pike specifically. That's so good at absorbing B twelve. It
7:33
Speaker 1: can outcompete you it's host, and you can get a
7:37
Speaker 1: pretty bad vitamin B twelve deficiency as a result. Do so,
7:43
Speaker 1: these tapeworms live in uh all kinds of host animals,
7:46
Speaker 1: like they could you could be you or me. It
7:49
Speaker 1: could be, like you said, a fish, which is pretty surprising. Um.
7:53
Speaker 1: Most often you hear about beef and pigs or cow.
7:57
Speaker 1: I guess it's the animal and pigs. Uh. But they
8:01
Speaker 1: you know, depending what kind of species it is, it
8:03
Speaker 1: might have a preference for a kind of host. And
8:08
Speaker 1: I guess we should describe the body of this thing
8:13
Speaker 1: right now. It's it's pretty gross. It's got a a head.
8:17
Speaker 1: I guess you would call it. I call it the
8:19
Speaker 1: skull X. Yeah, it's called the skull ax skull X.
8:23
Speaker 1: It's the top of the worm what we as humans
8:27
Speaker 1: might call a head. Yeah, but it looks like an
8:30
Speaker 1: old timey diving head diving helmet, you know what I mean.
8:35
Speaker 1: It's it's round, it's got those suckers, so they look
8:37
Speaker 1: like kind of the portholes on the old div diving helmet. Um.
8:41
Speaker 1: And those again, those suckers, they look like mouths that
8:44
Speaker 1: the thing would eat on, but no, they use it
8:46
Speaker 1: to suck onto the sides of your intestine. But at
8:49
Speaker 1: the top of the head um there are some hooks,
8:52
Speaker 1: like a ring of hooks that actually latch onto the
8:56
Speaker 1: like really grip onto the side of your intestinal wall,
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Speaker 1: so that that tapeworm, once it gets its hooks and
9:02
Speaker 1: it suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere.
9:06
Speaker 1: You know, we should bring back the term skin diver.
9:09
Speaker 1: Sure you remember that skin diver. Yeah, wasn't that like
9:12
Speaker 1: a snorkeling. I think snorkeling or maybe even scuba is
9:16
Speaker 1: just such an antiquated term, like nobody uses that anymore, No,
9:20
Speaker 1: I know, because it makes no sense now, and it's
9:22
Speaker 1: possible it never made any sense. Like I could see
9:25
Speaker 1: someone's granddad now saying, you know, I'm gonna get certified
9:29
Speaker 1: to be a skin diver, right, and then we're gonna
9:30
Speaker 1: get me some pearls, and all the kids laughing Grandpa,
9:35
Speaker 1: No one's his skin diver, right, And Grandpa was probably
9:38
Speaker 1: saying a bunch of other stuff. Nobody says anymore to
9:41
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.
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Speaker 1: So we're bringing skin diver back. What was the last
9:47
Speaker 1: thing you said something about the skull X. I said
9:49
Speaker 1: that once this thing gets his hooks and it's uh,
9:52
Speaker 1: it's suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere. Yeah,
9:56
Speaker 1: like a good catchy tune. Yeah, like it your tape worm.
10:03
Speaker 1: So if it wasn't for the skull x, uh, this
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Speaker 1: article points out, you know, the skull eos is the problem.
10:08
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for this thing, that your intestines would
10:12
Speaker 1: just churn it out and you'd poop it out, no problem.
10:14
Speaker 1: But the skull X is really where the rubber meets
10:17
Speaker 1: the road as far as attaching to your body and
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Speaker 1: that need to think that paristalic action I was talking about, Like,
10:23
Speaker 1: that's just a bunch of like quivering muscles that move
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Speaker 1: in a progressive direction towards your your rectum and anus
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Speaker 1: and all that that push like poop out through your
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Speaker 1: intestines or push nutrients through and where they absorbed. But
10:38
Speaker 1: then it ultimately like pushes the poop out um. And
10:42
Speaker 1: that's how the whole thing works. It's just like some
10:43
Speaker 1: quivering muscles in there. And I read Chuck that if
10:47
Speaker 1: you take a stimulant um laxative, that that's actually what
10:51
Speaker 1: it does is it really kind of um energizes and
10:54
Speaker 1: makes those muscles contract, which is good on the one
10:57
Speaker 1: hand because it really works. But on the other and
11:00
Speaker 1: it's bad because your body becomes dependent on those things
11:03
Speaker 1: really quickly. So you don't want to just take those
11:06
Speaker 1: willy nilly from what I saw. You want to try
11:08
Speaker 1: just about every other type of laxative there is. First
11:11
Speaker 1: starting with a diet high and insoluble fiber, and then
11:16
Speaker 1: work your way on up to where you're talking to
11:18
Speaker 1: a doctor or a nurse practitioner or something before you're
11:21
Speaker 1: hitting those those um stimulant laxatives. Yeah, I think the
11:26
Speaker 1: word laxative it's sort of is backward because it it
11:30
Speaker 1: makes it sound like it's relaxing everything, when in fact
11:34
Speaker 1: it's making everything work harder. It's pretty interesting. It's all
11:37
Speaker 1: upside down and dipsy do. But I'll tell you what.
11:41
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of signs along the way that say
11:43
Speaker 1: one way, one way, everybody. You're going this way whether
11:47
Speaker 1: you like it or not. Right, So, the sculex is
11:52
Speaker 1: the is, like I said, where you're you're sticking to
11:54
Speaker 1: the intestine, and then below the skull x is the
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Speaker 1: neck and and the rest of it is, I mean
12:02
Speaker 1: from the neck down, it's just sort of the same thing.
12:05
Speaker 1: There are all these uh, just individual segments, can be
12:09
Speaker 1: thousands of them, at least hundreds, called the strobilla, and
12:14
Speaker 1: each segment by its own is known as a pro
12:18
Speaker 1: glatted And those are like when you look at a
12:23
Speaker 1: tapeworm and it just looks like a piece of like
12:26
Speaker 1: segmented tampe tape. Those those little segments, those proglottids. I
12:31
Speaker 1: I did not know this at all, but there they're
12:35
Speaker 1: they're basically reproductive organs that also contain eggs, and that
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Speaker 1: the ones closest to the head are male sperm sacks.
12:47
Speaker 1: And then as you get further away from the head,
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Speaker 1: those proglottids um become female and egg holding, and that
12:55
Speaker 1: under under some circumstances with some species of tapeworms, they
12:59
Speaker 1: can sell um, fertilize and and basically we produced themselves, right,
13:06
Speaker 1: But more often than not, they're they're just kind of
13:09
Speaker 1: exchanging sperm and eggs with nearby neighbors who are again
13:13
Speaker 1: floating around in your intestines, absorbing nutrients and just sperming
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Speaker 1: and egging everywhere inside your gut. Yeah, and you're just
13:22
Speaker 1: sitting there watching Jeopardy and it might be eighty ft
13:25
Speaker 1: long and thirty years old. You're just you have no
13:29
Speaker 1: idea what's going on. Like your gut maybe infested with
13:34
Speaker 1: tape worms right now, and you probably you might not know. Yeah,
13:40
Speaker 1: isn't that creepy? It is super creepy. Yeah, all right,
13:43
Speaker 1: let's take a break and I gotta I'm gonna go
13:45
Speaker 1: wash my hands again, and we'll talk more about these
13:48
Speaker 1: proglottics right after this. Well, now, when you're on the
14:01
Speaker 1: road driving in your truck, want to learn a thing
14:04
Speaker 1: or two from Josh Man Chuck stuff you should know?
14:10
Speaker 1: All right, okay, Chuck, so you promise more purglotted talk
14:16
Speaker 1: laid on us. Yeah, So these purglotteds can um like
14:23
Speaker 1: the tapeworm is hardy, but it can also break apart.
14:26
Speaker 1: It'll still be alive, like make no mistake, Like like
14:29
Speaker 1: a chameleon's tail. It's no big whoop if some of
14:33
Speaker 1: these purglottis break off and they'll just come out of
14:36
Speaker 1: your poop. And you might look at your stool and
14:40
Speaker 1: see these things and say like, wow, I have a
14:43
Speaker 1: tape worm. Thank goodness, I got rid of it. But
14:45
Speaker 1: don't be fooled. There might be a lot of tapeworms
14:47
Speaker 1: still back up in your body. Yeah, because remember up
14:50
Speaker 1: towards the neck is sperm. Down lower along the body
14:54
Speaker 1: is um eggs, and then the lower you get our
14:57
Speaker 1: fertilized eggs. So when those proglotteds break off towards the
15:00
Speaker 1: end and make their way out in your poop um,
15:03
Speaker 1: they are they're fully fertilized egg sacs and that's how
15:08
Speaker 1: they enter the environment. It's all part of the life cycle.
15:10
Speaker 1: The proglottis breaking off and making its way out of
15:13
Speaker 1: your anus. By the way, proglottids are spectacular in that
15:19
Speaker 1: not only are they segments filled with fertilized egg sax
15:22
Speaker 1: by the time they break off and leave you, they
15:25
Speaker 1: also contain muscles, meaning that they can walk on their own.
15:30
Speaker 1: So these little segments of tapeworm filled with fertilized tapeworm
15:34
Speaker 1: eggs can move and crawl their way out of your butt,
15:40
Speaker 1: so much so that there's something called discharge of the proglottids,
15:44
Speaker 1: which um is when when right when totally I was
15:49
Speaker 1: gonna say that is so progressive, it's crazy, But when
15:52
Speaker 1: they start marching their way out of your butt, you
15:55
Speaker 1: have a there's a crawling sensation arianus um, and that
16:02
Speaker 1: this is one reason why dogs with tapeworms but scooch,
16:06
Speaker 1: and also why you might butt scooch too, because you
16:09
Speaker 1: are trying to erase the the very anus from your
16:13
Speaker 1: body to get rid of this crawling sensation. For sure.
16:16
Speaker 1: But even if they don't crawl right out of your
16:18
Speaker 1: bottom um, they they can still make their way out
16:22
Speaker 1: in your poop, and then they crawl away from the poop.
16:25
Speaker 1: Because if they crawl away from the poop, and say,
16:27
Speaker 1: like a pasture right where some human is just pooped,
16:31
Speaker 1: there might be a cow nearby that eats the grass
16:35
Speaker 1: that this periglotted has broken open and like deposited the
16:38
Speaker 1: eggs into the soil. And when that cow eats those eggs,
16:43
Speaker 1: this life cycle starts all over again. You know what
16:46
Speaker 1: we call that dog scooch in our house the boot
16:51
Speaker 1: scooting boogie. That's whenever you see the boot scooting boogie
16:56
Speaker 1: happen in your house. It may not meet a tape worm,
16:59
Speaker 1: but there it's not good. No um. Little Moe does
17:02
Speaker 1: it sometimes, but she does this cute thing where she
17:05
Speaker 1: does a little one eight in one place. She doesn't
17:07
Speaker 1: go like, she doesn't make a line, she stays and
17:10
Speaker 1: just kind of does like the twist, and she eventually
17:13
Speaker 1: bores a hole in the floor and falls through to
17:15
Speaker 1: another dimension. That's right. Yeah, the boot scooting boogie also
17:19
Speaker 1: could be like anal glands that need expressing, or just
17:24
Speaker 1: uh dingle berry that needs taken care of board on
17:28
Speaker 1: a Saturday night. But it's never something awesome. It's never
17:33
Speaker 1: you know, hundred dollar bills or just a dog that's
17:37
Speaker 1: like making some cool noise with their butt, right exactly.
17:44
Speaker 1: So man, Yeah, so the this life cycle thing that
17:48
Speaker 1: just kicked off again, we should follow this through one
17:51
Speaker 1: more time. Okay, I don't actually I don't even know
17:53
Speaker 1: if we've gone through this. But the thing about tape worms,
17:56
Speaker 1: and you kind of touched on it before, is they
17:58
Speaker 1: infest different animals, But the same kind of tape worm
18:02
Speaker 1: might infest different animals as part of its life cycle. Right, So,
18:07
Speaker 1: like when you just pooped in the cow pasture and
18:10
Speaker 1: that purglotted opened up in deposited the eggs into the soil,
18:14
Speaker 1: and this cow eating grass ate that soil. Those eggs
18:17
Speaker 1: went into that cow and they said, okay, time to
18:20
Speaker 1: turn into our larval stage, and in the cow they
18:24
Speaker 1: turned into larvae. But the larvae of tape worms form
18:29
Speaker 1: like a cyst around them, and from what I can gather,
18:32
Speaker 1: the reason that they form the cyst is because they um.
18:37
Speaker 1: It prevents them from setting off an immune response. Because,
18:40
Speaker 1: like you were saying, you can have a tapeworom infection
18:43
Speaker 1: unless it's really bad and you're becoming really malnourished as
18:46
Speaker 1: a result. UM, and it's a it's an adult tapew
18:49
Speaker 1: room in your gut. You may never know that you
18:52
Speaker 1: had one until the thing just falls out of your
18:54
Speaker 1: bottom one day, like it's done um or you start,
18:58
Speaker 1: you know, discharging purglotted in your stool. The same thing
19:03
Speaker 1: with cows, like when they become infested with um tapeworm
19:07
Speaker 1: larvae in these cysts forms, the cysts burrow their way
19:11
Speaker 1: out of the intestinal wall and then just implant themselves
19:15
Speaker 1: in the cows muscles don't seem to really provide any
19:18
Speaker 1: kind of discomfort or problem, and again they don't sit
19:20
Speaker 1: off an immune response. But the reason that they deposit
19:24
Speaker 1: themselves in their muscles is because somewhere along their evolutionary history,
19:28
Speaker 1: which from what we've seen and goes back at least
19:29
Speaker 1: two seventy million years. They figured out that the animals
19:33
Speaker 1: eat the muscles of other animals, and so we come
19:36
Speaker 1: along and we eat the muscles of the cows, and
19:39
Speaker 1: those cysts, those larval cysts of tapeworms deposit into our
19:42
Speaker 1: guts and they mature into the adult tapeworm, so that
19:47
Speaker 1: the whole life cycle begins again. Yeah, what these uh
19:51
Speaker 1: at the larval stage, what they're trying to do. They're
19:53
Speaker 1: trying to get to the bloodstream, right, So like if
19:56
Speaker 1: you eat eggs or whatever, then the they will become
19:59
Speaker 1: those syste the larval's and then they go into the
20:01
Speaker 1: blood stream. Right, that's right. Okay, So if you have this, uh,
20:08
Speaker 1: if you have the tapeworm, then you haven't an infection
20:12
Speaker 1: known as human tenise. Uh a man, I had it.
20:16
Speaker 1: I even spelled it out tiny assis, Is that right?
20:21
Speaker 1: I think? So that's how I was gonna say it.
20:24
Speaker 1: And if you have that, like it's like you said,
20:26
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. It's asymptomatic probably and you
20:28
Speaker 1: won't even know you've got it, but that can develop
20:31
Speaker 1: into sisters yarcosis, and that is when these things get
20:36
Speaker 1: into your blood stream, and that is not a good
20:38
Speaker 1: thing because the chain reaction that can happen from here
20:42
Speaker 1: is pretty bad. I mean, it can lead to death.
20:44
Speaker 1: It usually doesn't. But they can be anywhere in your body. Uh,
20:48
Speaker 1: they can grow, and they can inflame tissue. So if
20:51
Speaker 1: it's putting pressure, like near your eyeball, it can cause
20:54
Speaker 1: temporary blindness or permanent blindness. If it's near your brain,
20:58
Speaker 1: that's no good. It can cause brain damage and uh.
21:01
Speaker 1: In fact, in some UH countries they think it's the
21:05
Speaker 1: main cause for adult onset onset seizure. Isn't that crazy? Yeah? Yeah,
21:11
Speaker 1: I saw that. There's there's one guy it's called neurocystic
21:14
Speaker 1: or kosis, and this one doctor says that at least
21:18
Speaker 1: five million cases of adult onset um seizures worldwide or
21:23
Speaker 1: from having tapeworm cysts in your brain. So that that
21:27
Speaker 1: was the appropriate response, chuck. So the thing is like,
21:32
Speaker 1: when you eat a tapeworm larva um, it becomes an
21:36
Speaker 1: adult tapeworm in your gut. Humans aren't our bodies aren't
21:40
Speaker 1: set up or they're not in this kind of symbiosis
21:43
Speaker 1: with tapeworm eggs to do the same thing. So if
21:47
Speaker 1: we eat tapeworm eggs accidentally then those become those cystic
21:51
Speaker 1: larva's larva, and then that's that's what travels into our
21:54
Speaker 1: bloodstream and causes all of these problems. And there's specifically
21:57
Speaker 1: one kind of pig tape worm that it goes through
22:01
Speaker 1: its life cycle from pig to human to pig, and
22:06
Speaker 1: under normal circumstances, if we undercooked pork and get those larva,
22:10
Speaker 1: they're going to turn into adult tape worms. But if
22:12
Speaker 1: we undercooked pork and we accidentally eat some eggs from
22:16
Speaker 1: that pork, then that's when that cistic or cosis. Is
22:20
Speaker 1: that right, Yes, sistic or cosis. It can be a
22:23
Speaker 1: real problem that you will know, like you were saying
22:26
Speaker 1: that you've got a tape worm problem pretty pretty quick. Yeah.
22:30
Speaker 1: If they get big, they can block your your ducks,
22:33
Speaker 1: your pancreatic ducks, your bile ducks. Uh, they can get
22:36
Speaker 1: in your organs and grow within your organs, which is
22:40
Speaker 1: something that should keep you awake at night. Uh. If
22:43
Speaker 1: they get large enough in your organs that that's gonna
22:46
Speaker 1: like those organs are not going to be good for
22:48
Speaker 1: very long. Uh. They can rupture sometimes. Um. And this
22:53
Speaker 1: is just in the body, not necessarily in the organs,
22:55
Speaker 1: but if it ruptures in your body, then it's your
22:58
Speaker 1: Your body is gonna out like an immuno response. You're
23:01
Speaker 1: gonna get hives, it's gonna itch uh, it's gonna swell,
23:05
Speaker 1: and you're just gonna have like this massive allergic reaction.
23:08
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like what bug bit me, right, except
23:12
Speaker 1: you won't be able to talk because your throat will
23:13
Speaker 1: have closed. Perhaps, so chuck um. If you don't want
23:18
Speaker 1: a tapeworm, which hopefully by now you've realized you don't
23:21
Speaker 1: want a tapeworm again, in the in the developed world,
23:25
Speaker 1: it's not that hard to avoid a tapeworm, and in
23:28
Speaker 1: the United States in particular, um like the meat packing
23:33
Speaker 1: industry is I mean, it's dirty and gross and horrific,
23:38
Speaker 1: but it's actually pretty good at spotting things like tapeworms.
23:42
Speaker 1: So there's a really low chance that you're going to
23:45
Speaker 1: get your hands on meat from an American grocery store
23:49
Speaker 1: that has tapeworm cists in it. Right, probably not going
23:52
Speaker 1: to get a tapeworm, but just to be sure, the
23:55
Speaker 1: government has very um conscientiously recommended some minimum king temperatures
24:01
Speaker 1: for things like whole cuts of meat like a chopp
24:03
Speaker 1: or a steak, right. I think it used to be
24:05
Speaker 1: one sixty fairret height. Now they've lowered it to something
24:09
Speaker 1: like one, which is sixty three degrees celsius. And here's
24:13
Speaker 1: the key. They say, after you've done cooking it to
24:16
Speaker 1: that internal temperature which you want to meet thermometer, Do
24:19
Speaker 1: you have one of those? One of the best things
24:21
Speaker 1: I've ever bought, Chuck. That really up my steak game
24:24
Speaker 1: quite a bit. But the key to a good steak,
24:27
Speaker 1: and apparently to killing tape worms and other parasites, is
24:30
Speaker 1: to letting your whole cut of meat rest for at
24:34
Speaker 1: least three minutes. I always do five after you cook,
24:38
Speaker 1: before you carve it up and start eating. Do you
24:40
Speaker 1: do that? You should do that anyway, because of the
24:42
Speaker 1: flavor and the juices. It just does something amazing. Like,
24:46
Speaker 1: before I started doing that, I was just a schlove.
24:49
Speaker 1: I was a total loser. I had no idea what
24:51
Speaker 1: was going on in the world. Once I started off
24:54
Speaker 1: the grill and put it in your mouth, sure, yeah, basically,
24:56
Speaker 1: I mean put it on a plate and like start
24:58
Speaker 1: eating it right. Once started letting meat rest, it was
25:01
Speaker 1: like a whole new world. Yeah. And here's another tip.
25:06
Speaker 1: If you want a really delicious steak uh or I
25:10
Speaker 1: guess pork chop. You you get one either. I mean,
25:13
Speaker 1: if you don't have one of these um sort of
25:15
Speaker 1: slotted cutting boards for to rest on, use like a
25:18
Speaker 1: baker's rack or something, because you still maintain that crisp
25:23
Speaker 1: on the outer, that char if you just let it
25:26
Speaker 1: sit in its juices, that's gonna get all. You know,
25:28
Speaker 1: it's going to change the texture, oh, like a grilled
25:31
Speaker 1: pan or something like that. Use that. Yeah, I've got
25:34
Speaker 1: this cutting board that has uh it's basically like a
25:38
Speaker 1: grid instead of being flat, uh and it and it
25:42
Speaker 1: has a a little uh like a grill grate that
25:45
Speaker 1: can lift up and out of it so it's never sitting.
25:49
Speaker 1: Like not much of the meat is sitting on a
25:51
Speaker 1: board when it's resting. So you don't want it to
25:53
Speaker 1: rest in its juices. No, I want to keep it crispy. Okay,
25:58
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I got it all. It's to
26:00
Speaker 1: try that because I always just basically I just put
26:02
Speaker 1: it on a plate and throw like a some foil
26:04
Speaker 1: loosely over it, or else like a like a pan cover.
26:08
Speaker 1: You cover it too, huh. Yeah, yeah, I've always read
26:11
Speaker 1: it's gonna keep cooking right. Yeah, yeah, for sure, But
26:14
Speaker 1: I mean it's not on the flame anymore, so it's
26:16
Speaker 1: like just kind of um yeah, yeah, I know. For
26:20
Speaker 1: I've never tried it uncovered. Maybe I will try uncovering
26:24
Speaker 1: and away from the juices and see what happens you
26:27
Speaker 1: try covering it and leaving it in his juices. I
26:31
Speaker 1: don't even use a meat thermometer, so I think we
26:33
Speaker 1: have different steak games. You don't huh do you like,
26:36
Speaker 1: here's rare, medium, rare, medium, rare. But if I know
26:41
Speaker 1: the thickness and the weight and the temperature, I don't
26:44
Speaker 1: need to meet thermometer. I stopped cooking as many steaks,
26:47
Speaker 1: so I have to kind of I had to go
26:48
Speaker 1: back to elementary school again. No, there's no shame in it.
26:52
Speaker 1: I'm not ashamed. I had a had a chef that
26:55
Speaker 1: I worked for that he could he just touched his
26:59
Speaker 1: He like, you can tell the internal what the inside
27:02
Speaker 1: looks like just by touching the outside, right, And we
27:05
Speaker 1: should tell people. They're probably people who haven't been listening
27:08
Speaker 1: that long and don't know the secret to steak that
27:10
Speaker 1: we've said before, Chuck, But you do not touch your steak.
27:14
Speaker 1: You don't cut it, you cook it, you see it
27:17
Speaker 1: on one side for a minute and a half two
27:19
Speaker 1: minutes tops, depending on how thick it is. Flip it
27:22
Speaker 1: over and do the same thing to the other side.
27:23
Speaker 1: And then you take it off of your oven or
27:26
Speaker 1: your grill or whatever and move it into a convection
27:29
Speaker 1: oven if you've got one at about three degrees three minutes,
27:34
Speaker 1: the three and a half minutes per side for six
27:36
Speaker 1: to seven minutes total. Let it rest five minutes, thank
27:39
Speaker 1: us in the morning. I don't do mind that way either.
27:42
Speaker 1: Like I said, we've got different steak games. I thought,
27:45
Speaker 1: I thought you said you'd tried it that way before,
27:47
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is amazing I've done. I'll do
27:50
Speaker 1: all kinds of way. Sometimes I do it in a
27:52
Speaker 1: pan and then stick it in the broiler. These days
27:56
Speaker 1: of all about the grill again, because I've got a
27:59
Speaker 1: grill that can get really really hot. Oh yeah, well
28:02
Speaker 1: that's the key, you know, Like you want to see
28:04
Speaker 1: hear in those juices to keep it from escaping. Yeah,
28:08
Speaker 1: which is another reason to meet. Thermometer is good if
28:10
Speaker 1: you don't, if you can't, just use your thumb. You
28:12
Speaker 1: don't have to cut it open to look inside. You
28:14
Speaker 1: just plunge that thing in there and it tells you.
28:17
Speaker 1: I think all this talk of steak has made people
28:20
Speaker 1: forget that we're talking about tapeworms. Yeah, perryanus tapeworms. So
28:27
Speaker 1: um should we? I mean, I guess we should talk
28:30
Speaker 1: a little bit about the symptoms before we come back
28:32
Speaker 1: for the final act of tapeworms as a weight loss aid.
28:37
Speaker 1: But you might not have infectra I'm sorry symptoms at first. Uh.
28:43
Speaker 1: You might feel a little weak, you might feel some
28:46
Speaker 1: you might have some diarrhea. You might feel dizzy or
28:48
Speaker 1: lose your appetite. You might lose a little weight. You
28:51
Speaker 1: might crave salt, which is an interesting one because I
28:54
Speaker 1: always crave salt. Yeah. I thought that was interesting to
28:56
Speaker 1: um or Pika in general, Like if you crave eating
28:59
Speaker 1: clay or just anything that you is a little weird
29:03
Speaker 1: is a big sign. You're saying Pica now, pa Oh yeah,
29:08
Speaker 1: I think I've always said they haven't I you always said, Pika.
29:11
Speaker 1: This is amazing. It's like starting our podcast all over
29:15
Speaker 1: again after twelve years. It's a refresh. That's what I'm
29:20
Speaker 1: going with now, all right, Uh, So you will get
29:23
Speaker 1: a you will deliver a stool sample. Um. If you
29:26
Speaker 1: go to the doctor, if you suspect you have a
29:27
Speaker 1: tape worm, you want them to ask you for it first. Sure,
29:31
Speaker 1: just don't bring it in a bag unless you've happened
29:33
Speaker 1: to see that your poop has worms in it, um
29:36
Speaker 1: and that you could bring it in. But you could
29:38
Speaker 1: also just say there were those were definitely worms in
29:40
Speaker 1: my poop, and hopefully what happens is is that you've
29:43
Speaker 1: gone in there quickly enough to where it it doesn't
29:46
Speaker 1: end up being a very big deal. And you take
29:48
Speaker 1: a little anti worm medication and this thing works by
29:54
Speaker 1: basically kind of paralyzing the parasite so it's muscles are
29:59
Speaker 1: perm contracted. Yeah, and you know we're talking about how
30:04
Speaker 1: that that head just latches on. It's not able to
30:07
Speaker 1: latch on. It just comes right on out in your poop,
30:09
Speaker 1: I know, because it just falls out, basically. And there
30:13
Speaker 1: are plenty of videos on the internet that show tapeworms
30:17
Speaker 1: that have come out of people's anuses. If you want
30:21
Speaker 1: to go see that kind of thing, they can get
30:23
Speaker 1: really really long. Um. But that that drug chuck that
30:28
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, the anti warming agent, it's the
30:31
Speaker 1: same thing that they give dogs, Like any animal that's
30:34
Speaker 1: going to have a worm is going to get the
30:36
Speaker 1: same treatment. But they found they're pretty sure this particular one,
30:41
Speaker 1: Nick Close amid this d worming agent is actually also
30:45
Speaker 1: good for things like treating cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, graph
30:50
Speaker 1: versus host disease, endometriosis, and a bunch of other stuff.
30:54
Speaker 1: Because they're like, it does something to to channeling pathways, uh,
30:59
Speaker 1: multiple chane only pathways, And it might be like this
31:02
Speaker 1: wonder drug that's just waiting to be unlocked. Didn't that neat?
31:06
Speaker 1: That is super neat, Nick Close to meat? Do we
31:09
Speaker 1: take that break? Yeah? Man, let's take the break, all right.
31:12
Speaker 1: Then we'll get to the big revel revelation relevation, no revelation.
31:19
Speaker 1: Can you use the tape him to lose weight? Right?
31:22
Speaker 1: For this? Well, now we're on the road driving in
31:35
Speaker 1: your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh?
31:38
Speaker 1: Can chuck it stuff? You should know? All right? No,
31:46
Speaker 1: you can't and you shouldn't. That's right. So remember Kelly
31:50
Speaker 1: Kapoor tried that or else she considered taking it. I
31:52
Speaker 1: don't remember, do you. Oh that's right, I forgot about that.
31:56
Speaker 1: So I mean this has been around for a really
31:58
Speaker 1: long time. This idea that you can take a eat
32:00
Speaker 1: a tapeworm of some sort tapeworm cyst, not eggs, because
32:04
Speaker 1: those will turn into system and invade your brain. Um
32:07
Speaker 1: that that you could get a tapeworm infection and start
32:12
Speaker 1: to lose weight. Possibly as long as the nineteen century
32:17
Speaker 1: they think that there. So here's the thing. Do you
32:20
Speaker 1: remember when we did our episode on Flee Circuses. Sure
32:24
Speaker 1: it was really thrilling to me because even while we
32:28
Speaker 1: were podcasting, I still could not tell for a little
32:31
Speaker 1: while whether it was a real thing or just one
32:34
Speaker 1: of the most exquisitely perpetrated hoaxes ever, right, and that
32:39
Speaker 1: it was still working on us. There's this kind of
32:43
Speaker 1: a similar thing where it's not entirely clear if these
32:48
Speaker 1: old timey ads are real people think they typically are,
32:53
Speaker 1: or if they were real, if anybody actually did this,
32:56
Speaker 1: or if it was some sort of farce or hoax
32:58
Speaker 1: or satire. And if it wasn't satire, how widespread was this,
33:03
Speaker 1: Because it does seem that there were nineteenth century ads,
33:07
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century early twenty century adds four sterilized tapeworm
33:11
Speaker 1: pills that women could take. They were marketed toward women
33:15
Speaker 1: to keep their their figure trim. Right. Of course they
33:19
Speaker 1: were marketed toward women take a tapeworm, ladies, exactly. Uh.
33:24
Speaker 1: There was a singer and opera singer named Maria Callas
33:28
Speaker 1: who and this is almost certainly urban legend, but she
33:34
Speaker 1: lost I read eighty pounds I've seen other places sixty
33:37
Speaker 1: pounds over a few months in the mid nineteen fifties,
33:41
Speaker 1: so much so that it affected her singing as an
33:44
Speaker 1: opera singer. And we do know that she got a
33:47
Speaker 1: tapeworm at some point in her life, and we do
33:49
Speaker 1: know that she liked to eat her steak rare. But
33:52
Speaker 1: I think it looks, by and large like it was
33:54
Speaker 1: urban legend, that it got kind of all mixed up together.
33:57
Speaker 1: And people said that Maria Callis lost weight by ingesting tapeworm,
34:01
Speaker 1: right right, Like those two things did happen. She did
34:04
Speaker 1: lose weight, and she did have a tapeworm infection, probably
34:06
Speaker 1: at some point in life, but that the two were
34:08
Speaker 1: in no way related. But based on this kind of
34:11
Speaker 1: idea that you could take a tapeworm and lose weight,
34:14
Speaker 1: that that they became conflated into this urban legend, as
34:18
Speaker 1: you were saying, and that that's that's like the one
34:20
Speaker 1: that people point to is like proof that this actually happened,
34:24
Speaker 1: and actually it didn't, it didn't happen at all like that.
34:27
Speaker 1: Supposedly there is a clinic in Tijuana called worm Therapy
34:33
Speaker 1: uh and supposedly this is the one place in the
34:35
Speaker 1: world where you can go get a tape worm put
34:38
Speaker 1: into your body to lose weight for about bucks. You
34:43
Speaker 1: can get a beef tape worm um. And I've you know,
34:47
Speaker 1: have been to t one a few times. I never
34:49
Speaker 1: sought out worm therapy, but apparently it existed or still exists,
34:54
Speaker 1: it's not clear. So they have a website. I think
34:57
Speaker 1: it's worm Therapy dot com or dot org and it's
35:02
Speaker 1: as you know, like you know, contact form fields. It
35:06
Speaker 1: shows a map of where it is and it isn't
35:08
Speaker 1: to you one and all that there's a phone number.
35:09
Speaker 1: I didn't call the phone number. But it's one of
35:11
Speaker 1: those things like is it actually real number one or
35:15
Speaker 1: is it just a hoax website? If it's not a
35:18
Speaker 1: hoax website and it actually is a helmet therapy because
35:21
Speaker 1: remember in our Hookworms episode, we were talking about that
35:24
Speaker 1: theory that losing some kinds of parasitic worms they think
35:27
Speaker 1: actually harmed our immune system and lead to a rise
35:30
Speaker 1: in like crones and stuff like that. Yeah, so there
35:33
Speaker 1: are clinics out there in the world that use um
35:38
Speaker 1: parasitic worms to help autoimmune diseases. So it's possible that
35:43
Speaker 1: worm therapy does that and that they don't do the
35:45
Speaker 1: beef tapeworm thing. But the urban legend is that they did,
35:49
Speaker 1: at least as as recently as two thousand nine, they
35:51
Speaker 1: offered it. It's just not clear whether any of this
35:54
Speaker 1: is true or not. Right. What we do know is
35:57
Speaker 1: true is that to to purpose do this is not
36:00
Speaker 1: a good idea. It is not a healthy way to
36:05
Speaker 1: lose weight. Uh, and you're not even gonna lose Like
36:09
Speaker 1: it said that you can expect to lose one to
36:10
Speaker 1: two pounds from a tapeworm a week. You can lose
36:13
Speaker 1: that much with a pretty aggressive diet and exercise plan. Yeah, supposedly,
36:19
Speaker 1: just cutting five calories out from your diet every day
36:22
Speaker 1: every week, you could lose a pound. You can look
36:25
Speaker 1: forward to losing a pound. So yeah, exactly taking a
36:28
Speaker 1: tapeworm to do that is not not a good idea,
36:31
Speaker 1: especially considering so because that tapeworm is competing for nutrients
36:36
Speaker 1: from you. You're gonna end up with a pretty nice
36:39
Speaker 1: little case of malnutrition if it gets pretty bad. So
36:44
Speaker 1: you're actually going to be your body is going to
36:47
Speaker 1: talk you into eating more than you normally would, right,
36:51
Speaker 1: so you'll develop even worse eating habits than you did
36:54
Speaker 1: than you have before the tapeworm infection, so that when
36:57
Speaker 1: you finally get around to taking a d worming eight
37:00
Speaker 1: it and it gets rid of that tapeworm, when you
37:04
Speaker 1: just keep eating again, you're gonna gain that weight right back,
37:07
Speaker 1: and you're probably gonna gain more weight back because you've
37:10
Speaker 1: developed even worse seeing eating habits from having the tapeworm.
37:13
Speaker 1: And again, all of this is based on the idea
37:16
Speaker 1: that any of this is even true to begin with,
37:17
Speaker 1: which is totally unclear still at this point. Yes, totally,
37:22
Speaker 1: So that's it. Don't don't take a tapeworm to lose weight.
37:25
Speaker 1: Just exercise and diet. That's that is it. There's no
37:29
Speaker 1: better diet fed than that. Just exercise and diet, and
37:33
Speaker 1: you will lose weight and feel healthier and better and
37:35
Speaker 1: sleep better and have less chronic disease and just be
37:38
Speaker 1: far better off. That's it. That's right. You got anything else,
37:42
Speaker 1: No well, since Chuck said no, it's time for a
37:45
Speaker 1: listener mail. This is from a high school student. We
37:52
Speaker 1: love hearing from high school students. This is from Kate.
37:56
Speaker 1: Kate says, Hi, guys, I am a junior in high
37:59
Speaker 1: school from mass Aitusetts. Discovered the podcast in September at
38:03
Speaker 1: the start of the school year, and I've loved it
38:05
Speaker 1: ever since. It definitely makes my morning car rides much
38:07
Speaker 1: more interesting, and it does wonders to decrease my horrible
38:11
Speaker 1: road rage. Recently, as I was driving to Cape Cod,
38:17
Speaker 1: I was listening to your Spartacus episode. I've been studying
38:20
Speaker 1: Latin since sixth grade, uh and this year was my
38:23
Speaker 1: first year taking Ancient Greeks, so needless to say, I'm
38:25
Speaker 1: a huge nerd when it comes to Roman history. I
38:28
Speaker 1: couldn't help but to laugh when I heard you both
38:30
Speaker 1: struggling to pronounce the names of the Roman consuls and
38:34
Speaker 1: they're important and other important historical figures. This quarantine has
38:38
Speaker 1: really been tough on me, guys, like it has on everyone,
38:40
Speaker 1: and I really needed that laugh. So I thought I
38:43
Speaker 1: would write to you as a sort of thank you note.
38:45
Speaker 1: Although your pronunciation may not have been great, the whole
38:48
Speaker 1: episode really did wonders to lighten my mood and make
38:51
Speaker 1: me feel better even though things are crazy right now.
38:54
Speaker 1: Always I know that I have your podcast to listen
38:57
Speaker 1: to when I'm feeling down or just want to smile out.
39:01
Speaker 1: Wishing you health and happiness. That is from Kate in Massachusetts.
39:04
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Kate. That was nice of her to
39:07
Speaker 1: say our pronunciation may not have been great. Yeah, what
39:10
Speaker 1: she means is, guys, you were way off. It was terrible. Well,
39:14
Speaker 1: that was very nice, Kate. And it's nice to hear
39:16
Speaker 1: that we're helping you out there. And uh, thank you
39:19
Speaker 1: for writing in. And if you are like Kate and
39:22
Speaker 1: we're helping you out we always love hearing that kind
39:24
Speaker 1: of thing. You can send an email to us if
39:27
Speaker 1: you like, wrap it up, spend it on the bottom,
39:29
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
39:32
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39:37
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39:40
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