July 23, 2009 • 28 mins
There are some pretty disgusting parasites out there, but Josh and Chuck have settled on three particularly gross ones. Tune in to learn more about flesh-eating parasites, guinea worms and tapeworms in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Here is Charles w dr
(00:21):
kunk Eliasis Bryant How you doing drunk? That sounds like
my play a name? It is sort of player appreciate
dot Com. I wish I could remember what that name was.
Was so good? Oh it was we pastic Bryant Trump.
Is that it sugar tastic Bryant Trump. Sugar tastic? That's it,
(00:42):
Bryant Trump. Yeah, that means Chuck's put name is as
it's as its appears on player appreciate dot Com. I
love that you can generate a play a name. Yeah,
it is a pretty cool couples the Internet, Chuck, speaking
of the Internet. Yes, our parent company, Discoveries Channel Animal
Planet UM has a cool website. Indeed that they launched
(01:05):
for their show Monsters Inside of Me. Very cool, which
has inspired us to do a couple of parasite podcasts.
This is two of two. Yeah, number two. We just
did um a toxoplasmosis. Yeah, and I gotta say we
were excited about this stuff. It's actually we'll get requested
to do things and we're like, oh, I don't know,
should we do that. We'll turn them down and they'll
(01:25):
threaten to fire us, and then we'll march into the
office with a gas can and a lighter. It goes
down like that. But this one is cool. Monsters inside Me,
cool show. Yeah No, everybody on staff pretty much threw
in for this thing, and happily actually because yeah, it
is a cool show. That's a cool graphics. It's just gross. Yeah,
it is um. And if you're eating lunch or dinner
(01:46):
right now, we might advise you to wait until later
listen to this. I actually was eating a sub while
I was researching Leashman is sis tape worm sub? No,
that's the flesh eating I know, just was it a
taper and stub? It was undercooked meat, so yeah, probably. Um. Anyway,
we're talking about parasites and apparently pimp names and uh,
(02:08):
let's get into it. We're talking about three really gross ones,
and technically we should say four because I want to
give a shout out to my favorite and Chuck. Also,
I should probably say anytime we do a segmented um podcast.
Chuck likes the timing because he's a big fat jerk.
I don't like to time you. But if we want
to get to all three, we need only have a
certain amount of time. And so I'm gonna go ahead
and hit start on my new iPhone. Okay, well, dracunculish jerk,
(02:34):
We're supposed to do a Leisha manisis. Oh yeah, Alisha maniasis. Sorry, man,
that's what we're starting with. This is the flesh eating parasite.
It is. It's affection affectionately known tropics subtropics in southern Europe.
So we're safe for now, well, unless we travel to
one of these countries, which you were prone to do.
I yes, I am wanting to go to certain places sometimes.
(02:56):
But yeah, there's a lot of people who actually um
suffer from Alisha maniasis. Estimates are are about twelve million
infective worldwide and three fifty million at risk. Yeah, and
about two million new cases each year. And they're expecting
this to go up, Chuck, thanks to our friend climate change,
Thank you, al Gore. Um. Because as the temperatures increase,
(03:19):
the area where the sand fly, which uh increases as well.
And yeah, it's the sand flight which I wasn't familiar.
I think I had sand fly and black fly confused.
But luckily black flies don't spread um. Leashmanis the sand
flies to and these are actually about a third of
the size of mosquitoes. You know, your bits are relatively
(03:41):
painless if they're if they're not pain free. Um. So yeah,
you don't know that you're being bitten, and you certainly
don't know that the the saliva from this fly has
actually just transferred um some larva of this parasite into
your blood stream. And you know I should point out
to you said that global warming is one reason this
is on the rise. Another reason is because of our
(04:03):
shenanigans in the Middle East, because it is that place
is lousy with sand flies in Afghanistan and Iraq and
the like. So we think a lot of our personnel
over there maybe getting infected in bringing it back. So
leishmaniasis mission accomplished. Yeah, so, Chuck. Actually, the the concentration
(04:23):
of where these cases are popping up is concentrated in
just a handful of countries, Old World and New World. Um.
But there are places like Syria and Brazil have the
vast majority of these cases because it's where the sand
fly lives. But like you said, traveling conquering, these things
can can can transfer tourism and conquering. Yeah, leishmaniasis. Right,
(04:46):
So there's actually two kinds and a sub kind. The
sub kind is my favorite. The cutaneus is my favorite?
Is it because I want to describe the sore If
you had the cutaneus, uh, lee, maniasis, this is what's
gonna happen. You're getting get a sore in your skin.
What happens is as followed and uh, this is so gross.
(05:06):
They describe it. The sore is ending up looking like
a volcano. So it's got a raised edge and then
a central crater, a little meaty central crater right in
the middle. Do you at least maniasis on your breast?
That's gross? And some some of the sores are indeed
covered by a scab and they can be painless or painful.
(05:27):
Painful your breast is yeah. Yeah, So my favorite, chuck,
if you'll allow me to take over for a moment,
is mucosal or muco cut This is the stuff that
like you see photos of when you type in flesh
eating parasite, right, Yeah. What happens is is you get
a cutaneous parasitic infection, and uh, it can spread to
(05:49):
your mucous membranes, eat your lips, your nostrils, that kind
of thing. Basically, the prominent features on your face get
eaten away. Did you google image any of these? Yeah? Yeah,
so are you eating at the time? No, I was not.
It's amazing like people missing their noses. I saw one
where it was a close up of this guy's nose
and somebody had tweezers. It was just kind of pulling
(06:12):
it and it was a still photo, but you could
tell by the way it was being pulled. It was
basically like jelly. It's gross stuff, but that's that They
actually clear up on their own eventually. We read an
article from the CDC describing leashmaniasis, and I was just
considered to find you know, under the how do I
(06:32):
treat leishmaniasis, they're basically like, well, it goes away on
its own eventually, basically like there is no treatment, but
it said it could take months or years. So do
you want a volcano, uh, scab on your forearm for
years or that thing on your breath gross? Uh. There's
a really dangerous one though, called visceral. Yeah, so tell
(06:53):
us about that, chuckers. Yes, Josh, this is the nasty one.
This is the one that attacks your liver and spleen
and I think it in large just them. Well, your
spleen actually can become larger than your liver, which ain't
supposed to happen. That ain't supposed to happen, and even
your liver and uh it is liver shrinking and hardening.
Oh is that what happens? Okay, so your liver's like
a California raising pretty much. And then not the dancing
(07:15):
kind of the dying kind. Yeah. Um yeah, it'll kill you.
It will. And like you said, it is nasty in
that it is dangerous. It's not as nasty as um
muco cutaneous leashmaniasis, but it's still pretty dangerous stuff. So
you want to know how how this uh, this parasite, Uh,
this parasite's life cycle occurs. It's pretty interesting actually. So
(07:40):
you get bit by a sand fly, right, and the
parasite actually is taken up. It enters the bloodstream and
it's taken up by macro phages, which are a type
of white blood cell. So they're living happily and protective
within the macrophages where they're reproducing, and eventually they cause
the cell to lice. Dat erupts and they're all of
(08:04):
a sudden, all these new um parasites are released into
your bloodstream and then they're taken up by more white
blood cells and so on and so on, so the
process keeps continuing and they start multiplying exponentially. Yeah, which
is also how it's flesh eating. When when it's attacking
these cells, it's it's liz ing the cells in your
(08:24):
mucous membrane or around your like on your forearm or
something like that or uh, in the case of visceral leashmaniasis,
your internal organs. But like we said, don't worry about
It'll just go ahead and according to the c d C.
All right, change your press the timer. Man, we're dumb
in this one. Okay, So that's leashmaniasis. Yes to number two,
(08:45):
dracunculiass that's a good one. Yeah, this one's pretty awful too.
It's all this is really sad. As the guinea worm. Yeah,
this is really sad because it affects the poorest of
the poor in the world. That's the bad news, because
it comes from drinking un clean water. The good news
is they have largely eradicated it. Well, the five countries
that are stubbornly hanging on your guinea worm infection. But dude,
(09:07):
we're talking. Um, let's go back in time to nineteen six.
I'm in the tenth grade. You're an elementary school. If
you're drinking behind the elementary I was in the baseball cards.
I was into drinking behind the element I was into
Defender in van Halen Um. So three point five million
(09:29):
people were infected every year back then. And now let's
go back a couple of years to two thousand seven
when I was into Defender and Van Halen and I
was drinking behind the elementary school. Yeah, that's scary. Only
nine thousand five cases were reported, so that's awesome, and
most of those were in the Sudan and Ghana, so
(09:50):
clearly some work to be done there. Sure, So now
we should talk about how the gross this is. This
is a very very gross gross. Paris is the worst one.
I think what happens is U it's generally taken up
through at tainted water supply a year later. Yeah, that's
what was so frightening is you drink bad water on
vacation and Ghana. A year later, all of a sudden,
(10:12):
you say, what's that blister on my foot? Well, the
tour Ghana Tourism board is gonna be really mad at you.
The Greater Ghanese um Chamber of Commerce is going to
be after you chuck to go ahead, all right? So basically,
what is it? Water fleas are easily infected with these parasites,
and they show up in unsanitary water. You drink this water,
(10:36):
you get a couple of water fleas in, or you
can considerably just drink the larva. Right. Uh, the larva
travel down to your intestine where they lodge. They can
pass through the intestine, which most parasites can um and
then they grow right. Well, the stomach acid what I
thought was interesting is it does not kill. It killed
the water, Thank you stomach acid. Right, So, yeah, the
(10:58):
parasite sticks around. It grows and grows and grows um too,
about two to three ft long or a hundred centimeters
long um over the course of ten to fourteen months.
And it's just the females that grow to this adult stage.
And they said it's as wide as a cooked spaghetti
noodle three ft long in your intestine. Yeah, and it's gross.
(11:19):
That's not the worst part though. Our guest producer Lizzie
is about the girl. I think we should make that
our our mission today. Okay, So, um, you've got this
three ft long live spaghetti noodle that you can clearly
identify as a female, uh, detached from your intestine, and
then it migrates to the skin. And here's where the
beauty parts oil forms on the site where the worms
(11:44):
about to emerge, and pop goes the weasel. The worms
starts to poke its head out and uh. Basically you
look down and you have a worm coming out of
your body. And here's the tricky part, what getting it out? Okay,
so if you have them picked up by now, parasites
are arguably the most intelligent things on the planet, or
at the very least the most tenacious. The boil or
(12:07):
the blister where that's that occurs at the site where
the worms about to emerge. Actually, the pain associated with
it is alleviated simply by dropping it in water. Yeah,
this is a contact with water triggers the guinea worm
to release this milky white substance, which is actually millions
of larva into the water supply. So the water supply
(12:31):
is now tainted and the life cycle begins again. Right,
So you're in the you're in Ghana, you're feeling bad,
You get in the river because it makes it feel better,
and then all of a sudden, everyone downstream is getting
this milky secretion of eggs. They get infected. Just so
g it is so okay again, c DC says, yeah, really,
the best way to do this is to have a
(12:51):
clean sanitary water supply. So the treatment for this is
actually just preventive. You just make sure that population has
a clean water supply, right, which is what the Carter
Center has been working so hard for all these years.
That's odd to mention the Carter Center out of nowhere. Well, no,
the Carter Center they've been doing all this work. Oh
they have. Yeah, since when trying to eradicate g W
(13:13):
d Oh did they help with that drop from three
point five million to less than ten thousand cases in
about ten years? You got it, buddy, right, Well, way
to go, Jimmy Carter. Okay, so the Carter Center is
working on eradicating the guinea worm. Sure, among other groups,
got you World Health Organization? Uh? Yeah, right, okay, so yes,
(13:33):
so we've got we've got it down. But let's say
that you do have a polluted water source and all
of a sudden you have a three foot long cook
spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg in a boil.
What do you do, Chuck, what do you do? Well?
One thing you can do, Josh, is you can pull
it out, and you can only do this a few
centimeters at a time on a daily basis. I'm glad
(13:56):
I read this because if I ever had this, I
would yank that thing and pull it out from my
intestine in one long piece of spaghetti wolf. But apparently
you can't do that. I imagine it would break off
or something and causing infection, and you just make it mad.
And you don't want to make a guinea worm. No,
you're tough. So what you do is you wrap it
around a piece of gauze or a small stick, a
little bit at a time, every day, every day, for
(14:16):
several weeks, for several weeks, until it's out. That's one
thing you can do. Or it can be surgically removed,
clearly by a trained professional. But we're talking about the
poorest of the poor in the world, and they can't
they don't have access to this, or you can just
blow your head off. Well that's another option. Sure. Um.
The big problem with guinea worm disease, or when it
was a real real problem, is that, um, it is
(14:37):
a it's a disease of poverty, but it's also a
cause of poverty because if you have a three foot
log cooks spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg um,
you're pretty much temporarily disabled until that thing comes out.
You can't farm, No, you can't take care of your children. Right,
it's very sad. So it does have an economic impact.
That just it's a cycleman, it makes everything even worse.
(15:00):
It's does. But luckily again we've largely eradicated it except
for Ghana and Molly is completely clear of it now
and they used to have a problem with it all right, Chuck, Well,
then turn off your time or again, buddy, that was
a good one, I thought, so as well, are we
leaving this part in where you're actually manipulating the timer? Yes,
we'll find out onto tape worms, tapeworms. This one is
(15:22):
pretty common, the big finish. Everybody knows tapeworms. There's that
tapeworm diet which actually is real, is it really? We're
not endorsing that. By the way, I'm just big on
calorie restricted diets and knowledge. Even Chuck won't let me
endorse that one. But still, uh, this is We chose
this one because it's actually really interesting. Um. The study
(15:46):
of tapeworms has revealed a change and understanding of human evolution.
Big deal, or at least pitology. Yeah, we always thought
humans always thought that we get tapeworms from animals. Thanks
a lot, cow and pig for getting us tapeworms. There's
some research that's been done that actually turns the tables, Josh,
(16:06):
and in a switcheroo. It looks like we may have
started the whole thing and given it to the animals.
So not only did we domesticate you for slaughter, we
also gave you the tapeworm. So tapeworms uh known affectionately
in the medical community as tania. Uh. There's uh tanias solium,
which we'll talk about that's distinct from Tania sagenada and
(16:31):
Tania asiatica. Thank you. I worked on pronunciations like all
day uh sagonada and asiatica both actually for their lifestyle
life cycle require an herbivore in there as an intermediate
host to get to their definitive host us, the carnivores carnivores. Right,
does this mean a vegetarian or vegan wouldn't be infected?
(16:53):
You would think so, but look out for tanias solium,
which will get anybody. Yeah, very broad range and including dogs.
It said. That's very sad, right, Yeah, once we domesticated dogs, cows, pigs,
you know again, we thought that that's when we started
getting tapeworms. Actually, tapeworms go back as far as about
two point seven million years. Humans or hominids have had
(17:15):
some sort of trouble um with all of the wretching
and the pooping and stuff like that, if you believe
that kind of thing. Yeah, we've been around for two
point seven million years? Do you believe that? Hogwatch? Sorry, so,
chuck um. Let's talk about tapeworms. What they do, how
they do it, what they look like. All right, we're
(17:37):
talking about intestinal tapeworm infections. A lot of times, uh,
they're not detected because it's pretty mild symptom. Wize, I
assume that one or both of us has a tapeworm
right now? Can I tell you something? Boy? Yes, So
I'm actually a big proponent of high colonics. Yeah, oh yeah,
I learned so much. They are mood changing, really and
(18:00):
you have to get to And also anyone who goes
out and gets a high klonic make sure the place
you go is ultra sanitized and insist on watching them
sanitize the machine, especially in our producers. Jerry's House of Klonics.
I mean, she's tidy, but I wouldn't accept the high
klonic from her. Right, Um, I was. I got high
(18:23):
klonic two of them. The second one it was like
I was a brand new person. I literally felt reborn.
But the guy who was running the place was telling
me about a customer. They it's so perverse. They have
this table set up and it's like a doctor's exam
table um, and you have certain things sticking certain places, um,
and then a tube. Dr Frankenstein going sure, you have
(18:44):
a tube going out right, And then there's mirrors showing
the whole thing, so you're seeing all the stuff. One
guy had to call the owner in who was telling
me the story, and he had stopped up the tube
and they went and removed the tube on it out.
You know what it was. It was a fist size
ball of worms. You're kidding. The guy had had no symptoms,
(19:08):
had no clue they were in there. Uh, and all
of a sudden, the fist sized ball of worms coming out. Well,
it's pretty clear why the Discovery show is called Monsters
Inside Me. Yeah, fistful of monsters inside of you. Yeah,
so high colonics equal getting rid of worms. Sometimes that's
my that's my little ast side there, Chuck. I'm going
to Jerry's House of clonics right after this. You should, so, Chuck,
(19:31):
how do we get these tape worms that come out
and fist size balls? Well, there's different ways, Josh. Um.
It's usually you can get it through eating food. But
there's uh, there's a little disturbing asset to all this
is fecal matter has to be involved. Yeah. I saw
in this article that you could get it through intimate contact.
(19:51):
But if fecal matter has to be present, what is that?
I don't know, And you out there in podcasts, I
can't make your own call there. But if let's say
you were preparing some food and um, you have poop
on your hands and poop or something involved involved, yeah,
then then you can get it. And I know, undercooked
pork I think is one way that you can get
the Uh the which one was it? The solum? No?
(20:15):
Is it? I thought? So? No? Yeah, Solium is the
only one that doesn't require a herbivore. It's the others.
Solium is often found in raw or undercook pork, and
it's therefore called the pork tape worm. Well that's pretty definitive.
It sounds like it. Yeah, at least that's what Dr
Hoburg says. It's so. One of the things I found
disturbing was this. So you know how tapeworms are segmented.
(20:39):
First of all, they can grow up to sixty twenty
meters long. That's disturbing, And they're heavily segmented. Each segment
can contain up to forty thousand eggs larva eggs um.
These eggs can actually live twenty five years out in
the open. So if you poop somewhere like in the
(21:01):
desert at age, if you go back and visit your
poop in the desert age fifty, if there were taper
makes in there, you could consuerably eat them and start
it over again. That's crazy, isn't that gross? That is
and if you swallow these eggs, josh, uh, the larvae
can actually penetrate your intestinal wall and lodge in an
(21:23):
organ or form a cyst. Well, yeah, they can form
brain cysts. They can also attach They can attach to
any organ, including your eye and brain, which can cause.
They've said they've linked it to blindness and epilepsy and
insanity and um seizures. Yeah, what else is there? Um? Paralysis, UM,
(21:44):
A lack of equilibrium, Yeah, like vertigo, dizziness, that kind
of thing. It's bad stuff, it is, So stay away
from dirty pigs and don't cook if you have poop
on your hands, just get somebody else to cook an
maybe go out to eat. Yeah, that's a good call.
Does that it on tape worms? Yeah? We already covered
(22:06):
the part about how it turns out we infected livestock, right,
sorry pigs. So that's three uh three gross parasite Again.
I want to say I want to give a shout
out to my favorite which we didn't cover because there's
actually a dearth of information out there on it. It's
called the human bot fly, bot fly, the fly. Did
you read my blog post on it? Did you watched
(22:27):
the video? And that's awesome? So the bot fly actually
doesn't sting or lay its eggs or spread its larva
directly into humans. It uses um mosquitoes to do it
for him. So these flies actually capture mosquito midflight, lay
some eggs on it, and then the mosquito flies around
with the eggs until they hatch into larva. Once the
(22:50):
larva hatch, the mosquito um plunges its proposes into a
human or any any mammal I believe in to me
there in the so the larva are actually transferred. They
go under the under the skin, so there and eat
your fatty tissue for several weeks, and then finally a
(23:10):
maggot emerges from your skin and falls off and goes
into the soil where it burrows and until the pupa.
Then that's the pupa stage, and then it emerges as
an adult bot fly. That's the wrath of con Yeah,
and there is no treatment for it. Also, people who
have these things, they they as they grow they stay
close to the surface. So if you there, it breathes
(23:32):
through your skin, right through a hole in your skin
um and if you cover it up, you can feel
the maggot moving underneath your skin. People have reported was
just not in the top three because there's not that
much information on it, but we're still talking about it anyway, Bunny. Um.
And then the the only way to get rid of
it is to actually pop it out. So if you
(23:53):
go to the blogs at how stuff works dot com
you can, uh, I think you go through older posts
and you find one on the bot Flight's probably a
couple of weeks old by the time this this podcast
comes out. And if you're into parasites or that kind
of thing, well, definitely that's one thing. But while you're
getting help, while you're filling out the requisite insurance forms,
(24:15):
you should probably check out um Monsters Inside Me on
Animal Planet on Wednesdays at nine and Chuck and I
don't talk just anything like this is a cool show. Yeah,
cool and gross and just you know, if you're into
that kind of thing, and I know you are, and
again that it's like you're abusing our listeners. Um. That
website for Monsters Inside Me has one of the great
(24:38):
writers on staff here at how stuffworks dot com, Robert
Lamb to work by him, Robert's one of my favorite.
Rocked it out. So yeah, so there you go, three
gross parasites plus the bot fly, and that means it's
time for listener mail. So, Josh, I'm just gonna call
this listener mail from two dudes someone took you to
(25:00):
ask on Superman, did you read those we only get
too well. We had a few people right in, but
I'm going I'm gonna read Thomas. It's really ultimately, Chuck,
I don't. It's gotten to the point where I'm not
sure why I opened my mouth unless I'm definitively sure
I know what I'm talking about, because I tend to
say the exact opposite of what's true. I know, but
you know that's Uh, that's part of the show. You know.
People like finding little tidbits that we get wrong. It's
(25:20):
becoming the crux of the show. No, no, no, these
are things, These are little tidbits. This is this is
not high science here, It's about Superman for godsakes. Um, Hi, guys,
have been listening to your great podcast for a while
and I love them. I've never seen an email, but
I felt I needed to correct something in the Earthquake podcast.
You said Superman lied to Lex Luthor's girlfriend. I believe
was he's test marker. Uh not true, Superman did not lie.
(25:44):
She made him a promise. She made him promise to
save her mother before stopping the missile headed for California.
He reluctantly agreed, and she removed his Kryptonite necklace and
flew to Hackensack, New Jersey to say, miss test Marker's mom.
After he pushed the missile to space, you turned around
to see the second missile hit the San Andrea's fault.
So sorry, Superman did not lie, and he even says
(26:07):
uh in his own words, lois, I never lie. It
comes from Thomas from Harvard, Illinois. He's a dogmatic and inflexible.
He may have toxic plasms. I think he does. And
this is from Anthony. Hey, Chuckers, listen to the new
podcast on twinkies. He didn't address you. I thought that
was weird. Does well because they think that you don't
read the listener meal when in fact you too. Yeah.
(26:27):
I get the listener emails too, you just don't respond
and read them on the air. To clear that up,
Josh treats everything. Yeah, so hey Chuckers and Josh, oh,
he did say that, I just missed it. Uh. Bell
is a whole lot of unnecessary twinkies reminded me of
a time in the early nineties when I worked at
The State News, Michigan States University's independent student newspaper, Start,
(26:49):
we had a weekly junk food cookie day when we
would all chip in a buck or two, multiplied by
a staff of fixed fifty or sixty, and get heaps
of sugary and salty snacks. While gorging ourselves on Twinkies.
We had a debate about their shelf life. We took
some gaffer tape one of your favorite things. I love that,
and uh stuck at two pack up on the inside
of a locker, intending to leave it for as long
(27:10):
as possible. For over three years. We watched the twinkies
disintegrate into heaps of powder, but never during our experiment
during did we see any mold visible. We eventually threw
away the package, and I have not even from sins
how it comes from Anthony? Well, Anthony, Yeah, what year
did he say? He didn't Well, he said early nineties,
(27:31):
so he was he was, he's my age. Yeah, we're
grunging it out. You cried when krit Cobain died. Dues. Now, well,
if like Chuck you cried when Kurt Cobain died, you
can send us an email about that too. Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(27:55):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more House stuff Works, check out our
blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Here is Charles w dr
(00:21):
kunk Eliasis Bryant How you doing drunk? That sounds like
my play a name? It is sort of player appreciate
dot Com. I wish I could remember what that name was.
Was so good? Oh it was we pastic Bryant Trump.
Is that it sugar tastic Bryant Trump. Sugar tastic? That's it,
(00:42):
Bryant Trump. Yeah, that means Chuck's put name is as
it's as its appears on player appreciate dot Com. I
love that you can generate a play a name. Yeah,
it is a pretty cool couples the Internet, Chuck, speaking
of the Internet. Yes, our parent company, Discoveries Channel Animal
Planet UM has a cool website. Indeed that they launched
(01:05):
for their show Monsters Inside of Me. Very cool, which
has inspired us to do a couple of parasite podcasts.
This is two of two. Yeah, number two. We just
did um a toxoplasmosis. Yeah, and I gotta say we
were excited about this stuff. It's actually we'll get requested
to do things and we're like, oh, I don't know,
should we do that. We'll turn them down and they'll
(01:25):
threaten to fire us, and then we'll march into the
office with a gas can and a lighter. It goes
down like that. But this one is cool. Monsters inside Me,
cool show. Yeah No, everybody on staff pretty much threw
in for this thing, and happily actually because yeah, it
is a cool show. That's a cool graphics. It's just gross. Yeah,
it is um. And if you're eating lunch or dinner
(01:46):
right now, we might advise you to wait until later
listen to this. I actually was eating a sub while
I was researching Leashman is sis tape worm sub? No,
that's the flesh eating I know, just was it a
taper and stub? It was undercooked meat, so yeah, probably. Um. Anyway,
we're talking about parasites and apparently pimp names and uh,
(02:08):
let's get into it. We're talking about three really gross ones,
and technically we should say four because I want to
give a shout out to my favorite and Chuck. Also,
I should probably say anytime we do a segmented um podcast.
Chuck likes the timing because he's a big fat jerk.
I don't like to time you. But if we want
to get to all three, we need only have a
certain amount of time. And so I'm gonna go ahead
and hit start on my new iPhone. Okay, well, dracunculish jerk,
(02:34):
We're supposed to do a Leisha manisis. Oh yeah, Alisha maniasis. Sorry, man,
that's what we're starting with. This is the flesh eating parasite.
It is. It's affection affectionately known tropics subtropics in southern Europe.
So we're safe for now, well, unless we travel to
one of these countries, which you were prone to do.
I yes, I am wanting to go to certain places sometimes.
(02:56):
But yeah, there's a lot of people who actually um
suffer from Alisha maniasis. Estimates are are about twelve million
infective worldwide and three fifty million at risk. Yeah, and
about two million new cases each year. And they're expecting
this to go up, Chuck, thanks to our friend climate change,
Thank you, al Gore. Um. Because as the temperatures increase,
(03:19):
the area where the sand fly, which uh increases as well.
And yeah, it's the sand flight which I wasn't familiar.
I think I had sand fly and black fly confused.
But luckily black flies don't spread um. Leashmanis the sand
flies to and these are actually about a third of
the size of mosquitoes. You know, your bits are relatively
(03:41):
painless if they're if they're not pain free. Um. So yeah,
you don't know that you're being bitten, and you certainly
don't know that the the saliva from this fly has
actually just transferred um some larva of this parasite into
your blood stream. And you know I should point out
to you said that global warming is one reason this
is on the rise. Another reason is because of our
(04:03):
shenanigans in the Middle East, because it is that place
is lousy with sand flies in Afghanistan and Iraq and
the like. So we think a lot of our personnel
over there maybe getting infected in bringing it back. So
leishmaniasis mission accomplished. Yeah, so, Chuck. Actually, the the concentration
(04:23):
of where these cases are popping up is concentrated in
just a handful of countries, Old World and New World. Um.
But there are places like Syria and Brazil have the
vast majority of these cases because it's where the sand
fly lives. But like you said, traveling conquering, these things
can can can transfer tourism and conquering. Yeah, leishmaniasis. Right,
(04:46):
So there's actually two kinds and a sub kind. The
sub kind is my favorite. The cutaneus is my favorite?
Is it because I want to describe the sore If
you had the cutaneus, uh, lee, maniasis, this is what's
gonna happen. You're getting get a sore in your skin.
What happens is as followed and uh, this is so gross.
(05:06):
They describe it. The sore is ending up looking like
a volcano. So it's got a raised edge and then
a central crater, a little meaty central crater right in
the middle. Do you at least maniasis on your breast?
That's gross? And some some of the sores are indeed
covered by a scab and they can be painless or painful.
(05:27):
Painful your breast is yeah. Yeah, So my favorite, chuck,
if you'll allow me to take over for a moment,
is mucosal or muco cut This is the stuff that
like you see photos of when you type in flesh
eating parasite, right, Yeah. What happens is is you get
a cutaneous parasitic infection, and uh, it can spread to
(05:49):
your mucous membranes, eat your lips, your nostrils, that kind
of thing. Basically, the prominent features on your face get
eaten away. Did you google image any of these? Yeah? Yeah,
so are you eating at the time? No, I was not.
It's amazing like people missing their noses. I saw one
where it was a close up of this guy's nose
and somebody had tweezers. It was just kind of pulling
(06:12):
it and it was a still photo, but you could
tell by the way it was being pulled. It was
basically like jelly. It's gross stuff, but that's that They
actually clear up on their own eventually. We read an
article from the CDC describing leashmaniasis, and I was just
considered to find you know, under the how do I
(06:32):
treat leishmaniasis, they're basically like, well, it goes away on
its own eventually, basically like there is no treatment, but
it said it could take months or years. So do
you want a volcano, uh, scab on your forearm for
years or that thing on your breath gross? Uh. There's
a really dangerous one though, called visceral. Yeah, so tell
(06:53):
us about that, chuckers. Yes, Josh, this is the nasty one.
This is the one that attacks your liver and spleen
and I think it in large just them. Well, your
spleen actually can become larger than your liver, which ain't
supposed to happen. That ain't supposed to happen, and even
your liver and uh it is liver shrinking and hardening.
Oh is that what happens? Okay, so your liver's like
a California raising pretty much. And then not the dancing
(07:15):
kind of the dying kind. Yeah. Um yeah, it'll kill you.
It will. And like you said, it is nasty in
that it is dangerous. It's not as nasty as um
muco cutaneous leashmaniasis, but it's still pretty dangerous stuff. So
you want to know how how this uh, this parasite, Uh,
this parasite's life cycle occurs. It's pretty interesting actually. So
(07:40):
you get bit by a sand fly, right, and the
parasite actually is taken up. It enters the bloodstream and
it's taken up by macro phages, which are a type
of white blood cell. So they're living happily and protective
within the macrophages where they're reproducing, and eventually they cause
the cell to lice. Dat erupts and they're all of
(08:04):
a sudden, all these new um parasites are released into
your bloodstream and then they're taken up by more white
blood cells and so on and so on, so the
process keeps continuing and they start multiplying exponentially. Yeah, which
is also how it's flesh eating. When when it's attacking
these cells, it's it's liz ing the cells in your
(08:24):
mucous membrane or around your like on your forearm or
something like that or uh, in the case of visceral leashmaniasis,
your internal organs. But like we said, don't worry about
It'll just go ahead and according to the c d C.
All right, change your press the timer. Man, we're dumb
in this one. Okay, So that's leashmaniasis. Yes to number two,
(08:45):
dracunculiass that's a good one. Yeah, this one's pretty awful too.
It's all this is really sad. As the guinea worm. Yeah,
this is really sad because it affects the poorest of
the poor in the world. That's the bad news, because
it comes from drinking un clean water. The good news
is they have largely eradicated it. Well, the five countries
that are stubbornly hanging on your guinea worm infection. But dude,
(09:07):
we're talking. Um, let's go back in time to nineteen six.
I'm in the tenth grade. You're an elementary school. If
you're drinking behind the elementary I was in the baseball cards.
I was into drinking behind the element I was into
Defender in van Halen Um. So three point five million
(09:29):
people were infected every year back then. And now let's
go back a couple of years to two thousand seven
when I was into Defender and Van Halen and I
was drinking behind the elementary school. Yeah, that's scary. Only
nine thousand five cases were reported, so that's awesome, and
most of those were in the Sudan and Ghana, so
(09:50):
clearly some work to be done there. Sure, So now
we should talk about how the gross this is. This
is a very very gross gross. Paris is the worst one.
I think what happens is U it's generally taken up
through at tainted water supply a year later. Yeah, that's
what was so frightening is you drink bad water on
vacation and Ghana. A year later, all of a sudden,
(10:12):
you say, what's that blister on my foot? Well, the
tour Ghana Tourism board is gonna be really mad at you.
The Greater Ghanese um Chamber of Commerce is going to
be after you chuck to go ahead, all right? So basically,
what is it? Water fleas are easily infected with these parasites,
and they show up in unsanitary water. You drink this water,
(10:36):
you get a couple of water fleas in, or you
can considerably just drink the larva. Right. Uh, the larva
travel down to your intestine where they lodge. They can
pass through the intestine, which most parasites can um and
then they grow right. Well, the stomach acid what I
thought was interesting is it does not kill. It killed
the water, Thank you stomach acid. Right, So, yeah, the
(10:58):
parasite sticks around. It grows and grows and grows um too,
about two to three ft long or a hundred centimeters
long um over the course of ten to fourteen months.
And it's just the females that grow to this adult stage.
And they said it's as wide as a cooked spaghetti
noodle three ft long in your intestine. Yeah, and it's gross.
(11:19):
That's not the worst part though. Our guest producer Lizzie
is about the girl. I think we should make that
our our mission today. Okay, So, um, you've got this
three ft long live spaghetti noodle that you can clearly
identify as a female, uh, detached from your intestine, and
then it migrates to the skin. And here's where the
beauty parts oil forms on the site where the worms
(11:44):
about to emerge, and pop goes the weasel. The worms
starts to poke its head out and uh. Basically you
look down and you have a worm coming out of
your body. And here's the tricky part, what getting it out? Okay,
so if you have them picked up by now, parasites
are arguably the most intelligent things on the planet, or
at the very least the most tenacious. The boil or
(12:07):
the blister where that's that occurs at the site where
the worms about to emerge. Actually, the pain associated with
it is alleviated simply by dropping it in water. Yeah,
this is a contact with water triggers the guinea worm
to release this milky white substance, which is actually millions
of larva into the water supply. So the water supply
(12:31):
is now tainted and the life cycle begins again. Right,
So you're in the you're in Ghana, you're feeling bad,
You get in the river because it makes it feel better,
and then all of a sudden, everyone downstream is getting
this milky secretion of eggs. They get infected. Just so
g it is so okay again, c DC says, yeah, really,
the best way to do this is to have a
(12:51):
clean sanitary water supply. So the treatment for this is
actually just preventive. You just make sure that population has
a clean water supply, right, which is what the Carter
Center has been working so hard for all these years.
That's odd to mention the Carter Center out of nowhere. Well, no,
the Carter Center they've been doing all this work. Oh
they have. Yeah, since when trying to eradicate g W
(13:13):
d Oh did they help with that drop from three
point five million to less than ten thousand cases in
about ten years? You got it, buddy, right, Well, way
to go, Jimmy Carter. Okay, so the Carter Center is
working on eradicating the guinea worm. Sure, among other groups,
got you World Health Organization? Uh? Yeah, right, okay, so yes,
(13:33):
so we've got we've got it down. But let's say
that you do have a polluted water source and all
of a sudden you have a three foot long cook
spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg in a boil.
What do you do, Chuck, what do you do? Well?
One thing you can do, Josh, is you can pull
it out, and you can only do this a few
centimeters at a time on a daily basis. I'm glad
(13:56):
I read this because if I ever had this, I
would yank that thing and pull it out from my
intestine in one long piece of spaghetti wolf. But apparently
you can't do that. I imagine it would break off
or something and causing infection, and you just make it mad.
And you don't want to make a guinea worm. No,
you're tough. So what you do is you wrap it
around a piece of gauze or a small stick, a
little bit at a time, every day, every day, for
(14:16):
several weeks, for several weeks, until it's out. That's one
thing you can do. Or it can be surgically removed,
clearly by a trained professional. But we're talking about the
poorest of the poor in the world, and they can't
they don't have access to this, or you can just
blow your head off. Well that's another option. Sure. Um.
The big problem with guinea worm disease, or when it
was a real real problem, is that, um, it is
(14:37):
a it's a disease of poverty, but it's also a
cause of poverty because if you have a three foot
log cooks spaghetti noodle coming out of your leg um,
you're pretty much temporarily disabled until that thing comes out.
You can't farm, No, you can't take care of your children. Right,
it's very sad. So it does have an economic impact.
That just it's a cycleman, it makes everything even worse.
(15:00):
It's does. But luckily again we've largely eradicated it except
for Ghana and Molly is completely clear of it now
and they used to have a problem with it all right, Chuck, Well,
then turn off your time or again, buddy, that was
a good one, I thought, so as well, are we
leaving this part in where you're actually manipulating the timer? Yes,
we'll find out onto tape worms, tapeworms. This one is
(15:22):
pretty common, the big finish. Everybody knows tapeworms. There's that
tapeworm diet which actually is real, is it really? We're
not endorsing that. By the way, I'm just big on
calorie restricted diets and knowledge. Even Chuck won't let me
endorse that one. But still, uh, this is We chose
this one because it's actually really interesting. Um. The study
(15:46):
of tapeworms has revealed a change and understanding of human evolution.
Big deal, or at least pitology. Yeah, we always thought
humans always thought that we get tapeworms from animals. Thanks
a lot, cow and pig for getting us tapeworms. There's
some research that's been done that actually turns the tables, Josh,
(16:06):
and in a switcheroo. It looks like we may have
started the whole thing and given it to the animals.
So not only did we domesticate you for slaughter, we
also gave you the tapeworm. So tapeworms uh known affectionately
in the medical community as tania. Uh. There's uh tanias solium,
which we'll talk about that's distinct from Tania sagenada and
(16:31):
Tania asiatica. Thank you. I worked on pronunciations like all
day uh sagonada and asiatica both actually for their lifestyle
life cycle require an herbivore in there as an intermediate
host to get to their definitive host us, the carnivores carnivores. Right,
does this mean a vegetarian or vegan wouldn't be infected?
(16:53):
You would think so, but look out for tanias solium,
which will get anybody. Yeah, very broad range and including dogs.
It said. That's very sad, right, Yeah, once we domesticated dogs, cows, pigs,
you know again, we thought that that's when we started
getting tapeworms. Actually, tapeworms go back as far as about
two point seven million years. Humans or hominids have had
(17:15):
some sort of trouble um with all of the wretching
and the pooping and stuff like that, if you believe
that kind of thing. Yeah, we've been around for two
point seven million years? Do you believe that? Hogwatch? Sorry, so,
chuck um. Let's talk about tapeworms. What they do, how
they do it, what they look like. All right, we're
(17:37):
talking about intestinal tapeworm infections. A lot of times, uh,
they're not detected because it's pretty mild symptom. Wize, I
assume that one or both of us has a tapeworm
right now? Can I tell you something? Boy? Yes, So
I'm actually a big proponent of high colonics. Yeah, oh yeah,
I learned so much. They are mood changing, really and
(18:00):
you have to get to And also anyone who goes
out and gets a high klonic make sure the place
you go is ultra sanitized and insist on watching them
sanitize the machine, especially in our producers. Jerry's House of Klonics.
I mean, she's tidy, but I wouldn't accept the high
klonic from her. Right, Um, I was. I got high
(18:23):
klonic two of them. The second one it was like
I was a brand new person. I literally felt reborn.
But the guy who was running the place was telling
me about a customer. They it's so perverse. They have
this table set up and it's like a doctor's exam
table um, and you have certain things sticking certain places, um,
and then a tube. Dr Frankenstein going sure, you have
(18:44):
a tube going out right, And then there's mirrors showing
the whole thing, so you're seeing all the stuff. One
guy had to call the owner in who was telling
me the story, and he had stopped up the tube
and they went and removed the tube on it out.
You know what it was. It was a fist size
ball of worms. You're kidding. The guy had had no symptoms,
(19:08):
had no clue they were in there. Uh, and all
of a sudden, the fist sized ball of worms coming out. Well,
it's pretty clear why the Discovery show is called Monsters
Inside Me. Yeah, fistful of monsters inside of you. Yeah,
so high colonics equal getting rid of worms. Sometimes that's
my that's my little ast side there, Chuck. I'm going
to Jerry's House of clonics right after this. You should, so, Chuck,
(19:31):
how do we get these tape worms that come out
and fist size balls? Well, there's different ways, Josh. Um.
It's usually you can get it through eating food. But
there's uh, there's a little disturbing asset to all this
is fecal matter has to be involved. Yeah. I saw
in this article that you could get it through intimate contact.
(19:51):
But if fecal matter has to be present, what is that?
I don't know, And you out there in podcasts, I
can't make your own call there. But if let's say
you were preparing some food and um, you have poop
on your hands and poop or something involved involved, yeah,
then then you can get it. And I know, undercooked
pork I think is one way that you can get
the Uh the which one was it? The solum? No?
(20:15):
Is it? I thought? So? No? Yeah, Solium is the
only one that doesn't require a herbivore. It's the others.
Solium is often found in raw or undercook pork, and
it's therefore called the pork tape worm. Well that's pretty definitive.
It sounds like it. Yeah, at least that's what Dr
Hoburg says. It's so. One of the things I found
disturbing was this. So you know how tapeworms are segmented.
(20:39):
First of all, they can grow up to sixty twenty
meters long. That's disturbing, And they're heavily segmented. Each segment
can contain up to forty thousand eggs larva eggs um.
These eggs can actually live twenty five years out in
the open. So if you poop somewhere like in the
(21:01):
desert at age, if you go back and visit your
poop in the desert age fifty, if there were taper
makes in there, you could consuerably eat them and start
it over again. That's crazy, isn't that gross? That is
and if you swallow these eggs, josh, uh, the larvae
can actually penetrate your intestinal wall and lodge in an
(21:23):
organ or form a cyst. Well, yeah, they can form
brain cysts. They can also attach They can attach to
any organ, including your eye and brain, which can cause.
They've said they've linked it to blindness and epilepsy and
insanity and um seizures. Yeah, what else is there? Um? Paralysis, UM,
(21:44):
A lack of equilibrium, Yeah, like vertigo, dizziness, that kind
of thing. It's bad stuff, it is, So stay away
from dirty pigs and don't cook if you have poop
on your hands, just get somebody else to cook an
maybe go out to eat. Yeah, that's a good call.
Does that it on tape worms? Yeah? We already covered
(22:06):
the part about how it turns out we infected livestock, right,
sorry pigs. So that's three uh three gross parasite Again.
I want to say I want to give a shout
out to my favorite which we didn't cover because there's
actually a dearth of information out there on it. It's
called the human bot fly, bot fly, the fly. Did
you read my blog post on it? Did you watched
(22:27):
the video? And that's awesome? So the bot fly actually
doesn't sting or lay its eggs or spread its larva
directly into humans. It uses um mosquitoes to do it
for him. So these flies actually capture mosquito midflight, lay
some eggs on it, and then the mosquito flies around
with the eggs until they hatch into larva. Once the
(22:50):
larva hatch, the mosquito um plunges its proposes into a
human or any any mammal I believe in to me
there in the so the larva are actually transferred. They
go under the under the skin, so there and eat
your fatty tissue for several weeks, and then finally a
(23:10):
maggot emerges from your skin and falls off and goes
into the soil where it burrows and until the pupa.
Then that's the pupa stage, and then it emerges as
an adult bot fly. That's the wrath of con Yeah,
and there is no treatment for it. Also, people who
have these things, they they as they grow they stay
close to the surface. So if you there, it breathes
(23:32):
through your skin, right through a hole in your skin
um and if you cover it up, you can feel
the maggot moving underneath your skin. People have reported was
just not in the top three because there's not that
much information on it, but we're still talking about it anyway, Bunny. Um.
And then the the only way to get rid of
it is to actually pop it out. So if you
(23:53):
go to the blogs at how stuff works dot com
you can, uh, I think you go through older posts
and you find one on the bot Flight's probably a
couple of weeks old by the time this this podcast
comes out. And if you're into parasites or that kind
of thing, well, definitely that's one thing. But while you're
getting help, while you're filling out the requisite insurance forms,
(24:15):
you should probably check out um Monsters Inside Me on
Animal Planet on Wednesdays at nine and Chuck and I
don't talk just anything like this is a cool show. Yeah,
cool and gross and just you know, if you're into
that kind of thing, and I know you are, and
again that it's like you're abusing our listeners. Um. That
website for Monsters Inside Me has one of the great
(24:38):
writers on staff here at how stuffworks dot com, Robert
Lamb to work by him, Robert's one of my favorite.
Rocked it out. So yeah, so there you go, three
gross parasites plus the bot fly, and that means it's
time for listener mail. So, Josh, I'm just gonna call
this listener mail from two dudes someone took you to
(25:00):
ask on Superman, did you read those we only get
too well. We had a few people right in, but
I'm going I'm gonna read Thomas. It's really ultimately, Chuck,
I don't. It's gotten to the point where I'm not
sure why I opened my mouth unless I'm definitively sure
I know what I'm talking about, because I tend to
say the exact opposite of what's true. I know, but
you know that's Uh, that's part of the show. You know.
People like finding little tidbits that we get wrong. It's
(25:20):
becoming the crux of the show. No, no, no, these
are things, These are little tidbits. This is this is
not high science here, It's about Superman for godsakes. Um, Hi, guys,
have been listening to your great podcast for a while
and I love them. I've never seen an email, but
I felt I needed to correct something in the Earthquake podcast.
You said Superman lied to Lex Luthor's girlfriend. I believe
was he's test marker. Uh not true, Superman did not lie.
(25:44):
She made him a promise. She made him promise to
save her mother before stopping the missile headed for California.
He reluctantly agreed, and she removed his Kryptonite necklace and
flew to Hackensack, New Jersey to say, miss test Marker's mom.
After he pushed the missile to space, you turned around
to see the second missile hit the San Andrea's fault.
So sorry, Superman did not lie, and he even says
(26:07):
uh in his own words, lois, I never lie. It
comes from Thomas from Harvard, Illinois. He's a dogmatic and inflexible.
He may have toxic plasms. I think he does. And
this is from Anthony. Hey, Chuckers, listen to the new
podcast on twinkies. He didn't address you. I thought that
was weird. Does well because they think that you don't
read the listener meal when in fact you too. Yeah.
(26:27):
I get the listener emails too, you just don't respond
and read them on the air. To clear that up,
Josh treats everything. Yeah, so hey Chuckers and Josh, oh,
he did say that, I just missed it. Uh. Bell
is a whole lot of unnecessary twinkies reminded me of
a time in the early nineties when I worked at
The State News, Michigan States University's independent student newspaper, Start,
(26:49):
we had a weekly junk food cookie day when we
would all chip in a buck or two, multiplied by
a staff of fixed fifty or sixty, and get heaps
of sugary and salty snacks. While gorging ourselves on Twinkies.
We had a debate about their shelf life. We took
some gaffer tape one of your favorite things. I love that,
and uh stuck at two pack up on the inside
of a locker, intending to leave it for as long
(27:10):
as possible. For over three years. We watched the twinkies
disintegrate into heaps of powder, but never during our experiment
during did we see any mold visible. We eventually threw
away the package, and I have not even from sins
how it comes from Anthony? Well, Anthony, Yeah, what year
did he say? He didn't Well, he said early nineties,
(27:31):
so he was he was, he's my age. Yeah, we're
grunging it out. You cried when krit Cobain died. Dues. Now, well,
if like Chuck you cried when Kurt Cobain died, you
can send us an email about that too. Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(27:55):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more House stuff Works, check out our
blogs on the House of works dot com home page.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!