Doctors have shared a cautionary tale, based on real stories of patients they have seen who have consumed tapeworm eggs in a bid to lose weight.
Tapeworms are parasites which enter the human gut primarily through people unwittingly eating its eggs in undercooked meat.
There they can trigger weightloss by taking some of the food eaten by their host for themselves and causing diarrhoea.
This has led to bizarre cases where women seeking to lose weight have bought tapeworm eggs to intentionally infect themselves in a bid to slim down, with cases being reported from US and China.
The disgusting weight-loss technique isn’t recommended as it comes with a host of side affects, including releasing eggs into the bloodstream which can reach the brain and cause potentially fatal seizures.
Detailed by YouTube channel Chubbyemu , the case concerned a woman referred to only as ‘TE’, portrayed here by an actor, who bought a box of pills containing tapeworm eggs online using cryptocurrency.
It was decision that would land her in hospital, after eggs of the parasites wormed their way into the fluid surrounding her brain
Detailed on YouTube channel Chubbyemu, the case concerned a woman referred to only as ‘TE’ who bought a box of pills containing tapeworm eggs online using cryptocurrency.
TE, 21, resorted to buying the eggs struggling to reach her weightloss goals via diet and exercise.
Channel host Dr Bernard Hsu, a cancer specialist based in the US, said the patient in question found the pills via posts on a social media website deliberately designed to lure in the curious with phrases such as ‘controversial’ and ‘forbidden’.
‘TE was intrigued. A “forbidden” method is one that must be so good, and so powerful, that it’s the one true secret that she needs to know,’ he said.
Influenced by apparent success stories and before and after pictures TE was so convinced she downed two of the tablets she had purchased.
At first, TE had the results she hoped for, and she started to slim down.
While she suffered the occasional stomach cramp this was dismissed compared to the results.
Channel host Dr Bernard Hsu, a US medic specialising in oncology, said the patient in question found the pills via posts on social media board deliberately designed to lure in the curious with phrases such as ‘controversial’ and ‘forbidden’
She only grew slightly concerned one evening when she went to the bathroom and, as Dr Hsu graphically detailed, felt a strange sensation.
‘She thought she could feel something flapping and slapping around her cheeks while she was sitting down,’ she said.
‘When she was about to flush, she looked back and saw some tan, rectangular pieces floating around in the bowl creeping out of the bulk mass.’
But TE dismissed this as evidence of fat leaving her body.
Then, just a few weeks later, she noticed a strange growth, a lump under her chin.
Dr Hsu said she upon pressing it TE passed out, awakening after an undetermined length of time face down on the floor.
She then felt an immense pressure in her skull and over the next few days she was bombarded by intense headaches.
Cysticercosis can also affect the brain as was the case for TE, these brains cans show one patient, a 38-year-old man from the US, who developed similar problems as TE due to eggs adversely affecting the sensitive organ
She eventually sought medical help, going to a hospital’s A&E department being admitted for severe headaches, bloating and severe abdominal pain.
Medics eventually performed tests on her cerebrospinal fluid — a liquid which collects in the spine and around the brain protecting the organ and supporting normal blood flow.
Results showed the liquid was under double the pressure it should be, suggesting something was present that shouldn’t be.
However, tests for the usual suspects in these cases such as blood sugar or bacteria, came back negative.
Operating under the assumption the abnormal reading was result of an undetectable viral infection, medics used drugs to bring the swelling under control relieving her symptoms and TE was eventually sent home.
But this was only temporary and the debilitating headaches would return.
They were also joined by new bumps and a disturbing new problem.
Dr Hsu explained: ‘She would have periods in time where she’d suddenly wake up in the middle of the day and she couldn’t remember anything from the last few hours.’
This eventually resulted in her returning to the emergency department, by this time a about a year having passed since she initially swallowed the eggs.
Such infections can be quite severe if tapeworms remain able to release their eggs over a long period. Pictured, an 18-year-old male patient from India
Intentional infection with tapeworms for weight loss is rare, only a handful of such cases have been recorded in places like the US and Hong Kong. Pictured the same Indian patient showing the extent of his infection
Medics, now taking a closer look at her brain, found multiple concerning lesions in the organ.
Further scans also revealed more such lesions in her neck, face, tongue and her liver.
After persistent questioning about her diet and habits, TE confessed to doctors about consuming tapeworm eggs she had bought online.
Analysis of what exactly she had had purchased revealed she had bought tapeworms belonging to two species of parasite.
One was called Taenia saginata, also known as the beef tapeworm, after the meat it is most commonly found in.
The eggs of these worms look like rectangular tan coloured segments, like the ones TE noticed in the toilet bowl.
But it wasn’t the eggs that left her body that were causing the issues in her brain.
It was the second species that was causing these problems.
Called Taenia solium, this species, most commonly found in pork, releases tiny eggs in the body which can enter the bloodstream, and as was in TE’s case, spread into tissues like the muscles and brain.
This is called cysticercosis, and while these eggs cannot hatch outside the gut, they form hard nodule like cysts that can feel like lumps under the skin.
Other extraordinary cysticercosis infections have been recorded in the past, here is one example from a patient in Brazil
The species of tapeworm responsible for cysticercosis is called Taenia solium (pictured) which can infect people through contaminated faeces and pork products
These lumps are generally harmless, but can causes problems if they develop in sensitive tissues like the brain.
Dr Hsu added cases of vision changes, personality shifts, and diminished cognitive function due to the eggs, sometimes years after the initial Taenia solium infection had been found and treated, had also been documented.
For this reason, he said, there was no way the supposed benefits of ingesting tapeworm eggs could be worth it.
‘In an able-bodied human, weight loss with diet and exercise is physically doable, and that has much less risk than letting extra organisms intentionally live inside of you,’ he said.
Medics gave TE two drugs to combat her infestation one which paralysed the worms causing them to detach from the gut, and another that starves them of the sugars they need to survive.
They also prescribed her steroids to lower the level of inflammation in her brain and hopefully allow her body to clear the eggs, though this couldn’t be guaranteed.
Ads promoting the use of ‘sanatised’ tapeworms were once advertised to women
Regardless, scans revealed no signs of eggs in her brain after three weeks in hospital and she was discharged.
The last update on TE at six months follow-up was that she appeared to be suffering no further symptoms and was losing weight in a healthy manner.
Intentionally eating tapeworms to lose weight dates back to the Victorian-era with advertisements from the time for pills containing ‘sanitized’ ‘easy to swallow’ tapeworm eggs, with ‘no ill effects’.
However, advertising rules weren’t quite up to modern day standards back in the 1800s.
Some historians have disputed if the products actually contained tapeworm eggs or if this was just a case of clever marketing.
About 2.5million people are thought to be infected with Taenia solium per year via eating contaminated food unwittingly, most frequently in the poorer regions of Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
