Are politicians the most disgusting parasites?
Posted by africanpress on April 9, 2008
Publisher: Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.standard.ke
By Ted Malanda
If you considered politicians the most disgusting parasites, think again. The real monsters, medical workers say, are the little, and sometimes not so little, intestinal parasites that are wriggling and gleefully nibbling your gut to shreds as you read this.
You might want to bury your head in the sand and dismiss this as another Crazy Monday prank. But sorry, experts say they are over 100 different types of parasites that live in our bodies. Further, they estimate that over a billion people suffer silently from the scourge worldwide.
The first reaction one gets is, ‘not me!’ especially the educated and well to do who imagine that intestinal parasites are a problem for poor, malnourished village children with distended belies. But in truth, anyone, from the shinny, nice scented people we see on TV to the wretched of the poor, could be a walking habitat for wriggling, fornicating and ferocious feeding parasites or worms as we call them.
They are, in a sense, gangsters of the worst order and uninvited guests at your every meal. You could be the Nairobi hawker that braves scorching sun, rain and city council askaris to feed your kids. You might be a US-trained IT expert who spends 18 hours bent over your computer and plays golf to unwind.
Or you could be the big, affluent politician or banker who makes the earth shiver with your mere presence. But the parasites, we are all easy fodder. These guys not only wolf down everything we eat but also have the cheek to wait till we sweat to get, cook and digest it before helping themselves to the finer stuff like sucrose, amino acids and vitamins.
And like all ungrateful guests, the parasites defecate all over our guts, secrete harmful toxic substances and invite all manner of secondary ailments for the bash, too.
This they do by messing up our immune systems with their toxins so that any snotty little infection holds us hostage and literally pushes us to our knees. In short, once you have worms, and you don’t get them fixed, you keep going down every day.
And not unlike many politicians, intestinal parasites are so shortsighted that they practically eat you – their gracious host – to the grave, dying with you in the process.
Some are so smart that they cheat the human body that they are part of body tissue or organs. Thus, our immune system ignores them or gives them high-fives instead of fighting the lecherous intruders and killing them on the spot.
Most also have their bodies coated in armour plating so tough that it protects them from the digestive enzymes and dilute acids that our tummies secrete to break down the food we eat. Do not therefore cheat yourself that you are immune because you drink copious amounts of liquor. These creepy gangsters are most likely way ahead of that game, too.
The irony here is that when you are a well-to-do person and can afford to eat well, they will share your fine cuisine and enjoy your choice whisky for years without you taking note. Since their food supply chain is constant, they reward you with very subtle symptoms of their presence.
If on the other hand you are a poor person, especially a child who feeds badly, the little buggers practically eat you up in disgust because you are not bringing the bacon home!
Sadly, even when we have this creepy feeling that something is wriggling in our tummies, very few of us have the guts to seek medical attention. In fact, if you thought sexually transmitted diseases are scary, imagine the horror of your doctor telling you, ‘Sorry Mheshimiwa. You don’t have a tumour – it’s just worms, sir!’ And don’t forget that by the time you get to that point, the good doctor will have demanded a stool sample, a procedure that many of us view with utter disgust.
When you have a severe worm infestation, experts say, you could really be forgiven for imagining that you have a tumour. Some nematodes, a group of monsters that include roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, pinworms and the like, can grow up to 15 inches long in adult humans.
And when you imagine that each of the rascals can lay up to 200,000 eggs per day, then you have a monster of a problem. In large numbers, the hooligans could — aside from perforating your intestines into a fine sieve — ball up into a tumour-like mass and block your gut, causing constipation.
Thus, you have this major traffic jam in your gut, sort of like armed bandits blocking the Nairobi-Kisumu highway. They not only cause you upper abdominal discomfort but also ensure that nothing comes out from the rear end — in spite of all your grunting and teeth gnashing in the toilet.
In the lucky event that the aforementioned grunting yields fruit, the resulting stool is nothing to write home about: Long, stringy stuff, foul smelling, greenish horrors, diarrhoea or mucus-coated droplets that any self respecting mongrel would be ashamed of.
At this stage, it may not be unthinkable to see the little crawling blighters in your stool.
That aside, there are other symptoms that should cause you worry — anaemia for one. When an army of intestinal parasites invades, it could practically leach your blood away or cause you massive iron deficiency. So if you have this unreasonable urge to eat soil, you might want to slap a stool sample on the doctor’s desk instead of pretending that you are pregnant.
There are other symptoms, too: Are you nervous, anxious, restless…can’t concentrate? Is your tummy bloated and full of gas? Do you feel generally fatigued, depressed and unwell? Do you have flu-like symptoms? Do you have this crazy irritation around your anus? Do you suffer some curious food allergies or skin rashes? Are you vomiting or coughing? If the answer to some of these questions is yes, your might want to see your medical provider urgently.
There is likelihood, my good friend, that a bunch of parasites are holding a noisy bash in your guts at your expense.
But how did we, clean people who shower and wear expensive cologne and perfume, get to this point where the Director of Kenya Wildlife Service could be forgiven for declaring our bodies protected National Parks?
People who know these things say we are to blame. We consume junk food, chemicals, bad fats and sweets that create a perfect habitat for intestinal parasites. This they do by making our bowels unable to eliminate waste products causing constipation and a build up of faecal matter in our colons. Parasites thrive in that gore, I am told.
In addition, walking barefoot, drinking contaminated water, hanging around pets, eating undercooked food and — hold your breath — sexual intercourse could turn you into a veritable animal farm.
Left unattended, experts say, intestinal parasites can lead to long-term retardation of mental and physical development. In very severe cases, these rascals could kill you.
Knowing the deplorable state of hygiene in most of our homes, food markets, butcheries, pubs and eateries, chances that you have an intestinal parasitic infection are high.
And because few of us bother to get de-wormed, you, my dear friend, could be a walking animal farm. Go on — don’t sit there with a horrified look on your face — call the doctor. In the event that you just happen to be a doctor yourself, what the heck, call a doctor!
So this Crazy Monday evening, when you meet your date for an evening drink at that posh hotel and you have dispensed with the hugs and kisses, the first question you should ask is, “When did you last get de-wormed, honey?”
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African Press International – api
