Some Not So Common Ways That Parasites Can Affect Your Health

Last week you learned how to begin your healing journey by opening up your drainage pathways. You need to work on that for at least a few weeks before you jump into parasite detoxing. So, while you are doing all the things to open up those pathways, let’s dive a little deeper into how parasites can affect your health. I promise that in the coming weeks, I will also enlighten you on how to detox those critters out of your body (and I do recommend working with a functional medicine practitioner) but I also know that you need a few tips (more on that later).

People often associate parasites with digestive symptoms like cramping, gas, bloating and diarrhea. While that can all be true, there are multiple ways parasites can affect you. Here are some other ways that parasites can hijack your health!

• Nutritional Deficiencies - Parasite infections can cause major nutritional deficiencies in many people and the main ones include Vitamin A, B6, B12 and multiple minerals such as Calcium, Magnesium and Iron. These deficiencies can go on for years and cause subsequent immune depletion stetting the stage for chronic infections.
• Hair Loss - It goes without saying that if you are not absorbing essential vitamins and minerals there will not be enough of these life-giving nutrients for the hair follicles which will then cause hair loss. Iron plays a crucial role in this one as it is a major food source for the parasites. If you are supplementing with Iron and your levels are not improving, you may just be feeding a potential parasite infection in your gut.
• Food Allergies - Parasites often damage the intestinal tract and cause “leaky gut” or intestinal permeability which leads to increasing food allergies. This can then cause people to not eat or absorb enough nutrients leading to further nutritional deficiencies. If you are developing increasing food sensitivities and/or allergies, gut healing is necessary but you may want to back it up one step and eradicate the parasites first.
• Skin Conditions - If you have been struggling with chronic skin issues like unexplained rashes, hives, rosacea, eczema or psoriasis that are not resolving with food allergy elimination, gut healing and taking the proper skin healing nutrients (Vitamin A, Zinc, Omega’s and Collagen) then your underlying root cause may be parasites. Some host parasite interactions remain in the top layers of the skin preventing the skin from healing.
• Joint and Muscle Pain - Some intestinal parasites invade joints and excrete toxins that create inflammation and cause pain, stiffness and mobility issues.

Here are some nutritional tips that you can begin to incorporate while you are working on your drainage pathways:

• Add raw garlic to your daily diet as it has natural anti parasitic effects and can kill off existing parasitic eggs and prevent more from being produced.
• Consume coconut oil daily for the anti parasitic effects from the caprylic acid found in coconut oil.
• Add apple cider vinegar to warm water with lemon to alter your body’s pH and help with parasite die-off.
• Add ginger root to hot water and drink as a tea or add it to your food. Ginger can alter the production of stomach acid, killing parasites and preventing infections.