Tapeworms certainly have been used for slimming purposes, but how
effectively is open to question, and how safely is beyond doubt: it was not
safe at all. It is unlikely that the beef and pork tapeworms most frequently
used could absorb enough food to compete with the host, but irritation of the gut
might well interfere with absorption, either through diarrhoea, all that
damage.
Let's not complain. Tapeworms certainly
are organic. That surely means that they can cause no harm. Right?
Well, maybe not quite right. Before
you even think of trying tapeworm slimming, you had better study their life
histories. These are extremely varied. However most of them involve an alternation
of different kinds of hosts, and in alternating between hosts, they also alternate
between the forms appropriate to each host. The only kinds of tapeworms that one
normally need even consider in this connection are large species that normally occupy
the gut volume of a human or similar animal. The commonest species of such
kinds are beef and pork tapeworms.
So what is the problem?
The problem is the alternate host,
and how they infect it, and how the form they take in the alternative host
affects the human body, should you get infected by the wrong form. The worm in
the human gut releases huge numbers of eggs that escape from the gut in the
faeces. Any of the eggs or larvae that get eaten by pigs, cattle or the like,
do not stay in the gut, but tunnel into the tissues. They then settle down,
especially in the muscles of the host. There they assume an un-wormlike globular
form popularly known as "measles", because they are seldom found
singly, but infest the muscles, creating "measly" meat. In an x-ray of
a human limb this looks nauseating. It is no longer very difficult to treat
tapeworm in the human gut, but it is much more difficult to treat measles in
human flesh, where they can be very damaging, though not nearly as damaging as
when measles land in an eye or a vital organ.
Now, at one time one actually could
buy packets of tapeworm eggs for slimming. Of all the henwitted ideas I have
heard, this is not the worst, but it certainly deserves honourable mention.
Just think: the eggs are the phase of the tapeworm that hatches, not into gut
worms, but tissue measles. A fat lot of slimming the measles will cause by growing
in your muscles like a lot of internal ticks!
That is not all. Even if you eat the
correct phase of the tapeworm, namely the measles from insufficiently cooked
meat, sometimes you may be infected by measles developed from eggs laid in your
own gut, and hatch before they pass through. The pork tapeworm is particularly
dangerous because its eggs commonly hatch in the host's gut.
So, yes you can infect yourself with
tapeworms for slimming, whether it is effective or not.
So, don't anyway.
Instead, just eat and exercise
sensibly. If you can muster enough sense for that, you can muster enough sense
to steer clear of tapeworms.
Cheers,
Jon
