LW - Parasites (not a metaphor) by lukehmiles

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Parasites (not a metaphor), published by lukehmiles on August 9, 2024 on LessWrong.
A few of my new-parent friends started having terrible gut problems and figured they have colon cancer. Their doctors agreed it's the first thing to check. But the colonoscopies were negative for colon cancer. The tissue was inflamed though. One doctor called this "pre-cancer" (??)
Hmm what could be causing inflammation in the colon, but wouldn't show up on camera after you fasted and had medically-induced diarrhea for 24 hours?
The babies were born over a year before symptoms appeared, so it can't be related to pregnancy. No change in diet. No family history.
What happens a year or two after a kid is born? They go outside and immediately eat as much dirt as they can. What lives in dirt? Everything!
Me and my boy's mother ate some combantrin 3 months ago and have been clear since.
I'm currently trying to convince my friends that they didn't all get colon cancer in the same year at a young age. If I get them to eat the poison chocolate, then I'll write a follow up post in a few months.
I've actually had some very odd food issues since 2019 (eg seizures & fainting after garlic) which disappeared since the combantrin.
So if you randomly got food/gut/brain issues one day years ago you should consider taking a dewormer. Note that all the tests suck (insensitive) and the medicine is cheap and safe and sold online without prescription. (Albendazole available too but slightly less safe.) Worms are much easier to kill than bacteria, viruses, fungus, etc.
Also note that at least 5 million people in the US (ie 1.5%) have parasites according to the most conservative estimates offered here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7847297/
This seems to be a blind spot. No doctors or friends or families ever considered this or even mentioned the word "parasite" to me in the last 5 years.
Kind of funny that dewormers took off in poor countries but not here.
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