Your Brain On Pork! Pork Parasites Are Number One Cause Of Epilepsy
Your Brain On Pork! Pork Parasites Are Number One Cause Of Epilepsy
Eating pork and the tapeworms it contains is bad for the brain. Neurocysticercosis is the name of the disease where pork tapeworm larve called cysticerci invades the brain and damages the central nervous system. Neurocysticercosis is the number one cause of epilepsy in the world. This parasitic disease was more common is developing countries, but now this brain invasion has become a problem in the United States in the last thirty years.
Cysticersi create cavities is the brain, where they can grow from two to seven meters (twenty-three feet) in length while feeding off brain tissue. These parasites also infect muscles and other tissue throughout the body. Cysticersi can live up to twenty-five years and cause a wide variety of problems ranging from seizures, aneurysms, brain tumors, dementia, depression, and muscle pain and weakness.
Neurocysticercosis can also lead to chronic, tension, and migraine headaches when the body tries to break apart the calcified bodies of dead cysticersi, and pieces of them are released into other areas of the brain and cause inflammation.
The New England Journal of Medicine shows on its website a skeletal survey of a sixty-seven year old man who was infested with thousands of these calcified parasites throughout his body. The patient was asymptomatic at the time of presentation but reported that when he was younger he had muscle pain for which he had never been treated; suggesting the parasites had been dead and in his body for a long time.
Luckily the patient didn’t have any neurological symptoms, but the remains of the tapeworms were a constant source of inflammation in his body. To avoid contracting these parasites it recommended to cook pork for more than two hours to make sure the larvae are dead. Better yet it is better to not eat pork.
Tags: epilepsy
