Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Chagas Disease, Kissing Bug, Parasites, Vegetables

I often hear “disease starts with inflammation”!   No it doesn’t.  Ask the question, “Why do I have inflammation?”  “Where does it come from?”  It is because there is a toxin of some type that the body cannot deal with or is in the process of dealing with.  In this world we have a lot of possible toxic voluntary and involuntary “choices”.

As an example, an individual may come in contact with a parasite that uses a living person or animal as a host.  A parasite consumes your resources and creates waste (a toxin) that your body must deal with.  The Triatome (kissing) bug recently came to my attention. Known as the insect “vector” for Chagas disease is a major killer in Latin America.  The Triatomine Beetle is the American version of trypanosomiasis, the carrier for the parasite trypanosomes.  This is similar to the disease carried by the tsetse fly in Africa causing sleeping sickness. 

The normal venue for these beetles is a secretive nocturnal life in the cracks and holes of substandard housing or in any outdoor/indoor environment including doghouses, chicken houses, woodpiles, etcetera.  They like to bite faces, suck blood, and defecate leaving the parasite.  The area itches, is scratched, and unknowingly rubbed into mucous membranes of the eyes, nose or mouth.   Other possible transmissions is thru blood transfusions, organ transplantation, and the ingestion of food contaminated with the parasite.  How much of our food comes from Central or South America?

With the world’s mobile population, you can disregard the old textbook world parasite prevalence maps.  There are currently hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Latin America living in the U.S. 

The worst possible impact is a massive enlargement of the heart causing sudden death (cardiomyopathy).  Have you ever heard of a dog suddenly dying in the kennel?  The scary part is that most are symptom free.  Mild symptoms include fatigue, fever, headache, diarrhea and vomiting.  There may also be a swollen eyelid on the side of the bite.

If you are at risk for parasites (blog), consider Verma Comp, Vermasode, and Verma HP.  A preventative for pets is diatomaceous earth(blog) dusted in the kennel.

Stay Well!

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