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Medical professionals - Is there any benefit to a parasite cleanse? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 week ago by florencia@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I stumbled upon a corner of the internet where people were talking about taking Ivermectin to get rid of parasites. Specifically for parasites that don't show symptoms whatsoever, or the symptoms are so mild that it's hard to get a medical professional to prescribe an anti parasite treatment.

Is there any truth to this? I know in areas where parasites are more common, people regularly take anti parasite meds to poop out a lot of worms every so often. Would there be an under diagnosis problem in richer countries?

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[–] TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE

My father is a medical professional in a rural town, and he approached the ivermectin craze during the pandemic really seriously to ensure he was making evidence-based treatment decisions. He was coming across a lot of data showing significant improvement in supposed covid symptoms after taking antiparasitics in a significant number of individuals. The leading hypothesis for this effect, however, is that a fair number of people taking ivermectin probably had parasitic infections they didn't know about, and that's why they were seeing improvement.

It's been both mine and my father's experience that many medical professionals in the US (and I've heard it's similar in other western countries) handwave away many concerns about parasitic infections. I literally had several worms come out of my damn nose, and every single medical professional I spoke to about it didn't believe me until I showed them the proof.

Others in this thread are saying that if you don't have symptoms, why should you take a medication you don't need, but a lot of symptoms don't even get recognized as symptoms; chronic fatigue, digestive upset, and even psychological symptoms could be caused by an undiagnosed parasitic infection. (And parasitic infections can even be asymptomatic)

Serious adverse reactions to ivermectin are rare, but be smart. If you choose to circumvent the medical system and seek self-treatment, triple check dosaging (if you're bad at math, ask a friend to check your work (NOT AN LLM)), review interactions and contraindications lists, and start with a small dose (ideally under supervision of a trusted friend and/or close to an ER) to ensure you're not allergic