Intestinal Parasites and Their Control
The following is a transcription of the October 1958 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Also in this issue:
- Nutritional Deficiency as a Cause of Increased Parasitic Infestation in Humans
- Human Infection with Giardia Lamblia, by B.H. Webster, Md
- In Review (Prenatal Nutrition)
- The Medical Aspect of Fluoridation, by G.L. Waldbott
- Tip of the Month (to Dentists)
- Nutrition, Life Tenure, and the Degenerative Diseases
- High Points of Zymex II
Intestinal Parasites and Their Control
There are various known intestinal parasites, from tapeworm to the single flagellate cell known as Giardia lamblia, all of them transmitted by insect species.
It so happens that there are some plant enzymes that digest insect protein. The plants apparently use these enzymes in their self-defense against insects. Ripe figs when fresh contain an enzyme that has the ability to digest worms. This accounts for the fact that a fig on a tree never has a worm in it.
The brown skin on an almond kernel also carries an enzyme that digests worms. Some people get a sore mouth from eating unblanched almonds or ripe fresh figs. This is the effect of the proteolytic enzyme. It is similar to the papaya enzyme used in tenderizing meat. Papaya too causes an irritation to some people, as does pineapple, which also carries an enzyme that will tenderize meat.
But at the same time, the fig or almond proteolytic enzyme is a valuable weapon to destroy, without toxic effects to the patient, the insect infesting the alimentary tract.
In trying to eliminate these parasites, the use of poisons is the usual practice. However, poisons are far less satisfactory than the enzyme method.
Hookworm, for instance, requires the use of carbon tetrachloride, a dangerous liver poison. To eliminate hookworm in a dog or human victim requires dosages of tetrachloride that definitely cause permanent liver damage. Even then the dosage is often found to leave enough worms to reinfect the victim, and his symptoms recur in a few months. The plant enzymes, based on tests on dogs, seem to be far more effective and at the same time appear to have no untoward effect whatever in the dosage required to eliminate the worms.
This is another case where poisons have been recklessly used without knowledge that more physiological methods are available. The temperate climates where fig trees thrive are also climates where intestinal parasites are most prevalent, because of the greater use of uncooked foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables. If everyone ate his quota of ripe, fresh figs, the intestinal parasite situation would be under control.
There is far too little laboratory work done in routine examination of patients to check up on this infestation problem. We have been informed by a prominent dentist that he has found, over a number of years of careful checking, that many of his patients complaining of poorly fitting dentures in fact have mouth lesions due to Giardia lamblia infestation, not improperly fitted plates. The patients, however, try to get relief by getting new dentures made, blaming their troubles on what they think is their “difficult case” or a mouth that is hard for the dentist to fit.
This dentist has not completed his work at this stage, so does not want to be quoted. In fact, he has been told by high authorities that he is “all wet,” that Giardia lamblia is in so many intestinal tracts that they are like “rats in the basement”—everybody has them. Maybe that is true, but, also like rats, we all would like to be free of them, since we are always discovering new ways in which they become a menace to health.
Giardia lamblia causes dysentery if present in profusion. But in far less a degree of infestation, Giardia lamblia appears to cause mouth ulcers, which go away as soon as a few capsules of the vermifuge enzyme is taken. (Now available from Standard Process Laboratories as Vermidase Capsules [Zymex II].)
This is a matter of the highest importance to every dentist. He is charged with the responsibility of prescribing for any condition of a systemic nature when he sees the need for it in the mouth. (See Special Reprint No. 1-57, available on request.)
More importantly, the dentist certainly cannot afford to let his denture patient get the impression that he is unable to make dentures that fit when the patient has an “unfittable” mouth due to his intestinal parasites.
A confirmatory circumstance in the patient would be occasional bouts of diarrhea or a statement that his bowels are sensitive to certain foods that cause looseness. Giardia lamblia also appears to contribute to gallbladder inflammation, a point consistent with the parasite’s preference for the duodenal area, where its entry into the bile duct would be possible. Patients with gallbladder symptoms along with mouth ulcers have had prompt recoveries from both complaints as soon as the Giardia lamblia also infestation was controlled.
Children who play with cats and dogs are sure to become infected with intestinal parasites. We now have a simple and nontoxic remedy in the Vermidase Capsules. One or two capsules a day for a week will be found to accomplish the same result as the daily use of fresh figs for children so infested.
Pumpkin seeds were the standby of our grandparents as a safe vermifuge for children. Wheat germ oil often has caused elimination of worms, even tapeworm, but it is not a reliable vermifuge because it seems to require some as yet unknown nutritional synergist. Vitamin B12 (organic cobalt) and organic manganese are enzyme activators that may be such synergists. In fact, manganese is known as an important synergist for vitamin E in connection with its effect in preventing muscular dystrophy.
It is probable that the oil in the pumpkin seed is the active principle. Enzymes are highly selective in action. Here we have one that digests the insect protein (chitin) without correspondingly affecting the human tissue. The parasite is destroyed by digestion: those that infest the alimentary tract have built-in defenses against our own digestive enzymes, but they cannot resist the enzyme specifically designed by the fig and almond to destroy insects. This is a case where we use the forces of Nature for our own benefit.
Many a dentist has refunded the money paid him by a “hard-to-fit” patient just to get rid of their complaints that their “teeth do not fit.” I am of the opinion that a very large percentage of these difficult patients are victims of Giardia lamblia infestation—if not possibly other parasites. There is a great amount of evidence pointing to that conclusion.
The practical aspect is simple. Relief follows in a very few days if a diagnostic dosage of four capsules of Zymex II per day is tried for a week’s time. For children try one to three capsules, depending on age and/or weight. Repeat as necessary or upon reinfestation.
Nutritional Deficiency as a Cause of Increased Parasitic Infestation in Humans
Harris in his book Clinical Pellagra quotes authorities who found that Giardia lamblia infestation caused and aggravated the symptoms of pellagra. Other authorities considered the pellagra was first in incidence and that the patient thereby became susceptible to secondary diseases such as amebiasis, citing cases of each type.
Evidently, we have here the common situation of a weakened victim of starvation (often starvation on an overfull stomach by reason of the use of refined and synthetic foods such as white flour, sugar, candy, soft drinks, glucose, corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, rancid oils, and stale processed cereals).
Years ago, rats were reported to have their lice leave them as soon as a high-vitamin diet was given them.1 Also long ago, veterinarians reported that dogs given natural vitamins for pneumonia lost their flea population at once, along with overnight recovery from the pneumonia. We believe pneumonia is like diphtheria (or “fulminating scurvy,” as the Germans called it after finding that the diphtheria toxin cannot exist in any media containing vitamin C any more than an acid can exist in the presence of an alkali).
Siler and Nichols investigated the intestinal parasites in a group of insane patients and found entamoebas in 52 percent of nonpellagrins and flagellates (Giardia lamblia) in 60 percent. In pellagra victims both types of parasites were 76 percent present.
These parasites are like the sales tax collectors in California. They attack those who are sick in preference to the well. (There is no California sales tax on grocery store foods, but there is a sales tax on all foods used to treat the symptoms of starvation that result from the use of the counterfeit, tax-free rubbish sold in stores as food.)
Reference
- Gyorgy, Paul. A.M.A., Vol. III, p. 257, 1938.
Human Infection with Giardia Lamblia
By B.H. Webster, MD
Giardia lamblia is disseminated in the cystic form. Infection is brought about by ingestion and is assumed to be spread by flies, food, and water. The pathogenicity has been questioned, but it has been found to be an inhabitant frequently of the duodenum and jejunum and probably the biliary tract.
Experimental evidence was noted by Katsampes et al., in 1944, that the absorption of vitamin A is intensely disturbed in cases of giardiasis. That in severe infection giardia may act as a carrier to absorption from the small intestine, leading to symptoms similar to celiac syndrome, was advanced by Veghelyi, in 1940. A case reported by Veghelyi and Lancos, in 1949, was that of a 28-month-old child with keratomalacia of both eyes who harbored Giardia lamblia and showed steatorrhea, hypochromic anemia, and a low vitamin A blood concentration. Both vitamin A and glucose tolerance curves were low. Upon eradication of the parasite, the steatorrhea disappeared, the anemia improved, and the child gained weight.
Symptoms of 32 Cases of Giardiasis: Summary
An analysis of thirty-two white, private patients with Giardia lamblia infestation revealed consistent gastrointestinal symptoms of flatulence, upper abdominal pain and tenderness, and epigastric gnawing and distress. Diarrhea was present in 40.6 percent [of patients] and constipation alternating with diarrhea in 37.5 percent. Constitutional symptoms of nervousness, irregular fever, weight loss, and dizziness were striking. Nausea was found in only 15.6 percent, vomiting very seldom. These symptoms subsided following treatment.
|
Symptoms |
Before Treatment |
After Treatment |
| Flatulence |
30 |
1 |
| Upper abdominal pain and tenderness |
27 |
0 |
| Epigastric gnawing and distress |
24 |
0 |
| Nervousness |
23 |
1 |
| Loss of weight |
17 |
0 |
| Constipation |
15 |
1 |
| Diarrhea |
13 |
0 |
| Diarrhea alternating with constipation |
12 |
0 |
| Anorexia |
11 |
0 |
| Dizziness |
9 |
0 |
| Pruritus ani |
8 |
0 |
|
Mucus in stool |
8 |
0 |
| Palpitation |
7 |
0 |
| Irregular fever |
7 |
0 |
|
Urticaria |
6 |
0 |
|
Nausea |
5 |
0 |
|
Blood in stool |
2 |
0 |
| Vomiting |
2 |
0 |
Gross blood in the stool was rare; occult blood was present in twenty-one cases and mucus in only eight. There were no constant hematologic findings.
Chronic urticaria, present for six weeks to six months in six patients, disappeared after cure of the giardiasis.
Complete roentgenologic studies of the stomach, duodenum, gallbladder, and colon were performed upon the entire series of thirty-two cases. Seven cases of duodenitis, four of pylorospasm, and four of poorly functioning gallbladder were encountered. There was symptomatic relief of the ulcer symptoms, radiologic evidence of improvement of the two duodenal ulcers, and disappearance of pylorospasm, duodenitis and poorly functioning gallbladder six weeks following cure of the giardiasis.
—Excerpts from The American Journal of Digestive Diseases, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 64–71, January 1958
In Review (Prenatal Nutrition and Harelip)
Administration of natural vitamins during the early months of pregnancy may reduce the number of children born with a harelip and cleft palate deformity.
The Medical Aspect of Fluoridation
By G.L. Waldbott, MD
Scientific matters can never be decided on the basis of official positions taken by groups or organizations, no matter how high their scientific standing. The only research that can prevail in the long run is that which is carried out in the spirit of genuine scientific investigation and not set up to prove a point.
I cannot help but feel that evidence now being uncovered is opening up a vast, virgin field of investigation that heretofore has been completely neglected. It is the part played by trace quantities of toxic chemicals, including fluorine, in certain chronic diseases, the origin of which has baffled the medical profession. The ability to reproduce within a half hour a severe attack of migraine headache, convulsions, or spastic pains in the abdomen, or to reproduce within a somewhat longer period arthritis in susceptible individuals, certainly provides food for thought regarding the causes of many ailments.
New advances in medicine are rarely received with open arms. When premature official positions have been taken by important scientific organizations, the road to recognition is bound to be much slower and more cumbersome.
Tip of the Month (to Dentists)
Patients who cough, choke, or gag when the mouth or throat is examined or when X-rays are taken or impressions made will usually normalize if Cataplex A and F along with Betaris Tablets [Betafood] are taken for three or four days prior to their next appointment. Clinically, this condition is indicative of biliary stasis or a gallbladder condition.
Nutrition, Life Tenure, and the Degenerative Diseases
The character of nutrition throughout life is the principal environment factor determining longevity. Maximum growth requires the simultaneous presence of all nutrients. Nutrition and health are inseparable, yet it has not been adequately recognized that well-fed individuals are less subject to almost every type of pathology than malnourished ones. Sound nutrition in the elderly person differs little from that in the younger adult. This is to say, obesity, undernutrition, and an improper balance of other nutrients of the diet all have a detrimental effect.
—Geriatrics, Minneapolis, Minnesota
High Points of Standard Process Nutritional Adjuncts
Vermidase Capsules [Zymex II]: This enzymatic vermifuge contains factors from figs and almonds that act as a vermifuge by digesting the parasite. In addition to its value in treating Giardia lamblia and entamoeba dysentery, it may be helpful in infestations of roundworms, hookworms, threadworms, pinworms (aka seatworms), whipworms, and tapeworms (all types).
