June 11, 2020 • 39 mins
There’s a persistent insistence that you can ingest a tapeworm and as the parasite hijacks a lot of the calories you eat, the pounds will fall right off. In theory this could be true, but it’s also extremely dangerous. And has anyone ever really done it?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's
coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should
Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool
title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon,
an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and
(00:21):
it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys.
The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book.
It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be.
And we cannot wait for you to get your hands
on it. Yes, we can't. Um and you don't have
to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but
you don't have to wait to order. You can go
pre order the book right now everywhere you get books,
(00:43):
and you will eventually get a special gift for pre ordering,
which we're working on right now. That's right, So check
it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(01:03):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Chuck, Jane Chucker Bryant, and this is stuff you
should know, the super gross, but I love it. Addition, uh,
big time trigger warning for people. This is about tape worms.
It is disgusting and super creepy and gross, and I
(01:26):
knew that you would love it. It's so great, it's
so great. It's just so crazy. We're going all the way. Baby.
The word perianus comes up at least once, and not
in a good way. Oh man, Perry As he was
a good guy. He was that's I've ever had was
Oh he was? Was he? Uh? Was he the one
(01:48):
who who made himself everybody's secret saying every year that's right,
you know, old perry Anus uh down on him and
he would he would sign his name perianus parentheses saw ari. Uh. Well,
if you don't know what perenus is, just buckle up, because,
(02:10):
like you said, Chuck, it's going to be quite a
ride because we are talking about tape worms, and we're
not talking just about tape worms. We're talking about the
idea of taking a tapeworm, ingesting it, and letting it
live and grow in your body and the hopes that
it will uh divert enough nutrients and calories away from
(02:32):
you that you can just eat whatever you want and
lose weight at the same time because you're not getting fatter.
The tapeworm is right, but we're mainly just talking about
tape worms because well, I don't want to issue a
spoiler this really seriously, We'll save that for Act three.
So tape worms. Uh. This is from our old house
(02:54):
stuff works dot com website, which is nice to find
one of these. It is a little hidden gym hanging out.
This is a grab store article, originally just hidden in
the anus, waiting for us to discover it. That's right.
Actually it crawled its way out and dropped it at
my feet. So tapeworms. The very first line of this
(03:16):
article is a tapeworm is like something out of a
horror movie, and it really is. It is this wormy,
little ribbon shaped creature that is a parasite in every
sense of the word. They can be very big. It
can be as big as eighty ft long, and they
can live in a host for up to thirty years. Yeah. Like,
(03:38):
you could get a tapeworm as a kid, and that
thing might be with you through every formative experience you've
ever had, and you might actually be sad when it
calls out of your anus and detaches itself from you.
That sounds like a Simpsons episode or something kind of Yeah,
maybe a little more like um Cleveland show. Um. The
(04:01):
good news is, uh, if you don't live in a
developing nation, then you probably don't need to worry about
a tapeworm, although it can still happen, to be sure,
but with good hygiene, good hand washing, good livestock practices,
and good um just feak overall fecal and food handling practices,
(04:25):
it's not likely to be an issue with you. Yeah,
great practice livestock, great practice everybody. Yeah, So if you
are in the developing world, Um, you there is a
good chance that you can get a tapeworm because in
some cases, uh, sanitation is not as great as you
would like it to be, and there's more poop hanging
(04:46):
around than then there should be, or that there there
could be considering other modern practices. And then even beyond that, um,
there's a lot more living among livestock then there are,
and say like developed urban areas. Right, so even in
the developed world, there there if you go outside of
(05:07):
the urban areas and you start running up against pigs
and cows and their poop and stuff like that, um,
you can conceivably catch the tapeworm fairly easily, especially if
you're not really big into hand washing, sure, which you
should be if you're around poop from animals or humans
or any kind of poop. Yeah, just any time there's
(05:28):
even any kind of coincidence of poop in your hands,
even possibly, just take twenty seconds, recite the alphabet, and
wash your hands, because if you don't, you might get
some of that fecal material in your mouth and a
board that fecal material can be um tapeworm eggs, and
that is how you get a tapeworm infection. One way.
(05:48):
In the developed world, you're much more likely to get
it from something like eating undercooked meat. Right. I've never
even had pink eye. Oh really never. It's not a
pleasant experience. Chunk, all right, pop, Yeah, I got some
FeCO material in my own eye a couple of times,
I guess poop by the sailor man. Yeah, Like I
(06:11):
was sniffing my fingers and I guess I got too
close to my eye. Then you got your nose confused
with your eyeball right again, Right, I had a little
itch and I was like, oh no, what have I done?
And it was too late. So parasites, like I said,
A tapeworms, like I said, are true parasites. Um. Everything
that it gets that it needs it gets from its host, right,
(06:36):
and like that's how it lives. Man. It just it is,
like you said, a true parasite in that, like all
those things that you're supposed to be getting from the
food you eat, some of it is being diverted by
to the tapeworm um and they absorb nutrients like gangbusters.
They actually don't have a mouth, which is weird because
it looks like they have several mouths, but they actually
(06:58):
use those mouths to hang onto your intestines inside so
that they don't get flushed out by the paristalic action
that you know, helps move poop and stuff along your intestines,
and instead the tapewormage is kind of floating there absorbing
nutrients in the matrix of your gut juices basically, and
they absorb it. They absorb it through their skin um
(07:20):
and they're just really good at it, so much so
that there's at least one type of uh tapeworm out
there that you can actually get from eating undercooked fish
pike specifically. That's so good at absorbing B twelve. It
can outcompete you it's host, and you can get a
pretty bad vitamin B twelve deficiency as a result. Do so,
(07:43):
these tapeworms live in uh all kinds of host animals,
like they could you could be you or me. It
could be, like you said, a fish, which is pretty surprising. Um.
Most often you hear about beef and pigs or cow.
I guess it's the animal and pigs. Uh. But they
you know, depending what kind of species it is, it
(08:03):
might have a preference for a kind of host. And
I guess we should describe the body of this thing
right now. It's it's pretty gross. It's got a a head.
I guess you would call it. I call it the
skull X. Yeah, it's called the skull ax skull X.
It's the top of the worm what we as humans
(08:27):
might call a head. Yeah, but it looks like an
old timey diving head diving helmet, you know what I mean.
It's it's round, it's got those suckers, so they look
like kind of the portholes on the old div diving helmet. Um.
And those again, those suckers, they look like mouths that
the thing would eat on, but no, they use it
to suck onto the sides of your intestine. But at
(08:49):
the top of the head um there are some hooks,
like a ring of hooks that actually latch onto the
like really grip onto the side of your intestinal wall,
so that that tapeworm, once it gets its hooks and
it suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere.
You know, we should bring back the term skin diver.
(09:09):
Sure you remember that skin diver. Yeah, wasn't that like
a snorkeling. I think snorkeling or maybe even scuba is
just such an antiquated term, like nobody uses that anymore, No,
I know, because it makes no sense now, and it's
possible it never made any sense. Like I could see
someone's granddad now saying, you know, I'm gonna get certified
to be a skin diver, right, and then we're gonna
(09:30):
get me some pearls, and all the kids laughing Grandpa,
No one's his skin diver, right, And Grandpa was probably
saying a bunch of other stuff. Nobody says anymore to
you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.
So we're bringing skin diver back. What was the last
thing you said something about the skull X. I said
that once this thing gets his hooks and it's uh,
(09:52):
it's suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere. Yeah,
like a good catchy tune. Yeah, like it your tape worm.
So if it wasn't for the skull x, uh, this
article points out, you know, the skull eos is the problem.
If it wasn't for this thing, that your intestines would
just churn it out and you'd poop it out, no problem.
(10:14):
But the skull X is really where the rubber meets
the road as far as attaching to your body and
that need to think that paristalic action I was talking about, Like,
that's just a bunch of like quivering muscles that move
in a progressive direction towards your your rectum and anus
and all that that push like poop out through your
(10:35):
intestines or push nutrients through and where they absorbed. But
then it ultimately like pushes the poop out um. And
that's how the whole thing works. It's just like some
quivering muscles in there. And I read Chuck that if
you take a stimulant um laxative, that that's actually what
it does is it really kind of um energizes and
makes those muscles contract, which is good on the one
(10:57):
hand because it really works. But on the other and
it's bad because your body becomes dependent on those things
really quickly. So you don't want to just take those
willy nilly from what I saw. You want to try
just about every other type of laxative there is. First
starting with a diet high and insoluble fiber, and then
work your way on up to where you're talking to
(11:18):
a doctor or a nurse practitioner or something before you're
hitting those those um stimulant laxatives. Yeah, I think the
word laxative it's sort of is backward because it it
makes it sound like it's relaxing everything, when in fact
it's making everything work harder. It's pretty interesting. It's all
upside down and dipsy do. But I'll tell you what.
(11:41):
There's a bunch of signs along the way that say
one way, one way, everybody. You're going this way whether
you like it or not. Right, So, the sculex is
the is, like I said, where you're you're sticking to
the intestine, and then below the skull x is the
neck and and the rest of it is, I mean
(12:02):
from the neck down, it's just sort of the same thing.
There are all these uh, just individual segments, can be
thousands of them, at least hundreds, called the strobilla, and
each segment by its own is known as a pro
glatted And those are like when you look at a
(12:23):
tapeworm and it just looks like a piece of like
segmented tampe tape. Those those little segments, those proglottids. I
I did not know this at all, but there they're
they're basically reproductive organs that also contain eggs, and that
the ones closest to the head are male sperm sacks.
(12:47):
And then as you get further away from the head,
those proglottids um become female and egg holding, and that
under under some circumstances with some species of tapeworms, they
can sell um, fertilize and and basically we produced themselves, right,
But more often than not, they're they're just kind of
(13:09):
exchanging sperm and eggs with nearby neighbors who are again
floating around in your intestines, absorbing nutrients and just sperming
and egging everywhere inside your gut. Yeah, and you're just
sitting there watching Jeopardy and it might be eighty ft
long and thirty years old. You're just you have no
idea what's going on. Like your gut maybe infested with
(13:34):
tape worms right now, and you probably you might not know. Yeah,
isn't that creepy? It is super creepy. Yeah, all right,
let's take a break and I gotta I'm gonna go
wash my hands again, and we'll talk more about these
proglottics right after this. Well, now, when you're on the
(14:01):
road driving in your truck, want to learn a thing
or two from Josh Man Chuck stuff you should know?
All right, okay, Chuck, so you promise more purglotted talk
laid on us. Yeah, So these purglotteds can um like
(14:23):
the tapeworm is hardy, but it can also break apart.
It'll still be alive, like make no mistake, Like like
a chameleon's tail. It's no big whoop if some of
these purglottis break off and they'll just come out of
your poop. And you might look at your stool and
see these things and say like, wow, I have a
(14:43):
tape worm. Thank goodness, I got rid of it. But
don't be fooled. There might be a lot of tapeworms
still back up in your body. Yeah, because remember up
towards the neck is sperm. Down lower along the body
is um eggs, and then the lower you get our
fertilized eggs. So when those proglotteds break off towards the
end and make their way out in your poop um,
(15:03):
they are they're fully fertilized egg sacs and that's how
they enter the environment. It's all part of the life cycle.
The proglottis breaking off and making its way out of
your anus. By the way, proglottids are spectacular in that
not only are they segments filled with fertilized egg sax
by the time they break off and leave you, they
(15:25):
also contain muscles, meaning that they can walk on their own.
So these little segments of tapeworm filled with fertilized tapeworm
eggs can move and crawl their way out of your butt,
so much so that there's something called discharge of the proglottids,
which um is when when right when totally I was
(15:49):
gonna say that is so progressive, it's crazy, But when
they start marching their way out of your butt, you
have a there's a crawling sensation arianus um, and that
this is one reason why dogs with tapeworms but scooch,
and also why you might butt scooch too, because you
(16:09):
are trying to erase the the very anus from your
body to get rid of this crawling sensation. For sure.
But even if they don't crawl right out of your
bottom um, they they can still make their way out
in your poop, and then they crawl away from the poop.
Because if they crawl away from the poop, and say,
like a pasture right where some human is just pooped,
(16:31):
there might be a cow nearby that eats the grass
that this periglotted has broken open and like deposited the
eggs into the soil. And when that cow eats those eggs,
this life cycle starts all over again. You know what
we call that dog scooch in our house the boot
scooting boogie. That's whenever you see the boot scooting boogie
(16:56):
happen in your house. It may not meet a tape worm,
but there it's not good. No um. Little Moe does
it sometimes, but she does this cute thing where she
does a little one eight in one place. She doesn't
go like, she doesn't make a line, she stays and
just kind of does like the twist, and she eventually
bores a hole in the floor and falls through to
another dimension. That's right. Yeah, the boot scooting boogie also
(17:19):
could be like anal glands that need expressing, or just
uh dingle berry that needs taken care of board on
a Saturday night. But it's never something awesome. It's never
you know, hundred dollar bills or just a dog that's
like making some cool noise with their butt, right exactly.
(17:44):
So man, Yeah, so the this life cycle thing that
just kicked off again, we should follow this through one
more time. Okay, I don't actually I don't even know
if we've gone through this. But the thing about tape worms,
and you kind of touched on it before, is they
infest different animals, But the same kind of tape worm
might infest different animals as part of its life cycle. Right, So,
(18:07):
like when you just pooped in the cow pasture and
that purglotted opened up in deposited the eggs into the soil,
and this cow eating grass ate that soil. Those eggs
went into that cow and they said, okay, time to
turn into our larval stage, and in the cow they
turned into larvae. But the larvae of tape worms form
(18:29):
like a cyst around them, and from what I can gather,
the reason that they form the cyst is because they um.
It prevents them from setting off an immune response. Because,
like you were saying, you can have a tapeworom infection
unless it's really bad and you're becoming really malnourished as
a result. UM, and it's a it's an adult tapew
(18:49):
room in your gut. You may never know that you
had one until the thing just falls out of your
bottom one day, like it's done um or you start,
you know, discharging purglotted in your stool. The same thing
with cows, like when they become infested with um tapeworm
larvae in these cysts forms, the cysts burrow their way
(19:11):
out of the intestinal wall and then just implant themselves
in the cows muscles don't seem to really provide any
kind of discomfort or problem, and again they don't sit
off an immune response. But the reason that they deposit
themselves in their muscles is because somewhere along their evolutionary history,
which from what we've seen and goes back at least
two seventy million years. They figured out that the animals
(19:33):
eat the muscles of other animals, and so we come
along and we eat the muscles of the cows, and
those cysts, those larval cysts of tapeworms deposit into our
guts and they mature into the adult tapeworm, so that
the whole life cycle begins again. Yeah, what these uh
at the larval stage, what they're trying to do. They're
(19:53):
trying to get to the bloodstream, right, So like if
you eat eggs or whatever, then the they will become
those syste the larval's and then they go into the
blood stream. Right, that's right. Okay, So if you have this, uh,
if you have the tapeworm, then you haven't an infection
known as human tenise. Uh a man, I had it.
(20:16):
I even spelled it out tiny assis, Is that right?
I think? So that's how I was gonna say it.
And if you have that, like it's like you said,
it's not a big deal. It's asymptomatic probably and you
won't even know you've got it, but that can develop
into sisters yarcosis, and that is when these things get
(20:36):
into your blood stream, and that is not a good
thing because the chain reaction that can happen from here
is pretty bad. I mean, it can lead to death.
It usually doesn't. But they can be anywhere in your body. Uh,
they can grow, and they can inflame tissue. So if
it's putting pressure, like near your eyeball, it can cause
temporary blindness or permanent blindness. If it's near your brain,
(20:58):
that's no good. It can cause brain damage and uh.
In fact, in some UH countries they think it's the
main cause for adult onset onset seizure. Isn't that crazy? Yeah? Yeah,
I saw that. There's there's one guy it's called neurocystic
or kosis, and this one doctor says that at least
five million cases of adult onset um seizures worldwide or
(21:23):
from having tapeworm cysts in your brain. So that that
was the appropriate response, chuck. So the thing is like,
when you eat a tapeworm larva um, it becomes an
adult tapeworm in your gut. Humans aren't our bodies aren't
set up or they're not in this kind of symbiosis
(21:43):
with tapeworm eggs to do the same thing. So if
we eat tapeworm eggs accidentally then those become those cystic
larva's larva, and then that's that's what travels into our
bloodstream and causes all of these problems. And there's specifically
one kind of pig tape worm that it goes through
its life cycle from pig to human to pig, and
(22:06):
under normal circumstances, if we undercooked pork and get those larva,
they're going to turn into adult tape worms. But if
we undercooked pork and we accidentally eat some eggs from
that pork, then that's when that cistic or cosis. Is
that right, Yes, sistic or cosis. It can be a
real problem that you will know, like you were saying
(22:26):
that you've got a tape worm problem pretty pretty quick. Yeah.
If they get big, they can block your your ducks,
your pancreatic ducks, your bile ducks. Uh, they can get
in your organs and grow within your organs, which is
something that should keep you awake at night. Uh. If
they get large enough in your organs that that's gonna
(22:46):
like those organs are not going to be good for
very long. Uh. They can rupture sometimes. Um. And this
is just in the body, not necessarily in the organs,
but if it ruptures in your body, then it's your
Your body is gonna out like an immuno response. You're
gonna get hives, it's gonna itch uh, it's gonna swell,
and you're just gonna have like this massive allergic reaction.
(23:08):
You're gonna be like what bug bit me, right, except
you won't be able to talk because your throat will
have closed. Perhaps, so chuck um. If you don't want
a tapeworm, which hopefully by now you've realized you don't
want a tapeworm again, in the in the developed world,
it's not that hard to avoid a tapeworm, and in
(23:28):
the United States in particular, um like the meat packing
industry is I mean, it's dirty and gross and horrific,
but it's actually pretty good at spotting things like tapeworms.
So there's a really low chance that you're going to
get your hands on meat from an American grocery store
(23:49):
that has tapeworm cists in it. Right, probably not going
to get a tapeworm, but just to be sure, the
government has very um conscientiously recommended some minimum king temperatures
for things like whole cuts of meat like a chopp
or a steak, right. I think it used to be
one sixty fairret height. Now they've lowered it to something
(24:09):
like one, which is sixty three degrees celsius. And here's
the key. They say, after you've done cooking it to
that internal temperature which you want to meet thermometer, Do
you have one of those? One of the best things
I've ever bought, Chuck. That really up my steak game
quite a bit. But the key to a good steak,
and apparently to killing tape worms and other parasites, is
(24:30):
to letting your whole cut of meat rest for at
least three minutes. I always do five after you cook,
before you carve it up and start eating. Do you
do that? You should do that anyway, because of the
flavor and the juices. It just does something amazing. Like,
before I started doing that, I was just a schlove.
I was a total loser. I had no idea what
(24:51):
was going on in the world. Once I started off
the grill and put it in your mouth, sure, yeah, basically,
I mean put it on a plate and like start
eating it right. Once started letting meat rest, it was
like a whole new world. Yeah. And here's another tip.
If you want a really delicious steak uh or I
guess pork chop. You you get one either. I mean,
(25:13):
if you don't have one of these um sort of
slotted cutting boards for to rest on, use like a
baker's rack or something, because you still maintain that crisp
on the outer, that char if you just let it
sit in its juices, that's gonna get all. You know,
it's going to change the texture, oh, like a grilled
pan or something like that. Use that. Yeah, I've got
(25:34):
this cutting board that has uh it's basically like a
grid instead of being flat, uh and it and it
has a a little uh like a grill grate that
can lift up and out of it so it's never sitting.
Like not much of the meat is sitting on a
board when it's resting. So you don't want it to
rest in its juices. No, I want to keep it crispy. Okay,
(25:58):
I didn't know that I got it all. It's to
try that because I always just basically I just put
it on a plate and throw like a some foil
loosely over it, or else like a like a pan cover.
You cover it too, huh. Yeah, yeah, I've always read
it's gonna keep cooking right. Yeah, yeah, for sure, But
I mean it's not on the flame anymore, so it's
like just kind of um yeah, yeah, I know. For
(26:20):
I've never tried it uncovered. Maybe I will try uncovering
and away from the juices and see what happens you
try covering it and leaving it in his juices. I
don't even use a meat thermometer, so I think we
have different steak games. You don't huh do you like,
here's rare, medium, rare, medium, rare. But if I know
(26:41):
the thickness and the weight and the temperature, I don't
need to meet thermometer. I stopped cooking as many steaks,
so I have to kind of I had to go
back to elementary school again. No, there's no shame in it.
I'm not ashamed. I had a had a chef that
I worked for that he could he just touched his
He like, you can tell the internal what the inside
(27:02):
looks like just by touching the outside, right, And we
should tell people. They're probably people who haven't been listening
that long and don't know the secret to steak that
we've said before, Chuck, But you do not touch your steak.
You don't cut it, you cook it, you see it
on one side for a minute and a half two
minutes tops, depending on how thick it is. Flip it
over and do the same thing to the other side.
(27:23):
And then you take it off of your oven or
your grill or whatever and move it into a convection
oven if you've got one at about three degrees three minutes,
the three and a half minutes per side for six
to seven minutes total. Let it rest five minutes, thank
us in the morning. I don't do mind that way either.
Like I said, we've got different steak games. I thought,
(27:45):
I thought you said you'd tried it that way before,
and you're like, this is amazing I've done. I'll do
all kinds of way. Sometimes I do it in a
pan and then stick it in the broiler. These days
of all about the grill again, because I've got a
grill that can get really really hot. Oh yeah, well
that's the key, you know, Like you want to see
hear in those juices to keep it from escaping. Yeah,
(28:08):
which is another reason to meet. Thermometer is good if
you don't, if you can't, just use your thumb. You
don't have to cut it open to look inside. You
just plunge that thing in there and it tells you.
I think all this talk of steak has made people
forget that we're talking about tapeworms. Yeah, perryanus tapeworms. So
um should we? I mean, I guess we should talk
(28:30):
a little bit about the symptoms before we come back
for the final act of tapeworms as a weight loss aid.
But you might not have infectra I'm sorry symptoms at first. Uh.
You might feel a little weak, you might feel some
you might have some diarrhea. You might feel dizzy or
lose your appetite. You might lose a little weight. You
(28:51):
might crave salt, which is an interesting one because I
always crave salt. Yeah. I thought that was interesting to
um or Pika in general, Like if you crave eating
clay or just anything that you is a little weird
is a big sign. You're saying Pica now, pa Oh yeah,
I think I've always said they haven't I you always said, Pika.
(29:11):
This is amazing. It's like starting our podcast all over
again after twelve years. It's a refresh. That's what I'm
going with now, all right, Uh, So you will get
a you will deliver a stool sample. Um. If you
go to the doctor, if you suspect you have a
tape worm, you want them to ask you for it first. Sure,
just don't bring it in a bag unless you've happened
(29:33):
to see that your poop has worms in it, um
and that you could bring it in. But you could
also just say there were those were definitely worms in
my poop, and hopefully what happens is is that you've
gone in there quickly enough to where it it doesn't
end up being a very big deal. And you take
a little anti worm medication and this thing works by
(29:54):
basically kind of paralyzing the parasite so it's muscles are
perm contracted. Yeah, and you know we're talking about how
that that head just latches on. It's not able to
latch on. It just comes right on out in your poop,
I know, because it just falls out, basically. And there
are plenty of videos on the internet that show tapeworms
(30:17):
that have come out of people's anuses. If you want
to go see that kind of thing, they can get
really really long. Um. But that that drug chuck that
that you're talking about, the anti warming agent, it's the
same thing that they give dogs, Like any animal that's
going to have a worm is going to get the
same treatment. But they found they're pretty sure this particular one,
(30:41):
Nick Close amid this d worming agent is actually also
good for things like treating cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, graph
versus host disease, endometriosis, and a bunch of other stuff.
Because they're like, it does something to to channeling pathways, uh,
multiple chane only pathways, And it might be like this
(31:02):
wonder drug that's just waiting to be unlocked. Didn't that neat?
That is super neat, Nick Close to meat? Do we
take that break? Yeah? Man, let's take the break, all right.
Then we'll get to the big revel revelation relevation, no revelation.
Can you use the tape him to lose weight? Right?
For this? Well, now we're on the road driving in
(31:35):
your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh?
Can chuck it stuff? You should know? All right? No,
you can't and you shouldn't. That's right. So remember Kelly
Kapoor tried that or else she considered taking it. I
don't remember, do you. Oh that's right, I forgot about that.
(31:56):
So I mean this has been around for a really
long time. This idea that you can take a eat
a tapeworm of some sort tapeworm cyst, not eggs, because
those will turn into system and invade your brain. Um
that that you could get a tapeworm infection and start
to lose weight. Possibly as long as the nineteen century
(32:17):
they think that there. So here's the thing. Do you
remember when we did our episode on Flee Circuses. Sure
it was really thrilling to me because even while we
were podcasting, I still could not tell for a little
while whether it was a real thing or just one
of the most exquisitely perpetrated hoaxes ever, right, and that
(32:39):
it was still working on us. There's this kind of
a similar thing where it's not entirely clear if these
old timey ads are real people think they typically are,
or if they were real, if anybody actually did this,
or if it was some sort of farce or hoax
or satire. And if it wasn't satire, how widespread was this,
(33:03):
Because it does seem that there were nineteenth century ads,
late nineteenth century early twenty century adds four sterilized tapeworm
pills that women could take. They were marketed toward women
to keep their their figure trim. Right. Of course they
were marketed toward women take a tapeworm, ladies, exactly. Uh.
(33:24):
There was a singer and opera singer named Maria Callas
who and this is almost certainly urban legend, but she
lost I read eighty pounds I've seen other places sixty
pounds over a few months in the mid nineteen fifties,
so much so that it affected her singing as an
opera singer. And we do know that she got a
(33:47):
tapeworm at some point in her life, and we do
know that she liked to eat her steak rare. But
I think it looks, by and large like it was
urban legend, that it got kind of all mixed up together.
And people said that Maria Callis lost weight by ingesting tapeworm,
right right, Like those two things did happen. She did
lose weight, and she did have a tapeworm infection, probably
at some point in life, but that the two were
(34:08):
in no way related. But based on this kind of
idea that you could take a tapeworm and lose weight,
that that they became conflated into this urban legend, as
you were saying, and that that's that's like the one
that people point to is like proof that this actually happened,
and actually it didn't, it didn't happen at all like that.
Supposedly there is a clinic in Tijuana called worm Therapy
(34:33):
uh and supposedly this is the one place in the
world where you can go get a tape worm put
into your body to lose weight for about bucks. You
can get a beef tape worm um. And I've you know,
have been to t one a few times. I never
sought out worm therapy, but apparently it existed or still exists,
(34:54):
it's not clear. So they have a website. I think
it's worm Therapy dot com or dot org and it's
as you know, like you know, contact form fields. It
shows a map of where it is and it isn't
to you one and all that there's a phone number.
I didn't call the phone number. But it's one of
those things like is it actually real number one or
(35:15):
is it just a hoax website? If it's not a
hoax website and it actually is a helmet therapy because
remember in our Hookworms episode, we were talking about that
theory that losing some kinds of parasitic worms they think
actually harmed our immune system and lead to a rise
in like crones and stuff like that. Yeah, so there
are clinics out there in the world that use um
(35:38):
parasitic worms to help autoimmune diseases. So it's possible that
worm therapy does that and that they don't do the
beef tapeworm thing. But the urban legend is that they did,
at least as as recently as two thousand nine, they
offered it. It's just not clear whether any of this
is true or not. Right. What we do know is
true is that to to purpose do this is not
(36:00):
a good idea. It is not a healthy way to
lose weight. Uh, and you're not even gonna lose Like
it said that you can expect to lose one to
two pounds from a tapeworm a week. You can lose
that much with a pretty aggressive diet and exercise plan. Yeah, supposedly,
just cutting five calories out from your diet every day
(36:22):
every week, you could lose a pound. You can look
forward to losing a pound. So yeah, exactly taking a
tapeworm to do that is not not a good idea,
especially considering so because that tapeworm is competing for nutrients
from you. You're gonna end up with a pretty nice
little case of malnutrition if it gets pretty bad. So
(36:44):
you're actually going to be your body is going to
talk you into eating more than you normally would, right,
so you'll develop even worse eating habits than you did
than you have before the tapeworm infection, so that when
you finally get around to taking a d worming eight
it and it gets rid of that tapeworm, when you
just keep eating again, you're gonna gain that weight right back,
(37:07):
and you're probably gonna gain more weight back because you've
developed even worse seeing eating habits from having the tapeworm.
And again, all of this is based on the idea
that any of this is even true to begin with,
which is totally unclear still at this point. Yes, totally,
So that's it. Don't don't take a tapeworm to lose weight.
Just exercise and diet. That's that is it. There's no
(37:29):
better diet fed than that. Just exercise and diet, and
you will lose weight and feel healthier and better and
sleep better and have less chronic disease and just be
far better off. That's it. That's right. You got anything else,
No well, since Chuck said no, it's time for a
listener mail. This is from a high school student. We
(37:52):
love hearing from high school students. This is from Kate.
Kate says, Hi, guys, I am a junior in high
school from mass Aitusetts. Discovered the podcast in September at
the start of the school year, and I've loved it
ever since. It definitely makes my morning car rides much
more interesting, and it does wonders to decrease my horrible
road rage. Recently, as I was driving to Cape Cod,
(38:17):
I was listening to your Spartacus episode. I've been studying
Latin since sixth grade, uh and this year was my
first year taking Ancient Greeks, so needless to say, I'm
a huge nerd when it comes to Roman history. I
couldn't help but to laugh when I heard you both
struggling to pronounce the names of the Roman consuls and
they're important and other important historical figures. This quarantine has
(38:38):
really been tough on me, guys, like it has on everyone,
and I really needed that laugh. So I thought I
would write to you as a sort of thank you note.
Although your pronunciation may not have been great, the whole
episode really did wonders to lighten my mood and make
me feel better even though things are crazy right now.
Always I know that I have your podcast to listen
to when I'm feeling down or just want to smile out.
(39:01):
Wishing you health and happiness. That is from Kate in Massachusetts.
Thanks a lot, Kate. That was nice of her to
say our pronunciation may not have been great. Yeah, what
she means is, guys, you were way off. It was terrible. Well,
that was very nice, Kate. And it's nice to hear
that we're helping you out there. And uh, thank you
for writing in. And if you are like Kate and
(39:22):
we're helping you out we always love hearing that kind
of thing. You can send an email to us if
you like, wrap it up, spend it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(39:42):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's
coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should
Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool
title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon,
an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and
(00:21):
it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys.
The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book.
It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be.
And we cannot wait for you to get your hands
on it. Yes, we can't. Um and you don't have
to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but
you don't have to wait to order. You can go
pre order the book right now everywhere you get books,
(00:43):
and you will eventually get a special gift for pre ordering,
which we're working on right now. That's right, So check
it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(01:03):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Chuck, Jane Chucker Bryant, and this is stuff you
should know, the super gross, but I love it. Addition, uh,
big time trigger warning for people. This is about tape worms.
It is disgusting and super creepy and gross, and I
(01:26):
knew that you would love it. It's so great, it's
so great. It's just so crazy. We're going all the way. Baby.
The word perianus comes up at least once, and not
in a good way. Oh man, Perry As he was
a good guy. He was that's I've ever had was
Oh he was? Was he? Uh? Was he the one
(01:48):
who who made himself everybody's secret saying every year that's right,
you know, old perry Anus uh down on him and
he would he would sign his name perianus parentheses saw ari. Uh. Well,
if you don't know what perenus is, just buckle up, because,
(02:10):
like you said, Chuck, it's going to be quite a
ride because we are talking about tape worms, and we're
not talking just about tape worms. We're talking about the
idea of taking a tapeworm, ingesting it, and letting it
live and grow in your body and the hopes that
it will uh divert enough nutrients and calories away from
(02:32):
you that you can just eat whatever you want and
lose weight at the same time because you're not getting fatter.
The tapeworm is right, but we're mainly just talking about
tape worms because well, I don't want to issue a
spoiler this really seriously, We'll save that for Act three.
So tape worms. Uh. This is from our old house
(02:54):
stuff works dot com website, which is nice to find
one of these. It is a little hidden gym hanging out.
This is a grab store article, originally just hidden in
the anus, waiting for us to discover it. That's right.
Actually it crawled its way out and dropped it at
my feet. So tapeworms. The very first line of this
(03:16):
article is a tapeworm is like something out of a
horror movie, and it really is. It is this wormy,
little ribbon shaped creature that is a parasite in every
sense of the word. They can be very big. It
can be as big as eighty ft long, and they
can live in a host for up to thirty years. Yeah. Like,
(03:38):
you could get a tapeworm as a kid, and that
thing might be with you through every formative experience you've
ever had, and you might actually be sad when it
calls out of your anus and detaches itself from you.
That sounds like a Simpsons episode or something kind of Yeah,
maybe a little more like um Cleveland show. Um. The
(04:01):
good news is, uh, if you don't live in a
developing nation, then you probably don't need to worry about
a tapeworm, although it can still happen, to be sure,
but with good hygiene, good hand washing, good livestock practices,
and good um just feak overall fecal and food handling practices,
(04:25):
it's not likely to be an issue with you. Yeah,
great practice livestock, great practice everybody. Yeah, So if you
are in the developing world, Um, you there is a
good chance that you can get a tapeworm because in
some cases, uh, sanitation is not as great as you
would like it to be, and there's more poop hanging
(04:46):
around than then there should be, or that there there
could be considering other modern practices. And then even beyond that, um,
there's a lot more living among livestock then there are,
and say like developed urban areas. Right, so even in
the developed world, there there if you go outside of
(05:07):
the urban areas and you start running up against pigs
and cows and their poop and stuff like that, um,
you can conceivably catch the tapeworm fairly easily, especially if
you're not really big into hand washing, sure, which you
should be if you're around poop from animals or humans
or any kind of poop. Yeah, just any time there's
(05:28):
even any kind of coincidence of poop in your hands,
even possibly, just take twenty seconds, recite the alphabet, and
wash your hands, because if you don't, you might get
some of that fecal material in your mouth and a
board that fecal material can be um tapeworm eggs, and
that is how you get a tapeworm infection. One way.
(05:48):
In the developed world, you're much more likely to get
it from something like eating undercooked meat. Right. I've never
even had pink eye. Oh really never. It's not a
pleasant experience. Chunk, all right, pop, Yeah, I got some
FeCO material in my own eye a couple of times,
I guess poop by the sailor man. Yeah, Like I
(06:11):
was sniffing my fingers and I guess I got too
close to my eye. Then you got your nose confused
with your eyeball right again, Right, I had a little
itch and I was like, oh no, what have I done?
And it was too late. So parasites, like I said,
A tapeworms, like I said, are true parasites. Um. Everything
that it gets that it needs it gets from its host, right,
(06:36):
and like that's how it lives. Man. It just it is,
like you said, a true parasite in that, like all
those things that you're supposed to be getting from the
food you eat, some of it is being diverted by
to the tapeworm um and they absorb nutrients like gangbusters.
They actually don't have a mouth, which is weird because
it looks like they have several mouths, but they actually
(06:58):
use those mouths to hang onto your intestines inside so
that they don't get flushed out by the paristalic action
that you know, helps move poop and stuff along your intestines,
and instead the tapewormage is kind of floating there absorbing
nutrients in the matrix of your gut juices basically, and
they absorb it. They absorb it through their skin um
(07:20):
and they're just really good at it, so much so
that there's at least one type of uh tapeworm out
there that you can actually get from eating undercooked fish
pike specifically. That's so good at absorbing B twelve. It
can outcompete you it's host, and you can get a
pretty bad vitamin B twelve deficiency as a result. Do so,
(07:43):
these tapeworms live in uh all kinds of host animals,
like they could you could be you or me. It
could be, like you said, a fish, which is pretty surprising. Um.
Most often you hear about beef and pigs or cow.
I guess it's the animal and pigs. Uh. But they
you know, depending what kind of species it is, it
(08:03):
might have a preference for a kind of host. And
I guess we should describe the body of this thing
right now. It's it's pretty gross. It's got a a head.
I guess you would call it. I call it the
skull X. Yeah, it's called the skull ax skull X.
It's the top of the worm what we as humans
(08:27):
might call a head. Yeah, but it looks like an
old timey diving head diving helmet, you know what I mean.
It's it's round, it's got those suckers, so they look
like kind of the portholes on the old div diving helmet. Um.
And those again, those suckers, they look like mouths that
the thing would eat on, but no, they use it
to suck onto the sides of your intestine. But at
(08:49):
the top of the head um there are some hooks,
like a ring of hooks that actually latch onto the
like really grip onto the side of your intestinal wall,
so that that tapeworm, once it gets its hooks and
it suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere.
You know, we should bring back the term skin diver.
(09:09):
Sure you remember that skin diver. Yeah, wasn't that like
a snorkeling. I think snorkeling or maybe even scuba is
just such an antiquated term, like nobody uses that anymore, No,
I know, because it makes no sense now, and it's
possible it never made any sense. Like I could see
someone's granddad now saying, you know, I'm gonna get certified
to be a skin diver, right, and then we're gonna
(09:30):
get me some pearls, and all the kids laughing Grandpa,
No one's his skin diver, right, And Grandpa was probably
saying a bunch of other stuff. Nobody says anymore to
you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.
So we're bringing skin diver back. What was the last
thing you said something about the skull X. I said
that once this thing gets his hooks and it's uh,
(09:52):
it's suckers into your intestinal wall, it's not going anywhere. Yeah,
like a good catchy tune. Yeah, like it your tape worm.
So if it wasn't for the skull x, uh, this
article points out, you know, the skull eos is the problem.
If it wasn't for this thing, that your intestines would
just churn it out and you'd poop it out, no problem.
(10:14):
But the skull X is really where the rubber meets
the road as far as attaching to your body and
that need to think that paristalic action I was talking about, Like,
that's just a bunch of like quivering muscles that move
in a progressive direction towards your your rectum and anus
and all that that push like poop out through your
(10:35):
intestines or push nutrients through and where they absorbed. But
then it ultimately like pushes the poop out um. And
that's how the whole thing works. It's just like some
quivering muscles in there. And I read Chuck that if
you take a stimulant um laxative, that that's actually what
it does is it really kind of um energizes and
makes those muscles contract, which is good on the one
(10:57):
hand because it really works. But on the other and
it's bad because your body becomes dependent on those things
really quickly. So you don't want to just take those
willy nilly from what I saw. You want to try
just about every other type of laxative there is. First
starting with a diet high and insoluble fiber, and then
work your way on up to where you're talking to
(11:18):
a doctor or a nurse practitioner or something before you're
hitting those those um stimulant laxatives. Yeah, I think the
word laxative it's sort of is backward because it it
makes it sound like it's relaxing everything, when in fact
it's making everything work harder. It's pretty interesting. It's all
upside down and dipsy do. But I'll tell you what.
(11:41):
There's a bunch of signs along the way that say
one way, one way, everybody. You're going this way whether
you like it or not. Right, So, the sculex is
the is, like I said, where you're you're sticking to
the intestine, and then below the skull x is the
neck and and the rest of it is, I mean
(12:02):
from the neck down, it's just sort of the same thing.
There are all these uh, just individual segments, can be
thousands of them, at least hundreds, called the strobilla, and
each segment by its own is known as a pro
glatted And those are like when you look at a
(12:23):
tapeworm and it just looks like a piece of like
segmented tampe tape. Those those little segments, those proglottids. I
I did not know this at all, but there they're
they're basically reproductive organs that also contain eggs, and that
the ones closest to the head are male sperm sacks.
(12:47):
And then as you get further away from the head,
those proglottids um become female and egg holding, and that
under under some circumstances with some species of tapeworms, they
can sell um, fertilize and and basically we produced themselves, right,
But more often than not, they're they're just kind of
(13:09):
exchanging sperm and eggs with nearby neighbors who are again
floating around in your intestines, absorbing nutrients and just sperming
and egging everywhere inside your gut. Yeah, and you're just
sitting there watching Jeopardy and it might be eighty ft
long and thirty years old. You're just you have no
idea what's going on. Like your gut maybe infested with
(13:34):
tape worms right now, and you probably you might not know. Yeah,
isn't that creepy? It is super creepy. Yeah, all right,
let's take a break and I gotta I'm gonna go
wash my hands again, and we'll talk more about these
proglottics right after this. Well, now, when you're on the
(14:01):
road driving in your truck, want to learn a thing
or two from Josh Man Chuck stuff you should know?
All right, okay, Chuck, so you promise more purglotted talk
laid on us. Yeah, So these purglotteds can um like
(14:23):
the tapeworm is hardy, but it can also break apart.
It'll still be alive, like make no mistake, Like like
a chameleon's tail. It's no big whoop if some of
these purglottis break off and they'll just come out of
your poop. And you might look at your stool and
see these things and say like, wow, I have a
(14:43):
tape worm. Thank goodness, I got rid of it. But
don't be fooled. There might be a lot of tapeworms
still back up in your body. Yeah, because remember up
towards the neck is sperm. Down lower along the body
is um eggs, and then the lower you get our
fertilized eggs. So when those proglotteds break off towards the
end and make their way out in your poop um,
(15:03):
they are they're fully fertilized egg sacs and that's how
they enter the environment. It's all part of the life cycle.
The proglottis breaking off and making its way out of
your anus. By the way, proglottids are spectacular in that
not only are they segments filled with fertilized egg sax
by the time they break off and leave you, they
(15:25):
also contain muscles, meaning that they can walk on their own.
So these little segments of tapeworm filled with fertilized tapeworm
eggs can move and crawl their way out of your butt,
so much so that there's something called discharge of the proglottids,
which um is when when right when totally I was
(15:49):
gonna say that is so progressive, it's crazy, But when
they start marching their way out of your butt, you
have a there's a crawling sensation arianus um, and that
this is one reason why dogs with tapeworms but scooch,
and also why you might butt scooch too, because you
(16:09):
are trying to erase the the very anus from your
body to get rid of this crawling sensation. For sure.
But even if they don't crawl right out of your
bottom um, they they can still make their way out
in your poop, and then they crawl away from the poop.
Because if they crawl away from the poop, and say,
like a pasture right where some human is just pooped,
(16:31):
there might be a cow nearby that eats the grass
that this periglotted has broken open and like deposited the
eggs into the soil. And when that cow eats those eggs,
this life cycle starts all over again. You know what
we call that dog scooch in our house the boot
scooting boogie. That's whenever you see the boot scooting boogie
(16:56):
happen in your house. It may not meet a tape worm,
but there it's not good. No um. Little Moe does
it sometimes, but she does this cute thing where she
does a little one eight in one place. She doesn't
go like, she doesn't make a line, she stays and
just kind of does like the twist, and she eventually
bores a hole in the floor and falls through to
another dimension. That's right. Yeah, the boot scooting boogie also
(17:19):
could be like anal glands that need expressing, or just
uh dingle berry that needs taken care of board on
a Saturday night. But it's never something awesome. It's never
you know, hundred dollar bills or just a dog that's
like making some cool noise with their butt, right exactly.
(17:44):
So man, Yeah, so the this life cycle thing that
just kicked off again, we should follow this through one
more time. Okay, I don't actually I don't even know
if we've gone through this. But the thing about tape worms,
and you kind of touched on it before, is they
infest different animals, But the same kind of tape worm
might infest different animals as part of its life cycle. Right, So,
(18:07):
like when you just pooped in the cow pasture and
that purglotted opened up in deposited the eggs into the soil,
and this cow eating grass ate that soil. Those eggs
went into that cow and they said, okay, time to
turn into our larval stage, and in the cow they
turned into larvae. But the larvae of tape worms form
(18:29):
like a cyst around them, and from what I can gather,
the reason that they form the cyst is because they um.
It prevents them from setting off an immune response. Because,
like you were saying, you can have a tapeworom infection
unless it's really bad and you're becoming really malnourished as
a result. UM, and it's a it's an adult tapew
(18:49):
room in your gut. You may never know that you
had one until the thing just falls out of your
bottom one day, like it's done um or you start,
you know, discharging purglotted in your stool. The same thing
with cows, like when they become infested with um tapeworm
larvae in these cysts forms, the cysts burrow their way
(19:11):
out of the intestinal wall and then just implant themselves
in the cows muscles don't seem to really provide any
kind of discomfort or problem, and again they don't sit
off an immune response. But the reason that they deposit
themselves in their muscles is because somewhere along their evolutionary history,
which from what we've seen and goes back at least
two seventy million years. They figured out that the animals
(19:33):
eat the muscles of other animals, and so we come
along and we eat the muscles of the cows, and
those cysts, those larval cysts of tapeworms deposit into our
guts and they mature into the adult tapeworm, so that
the whole life cycle begins again. Yeah, what these uh
at the larval stage, what they're trying to do. They're
(19:53):
trying to get to the bloodstream, right, So like if
you eat eggs or whatever, then the they will become
those syste the larval's and then they go into the
blood stream. Right, that's right. Okay, So if you have this, uh,
if you have the tapeworm, then you haven't an infection
known as human tenise. Uh a man, I had it.
(20:16):
I even spelled it out tiny assis, Is that right?
I think? So that's how I was gonna say it.
And if you have that, like it's like you said,
it's not a big deal. It's asymptomatic probably and you
won't even know you've got it, but that can develop
into sisters yarcosis, and that is when these things get
(20:36):
into your blood stream, and that is not a good
thing because the chain reaction that can happen from here
is pretty bad. I mean, it can lead to death.
It usually doesn't. But they can be anywhere in your body. Uh,
they can grow, and they can inflame tissue. So if
it's putting pressure, like near your eyeball, it can cause
temporary blindness or permanent blindness. If it's near your brain,
(20:58):
that's no good. It can cause brain damage and uh.
In fact, in some UH countries they think it's the
main cause for adult onset onset seizure. Isn't that crazy? Yeah? Yeah,
I saw that. There's there's one guy it's called neurocystic
or kosis, and this one doctor says that at least
five million cases of adult onset um seizures worldwide or
(21:23):
from having tapeworm cysts in your brain. So that that
was the appropriate response, chuck. So the thing is like,
when you eat a tapeworm larva um, it becomes an
adult tapeworm in your gut. Humans aren't our bodies aren't
set up or they're not in this kind of symbiosis
(21:43):
with tapeworm eggs to do the same thing. So if
we eat tapeworm eggs accidentally then those become those cystic
larva's larva, and then that's that's what travels into our
bloodstream and causes all of these problems. And there's specifically
one kind of pig tape worm that it goes through
its life cycle from pig to human to pig, and
(22:06):
under normal circumstances, if we undercooked pork and get those larva,
they're going to turn into adult tape worms. But if
we undercooked pork and we accidentally eat some eggs from
that pork, then that's when that cistic or cosis. Is
that right, Yes, sistic or cosis. It can be a
real problem that you will know, like you were saying
(22:26):
that you've got a tape worm problem pretty pretty quick. Yeah.
If they get big, they can block your your ducks,
your pancreatic ducks, your bile ducks. Uh, they can get
in your organs and grow within your organs, which is
something that should keep you awake at night. Uh. If
they get large enough in your organs that that's gonna
(22:46):
like those organs are not going to be good for
very long. Uh. They can rupture sometimes. Um. And this
is just in the body, not necessarily in the organs,
but if it ruptures in your body, then it's your
Your body is gonna out like an immuno response. You're
gonna get hives, it's gonna itch uh, it's gonna swell,
and you're just gonna have like this massive allergic reaction.
(23:08):
You're gonna be like what bug bit me, right, except
you won't be able to talk because your throat will
have closed. Perhaps, so chuck um. If you don't want
a tapeworm, which hopefully by now you've realized you don't
want a tapeworm again, in the in the developed world,
it's not that hard to avoid a tapeworm, and in
(23:28):
the United States in particular, um like the meat packing
industry is I mean, it's dirty and gross and horrific,
but it's actually pretty good at spotting things like tapeworms.
So there's a really low chance that you're going to
get your hands on meat from an American grocery store
(23:49):
that has tapeworm cists in it. Right, probably not going
to get a tapeworm, but just to be sure, the
government has very um conscientiously recommended some minimum king temperatures
for things like whole cuts of meat like a chopp
or a steak, right. I think it used to be
one sixty fairret height. Now they've lowered it to something
(24:09):
like one, which is sixty three degrees celsius. And here's
the key. They say, after you've done cooking it to
that internal temperature which you want to meet thermometer, Do
you have one of those? One of the best things
I've ever bought, Chuck. That really up my steak game
quite a bit. But the key to a good steak,
and apparently to killing tape worms and other parasites, is
(24:30):
to letting your whole cut of meat rest for at
least three minutes. I always do five after you cook,
before you carve it up and start eating. Do you
do that? You should do that anyway, because of the
flavor and the juices. It just does something amazing. Like,
before I started doing that, I was just a schlove.
I was a total loser. I had no idea what
(24:51):
was going on in the world. Once I started off
the grill and put it in your mouth, sure, yeah, basically,
I mean put it on a plate and like start
eating it right. Once started letting meat rest, it was
like a whole new world. Yeah. And here's another tip.
If you want a really delicious steak uh or I
guess pork chop. You you get one either. I mean,
(25:13):
if you don't have one of these um sort of
slotted cutting boards for to rest on, use like a
baker's rack or something, because you still maintain that crisp
on the outer, that char if you just let it
sit in its juices, that's gonna get all. You know,
it's going to change the texture, oh, like a grilled
pan or something like that. Use that. Yeah, I've got
(25:34):
this cutting board that has uh it's basically like a
grid instead of being flat, uh and it and it
has a a little uh like a grill grate that
can lift up and out of it so it's never sitting.
Like not much of the meat is sitting on a
board when it's resting. So you don't want it to
rest in its juices. No, I want to keep it crispy. Okay,
(25:58):
I didn't know that I got it all. It's to
try that because I always just basically I just put
it on a plate and throw like a some foil
loosely over it, or else like a like a pan cover.
You cover it too, huh. Yeah, yeah, I've always read
it's gonna keep cooking right. Yeah, yeah, for sure, But
I mean it's not on the flame anymore, so it's
like just kind of um yeah, yeah, I know. For
(26:20):
I've never tried it uncovered. Maybe I will try uncovering
and away from the juices and see what happens you
try covering it and leaving it in his juices. I
don't even use a meat thermometer, so I think we
have different steak games. You don't huh do you like,
here's rare, medium, rare, medium, rare. But if I know
(26:41):
the thickness and the weight and the temperature, I don't
need to meet thermometer. I stopped cooking as many steaks,
so I have to kind of I had to go
back to elementary school again. No, there's no shame in it.
I'm not ashamed. I had a had a chef that
I worked for that he could he just touched his
He like, you can tell the internal what the inside
(27:02):
looks like just by touching the outside, right, And we
should tell people. They're probably people who haven't been listening
that long and don't know the secret to steak that
we've said before, Chuck, But you do not touch your steak.
You don't cut it, you cook it, you see it
on one side for a minute and a half two
minutes tops, depending on how thick it is. Flip it
over and do the same thing to the other side.
(27:23):
And then you take it off of your oven or
your grill or whatever and move it into a convection
oven if you've got one at about three degrees three minutes,
the three and a half minutes per side for six
to seven minutes total. Let it rest five minutes, thank
us in the morning. I don't do mind that way either.
Like I said, we've got different steak games. I thought,
(27:45):
I thought you said you'd tried it that way before,
and you're like, this is amazing I've done. I'll do
all kinds of way. Sometimes I do it in a
pan and then stick it in the broiler. These days
of all about the grill again, because I've got a
grill that can get really really hot. Oh yeah, well
that's the key, you know, Like you want to see
hear in those juices to keep it from escaping. Yeah,
(28:08):
which is another reason to meet. Thermometer is good if
you don't, if you can't, just use your thumb. You
don't have to cut it open to look inside. You
just plunge that thing in there and it tells you.
I think all this talk of steak has made people
forget that we're talking about tapeworms. Yeah, perryanus tapeworms. So
um should we? I mean, I guess we should talk
(28:30):
a little bit about the symptoms before we come back
for the final act of tapeworms as a weight loss aid.
But you might not have infectra I'm sorry symptoms at first. Uh.
You might feel a little weak, you might feel some
you might have some diarrhea. You might feel dizzy or
lose your appetite. You might lose a little weight. You
(28:51):
might crave salt, which is an interesting one because I
always crave salt. Yeah. I thought that was interesting to
um or Pika in general, Like if you crave eating
clay or just anything that you is a little weird
is a big sign. You're saying Pica now, pa Oh yeah,
I think I've always said they haven't I you always said, Pika.
(29:11):
This is amazing. It's like starting our podcast all over
again after twelve years. It's a refresh. That's what I'm
going with now, all right, Uh, So you will get
a you will deliver a stool sample. Um. If you
go to the doctor, if you suspect you have a
tape worm, you want them to ask you for it first. Sure,
just don't bring it in a bag unless you've happened
(29:33):
to see that your poop has worms in it, um
and that you could bring it in. But you could
also just say there were those were definitely worms in
my poop, and hopefully what happens is is that you've
gone in there quickly enough to where it it doesn't
end up being a very big deal. And you take
a little anti worm medication and this thing works by
(29:54):
basically kind of paralyzing the parasite so it's muscles are
perm contracted. Yeah, and you know we're talking about how
that that head just latches on. It's not able to
latch on. It just comes right on out in your poop,
I know, because it just falls out, basically. And there
are plenty of videos on the internet that show tapeworms
(30:17):
that have come out of people's anuses. If you want
to go see that kind of thing, they can get
really really long. Um. But that that drug chuck that
that you're talking about, the anti warming agent, it's the
same thing that they give dogs, Like any animal that's
going to have a worm is going to get the
same treatment. But they found they're pretty sure this particular one,
(30:41):
Nick Close amid this d worming agent is actually also
good for things like treating cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, graph
versus host disease, endometriosis, and a bunch of other stuff.
Because they're like, it does something to to channeling pathways, uh,
multiple chane only pathways, And it might be like this
(31:02):
wonder drug that's just waiting to be unlocked. Didn't that neat?
That is super neat, Nick Close to meat? Do we
take that break? Yeah? Man, let's take the break, all right.
Then we'll get to the big revel revelation relevation, no revelation.
Can you use the tape him to lose weight? Right?
For this? Well, now we're on the road driving in
(31:35):
your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh?
Can chuck it stuff? You should know? All right? No,
you can't and you shouldn't. That's right. So remember Kelly
Kapoor tried that or else she considered taking it. I
don't remember, do you. Oh that's right, I forgot about that.
(31:56):
So I mean this has been around for a really
long time. This idea that you can take a eat
a tapeworm of some sort tapeworm cyst, not eggs, because
those will turn into system and invade your brain. Um
that that you could get a tapeworm infection and start
to lose weight. Possibly as long as the nineteen century
(32:17):
they think that there. So here's the thing. Do you
remember when we did our episode on Flee Circuses. Sure
it was really thrilling to me because even while we
were podcasting, I still could not tell for a little
while whether it was a real thing or just one
of the most exquisitely perpetrated hoaxes ever, right, and that
(32:39):
it was still working on us. There's this kind of
a similar thing where it's not entirely clear if these
old timey ads are real people think they typically are,
or if they were real, if anybody actually did this,
or if it was some sort of farce or hoax
or satire. And if it wasn't satire, how widespread was this,
(33:03):
Because it does seem that there were nineteenth century ads,
late nineteenth century early twenty century adds four sterilized tapeworm
pills that women could take. They were marketed toward women
to keep their their figure trim. Right. Of course they
were marketed toward women take a tapeworm, ladies, exactly. Uh.
(33:24):
There was a singer and opera singer named Maria Callas
who and this is almost certainly urban legend, but she
lost I read eighty pounds I've seen other places sixty
pounds over a few months in the mid nineteen fifties,
so much so that it affected her singing as an
opera singer. And we do know that she got a
(33:47):
tapeworm at some point in her life, and we do
know that she liked to eat her steak rare. But
I think it looks, by and large like it was
urban legend, that it got kind of all mixed up together.
And people said that Maria Callis lost weight by ingesting tapeworm,
right right, Like those two things did happen. She did
lose weight, and she did have a tapeworm infection, probably
at some point in life, but that the two were
(34:08):
in no way related. But based on this kind of
idea that you could take a tapeworm and lose weight,
that that they became conflated into this urban legend, as
you were saying, and that that's that's like the one
that people point to is like proof that this actually happened,
and actually it didn't, it didn't happen at all like that.
Supposedly there is a clinic in Tijuana called worm Therapy
(34:33):
uh and supposedly this is the one place in the
world where you can go get a tape worm put
into your body to lose weight for about bucks. You
can get a beef tape worm um. And I've you know,
have been to t one a few times. I never
sought out worm therapy, but apparently it existed or still exists,
(34:54):
it's not clear. So they have a website. I think
it's worm Therapy dot com or dot org and it's
as you know, like you know, contact form fields. It
shows a map of where it is and it isn't
to you one and all that there's a phone number.
I didn't call the phone number. But it's one of
those things like is it actually real number one or
(35:15):
is it just a hoax website? If it's not a
hoax website and it actually is a helmet therapy because
remember in our Hookworms episode, we were talking about that
theory that losing some kinds of parasitic worms they think
actually harmed our immune system and lead to a rise
in like crones and stuff like that. Yeah, so there
are clinics out there in the world that use um
(35:38):
parasitic worms to help autoimmune diseases. So it's possible that
worm therapy does that and that they don't do the
beef tapeworm thing. But the urban legend is that they did,
at least as as recently as two thousand nine, they
offered it. It's just not clear whether any of this
is true or not. Right. What we do know is
true is that to to purpose do this is not
(36:00):
a good idea. It is not a healthy way to
lose weight. Uh, and you're not even gonna lose Like
it said that you can expect to lose one to
two pounds from a tapeworm a week. You can lose
that much with a pretty aggressive diet and exercise plan. Yeah, supposedly,
just cutting five calories out from your diet every day
(36:22):
every week, you could lose a pound. You can look
forward to losing a pound. So yeah, exactly taking a
tapeworm to do that is not not a good idea,
especially considering so because that tapeworm is competing for nutrients
from you. You're gonna end up with a pretty nice
little case of malnutrition if it gets pretty bad. So
(36:44):
you're actually going to be your body is going to
talk you into eating more than you normally would, right,
so you'll develop even worse eating habits than you did
than you have before the tapeworm infection, so that when
you finally get around to taking a d worming eight
it and it gets rid of that tapeworm, when you
just keep eating again, you're gonna gain that weight right back,
(37:07):
and you're probably gonna gain more weight back because you've
developed even worse seeing eating habits from having the tapeworm.
And again, all of this is based on the idea
that any of this is even true to begin with,
which is totally unclear still at this point. Yes, totally,
So that's it. Don't don't take a tapeworm to lose weight.
Just exercise and diet. That's that is it. There's no
(37:29):
better diet fed than that. Just exercise and diet, and
you will lose weight and feel healthier and better and
sleep better and have less chronic disease and just be
far better off. That's it. That's right. You got anything else,
No well, since Chuck said no, it's time for a
listener mail. This is from a high school student. We
(37:52):
love hearing from high school students. This is from Kate.
Kate says, Hi, guys, I am a junior in high
school from mass Aitusetts. Discovered the podcast in September at
the start of the school year, and I've loved it
ever since. It definitely makes my morning car rides much
more interesting, and it does wonders to decrease my horrible
road rage. Recently, as I was driving to Cape Cod,
(38:17):
I was listening to your Spartacus episode. I've been studying
Latin since sixth grade, uh and this year was my
first year taking Ancient Greeks, so needless to say, I'm
a huge nerd when it comes to Roman history. I
couldn't help but to laugh when I heard you both
struggling to pronounce the names of the Roman consuls and
they're important and other important historical figures. This quarantine has
(38:38):
really been tough on me, guys, like it has on everyone,
and I really needed that laugh. So I thought I
would write to you as a sort of thank you note.
Although your pronunciation may not have been great, the whole
episode really did wonders to lighten my mood and make
me feel better even though things are crazy right now.
Always I know that I have your podcast to listen
to when I'm feeling down or just want to smile out.
(39:01):
Wishing you health and happiness. That is from Kate in Massachusetts.
Thanks a lot, Kate. That was nice of her to
say our pronunciation may not have been great. Yeah, what
she means is, guys, you were way off. It was terrible. Well,
that was very nice, Kate. And it's nice to hear
that we're helping you out there. And uh, thank you
for writing in. And if you are like Kate and
(39:22):
we're helping you out we always love hearing that kind
of thing. You can send an email to us if
you like, wrap it up, spend it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(39:42):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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