To lose weight, she buys tapeworm eggs on the dark web… which damage her brain. A nightmare!

Voluntarily catching the tapeworm to lose weight quickly without restricting yourself is a method regularly mentioned and considered since the 19th century. But, in reality, harboring such a parasite in your intestines turns out to be a very bad idea. What still needs to be remembered, it seems.

Tapeworm, the secret method to lose weight?

The alert was launched a few days ago on the Daily Mailby doctors surprised to see patients consuming tapeworm eggs. Tapeworms are parasites that enter the human intestine primarily when people unintentionally eat their eggs in undercooked meat. Once established, this parasite is known to cause weight loss by taking part of the food consumed by their host and also causing diarrhea.

An unpleasant infection which seduces at their own risk certain women, in the United States or China, who wish to lose weight quickly. This is the case of TE, a 21-year-old young woman who purchased capsules containing tapeworm eggs online using cryptocurrency.

A descent into hell after buying tapeworms

The chilling case is detailed in a video. Motivated by the comments she had found, TE rushed to order two capsules containing tapeworms and began to lose weight, once the “parasites” had been ingested. Slight stomach aches wake up, but she ignores it: the treatment is working.

But one morning, she noticed a bump under her chin, felt pressure in her skull and complained of violent headaches. She eventually went to the emergency room where doctors analyzed her spinal fluid, a fluid that builds up in the spine and around the brain, protecting the organ and supporting normal blood flow.

The results show a pressure twice as high as it should have been, but when blood sugar or bacteria tests come back normal, TE is sent home with treatment for a viral infection. This doesn’t solve anything: the headaches persist, TE suffers from loss of consciousness, and new bumps appear.

Eggs laid… in the brain

After a year of suffering, other examinations revealed lesions on his neck, face, tongue and liver. It was only then that TE admitted to doctors that she had consumed tapeworm eggs that she had purchased online. What she doesn’t know is that she has indeed purchased tapeworms, but belonging to two species of parasites.

THE Taenia saginataalso known as beef tapeworm, which looks like beige-colored rectangular segments. A second called Taenia soliummost commonly found in pork, and which releases tiny eggs into the body that can enter the bloodstream and spread to tissues like muscles and the brain.

This is called cysticercosis. These eggs form hard nodules like cysts that can look like bumps under the skin and can develop in sensitive tissues like the brain. What happened to young TE and other patients who once ate undercooked pork.

Last August, a doctor had shared scan images of an infected patient with the same parasites.

Far more risks than benefits

For all these risks, the purported benefits of ingesting tapeworm eggs are by no means worth it, doctors say.

However, the idea of ​​this tapeworm is not a first. The practice, born in the 19th^e century, in the Victorian era, when female beauty standards valued women with wasp waists at all costs, enjoyed its small success. Although it was then necessary to find a way to remove the parasite once the desired weight was obtained (using a bowl of milk in front of an orifice, suffice to say that the technique was not reliable!). If historians today doubt the veracity of the method, the idea regularly comes up in the media. As in one of the episodes ofAmazing Kardashian Family in which Khloé Kardashian floats the idea of ​​harboring a tapeworm in her intestine.

TE has had the bitter experience: the technique does not work. In an article from Slate on the subject in 2017, gastroenterologist Philippe Godeberge was already surprised by this craze.

Less kilos perhaps, but with a 10 meter worm in the stomach, eggs in the brain, and no longer any vitality. Is it worth it?