Why Can't We Be Friends?

[rawlion]

Oftentimes when asking for liver in the market I was told it wasn’t good. Neither butchers nor meat inspectors could provide me with any reasonable explanation. They just wrote it down to parasites.

Since I wasn’t parasite phobic I disregarded theirs warnings and consumed the BAD but discounted livers from time to time. I noticed a pattern that only grass fed and non-dewormed animals (especially sheep) had inferior livers. There always has been a dilemma for me whether to go for CLEAN commercial meat or choose from much better but infected sources.

This issue haunted my mind for quite a while. Finally I cracked this mystery the other day when I was cutting yet another spoiled liver. I found the whole number of Fasciola hepatica in the bile ducts. I surfed the Internet and got all the desired answers.

Here is the most general info on Fasciolosis.

The Merck Manual also provide some insight on common liver fluke.

Why animals rarely if ever have liver flukes in the wild?
Control measures for F hepatica ideally should involve removal of flukes in affected animals, reduction of the intermediate host snail population, and prevention of livestock access to snail-infested pasture. Prevention of livestock access to snail-infested pasture is frequently impractical because of the size of the areas involved and the consequent expense of erecting adequate fencing.

How it correlates with my condition?
Chronic or obstructive phase: This phase may develop months or years after initial infection. Adult flukes in the bile ducts cause inflammation and hyperplasia of the epithelium. The resulting cholangitis and cholecystitis, combined with the large body of the flukes, are sufficient to cause mechanical obstruction of the biliary duct. In this phase, biliary colic, epigastric pain, fatty food intolerance, nausea, jaundice, pruritus, right upper-quadrant abdominal tenderness, etc., are clinical manifestations indistinguishable from cholangitis, cholecystitis and cholelithiasis of other origins. Hepatic enlargement may be associated with an enlarged spleen or ascites. In case of obstruction, the gall bladder is usually enlarged and edematous with thickening of the wall. Fibrous adhesions of the gall bladder to adjacent organs are common. Lithiasis of the bile duct or gall bladder is frequent and the stones are usually small and multiple.

So many familiar symptoms… But they are our FRIENDS, the parasites, AREN’T they?

[Paleo Donk]

So you are going to liver flush now, right.  

[miles]

Why would they be your friends? They're just there because they can be. If you drop food around your house, rats and bugs come and eat it, cleaning it up, but they're not there to help you and will likely be more troublesome to you than the food you'd dropped. The rats and bugs didn't infest your house to help you, but just because they could.

By the way, I didn't understand the explanation of why wild animals don't get liver flukes..?

[goodsamaritan]

When there was a time you were polluted and constipated, the parasites may have migrated to the wrong organs in your body.  You can always choose a 30 day herbal anti-parasite solution.

Those I have used for myself and my children are http://www.barefootherbalistmh.com and http://www.humaworm.com

I view parasites from both Hulda Clark and Aajonus Vonderplanitz.

As long as the parasites are in the correct organs, they are our friends.

[rawlion]

So you are going to liver flush now, right.  

I don't know... I was just wondering if I could get infected...

Ruminant animals in the wild are always changing the pastures and don't eat feces of each other.

In the advanced cases the livers are affected very badly. There are a lot of calcifications produced by flukes and you can hear the crunchy sound when cutting the liver. Pretty scary Honestly, I would want that to happen with my liver...

[Hannibal]

As long as the parasites are in the correct organs, they are our friends.

Which organs are correct?

[Michael]

Why would they be your friends? They're just there because they can be. If you drop food around your house, rats and bugs come and eat it, cleaning it up, but they're not there to help you and will likely be more troublesome to you than the food you'd dropped. The rats and bugs didn't infest your house to help you, but just because they could.

That's a good analogy and summarisation miles which, I think, describes the situation perfectly.  This issue of whether parasites are beneficial or dangerous remains an area of great confusion for most of us - myself included!  I'm not sure there is a black & white answer and, as much as it bothers many of us, we may have to accept the issue is a grey area.

Those flukes certainly scare the hell out of me Yuri!  Despite, of course, being well aware of the parasites existing in the RAF I eat daily, that lamb's liver I have sitting in the fridge seems, now, even less appealing.  But, 10 years of eating this way and the only parasite issues I've blatantly experienced have been with fish and seafood.  This has been to such an extent that, despite the apparent trouble-free experiences of others such as Tyler, I no longer consume it raw.  Of course, my liver may be being eaten alive by flukes as I type this!!   

[rawlion]

Michael,

What confuses me most is that the diseased animals eat non-cooked natural diets of fresh grass and hay...

Hunters also occasionally report about the spoiled livers of wild animals. For instance, here are the pictures of one wild ungulate animal (capra ibex). Looks less than healthy...

[alphagruis]

I like the brief but much telling comment of Miles, too.

It is an erroneous anthropocentric view to think of parasites or other life or non life related phenomena as either our friends or our ennemies. They are neither one nor the other and nature in general merely doesn't work in this way nor exhibit any feelings with respect to mankind. Parasites indeed exist because they can exist due to there being food and a niche for them and they eventually thrive or not. Sometimes, but only by the way, they do things that are beneficial or we can take advantage of and sometimes they are really harm to us. But they never 'intend" to do so, this point of view is nonsense. Note that mitochondria were most likely once bacteria parasites of primitive eucaryots.

Believing that nature in general was once in paleotimes and again will be in future just optimized for man's well being provided he does this or that, eats Raw Paleo or according to so many diets proned by various gurus is ridiculous because it is just obviously wrong.

So it is not true and there is no reason to believe that wild animals or grassfed animals cannot be infested by parasites, rawlion.

Yet it is true that Raw Paleo or grass feeding of cattle changes markedly the problem of parasites and seriously diminishes the relevant thread as a lot of others.    

[goodsamaritan]

Michael,

What confuses me most is that the diseased animals eat non-cooked natural diets of fresh grass and hay...

Hunters also occasionally report about the spoiled livers of wild animals. For instance, here are the pictures of one wild ungulate animal (capra ibex). Looks less than healthy...

When I buy my livers in the wet market beside my office I CHOOSE which one looks healthy.  If none of them look healthy, I do not buy and just wait for the next day's livers.

[pioneer]

You guys got it all wrong, parasites are defined as something living off the host and the host doesnt get any benefit. I think what you guys mean when you say parasites are healthy is not parasites but symbiotes. Symbiosis is that which lives off of the host and the host gets benefit from it. So to say that parasites are good is wrong, you want parasites out and symbiotes in.

[goodsamaritan]

You guys got it all wrong, parasites are defined as something living off the host and the host doesnt get any benefit. I think what you guys mean when you say parasites are healthy is not parasites but symbiotes. Symbiosis is that which lives off of the host and the host gets benefit from it. So to say that parasites are good is wrong, you want parasites out and symbiotes in.

Yeah, we have to identify which ones.

I know in one news report that eczemas were eliminated by introducing certain worms in the guts of the eczematic and this cured them.

[alphagruis]

You guys got it all wrong, parasites are defined as something living off the host and the host doesnt get any benefit. I think what you guys mean when you say parasites are healthy is not parasites but symbiotes. Symbiosis is that which lives off of the host and the host gets benefit from it. So to say that parasites are good is wrong, you want parasites out and symbiotes in.

The trouble with this is that from all evidence now at hand in biology parasites and symbionts cannot even remotely be so easily distinguished as you seem to believe. Things are much more complex when one takes the time to look at them.

Again, as an example, mitochondria were initially rather a parasite that later on evolved towards a kind of symbiont in eucaryots.

[pioneer]

True, Im just saying as the definition of them appears, the symbionts are the good guys because they benefit the host. Usually a parasite is something that lives off the host but the host doesnt get a benefit. Symbionts are like those remora fish when they attach to sharks and clean off parasites from their underbellies, the shark does not want to get rid of them but live with them in harmony.

[raw-al]

I view parasites from both Hulda Clark and Aajonus Vonderplanitz.
As long as the parasites are in the correct organs, they are our friends.

GS,
I have read Hulga's book on Disease and I started off buying what she was saying till I showed it to a friend. He pulled the plug on that. After that I started to read her more critically and have arrived at "my" conclusion (not to be confused with what everyone else should conclude ) that I am not buying her story.

Until I hear a convincing story I am not going to get rid of all stainless steel implements and eat with plastic everything along with some of her other conclusions and suggestions. I am not suggesting she is 100% you know what... I will start a thread on that topic.