The Tapeworm Diet

People are always looking for the fastest, easiest, and best ways to lose weight. Anyone that has been serious about weight loss can attest to this. There are some pretty ridiculous diets out there that have you take things to the extreme in order to try to get you to lose weight. Consuming nothing but juice for a week, eating cabbage soup for weeks, drinking only lemonade mixed with cayenne pepper, or injecting yourself with a pregnant woman's pee (HCG) are examples of some of the extremes people will try when they're desperate to lose weight.

And then there's the tapeworm diet. The tapeworm diet has to be one of the most extreme and desperate diet plans available. Its hard to believe that anyone would willing ingest a tapeworm just to try to lose weight. Not only is it banned by the FDA, its highly dangerous and can lead to death in some cases.

Where did this "diet" come from?

Well it actually dates all the way back to the 1900s when ads surfaced for diet pills that supposedly contained tapeworm eggs - if they actually did or not is another story. The most famous reported case of tapeworms for weight loss was Marie Callas. Marie was indeed infected with tapeworms, but not on purpose because she wanted to lose weight. It was in-fact because of her love for steak and liver tar-tare which are prone to contamination. It was just a coincidence that she happened to have tapeworms at a time when these pills were supposedly being marketed. Newspapers furthered the rumor by passing along false statements about her which claimed that she was indeed taking the tapeworm diet pills.

Tapeworms are parasitic flatworms (cestoda) that live in the intestines of their host. The larva of the cestoda are usually ingested in humans by consuming undercooked food. The larva can then grow into a large adult tapeworm (up to 100 feet). The most common types of tapeworms in humans are the pork, beef, fish, and the dwarf tapeworm.

The majority of people infected by tapeworms do not produce any symptoms. During the onset of the disease, ten days or so after eating raw or insufficiently cooked food, symptoms such as abdominal discomfort and pain, diarrhea, vomiting, flatulence, nausea, or weakness may occur. Some of the same symptoms in chronic cases may occur along with water retention, malnutrition, and loss of weight. A colon blockage can happen when the worm gets so large it fills the entire intestine. If the tapeworm consumes most of the hosts B12 you can develop an anemia which can result in neurological symptoms such as numbness, loss of vibration sense, and even some eye symptoms.

The basic concept of the tapeworm diet is simple: the parasites feed on the food the host ingests which in turn reduces the number of calories absorbed. It works like a calorie restriction diet but with the benefit of being able to eat all you want. There are even a few scientists that believe tapeworms can also help clear up allergies.

How Exactly Does The Tapeworm Make You Lose Weight?

Tapeworms naturally secrete a type of protein that takes over your intestines. Depending on where the protein secreted in the digestive tract is, the tapeworm will either speed up or slow down the digestion process. What this means is that you become less efficient at digesting food. The decrease can vary greatly from 5-30% which can be a difference as much as 1 or 2 pounds a week.

The tapeworm competes with the host for calories but only specific nutrients that the worm needs which is the reason the tapeworm hijacks your digestive system in the first place. The tapeworm controls the speed of your digestive process so that it can efficiently get the nutrients it needs from you. That is the reason someone that loses five pounds while infected doesn't have a five pound worm inside them.

Will You Lose Weight?

So will you actually lose weight with a tapeworm living inside you? Probably, but you have to consider the wide range of side effects that tapeworms produce. There's also always the risk of malnutrition with tapeworms. If you ask me, having a flatworm exit from a bodily orifice unexpectedly is a pretty big disincentive. You could also always get ascites, a build up of fluids which cause your stomach to swell up, which is the exact opposite of what you'd be trying to accomplish.