You can’t wriggle your way out of obesity.
Doctors on YouTube have warned viewers that tapeworm egg pills are being sold on the dark web as a quick-fix weight loss solution — putting consumers at risk of serious illness and potentially death.
The parasites are known to make a home in the human gut after their eggs are unwittingly consumed via undercooked meat products, with some that can grow up to 30 feet long while munching on their host’s post-chewed meals, thus triggering weight loss. The bizarre practice of ingesting tapeworm eggs for weight loss goes back to at least the Victorian era, though it’s unclear how commonly the method was used.
Dr. Bernard Hsu, a US-based oncologist and host of Chubbyemu, a YouTube channel dedicated to sharing tales of medical oddities, reported on a case study of a woman who bought capsules filled with tapeworm eggs using cryptocurrency.
The 21-year-old patient, referred to only as “TE,” had been struggling to lose weight conventionally through diet and exercise when she scrolled across an ad on social media for a “controversial” weight loss cure with convincing before-and-after photos.
“TE was intrigued. A ‘forbidden’ method is one that must be so good, and so powerful, that it’s the one true secret that she needs to know,” Hsu began.
TE wasted no time downing two of the tapeworm tablets and soon saw the results she’d hoped for — though it came at the uncomfortable cost of regular stomach cramps and bloating. Still happy with her weight loss, she dismissed the symptoms.
However, her worry grew after a shocking bathroom incident, as graphically recalled by Hsu. ‘She thought she could feel something flapping and slapping around her cheeks while she was sitting down,” he said.
“When she was about to flush, she looked back and saw some tan, rectangular pieces floating around in the bowl creeping out of the bulk mass.”
Again, TE chalked up her strange bowel movement as all part of the process — fat leaving her body.
But her symptoms grew more strange: a few weeks later, she noticed an unusual lump under her chin. She reportedly then pressed on the mound, and then awoke face down on the floor after having apparently passed out, unsure how long she’d been unconscious.
Days of intense headaches and cranial pressure followed the episode.
Finally, she checked herself into a hospital for severe headaches and abdominal pain — without telling them about her foray into the tapeworm diet. Typical tests measuring blood sugar levels and bacterial infection came back negative. Believing she may be harboring an unidentified viral infection, doctors treated her swelling belly and sent her home with no clear diagnosis.
The headaches soon returned alongside a scary new symptom.
“She would have periods in time where she’d suddenly wake up in the middle of the day and she couldn’t remember anything from the last few hours,” Hsu said.
Again, she returned to the hospital. At this point, about one year had passed since she swallowed the tapeworm eggs — but her doctors still didn’t know that.
Physicians turned their scope to her brain and found multiple lesions, prompting them to take a wider look at her whole body where they found more lesions across several organs, including her tongue and liver.
Finally, TE confessed to her dangerous diet ploy.
They discovered that TE had consumed two species of the parasite. Taenia saginata, or beef tapeworm, matched the description of the rectangular, tan-colored bugs she found in her toilet bowl just weeks after first taking the pills.
It was the second type that caused major issues. Taenia solium, which stems from pork, is known to make its way outside of the digestive tract by releasing eggs into the bloodstream and settling on any sort of body tissue, such as the brain. While they won’t hatch unless they remain in the gut, the intact eggs can cause a variety of horrifying side effects, such as the hard bump — a clump of eggs — TE found under her chin.
This process is called cysticercosis — harmless in some but a nightmare for others, depending on where the eggs land. Others who have suffered cysticercosis of the brain have endured personality shits and cognitive dysfunction for years before detecting the issue, Hsu claimed.
Fortunately, tapeworms are treatable and TE received drugs to paralyze and starve the worms, allowing the body to expel the foreign organisms, and steroids to calm the inflammation in her brain.
After three weeks in a hospital, TE was tapeworm-free and discharged.
Hsu pleaded with viewers to heed this cautionary tale: “In an able-bodied human, weight loss with diet and exercise is physically doable, and that has much less risk than letting extra organisms intentionally live inside of you.”
