THE INTESTINAL WORMS HUMANS CARRY

SOME INTESTINAL WORMS HUMANS CAN GET ARE DEADLY

THE INTESTINAL WORMS HUMANS CAN CARRY are everywhere, even on fruits, vegetables and soil. One type, known as Ascaris (Ascaris Lumbricoides), pictured at the right, are a parasitic roundworm.

Roundworms exist all over the world, the kinds of which number in the hundreds of thousands - Ascaris being the most common among those that inhabit human hosts.

Being infested with these is called Ascariasis, and the worst part of this is that there are no obvious symptoms, until there are so many in the intestines clogging you up, elsewhere blocking the flow of bile, or breaking down the lungs and causing asthma-like problems, that you obviously have something wrong with you.

One type of area where these can thrive and inhabit humans is anywhere there is raw or untreated sewage, or where such is used to fertilize crops. This is just one likely place, however. Eggs are often found right in soil. Most instances of these intestinal worms humans are being infested with are found in Africa and Asia, but it has also been increasingly found in American human hosts as well - it is now estimated that 4 million people in the United States alone are infested. Though infested people can be found throughout the US, the majority of them seem to be in the rural southeastern areas.

Infestation of the human host begins when people unknowingly swallow eggs from infected food or from soil. The eggs hatch in the upper portion of the small intestine, grow to the larval stage, then swim along the bloodstream to get to the lungs. Coughed up, they then become swallowed and reach maturity in the intestines where they were hatched, and then they mate. Fertilized females produce up to 240,000 microscopic eggs per day.

Basically, intestinal worms + humans = a bad combination.