Originally Posted by tore

This is a bit off-topic, but ..

The reason I wouldn't recommend treatment if parasites are no real trouble is that there are some studies that show that certain parasites alleviate allergy symptoms. The hypothesis explaining it says that many parasites lower our immune systems. They sort of turn it down a few notches. We humans have evolved to cope with a certain parasite load and without them turning down the volume on our immune systems as it were, some of us get a bit hyper reactive - some of us get allergies.

So basically, people with parasites have less allergy. This is something shown in studies and there's also a more recent human experiment with hook worms that show that infecting yourself with hook worms can have really good effect on most allergy symptoms if not all. The goal is of course to isolate the protein(s) the hookworms produce to create this effect and create some sort of anti-allergy medication, but that will take a while.

Medicines which kill the "children worms" may also kill a range of other parasites and so if someone isn't bothered by them, I wouldn't advise taking medication just to get rid of them! Although I may be going out on a limb here, I'm guessing such treatments could worsen allergy symptoms for people with allergies!

So you may want to cope with some worms in your ass after all