16: Are Parasites the Real Cause of Crohn's and Colitis (IBD)?

Parasites are more common than you think. Some specialists estimate that up to 80% of all humans have parasite infections and I've seen them be at the roots of Crohn's and colitis for HUNREDS of clients over the years.


TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• What are parasites?
• Why they make you sick
• What they eat (in you) for food
• Parasites vs. autoimmunity, Crohn's and Colitis
• Symptoms of parasites
• How to remove parasites

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Transcript

Josh Dech:

Being diagnosed with Crohn or colitis can really flip your life on its head. It’s obviously not fair and no doctor can really explain why it’s happening to you. But I can promise that it’s not a random condition like they say it is.

Today, we’re giving you the tools to help identify one of the biggest drivers that we see in our Crohn’s and colitis clients who are successfully reversing their disease, and that is parasites. We see it in over 80% of people, and you’re gonna be shocked to learn some of the things that come out.

So on today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about what parasites are, how you get them, why they’re such a problem, as well as what they’re actually eating inside of you as a food source, and of course—how to get rid of them.

I’m so excited to share this with you so you can finally start getting some answers. Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn’s and colitis are reversible.

Now, I’ve helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease, and I’m here to help you do it too—because inflammation always has a root cause. We just have to find it.

This is the Reversing Crohn’s and Colitis Naturally podcast.

I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the links in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates, information, tips and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below.

Something we’re introducing here—most doctors don’t know this or really believe this—but did you know that parasites can be causing your IBD?

Now, they’re not just a third world problem—contrary to popular belief.

(Continued in next message...)

(Continued from previous message — Part 2 of the full 49-minute transcript.)

So in this training, we’re going to talk about parasites. We’ll talk about what they are, how we get them, and why they’re such a massive problem. I’ll tell you about some client stories of parasites—I’m talking 3-4 foot anacondas—including some of my own that I’ve dealt with. And of course, how to get rid of them.

But be warned—this is not just a simple DIY project.

If you are new here, my name is Josh Dech. I’m a holistic nutritionist, IBD specialist, medical lecturer, and physician’s consultant for Crohn’s and colitis and even severe IBS. And my team and I have helped hundreds and hundreds of people now reverse their IBD—so much so the colonoscopy reports come back as “healthy,” “normal,” and “unremarkable.”

And “unremarkable,” in any case, is usually bad—except for your colonoscopy. So it’s a very, very good thing. Very, very cool stuff. And I’m here to help you prove your doctor wrong and make sense of what’s going on inside of your guts.

Let’s dive right in.

We’re talking about parasites.

So, number one: What are parasites? Why are they a problem? How do we get rid of them?

What is a parasite?

The definition of a parasite is an organism that lives in or on a host, stealing nutrients at the host’s expense. They require the host to survive. And they consume parts of you as nutrients.

And parasites—they can eat a lot of different stuff.

Here’s what I want you to keep in mind: Doctors often say they’re a third world problem.

But there are approximately 1 million different types of parasites that we know of in the world. And approximately 1,400 species that actually can infect humans.

1,400 species. That can infect humans.

And so, they’re very, very easy to get. They’re kind of all over the place.

You can get them from public bathrooms—there was a common one, I just spoke to a young lady the other day, and she took her daughter over to daycare. There was a baby there who was very sick, had some diarrhea. Her daughter came home a day later, had diarrhea. Another day later or two days later, her other daughter got diarrhea. From one baby at the daycare, this thing spread. And today, her daughter’s six years old—and has Crohn’s disease.

We already know as well that parasites live as part of our microbiome. They’re part of us. They’re part of this ecosystem.

And so if you’re someone and you’re dealing with IBD, you’re probably like everybody else—you woke up one day sick. After a couple of days, weeks, or months—that’s probably 80% of people dealing with this disease. And there’s no explanation. Your doctor says, “It’s just genetic. One day it just randomly turned on.”

But somewhere, you knew—this never made sense. Like, it just... the math doesn’t add up.

How can I be perfectly healthy one day, then sick the next?

How come my child was healthy but is now sick?

It is not in my genetics—and even if it’s genetic, it doesn’t really matter.

So what’s really going on?

And a big driver can be these parasites.

There’s 1,400 different species that can infect humans. And so, we’re not going to talk about naming the species today—there’s just way too much. We’re not going to get a textbook’s worth. But I want you to understand, this is not a third world problem.

There’s lots of opportunities for parasites to get into your system, and what your doctors are telling you—even if they test (we’ll talk about that)—doesn’t matter.

You can still have them and not show up on a test.

So the first thing we need to know: Parasites are not a third world problem. I want you to remember that. Even when your doctor says they are—know that they are not. That’s the knowledge they have, and they’re wrong.

Okay, second thing is: When your doctor tests for parasites, even the world’s best parasite tests are 40% accurate at the best of times.

Because parasites can hide.

Parasites can burrow through the gut lining, and they can hide in the crypts and folds of your bowels. They can get into muscles and joints. They can get into all kinds of areas.

They like to hide inside the lymphatic tissue—in your liver, your gallbladder and bile duct, the ileocecal valve, like right where the small and large intestines connect, the appendix—they can be all over the place.

If you have hip pain, back pain—we’ll talk about that—it can be parasites in the muscle.

And so to try to pick them out of a stool test? Very difficult.

Not only that—but parasites even produce a lot of enzymes where they break themselves down. So it can be very difficult to actually test for a parasite.

So if you got a test and it said “negative”—doesn’t matter.

If you have the symptoms—which we’ll go over—we’re going to talk about this—you could still have a parasite infection.

And probably 80% of the clients we see have parasites as the main driver, or at least a contributing factor to their bowel disease.

And the kicker is—if you do have parasites, and you have other conditions like mold or fungal overgrowth, or something else—E. coli—you may not get them out successfully if you have parasites that are active.

So we’re going to go through this and talk about how to get rid of them and some of the steps. But I’m going to preface right away: It’s not DIY. It can be very dangerous. People can make themselves very sick or do a parasite protocol and render it completely ineffective—wasting time and money.

We’ll get into that, okay?

So the first thing: Parasites are not a third world problem.

Second: Your doctor may test, but they’re 40% accurate at best. Most people will test negative.

Okay, the next one we want to talk about is that 80 to 90% of the people we see inside of our program, with the hundreds of cases of Crohn’s, colitis, we’ve now reversed—they have parasites.

Either as a major driver or one of the layers of contributing problems.

And we’re going to talk about more of this here in a minute.

So here’s what parasites can do—remember we talked about the definition: An organism that lives on or inside of a host.

Technically a leech would be a parasite, right? It leeches on and it sucks blood—that’s a parasite.

But it can also live inside you. And they have all kinds of things they eat for food.

So think about this for just a minute.

Parasites can eat blood.
And they can also eat iron.

Give me a thumbs up in the chat, raise your hand, or just give me a nod—give me a yes—if you’ve ever been diagnosed with blood issues or anemia, low iron, if you’ve ever required an iron transfusion or a blood transfusion with your IBD.

Maybe you’re not bleeding two cups of blood a day, but you’re still having low iron, low hemoglobin, and requiring transfusions. Because—it could be a parasite.

So parasites eat blood, they can eat iron—different kinds eat different things.

So low hemoglobin, low iron levels, you get iron infusions over and over again, and you’re still anemic every eight weeks or six months—whatever—and you’re like, “Oh, I’m anemic again, weird.”

It could be a parasite eating it for food.

Other bacteria and microbes can eat your iron too, so it can be really rough—but there’s a reason why it’s happening. Your body isn’t just iron deficient for no reason.

Okay, there’s more to it.

The other things they can eat—they love to eat different nutrients.

Now, nutrients can be just about anything. So it can be vitamins, it can be minerals, it can be amino acids, and all that.

But if you’ve ever been diagnosed with a nutrient deficiency, maybe a B vitamin issue or malabsorption syndrome—I don’t like syndromes. Because they’re just saying, “Oh, you just have this thing going on.”

Saying you have a syndrome leaves no explanation. It just sort of works under the assumption that your body is somehow deficient or defective. Doesn’t make any sense.

But if you have something that is eating the food, therefore you’re not getting it—picture this:

You consume something. You’re eating a nice, juicy steak. It breaks down inside of your body and gets into the intestines—ready to absorb.

But before—okay, you’ve broken this down, let me draw this up—you got a little steak here, it’s a nice juicy steak. You’ve eaten it, it gets into the intestines—this is where it starts breaking down.

Now it turns into these itty bitty pieces and before these pieces can actually enter and pass through the intestinal wall, guess what?

This little wormy—this little parasite—comes up, chomp chomp chomp, and starts eating all your nutrients.

They never make it into the body.

Of course you have malabsorption syndrome.So if you’re somebody—we need fluid to drain, picture it like a pipe. You can’t move things through a pipe without water moving through it.

Now, if that pipe gets dry—what happens? Things cake up, drains get clogged, there’s nothing constantly flushing it through. It’s like having a garburator in your sink, but you never flush water through—it’s just full of food. Now it rots.

Picture that in your lymphatic system. It’s a constant machine of fluid pumping through. But now, you’re getting low on fluid, something’s eating it or blocking that.

Well, if you’ve ever had swollen lymph glands—now it can be armpits, neck, throat, groin, even in the feet.

If you’re someone who gets swelling in the hands or swelling in the feet, maybe there’s a history of mastitis or inflammation in the breast tissue—there’s a lot of lymphatics through there. And so, if you’ve got a parasite issue, it can cause this lymphedema, we call it.

You can get swelling in the lymph glands, swelling in lymphatic areas, swelling or puffiness.

If you lift your arms up and your armpits aren’t a pit where it inverts, it’s actually kind of bulgy or seems like watery and swollen, that’s a lymphatic issue, right?

If you see swelling in the skin, that can all be lymphatic swelling or poor drainage due to parasites.

Now, parasites will also eat certain tissues or nutrients.

Think liver, think lungs. They can actually consume some of these bits and pieces.

And so, if you’re going in and you’re somebody who’s got—they’ll even eat muscles.

We talked about how they get into the muscle tissue, right? They’ll slice the gut lining.

So liver, lungs, muscle—they can eat some of these. They’ll eat basically anything. But these are common ones.

And so if you’re somebody who comes in and you’ve got muscle aches and pains, pain in your hips, lower back or middle back aches and pains, acupuncture won’t take it away, massage, physio—it’s not going away?

Maybe it’s because it’s not from a muscular issue. Maybe it’s something irritating the muscle.

If you’ve got inflammation, if you’ve got arthritis—these things could be a problem.

Now remember—they’re going to eat what they’re nearby. They’re going to eat.

So they can live in the intestines, they’ll live in your drainage and detox pathways...

It’s not an issue between here and here—between the nutrients and your tissues—it’s something else that’s actually consuming them before they get to your tissues.

Malabsorption syndrome doesn’t make any sense, right?

Now, you can be inflamed. Of course. It can be other issues leading to lack of absorption.

But this is something to keep in mind. Nothing I’m telling you is definitive. Symptoms are all going to be contextual, but keep this in mind:

They can eat blood and iron—so you can have your hemoglobin issues, your anemia.

They can consume nutrients for food—so you can have these malabsorption issues or be low on vitamins and minerals and other things—very, very common in IBD.

The other one they can do—there’s lots of them, I’m just going to name a few—but they can actually eat and consume lymphatic fluid.

Believe it or not—hungry little buggers.

They’ll get in there and consume lymphatic fluid.

If you remember a couple of weeks back—or a couple of episodes back if you’re on the podcast—we did an episode on drainage and detoxing, right?

Detoxing is gathering the garbage.
Drainage is taking it out to the curb.

And so if you have drainage pathways in your body—your liver, your lymphs, your lungs, your sinuses, bile ducts—these are different ways that things get around and exit the body.

Colon, kidneys, bladder—these are how things exit.

And so parasites can hang out in these areas, blocking a lot of this drainage. They’ll live in your lymphatics, they’ll live in your liver and bile ducts, ileocecal valve—they love it.

So if you’re having pain or discomfort kind of around the belly button or the right side of the belly button—the appendix, the gallbladder—if you’ve had your appendix or gallbladder removed, there might be a parasite issue in there as well.

If you have pain in the upper right of your shoulder blades, that could be a gallbladder issue, could be parasites.

There’s a lot of ways to detect this. We’ll talk about symptoms earlier—but keep in mind, parasites are a very complex issue.

Now a lot of people go, “Well I took some ivermectin,” or, “I took a parasite protocol before, it didn’t do anything for me.”

Probably not. Because there’s a lot of prep. It’s not as simple as just taking a protocol.

If your drainage and detox pathways are locked, and you try to take the garbage out to the curb—you just drop it in another area of the house because you can’t get it outside.

If you’re trying to clear parasites—you’re evicting tenants from the building—but the doors are locked.

And so if you’re trying to get rid of parasites—there’s a lot of prep that needs to happen first. You need to have proper drainage, and we’ll talk about that towards the end here.

We talked about food sources. We know parasites:

• Are not a third world problem
• Your doctor may test—but it’s super inaccurate
• They’re very hard to detect
• 80–90% of the people we see, over the hundreds we’ve had now reversing their disease and their guts, parasites are a major layer or the primary driver as part of their condition

Right?

Picture this—let’s go back to the confusion you have about waking up one day suddenly ill.

We say it’s an autoimmune condition, your body is just attacking itself.

How does your body randomly one day go and just start attacking itself?

You have over 200 different checks and balances of the trillions of different cells and microbes in your microbiome. Hundreds of different checks and balances to make sure things are being done properly.

How can your body just attack itself?

There are cells literally designed to kill the cells that attack you.

So what if it’s just your body attacking something in your microbiome, and your gut is merely caught in the crossfire?

If you’ve got a gunfight between two opposing armies, is the reason the cities get blown up and everything gets torn apart because they’re intentionally blowing up buildings?

No. They’re attacking everything, and the buildings get caught in the crossfire.

This happens in your digestive system.

So parasites are a big, big problem in there. It’s one of the things your body can be attacking—next to other viruses, fungus, etc.

Okay?

So keep this in mind:

• They’re not third world
• They’re hard to detect
• Most people have them
• And they can feed on blood and iron, causing things like anemia
• They can feed on nutrients, leading to malabsorption syndromes or deficiencies
• They can steal lymphatic fluid, leading to lymphedema, swelling, and skin issues
• They can live in or hang out and eat parts and tissues in the liver, lungs, and muscles, for example—aches, pains

These are all basic symptoms.

And they block your drainage.

So let’s talk about some of these symptoms a bit more in detail.

And keep the questions coming in the chat, guys, because I will go through these toward the end. I want to make sure we can answer your questions.

Parasites are nasty business.

Let’s talk about some symptoms of parasites.

First of all—we can palpate. That means press in on the areas where they live.

So we know they live in the liver, for example.

You can actually—I'm a little short on the camera here—but you can press in around your belly button.

So for example, you want to relax your belly, take your fingers, and actually drive them up under the rib cage. You can really palpate—pressing your liver in there.

If you’re like, “Oh that feels terrible, like the wind’s getting knocked out of me, it feels really uncomfortable, I got some pain”—there could be some parasites in there.

Now, you can also go a little further over to the gallbladder.

If you have pain in the gallbladder, pain in the shoulder blades, if you have a known history of gallstones, if you have some sludgy bile or fatty foods are causing problems, it could be a parasite issue causing issue in those areas.

The belly button—if you’re someone with pain around your belly button or in your belly button, it could be a parasite.

Off to the right and just down below that belly button—mine’s here, so I can go down to the right of that—that can be around the appendix.

If you have issues in there, it could be a parasite.

Back, hips, joints—these things can be indicative of parasites.

If you’re someone who has—let’s talk about allergies.

Seasonal allergies—you never used to have them, but now they’re really, really bad. Or they’re seasonally getting really bad, or you didn’t have allergies before, but now suddenly you do?

Remember—we talk about this analogy all the time of your cup being full.

Let’s use this for your immune system.

Parasites are filling it up.

Now normally, your cup is about this full—very, very little.

Okay? Seasons come around, maybe something stuffs you up—pollen might cause a little bit of a runny nose, that’s about it.

Okay. But now—you’ve got parasites, your cup is full.

Now what happens? Pollen comes in—and now it overflows.

You’re like, “Oh yeah, it’s just seasonal stuff. It’s pollen, it’s dander, it’s whatever.”

No. Something filled your cup. Could be parasites overdrawing these pathways of your immune system, and that can lead to more seasonal allergies.

You can also find yourself with chronic sinus issues, repeat sinus infections, getting prone to colds and flus, running sinuses, rashes, hives—these typical allergy-like symptoms can be a sign of parasites.

If you’re somebody who has itching, another sign of parasites.

It could be vaginal itching, could be rectal itching—could be a sign of parasites.

Other conditions we typically see—remember, parasites can hang around those bowels, in the small intestine.

They can mess with your valves.

If you’ve got a condition called SIBO—small intestinal bacterial overgrowth—well guess what?

If the door to your intestines is flapping open because something can’t close—because there’s something jamming it—guess what’s going to start to backflow?

Extra microbes getting into areas they shouldn’t, leading to small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

If you have a low libido, these can also mess with hormones, sex hormones—these can be problems associated with parasites.

If you sound like any of that—if you're drooling in the chat—let me know. If you’re going, “Wait a minute, that sounds like me,” let me know some of the symptoms you’re experiencing below. If I name a symptom and that sounds like you, just type that symptom below so we can keep track of you guys and see what’s going on.

I want to talk about these as this goes on, okay?

Now let’s talk about sleep.

If you’re somebody who has poor sleep—I can’t get to sleep, I’m waking up during the night, even if it’s just for a bowel movement or just to use the bathroom, just got to pee—you’re waking up?

That could be a parasite issue.

If you are a teeth grinder, neurologically very tense, especially at nighttime—could be a parasite.

Just saying.

And if you don’t know if you grind your teeth, one—you’ll typically know, your dentist will tell you.

If you don’t go to the dentist very often, molars should be more like this—they kind of have like a hill on the outsides. If yours are sort of flat—you grind your teeth.

Guess what mine look like? Parasites. Right?

I’ve had them for a long, long time. In fact, I’m on a parasite protocol as we speak.

And guess who just got out a 12-inch worm like the day before yesterday?

I posted it on social, you can watch that video. They’re gnarly.

I’ve seen much worse—3 and 4 foot worms out of clients. We’ve had people passing 30, 40, 50.

And the question is, “How did my doctor never see these? How come they don’t learn about them?”

It’s pretty bizarre stuff.

So poor sleep can be a problem. These—my glasses just keep falling down—bear with me, guys.

So poor sleep, teeth grinding, waking up at night—could be a parasite problem.

If you are somebody who has trouble gaining weight, for example—malabsorption—maybe there’s something eating the food before you absorb it.

Could be a parasite problem.

If you are—if you have infertility issues, parasites can actually—have you ever heard of a hydrocele?

They can actually hang out in the testes of men, blocking that off as well, which can cause some swelling.

They can eat—they love reproductive organs.

If you’re somebody with a lot of cysts—ovarian cysts.

If you’re someone who deals with cysts or tumors within the body—there was a study that was done, I forget how many—a hundred-plus tumors and cysts—they actually dissected them...

100% had parasites.

And the idea is that cancers, tumors, and cysts—it’s actually your body encapsulating something to put it in a bubble to keep it from getting out—to protect you.

Nothing in the body is a mistake.

Your body—once we start to understand—everything your body does is because it’s trying to heal you.

It’s taking every mechanism—even deadly ones sometimes—to try to protect you as a last-ditch effort.

Tumors and cysts can be one of those things.

So if you’re prone to a lot of those—it might be a parasite problem.

If you’re someone with hormonal issues, thyroid issues—same thing.

Let’s talk about the skin.

Skin issues—if you’re someone who has dry skin, flaky skin, if you’ve got scaly skin, psoriasis, eczema—these can be textbook telltale signs of parasites.

They can also affect the skin, they can cause a lot of issues in the immune pathways dealing with the skin.

Because remember—your outsides, your external body, is a direct reflection of the internal.

As part of our intake process, I have people take pictures of their mouth, their tongue, their fingernails, shorts and a t-shirt, front, side, back—I can see your legs, I can see where weight’s being stored.

All these outside symptoms tell us what’s going on inside.

But these aren’t things your doctor looks at.
 They look at your gut—but your gut’s not working by itself.
That’s connected to everything else in the body.

So eczema, psoriasis, dryness, scaliness in the skin—can also be signs of parasites.

Let’s talk about mental health.

If you have anxiety, depression, irritability, moody issues, focus issues, concentration issues, ADHD-like symptoms—guess what?

Could be parasites.

Hair loss or early hair thinning—and the other one I’m going to put on here, let’s talk about your liver and your blood.

Remember—they can live in the liver, they love to eat blood.

Let’s look at your blood work, for example.

If you have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, if you’ve got a history of elevated liver enzymes—ALT, these different enzymes—could be a parasite problem.

As well as high cholesterol—what if it’s parasites?

There are a lot of different things that can cause these problems, but parasites are one of the commonalities.

Now again—I’ve told you before, I don’t know if—I’m not decided if I’m going to put some of these photos on the internet or not because they’re pretty disgusting.

For those—maybe I’ll put it behind like a warning page, like "see at your own risk."

But I did just put a video on social recently about one of my 12-inch parasites that just came out as well.

Now, I’ve got other people—it depends—some parasites will affect people worse. Sometimes you’ve got more of them, right?

So this is why someone might have bowel disease, versus another might just have irritable bowel syndrome.

But think about this for a minute.

We’ve got clients—Billy Jean is a great example.

She’s been up and down inside the groups talking about this—15 years with severe pan-ulcerative colitis.

All the drugs—the Remicades, everything.
She had cancer lesions all over her body, melanomas popping up. She kept having them removed—20, 30 of them a year were being removed.

Well guess what?

She had a body full of mold, started pulling that out—her IBD was almost gone.

Guess what?

She got out some parasites.

She sent me a picture with this parasite on the ground that she pulled out, and it’s next to a measuring table—I think it’s like 38 inches.

That’s an Amazon anaconda, you know what I mean?

So we have these in the body.

And if your body—think about what happens. You get a tiny little infection in your hand, you cut and scrape it, it can swell, it can pus, all kinds—you might need antibiotics topically to get rid of that. That’s microscopic.

Imagine something you can see with the eye that’s half the thickness of the marker in my hand and 36 inches long.

Imagine how hard your body is fighting to kill that thing off and get rid of it. What it’s doing, what it’s eating in your body, how long they’ve been there, how many there can be.

Of course we’re going to have bowel issues.
Of course we’re going to be ill.

Your body is fighting an alien-sized freakin' warfare in there, and your doctor goes:

“Well let’s just suppress the immune system.”

You’re telling me you want to shut off and suppress the thing that’s actually trying to kill the giant worms inside of me?

Let’s talk about this rationally.
 Let’s make sense of the things that don’t make sense, because this doesn’t add up.

The math isn’t mathing, guys.

Your body isn’t randomly attacking itself.

Parasites are a primary driver in a lot of what we see.

Now your body—if it is attacking itself—has cells that kill those cells off.

So what if it’s just your body attacking something else, and your gut, your tissues are caught in the crossfire?

This is what we have to keep in mind.

My argument, okay?

Now the reason I say it’s my argument—it’s incredibly successful.

Hundreds of people reversing their bowel disease.

Doctors draw the—we just had Larisa on recently, just last week, talking about her story.

Think she was diagnosed in 2013, having issues prior to that, so arguably 10 to 13 years, 11 to 13 years of bowel disease.

Her gut was so bad, colon was super inflamed, on the verge of getting it removed.

She literally describes it very creatively as having squirrels with razor blades attached to their feet running around on her insides.

Peruse, bleeding, nausea, chronic fatigue, the pain, the urgency…

Our first call together—we jumped on the first call, five minutes in, she had to go run, and she’s sitting on the toilet, we’re having this conversation.

It’s not unusual for what we do.

But keep in mind—it can be that severe.

She just came out, guys—16 weeks.

She got her colonoscopy report back from her doctor. She was working with Curtis, one of our specialists in the program.

And she came back, got her colonoscopy report from the doctor—unremarkable.

It was healthy, pink, normal.
There was one itty-bitty speck.

Her doctor was making fun of her and said, “Well you’re doing that diet thing,” and she’s like, “That’s a lot more than diet, but whatever.”

He was kind of teasing her about it.
 Got the report back—jaw on the floor.

He brought the nurses in, they were talking about it. She’s like, “I’m going to show you this show on the parasites that came out of her”—they’ve never seen these before.

So there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, and it’s not this lifelong condition that just happens randomly.

It’s not your fault.

If your kid is sick—it’s not your fault.

It’s not negligence—and rarely is it diet.

I mean, it’s part of the problem, or part of the process. But diet’s not the total solution here, okay?

It goes much deeper than that.

People see—oh, he’s a nutritionist, he’ll give me a meal plan.

Uh-uh.

We go much, much deeper.

There’s a lot more that meets the eye.

But here’s what we’re going to do for you.

I want to talk about getting rid of parasites.

Okay?

Let’s talk about getting rid of these bad boys, because they are a big problem.

Now, most people will think—“Well, I’ll just take Ivermectin or I’ll take mebendazole, fenbendazole, some kind of ‘zole,’ some sort of pharmaceutical drug.”

We have to do preparation.

There’s no silver bullet.

Now most people—if you go to Mexico, for example, on a vacation, you come back, you think you got parasites—you might be looking at two months.

Most people we see inside the program going after parasites—from start to finish—you’re probably four to six months.

There are different timelines that it can take. Typically kids respond better. Depends on the residual damage.

But look at this.

The first thing we have to do—and this is my process—

If you guys are taking supplements to just manage inflammation—I talk about this a lot—you’re on plant-based medication, you’re not actually fixing the problem.

You’re taking curcumin, you’re taking qing dai or dragon’s blood or aloe or slippery elm—these are great products in context.

But keep in mind—you’re taking them and they are simply masking the problem.

They’re managing inflammation. It’s like you’re putting water on the fire while there’s still gas fueling it.

It’s not fixing the problem, but it can manage it.

But keep in mind—in this context—it’s just plant-based medication.

So the first thing we have to do—number one—we have to ID the problem.

If we cannot identify and name the problem—we’re using plant-based medication or masking symptoms.

We have to know what it is.

If we can look at you and go, “Yep, you have parasites,” perfect—we know what we’re dealing with.

The next step we have to do is drainage.

Now, I’m not going into drainage in detail—we just did an episode on that, I think two weeks ago or something—you can check back. We have the podcast and the YouTube channel for this as well.

We have to go through drainage.
We have to get the doors open.

Getting rid of parasites—you’re evicting tenants from the building—but the doors are locked.

If they can’t get out, what are they going to do?

They’re going to pick a different room in the house, squat, and they’re going to be mad.

They’re going to pee on the rug and start a fire and burn your house down.
This is why people will do protocols and get sicker.
They don’t have proper drainage, or they don’t really know what they’re going after—they’re shotgunning and guessing—and those things that are trying to get out are getting more resistant.

There’s a lot of steps here.

So the first—we have to know what’s going on.

We go through what’s called symptomatology.

Your body speaks a language.
Your gut only has 14, 15, 16 different words.

Whether you have a stomach flu, IBS, SIBO, diverticulitis, Crohn’s, colitis—doesn’t matter. Your gut will say things like:

• Constipation
• Diarrhea
• Bloat
• Gas
• Pain
• Cramping
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Increased or decreased appetite
• Maybe it says blood and mucus, maybe it says acid reflux…

There’s not many words it can say.

This is why we talk about all the other symptoms—the pain, the palpation, the skin, the joints, the moods, the sleep, the teeth grinding…

These can all be other symptoms—it expands your body’s vocabulary.

We can learn to communicate with it to identify the problem.

Once we can do that—we know what’s causing inflammation—we have to open the doors so they can get out.

So this is going to be drainage.

Again—I’m not detailing drainage—we just went over that recently. You can check back on the channel here for more info on that one.

Once we have the drainage, this is where we’re going to go to the simple:

Five R’s.

Now it sounds simple, but again, there’s a lot of nuance.

But the Five R’s—we have to go into this one.

Now that we know what the problem is, we’ve opened the doorways, the first R is:

Remove.

Again, I’ve gone over this many times, so I’m not going to go into a huge bit of detail.

We want to remove—say, the parasite, for example.

Some people can tolerate boom—heavy doses right away.
Some people have to titrate.
Some people pump on and off.

It all depends on you.

It requires guidance—it’s very finicky.

You can make yourself very, very sick doing this solo.

I just want you to understand what’s involved so you don’t take any crazy risks, okay?

We have to remove that.

We mentioned your parasites, for example, can consume nutrients.

The analogy I often use—your body is like a city.

Say you had a parasite in your liver, for example.

Your liver is its own little factory. Inside are these cells. These are the workers of the factory.

If they want to get rid of things, detox and drain, and do all the things they’re supposed to do—they need tools in the factory.

Those tools are the nutrients.

The parasites just ate all the tools.

So this is where we have to go into your next R, which is:

Replenish.

We pick very specific nutrients your body seems to be lacking. Could be based on genetics, could be based on symptoms, could be based on blood work, could be based on DNA—who knows?

But this is another one—oh, another I’m going to put up for symptoms, guys—just total backtrack—

Eosinophils.

If you have like EOE—eosinophilic esophagitis…
If you have elevated eosinophil activation protein on GI Maps…
Eosinophils in your blood…

It’s probably damn near guaranteed you’ve got a parasite.

So keep that in mind.

We’re going to Remove.
We’re going to Replenish.

Okay?

The next one we want to do is:

Rebuild.
Now, your microbiome has been damaged.
The ecosystem’s been inflamed.
The house is on fire.
Things aren’t living there properly.

We have to begin rebuilding that.

Sometimes it’s as simple as probiotics, but rarely.
There’s a lot that’s involved.

The next we want to do, of course, is:

Repair.

Repair the tissues.

This is part of the nutrients we’ve replenished, part of rebuilding the microbiome—they contribute to repair.

This can also be purely symptomatic, going back to those supplements we talked about—your slippery elms and aloe and qing dai, and all the things that cool and soothe the gut.

They can give your body some reparatives.

A lot of them are called mucogenics.

Mucus membrane layer, like a sock in a shoe—and “-genic” means genesis or creation.

So they’re creating a lot of this stuff inside your body, putting that sock on, so to speak, and giving it some protection.

And the last one we want to do, of course, is:

Rejuvenate.

I go into these Five R’s in more detail on previous episodes—check the channel or the podcast thread for that.

But Rejuvenation—your immune system is imbalanced.

We don’t want to boost it.

Boosting an imbalance—we want to rejuvenate and bring those immune pathways back.

It’s like an octopus juggling.

Your immune system is an octopus—it’s juggling all these pieces.

And what happens?

You have all these—you're juggling Candida, and mold, and parasites, and stress, and a stomach flu, and your boss at work, and your kids coming home sick—it’s juggling all this stuff.

But guess what happens when parasites come in—for example, in this context of today’s lecture?

What happens?

All those arms go over here now, and they’re dealing with the parasites, because they need all those resources.

Everything else gets dropped.

It overgrows.

If you boost it, you might be boosting all the parasite arms, so to speak.

And now you have worsened reactions, worsened issues, worsened immune system, worsened allergies, worsened sinus issues…

You’re getting more sick, because you’re pushing that imbalance.

Rejuvenation means—get the octopus to juggle safely again.
That’s what it looks like.

There’s a lot of steps and stages here.

Most people’s biggest mistakes when dealing with parasites are:

• Not prepping properly
• Not laying the foundation

You do not build a house on sand.
It will fall apart.

So our job is to go in and build a solid foundation through proper drainage and detoxing, and prepping the body to handle what’s to come.

This is why I say it’s not really a DIY project, unfortunately.

It can be very difficult.

I'm turning over to the questions now.

Karen says:

“Gut parasites are possible for world travelers.”

Absolutely.
 They’re possible for people who’ve never left the country, because other people are traveling.
Foods get imported/exported, you can pick them up from anywhere.

Curtis, our in-house parasite expert—he’s been my mentor for many years as well—he works with a lot of our clients in the program.
And he can tell you ten dozen ways you can get parasites.
It’s actually quite shocking.

Carrie Boone says:

“My son has had many transfusions, is always anemic.”

100%.
Parasites interfere with a lot of these things.

Proper breakdown of food, nutrients that you need to actually take iron out of food—they can consume iron, consume blood.

There are other microbes that can do it too, but it could be a parasite issue.

We have to keep in mind what they’re doing inside the body and how they’re acting or reacting.

This can tell us a story.

These are back to symptoms of what’s going on.

Same with malabsorption, all those things.

Carrie says:

“Parasites didn’t cause my son’s Crohn’s, but still interesting.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Again—I’m not saying everyone has parasites.
I’m saying 80 to 90% of the people we see in our program have parasites as the main driver or part of their process.

There’s still a large portion of people who don’t have parasites at all—or maybe they aren’t a problem right now.

But it’s getting closer and closer—as the literature comes out and the data starts to come out—it’s getting more and more likely that almost everybody’s got them.

The question is: How bad are they in you?

If we don’t know what’s causing the disease and we haven’t—even if you say, “Parasites didn’t cause it”—it’s very possible, no doubt about it.

But unless you’ve completely conclusively ruled it out, we don’t know how much it is.

Picture your cup filling up, right?

If your cup is full and overflowing, you’re having symptoms, you’re having disease—

Parasites could be this much of it,
Parasites could be that much.

We don’t know.

And this is where getting in and figuring out an individualized process to figure out what’s happening inside your body—that makes all the difference in the world.

Douglas says:

“Did you know that my IBD is autoimmune deficiency and that parasite didn’t cause it? Stop trying to make money with fake pretenses.”

Well, Douglas, if you were willing to open your ears and maybe learn something in this process, maybe you could understand there’s a lot more to it.

Your body can’t just randomly be—

I don’t know what autoimmune deficiency is.
So if you want to clear that up, we can definitely address this.

But here’s the thing:

Just because you don’t have parasites, how do you know you don’t?

First of all—doesn’t mean the other 80 to 90% of people in the world dealing with IBD don’t.

And this is where I want to encourage the community to be very careful about this.

Because we say,

“Well no, I don’t have it, therefore you don’t have it.”

It’s like saying,

“This supplement worked for me, therefore it’ll work for you.”

Well, you can give one person curcumin and glutamine, it works really well for them.

For somebody else—it makes them much sicker.

Because they’re driving the wrong immune pathways.

So just because it’s different for you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for everybody else.

And I’m trying to be very PC about this one—coming and clapping on some of these lives—
 There’s a lot of people clearly getting better.

So if you are not getting better, we can open that door for a conversation.

But we have to be willing to learn and be teachable.

If you’re not willing to be teachable, you’re not going to learn, you’re not going to get better.

And at that stage, you’re becoming your own worst enemy.

Muhammad asks:

“Can parasites cause abscess?”

Totally.

What is an abscess?

An abscess is either a blockage—an abscess could be looking at cysts, and these types of build-ups inside the body.

They’re typically casing something.

An abscess can be an infection that’s pocketed and encapsulated.

Abscesses can be a lot of different things, but it’s typically infection.

So your body has a lot of different immune responses.
It has different immune cells, inflammatory cells, different types of white blood cells that cause different reactions.

They do different things.
 Some break down with enzymes, some actually physically eat and consume.

There’s a lot of different things they do.

So—it’s possible. I can’t say for sure.

And this is why it’s so important to go through context.

We gave you guys probably 30 different symptoms of parasites—
It doesn’t mean everyone’s got them, or that all these symptoms guarantee you have a parasite.

These are just more strongly associated with parasites than anything else.

Billy Jean says:

“Douglas, parasites caused my IBD. It’s hardly fake, my friend.”

Case in point.

It can cause it.
If it’s not causing it for you, that’s fine.
But it doesn’t mean you have to tell everybody they don’t exist.

That’s just Bad News Bears.
You’re only harming the community with that.

Kimberly is a teeth grinder while she sleeps—
Classic.
Could be a parasite, could be just general stress as well.

This is again, guys, why it’s so important to understand context.

I’m not saying:

“If you grind your teeth, you do have parasites.”

I’m saying:

Parasites can be a neurological irritant, which can lead to things like teeth grinding, particularly at night.

If you’re someone whose symptoms are cyclical, for example, or seasonal—
Could be parasites.

Because they have life cycles.

What about fibroids?

Fibroids are a little bit out of my scope.
That’s something I would definitely loop Curtis in on—I think he might actually be here on the live, sometimes he catches these, he might be with clients.

Fibroids can be really interesting, but cysts and fibroids, especially in women…

Parasites love reproductive organs, especially female reproductive organs.

So we can see a lot of cysts, we can see fibroids, we can see ovarian cysts, we can see endometriosis…

A lot of inflammation.

Keep in mind—your body’s not making mistakes randomly.
Your body’s not just popping off saying:

“Yeah, I’m going to F you today. I’m just bored, so I’m going to fight you and cause an autoimmune condition.”

It doesn’t work that way.

So something has to be causing the inflammation.

So absolutely, theoretically—I mean, again, I’d get a specialist in if I wanted to talk about it in deeper detail—

But parasites can cause fibroids to my understanding of them.

Anarie says:

“Is there blood work that will definitely tell you parasites?”

That’s a great question.
There’s a lot of things that we can look at.
It’s actually a section of education called functional blood chemistry.
And there are some studies that are alluding to the fact—again, how big they are, how big the data pools are—TBD.
But I know practitioners who would say—they’ll look at your blood and go:

“Yes, 100% you have a parasite, and here’s why.”

There are good leading indicators.
But if you are exceptionally skilled at functional chemistry, allegedly you can look at it and go,

“Yep, you have a parasite, and here’s what we’re looking at.”

Jennifer asks:

“How can you pinpoint the type of parasites that you have? Or is it just symptoms and testing to see if it’s required? I stopped going to physicians due to nothing ever coming of it as far as any relief.”

How can you pinpoint the types of parasites?
Great question.
Visually, sometimes we can see.
There are a lot of common ones we’ll see.
But there are different types of parasites in umbrellas—we’ll see:

• Protozoa
• Helminths
• Even things like hookworms, which are common for kids—for example, seeing little worms in the stool

But different types of parasites cause different symptoms.
There might be some types, for example, more prone to causing neurological issues.
Some that are more prone to liver dysfunction and digestive issues—like liver flukes, for example.
They hang out in the liver—they’re kind of these small flat things, they’re often described as looking like tomato skins in the toilet—you can see them.
We got worms coming out…
There are different ones that might cause back pain or hip pain, based on where they like to live and where they like to hide.
But it has to be symptomatology.
We have to go through and see the symptoms to know.
But there is no type of testing, unfortunately, to pinpoint.
But here’s the reality:
Of the 1,400+ types of parasites we talked about that can get in and cause issues in the digestive system or body as a whole—
A lot of them can respond to similar types of plant-based therapies and treatments—if you’ve prepared the body.

Now, I know there’s people listening right now going:

“Well, just give me the pill to take!”

You’re missing the entire picture.
You could take 40 parasite products in a row, for a year straight, and still get nowhere.
It has to be prepped properly.
And so—that’s my long answer short on that one.
Carrie says:

“Parasites didn’t cause his Crohn’s disease, but they could be keeping him sick. Diagnosed at the age of four, he’s now fifteen.”

So he might not have parasites now—again, kids can get parasites, totally.
But parasites can also—absolutely—that’s a great point, Carrie—
They can keep you sick.
For example, someone could get a mold infection, which drops the immune system—think about dropping the defense, the shields, so to speak.
Parasites can come in because mold is a breeding ground for parasites.
They love those areas, they love that toxicity, they love the dysbiosis they create.
But then sometimes, you have to get rid of the parasites before you can get rid of the mold, for example.
There’s a lot of layers to a very complex problem.
Great question.
Nicole, second question—follow-up:

“What’s the prep to lead up to the detox?”

So the prep has to be drainage.
There’s a lot of different things we use.
I’m going to tell you some things, but by no means am I recommending you do these by yourself.
You can cause a lot of harm.
You can mobilize toxins and make yourself very sick.
They should all be done under professional supervision.
For example, if we’re going through a parasite protocol, it might look like:

• Supplementation for drainage
• Could be liver support
• Could be lymphatic support
• Could be kidney support
• Could be gallbladder support
• Could be nutrients—a whole combination            

Sometimes we’ll use, say for example, enemas—like coffee enemas.
Sometimes we’ll use a lot of lymphatic drainage to open up.
Depends on your drainage pathways—what’s blocked—it has to be unique to you.
There’s a lot of things that we can utilize.
There are lymphatic massages.
There are lymphatic processes you can do at home.
There’s dry needling, there’s acupuncture, there’s exercise—
There’s all kinds of things you can utilize.
But this is preparing your detox and drainage pathways.
And symptomatically, based on how you do—good, better, or worse or the same—this is going to tell us when we’re ready to move on.
And then we can start the removal process.
But again—it’s a very finicky process.
I want you guys to have this information, to understand what’s involved.
It’s just—I know so many people come in here and I wish I could say,

“Yes, do this process without supervision…”

It can be very, very, very dangerous.
So I haven’t published these things to say:

“Everybody take this thing.”

So many people do them and they get sicker.
They get worse.
So it has to be nuanced to you, and it has to be managed and monitored.
Muhammad asks:

“Do parasites only eat carbs and fiber? And if so, can a carnivore diet kill the parasites?”

It’s rare you can really starve a parasite out.
That’s a great question though.
Fasting, starvation, or cutting out nutrients—parasites prefer carbs and fiber, but they can eat protein.
I mean, parasites can eat your own muscle—of course they can eat protein as well.
Carnivore, A: you could give them more meat to eat inside the gut, or
B: they’ll find something else.
But oftentimes, we see with elimination diets, we’re just not contributing to the problem.

Parasites do tend to prefer certain things like fibers or carbohydrates—for the most part, in my experience.
But they can also eat and consume neurotransmitters.
They can consume hormones.
They can eat melatonin and serotonin, right?
So there can be a lot of different issues that we can see.
Why do parasites get worse at nighttime?
Why are there more symptoms at night?
Melatonin—chomp chomp chomp.
Right?
They can eat that.
So there’s a lot of things they can eat.
So diet—there’s a couple things we look at.
Curtis has often told me—again, one of our specialists in the program—he often says:

“You need fish or you need bait to catch fish.”

Which means—even if you’ve got Candida, you shouldn’t go carnivore, because they’ll go into remission and they’ll be very hard to actually kill off and take out.
So they do have to have some food to eat.
But keep in mind, there’s a lot of processes.
But diet—as long as you’re not feeding them junk food, processed and fried foods, fast foods that make your gut sicker or your body sicker—
That’s what’s contributing to the glass being full.
I wouldn’t worry about it.
If you’re eating whole foods, I’m not really concerned about diet, so to speak.
Is it possible to do drainage without supplements?
That’s a tricky one.
Technically, maybe—but it would be a lot longer of a process, a lot more complicated of a process.
It would be very, very difficult to do.
Here’s the thing:
One of the ways we get parasites—you know, if you go back to ancient literature and ancient texts, look at Ayurveda, right?
Five-, six-thousand-year-old Indian medicine—they have a lot of text about seeds and the benefits of seeds.

Go back to the Qur’an—I believe their Prophet Muhammad, there’s a quote in there, something that says:

“The black seed”—which is your black cumin—
“The black seed is a cure for everything or every ailment except for death.”

In the Bible, God says:

“I will give you all these fruits and plants and trees and seeds to multiply and eat and consume,” or however it’s worded.

But the point is—seeds have been well-known, even in ancient times, to have therapeutic properties.
What do we eat today?
Seedless fruit.
We don’t have the seeds that we used to consume.
We don’t have a lot of this.
So these things would, theoretically, be preventative measures for parasites.
In Ethiopia, they will eat raw meat—they’ll kill the animal, they’ll cut it off and eat it raw.
But they will eat it with something that’s anti-parasitic—an herb or a product of some kind.
And so—they’re aware of these parasites.
Over here, we pretend like they don’t exist.
And so, the idea is—there was a point where it could simply be just preventative, I believe.
But I think things have gotten so far now, where we’re all so sick and deficient in all the things, our microbiomes are so messed up, we’re so full of toxins and chemicals—
We no longer can benefit from preventative measures.
We have to go to quote—
“Pharmaceutical grade” or “therapeutic grade” dosing of supplements
to get the extreme levels out of our body, until we can rebalance and restabilize, and then go back to just diet and non-supplementary intervention.
Anarie asks:

“When starting your program, what’s the hint that says ‘parasites’?”
It’s all symptomatology.
If we’re looking at your symptoms, it’s like—

“What’s the hint to interpreting this language?”

It’s like, well, I know the language at this point.
We’ve seen it so many times—we can see and identify,

“Yep, it’s parasites.”

We have to go through symptoms, we have to look at a history.
When someone comes into our program, there’s two interviews.
The first intake—that’s going to be about 30 minutes or so.
We learn all about you, what’s going on, your history, how you got here, build a story, understand the symptoms.
And then I’ve got 200 questions in paperwork for you to send back to me.
I’ve got a bunch of stuff I want to look at—blood work, we look at photos of you, we look at your medical history, any tests you’ve had done, any labs…
We distill that down, then do a secondary interview to give us more context.
So it’s a several-hour process to distill everything down to say:

“Okay—here’s your root cause and causes, and this is how we go about it.”

Muhammad:

“When I have a flare-up, it really hurts at night.”

Could be a parasite issue, because they can be more active at nighttime—or during full moons.
If you have symptoms coming up on the full moon, could be a parasite issue.
A lot of them have life cycles in line with that full moon.
Last question—Jennifer asks:

“How sick can you get while going through the process if you have parasites?”

Parasites are already making you sick.
You can get much sicker.
This is the danger.

I want to be careful with this one, Jennifer.
If this is a question where you’re weighing the pros and cons of,

“Should I take it on myself?”

Extreme caution.
People have put themselves in the hospital.
People have caused new illnesses.
You can drive yourself to a secondary autoimmune condition.
Who knows what can happen?
You might get really, really lucky…
But it’s not worth the risk.
The one-in-a-million chance you’re going to do it fine and get through it with no intervention or no supervision and just take an Amazon pill and be fine—
That’s like one in a billion.
But it’s much more likely you’ll put yourself into a very bad position—
Heavy flares that may not go away,
Hospitalization,
Secondary autoimmune conditions…
It can get really bad.
This is why it’s so important.
I wish this stuff was DIY, guys.
This is why I put out all this content at no cost to you.
We spend hours a week just giving information—putting out podcasts, YouTube stuff.
It takes thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to get this stuff out and make it free and accessible.
So I want you to utilize it.
But on the other hand—
There are some things that just require a professional to spend hours with you, going through and doing it over the course of weeks and months.
And that’s the last one I’m going to answer here.
It’s all we got for you for now.
Thank you so much for coming.
I’m going to see you guys next time.
Thanks for listening.
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