Today I learned a new thing... what did you learn today?

Myranda

Several times in my life people have said things along the lines of "you don't hear about people with wheat allergies in the third world, we must be making it up and they're just grateful for whatever they get" ...

While doing some homework I had The Infinite Monkey Cage playing and they mentioned something that I'd never heard of.

My assumption had always been that without access to A&E wards, with epi-pens that people with allergies died off and so didn't pass on such genes...

Turns out there's another thing that I'd never known about - parasitic worms. More than 2 billion people are afflicted by types of parasitic worms that we don't get in the western world, and there is a link between these worms and allergies, so there's lots of parasitic worm research going, and not just because it's nice to hope that one day no one will be affected by parasites...

So that's a thing I learned ... while learning that being asked to write 750 words on Fitbit and the Fitbit One - and its business model of cloud computing is not as inspiring as it sounds, and that I take that lack of inspiration out be critiquing the efficacy of fitness tracking via wobbles... ;-)

Phil_aka_Pip

I learned that on these new-fangled computers, the gcc compiler gives you 64 bits for a long, not 32, as used to be the norm. And the mucking about with the C language boiled my piss ...

stimpsonslostson

Myranda said:

Several times in my life people have said things along the lines of "you don't hear about people with wheat allergies in the third world, we must be making it up and they're just grateful for whatever they get" ...

Turns out there's another thing that I'd never known about - parasitic worms. More than 2 billion people are afflicted by types of parasitic worms that we don't get in the western world, and there is a link between these worms and allergies, so there's lots of parasitic worm research going, and not just because it's nice to hope that one day no one will be affected by parasites...

Yup. A friend of mine (a Dr off that Embarrassing Bodies telly show) infected himself with hookworms to demonstrate this. He's got a problem with wheat, the hookworms allowed him to eat a "normal" pizza without digestive pyrotechnics. 

I learned that the moral of "The Hungry Caterpillar" is that if you eat too much and get fat you should switch to eating only leaves, lock yourself away, and only rejoin society when you're "beautiful". 

Just what I want my little girl to hear.

Sambostar

I always had threadworms as a kid.  But I was playing in shyte everyday.  Raspberry worming powder mixer would induce projectile vomit...so I gave up telling the truth to my mum.  Happy days.  One day I learned, whilst casually scratching my arse and removing the multitude of worms, that if I washed my hands, or used a foreign object to scratch my arse instead of my hand, I would prevent a new propagation of worms.  I didn't realise that I was eating the eggs after scratching my arse, it was more of an evolved learning process.  It was a bit of a monkey learns to use stick to extract honey from beehive moment.  Although in my case the evolutionary moment of learning was quite by accident as using an old hairbrush was actually just more satisfying in stopping the itch than using my bitten fingernails.

These days threadworms seem to be much rarer, due to sanitised conditions, but more often than not, I think it because kids have a much sadder and insular childhood and less opportunity to explore and do what they want to do, or perhaps they are better trained or more conformist I donno.  Probably the same as tapeworms being rare in my day.

The wheat intolerance is due to the fact that wheat has only been grown and eaten over here since it was introduced from the middle east some 6000 years ago and our genealogy has been here much longer.  Interestingly this ties in with the distribution of human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe

But make of that what you will.

People of black descent are prone to different problems like Sickle Cell.

Here, this is a skin mite, new born babies are the only humans not to have them, but they are immediately infected for life with the parasites as soon as their mother or father kisses them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demodex

Dermatologists believe that Rosacea may be an adverse reaction to Demodex poo.

Sambostar

I always assumed that, since heat exhaustion wasn't an issue in our climate, white people encouraged breeding in the bald gene, as hair and home were so lice ridden in this cold, wet country, where people didn't travel seasonally and just hunkered down, baldness became an advantageous evolutionary trait to improve your quality for life, such that it would be something you would desire for your offspring. 

Where as in hot countries, most natives never lose their hair.  Probably because the kids of the mums who decided to mate with the bald fella's promptly died of heat exhaustion, so culturally people figured it was a bad idea.

Hence why older people from hot countries are so good looking and so many Celtic type middle aged white men are secretly embittered.

More probably it was an evolutionary accident though, like my learning experience of using a hairbrush on my arse.

I must say that massive infestations of Enterobius vermicularis never affected me much, although I am starting to develop adverse reactions to beer.   In fact I quite miss the days when I had to scoop a handful of the critters away from my back passage.  I had a great childhood and great memories.  Happy days.  After all, everyone and everything has to live somewhere right?

I do despair at the worldliness of kids these days and even parents when they don't even recognise what threadworms are though (Not referring you Myranda, just the general impression I get from parents these days.  Parenting must still be about threadworms, red eye, scabies and ear nose and throat infections still isn't it?

Loads of shyte genes were passed down.  And everyone is the ancestor of a sadistic rapist somewhere along the line.  It's just life.

On the subject of parasites.  Nearly everyone who has or has had a cat is infected with Toxoplasma (You know the thing Tommy from Trainspotting died of after his immune system was compromised after developing full blown AIDS). 

Although it will never kill you, just like other parasites and viruses, it will only kill you if your immune system becomes compromised, through sickness, severe trauma or old age.  Interestingly, scientists believe the parasite makes women more sexually promiscuous and it has the effect of turning men into loners.

Another interesting fact is that scientists have proved that women are attracted to more masculine looking men when they are ovulating and more feminine men when they are not.  Which basically kind of proves that the potential for false paternity is in their genes, or sex rather and that women are actually more governed by their hormones than men are, as apparently, so the popular misconception goes, men are simple creatures who will shag anything at any given time, even if it isn't human or is kept in a flock in a field.  So many popular misconceptions have been disproved with science.

However there is nothing wrong with beastiality, so long as you are not a Christian, the animal is consenting and you don't catch worms eh!

Sambostar

But you can't generalise about anything. 

After all, if I was generalising I would point out the irony of dog owners being overly concerned for the safety of their pets whilst walking through the New Forest, where there is some parasitic thing that their pets pick up which kills them, whilst they let them defecate in children's play areas and parks and the New Forest, where kids, two feet to ground level, are infected with nematodes from the pets animal faeces which in turn causes blindness or death of the child.

underdog

@Sambostar your ramblings take on a whole new level of beauty reading them drunk.

VimFuego

I've found learning new stuff to be taxing and hard work, so I have decided that instead I will merely relearn the same thing each day. This frees up so much time for more important stuff.

boogieman

I remember the raspberry stuff as a kid, never associated it with having threadworms but I guess I must have had them at some stage. Obviously pater and mamma were too embarrassed to tell me the truth in front of the staff. Must have been a far more common problem back then, either there was more crap around as @Sambostar suggests, or food hygiene wasn't as good.

EricTheWeary

I've had threadworms couple of timed. Not too bad a thing and always interesting to inspect your own poo.

Deadman

After receiving a final gas bill from npower yesterday, a whole 15 months after switching providers, I learned that the energy UK's approved code of practice forbids any request sent after 12 months. A small victory after a short exchange of words but proof that just rolling over when you think something is not right and doing a little research is the way to go.

Phil_aka_Pip

Threadworms info.

They don't say where threadworms come from. Is it meat that's not properly cooked?

Sambostar

boogieman said:

I remember the raspberry stuff as a kid, never associated it with having threadworms but I guess I must have had them at some stage. Obviously pater and mamma were too embarrassed to tell me the truth in front of the staff. Must have been a far more common problem back then, either there was more crap around as @Sambostar suggests, or food hygiene wasn't as good.

I'm glad somebody does, starting to feel like I had the plague.

Threadworms come from everywhere, usually the eggs are on other kids hands, after scratching their arses and passing you a shared ice cream.  The eggs stick to towels and bed linen.  They are easy to get rid of, all you do is wash your hands or use a hairbrush to scratch your arse with.  You can simply pick them up from garden soil or unwashed vegetables though.  I was always digging and eating soils and covered in shit all day long and used to wash once a week so I always had them.  As far as that score goes, not much has changed, although I don't get them anymore.  Maybe it's because I wash my hands these days.  Maybe it's global warming, who knows?

The worms that come from uncooked pork are far more dangerous and much smaller, similar to the ones from some dog shits.  They travel around your bloodstream and grow anywhere, often in your brain or behind your eyeballs.  They can paralyse your or kill you.  They are much smaller, but bigger than malaria parasites, a nematode usually Trichinella spiralis.

Another thing to look out for are liver flukes from watercress or eating vegetables from an area livestock have been in.

Although livestock have a whole new host of parasites and worms to contend with.

EricTheWeary

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Threadworms info.

They don't say where threadworms come from. Is it meat that's not properly cooked?

I was a vegan last time I got them so I don't think so. :ar!

Sambostar

I think the scariest thing as far as my job goes is that horseflies and deerflies as well as ticks, especially from areas that have high numbers of deer about of course CAN pass on Lyme's Disease.

Your GP will flat out refuse to acknowledge that deer flies and horse flies do, in fact they probably won't know what a deer flies is, but trust me they do.  I'm always getting bitten to buggery with them flies and ticks in tick season.  Many people don't show any obvious physical symptoms of Lyme's at all, it's just another thing that causes health conditions when your each old age or your immune system gets down and no one knows what the cause is.  It's a bacteria that you can beat on your own, or sometimes keep at bay.  More often than not, as mentioned, it's one of those things that comes back to haunt you and fuck you up as you get older, the clueless GP will misdiagnose you, the cost of proper diagnosis will be too high, as they have to send samples to the tropical disease unit and it can be hard to spot and it'll generally be one of those things that just makes your life more of a misery than it already is.

And then there is Weil's disease from rat's piss and watercourses.  Another bacteria sent from hell to fuck you up permanently, disable you or kill you.

I'd rather have threadworms than any of that other bacterial or parasitic shite.  I like worms.  I always stop to save the earthworms in the road after the rain and they do a good job eating leaves.  Sometimes I get really pissed off because I have just saved a 9 inch long worm and then somebodies pet chicken or a pheasant will come along and gobble it up.  Haven't seen any foreign flatworms though, although I do plant along of Dicksonia imported from Tasmania to Victoria State AU.  I don't think they like it around here.

Sambostar

Everything is sanitized to fook these days, hence why they think so many kids have ADHD or whatever.  Some like to gut flora apparently and being raised in sterile conditions with too much good parenting.

Hootsmon

^ Sambers.....my wife went tae the Docs last year with a circular rash on her leg, about 3" across,he couldn't find anything about it on the net for comparison so she got some cream and that was it. it never healed but it faded from time to time.

fast forward a year and she is having a dreadful time with what appears tae be Fibromyalgia.....my good wife just happens tae spot an article on the net about Lymes disease and the comparison tae Fibro with similar symptoms.

the wife is a florist ...plus we always spend hours everyday walkin' in country parks....she thinks tae herself "maybe this mysterious illness could be Lymes NOT Fibro..."

so off we go the her Docs and he immediately sees the connection and send poor Mrs Hoots tae see a rheumatologist...we are awaiting an appointment.

her rash is not the classic "bullseye" rash (no outer ring) but is a ringer for the large inner circle rash.

suspiciousminds

So how do you know if you have theadworms?

Hootsmon

 ^ jobby/clothes peg/lollypop stick

PolarityMan

suspiciousminds said:

So how do you know if you have theadworms?

Your posts look like Sambo's.

Sambostar

You have an itchy butt and worms come off on your fingers when you scratch it at night.

I think the link between ADHD and gut flora might be dubious, maybe more kids these days just get diagnosed than they did in our day.

Hoots, I hear this loads, especially with older women who liked to garden and had loads of ticks in deer infested areas all their lives.  The doctors misdiagnose fibromyalgia which seemed to be their top answer for everything for the so called hypochondriac.  The GP will be reluctant to send off bloodwork for testing though as it costs and even if they send it off, it may come back clear and you can't send off a second time, so it's hard to figure in the secondary stages.  But I'm not a doctor, only a hypochondriac, so probably not of much assistance.  It could be a lot of immune things, a virus or early onset arthritis or a combination or loads of things.  I believe there is a newly qualified Doctor in the house though.  I don't know how you cure it anyhow?  Repeated antibiotics?

I don't plan on getting old, but guess it might happen anyway. I'II be a miserable, lyme disease ridden, worm infested, greasy haired, balding, lonesome git with few teeth, most probably living in a caravan in the woods somewhere.

New research suggest that showering once every three days at the most is better for you though, as your skin needs beneficial bacteria.  So at least I feel less like a stinky gypo now.

I never do get ill though.  Apart from in the USA, where the humidity is 20% in winter.  I kind of like this damp land of algae where even reflective road signs get a covering of green algae on them.