Why and How You Need to Deworm as an Adult

You may have seen programmes promoting deworming in children, but do you know that adults need deworming too? While worm infection is more common among children, it can also happen in adults.

How Do You Get Worms in Your Body?

You can get worms in your body due to seemingly safe but unhygienic habits such as not washing your hands before eating food, walking barefoot on the grass in your lawn, not washing vegetables before cooking, drinking dirty water or untreated milk, swimming in a public swimming pool with untreated water, and even from a lick from your pet. These worms enter your body and lay eggs in your intestines.

Like with children, the most common types of worms that infect adults are roundworm, threadworm, whipworm, tapeworm and hookworm. They can cause abdominal pain, diarrhoea, bloating, vomiting and allergic reactions in both adults and children. When in a child’s intestine, worms can even affect their performance and growth. If left unattended, worms can form cysts in the liver and lungs.

How Can Deworming Be Done in Adults?

There are several anti-worm medications that can be used to treat worm infections. The most commonly used anti-worm medicine is pyrantel, albendazole or mebendazole. All of these medications are equally effective for treating intestinal worms. As for whether you can buy worm medicine over the counter, yes, you can, except albendazole, which requires a medical prescription.

Most worm treatments kill worms by either starving them or paralysing them. Mebendazole and albendazole, for example, work by preventing the worms from absorbing the sugars they need for survival. However, they kill the worms but not the eggs. Ivermectin and praziquantel, other kinds of worm medicine, work by paralysing the worms in the intestine. This allows them to be easily dislodged and removed from the intestine in the stools.

How Long Does Worn Medicine Take to Work?

The medicine should start to work straight away, but it may take several days to kill all the worms. It’s essential that you take the medicine exactly as the pharmacist or doctor tells you. Don’t stop early if you have been told to take it for several days.

The length of the treatment is generally quite short and will depend on the type of worm you have and which medicine has been prescribed. For example, for threadworms, mebendazole is often given as a single one-off dose. A doze may be repeated two weeks later. For whipworm or roundworm infections, mebendazole is given twice a day for three days.

What Are the Side Effects of Worm Medication?

Medicines for worms are well tolerated and very rarely cause serious side effects. The side-effects mostly-commonly reported are tummy upsets such as cramps, wind, feeling sick and diarrhoea. These symptoms are likely due to the worms being passed through your body and usually disappear after some time.

What Else Can You Do to Get Rid of Intestinal Worms?

Practitioners of natural medicine sometimes recommend certain dietary strategies in the treatment of intestinal worms to optimize stomach acid, which’s protective against food-borne parasites. One of these strategies is adding superfood supplements to your diet. Examples include pumpkin seed (it contains cucurbitacin, which is anti-parasitic in nature), turmeric (it possesses antiseptic and anti-microbial properties) and coconut (it can help in the deworming process).

Another great natural approach to treating worms is with apple cider vinegar. Many are aware of the health benefits of apple cider vinegar, but only a few people know this fermented apple cider is also an effective worm treatment.

Apple cider vinegar is considered a powerful fighter of internal parasites like worms, yeast and bacteria. It’s known that infections by parasites and other illnesses are caused by an excessively acid (low pH) diet and are treated by the consumption of more alkaline (high pH) foods. Although apple cider vinegar is an acidic food, research has shown that consuming it causes an alkalizing effect that restores the body to an environment inhospitable to parasites.

When looking to buy apple cider vinegar, one brand to consider is Bragg. Its apple cider vinegar is the only product on the market that contains an efficacious dose of acetic acid, which is the active ingredient responsible for the deworming benefits. While there is quite a range of apple cider vinegar products available on the market, Bragg is one of the best brands to consider. Depending on the brand you choose, you may have to consume more of the product to reach the required 750 milligrams necessary to rip the benefits.

If you’re interested to buy apple cider vinegar from Bragg, you can purchase a bottle online for less than $20. To help eliminate worms in the body, take a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with a glass of warm water until you start to feel better.