Parasites, Inflammation, and Cancer

My Experience With Parasites

Not long after I finished chemo back in 2007, I felt called to see a naturopath. At that time, natural health was as alien to me as legs are to a fish, however after the multiple rounds of chemotherapy, and endless prescriptions for drugs to mask the side-effects and symptoms of the other drugs I was on, I intuitively knew that it wasn't more drugs that I needed, and I arranged my first consult with a natural health practitioner.

 He was a naturopath and kinesiologist, and he muscle tested me for a range of things, one of which was parasites. He looked me squarely in the eye and told me that I was infested, and that ‘we worm our pets every six months, but fail to do ourselves’. He then proceeded to try to sell me a bunch of herbs to get rid of them. I stood there in disbelief, paid the bill for the consult only, and left without the herbs.

I felt like I had been conned. As far as I was concerned, parasites weren’t a problem in the Western world. There were certainly no Tik Tok or Instagram videos proudly displaying the worms released during various parasite cleanses back then!

Fast forward to 2015, the year I was diagnosed with a breast cancer recurrence...

Within a matter of months, my health had rapidly declined. My hair started thinning, I was getting recurrent skin infections, I had extreme brain fog and fatigue, no amount of sleep was enough, and when I did sleep, I would wake in a pool of cold sweat. I was always chilled to the bone even though I was living in the sub-tropics, and to top things off, I was covered head to toe in systemic eczema. Every morning I would wake up to piles of dry skin that had shed overnight, in and around my bed.

I was so unwell, but I just couldn't work out why.

At the time I owned and operated a small kombucha business, selling and promoting the importance of a healthy gut to all my customers. I was the face of a health product, but I had never been so unwell. I looked and felt like I was dying, and I couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom. I knew I had to get on top of the inflammation because of my history with cancer, but everything I tried barely made an impact.

My clean diet, and low-tox living principles that I'd followed for more than 8 years no longer worked. It didn't matter what I did, or what supplement, superfood, or health practice I tried, nothing worked. I saw a couple of doctors but they had no idea what was going on, and nor did my naturopath.

I was desperate.

I eventually read a blog post about someone who did a water-fast in order to heal their eczema. I reasoned that I had nothing to lose and decided to give it a go myself.

I knew enough to know that I had to heal my gut. I didn't know why, but something in my gut was off, and I needed to heal it.

I also knew that fasting is one of the most effective ways to help to do this, however I was not in any way prepared for what was to come!

To cut a long story short, with every day of the fast, the redness of my skin receded a little more which spurred me on to do another day. I sweated and stank throughout the duration of the fast, and on day eight, I suddenly had an incredibly intense reaction.

I broke out in hives to the point where my skin looked like that of a reptile, literally thousands of raised, itchy bumps that lasted about half an hour. I was terrified. Shortly after I passed what looked to be a bowl of rice noodles in the toilet bowl.

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I realised that I literally had starved out dozens of worms I had no idea that I even had.

Suffice to say, the fasting was an aggressive and extreme detox that my body was not in anyway prepared for. With the benefit of hindsight, I would do things very differently if I had my time again. With that said however, the incident was the most profound moment during my entire healing journey. I finally knew what I was dealing with!

I started researching parasites and their links to illness and dis-ease, and things started to make a LOT more sense. I  recalled what the ‘crazy’ naturopath had told me almost a decade earlier, and promptly ordered a bunch of anti-parasite formulations and got started immediately.

Not long after this incident, I received the news that I had cancer again, this time on my chest wall and in my lymphatic system, however I was not at all surprised given how immuno-compromised I had been in the months leading up to the diagnosis. I had been completely stressed out and run down, with a long list of 'mystery symptoms, the perfect conditions for any dormant cancer stem cells to take hold and thrive.

Inflammation

I spent hours upon hours reading other people's accounts on Curezone (the go-to health blog at the time) and researching parasites and their links to illness and dis-ease, including cancer. The more I read, the more I learned that the theory of parasites and cancer being intimately related has been known for many decades in the holistic healing space.

Parasites cause huge amounts of inflammation. They deplete their host of nutrition, and excrete their waste into the host's bloodstream. In addition, they wreck havoc in the gut and microbiome - where as much as 80% of the immune system resides! This is important information because cancer can only take hold if the immune system is suppressed.

It’s well established that inflammation is a key driver of cancer initiation, growth and spread, and at that time, my body was completely inflamed.

It made so much sense! I'd spent many years during my 20's and early 30's travelling the world, swimming in lakes and rivers, and eating organic produce, all of which are common ways to pick up a parasite. It never once occurred to me to do a parasite cleanse, even after years of eating questionable foods and numerous bouts of 'Delhi-belly', 'Bali-belly' and a long list of other 'fill-in-the-blank-belly' from my years of travel.

Talk about a lightbulb moment!

Thus, regular and multiple parasite cleanses over a period of four years was a key aspect of my healing journey, and how I restored my health. It is something I now do bi-annually as part of my health maintenance - just like the kooky naturopath recommended all those years ago!

I am so passionate about the benefits of making an effort to do at least one parasite cleanse per year just as a general health maintenance, just as we worm our pets. If you have been on the fence about doing one, or not sure where to start, there are plenty of ways you can do get started. The cleanse from CellCore is truly an amazing product, which I can highly recommend.

Get your Para Kit from CellCore and don't forget to use this Patient Direct Code d9UQ2mVC purchase parasite cleanse here

If you need personalised guidance to prepare for and complete a parasite cleanse, you can book a consultation with me here