5 Signs You Have Parasites

Name: 5 Signs You Have Parasites
Uploaded: 2026-09-17T12:00:28.000Z
Duration: 8 min 35 s
Channel: Dr. Eric Berg DC

Dr. Eric Berg DCSeptember 17, 20268m

Topics11

Five Classic Signs of Parasites0:00 How You Get Parasites0:30 The Old Friends Hypothesis2:01 TH2 Immune System Details4:01 Sign 1: CBC Blood Test5:01 Sign 2: Fatigue with Low Iron5:31 Sign 3: Gut Problems6:00 Sign 4: Teeth Grinding6:30 Sign 5: Chronic Itching7:01 Natural Remedies7:32 Free Download and Additional Content8:01

In a Nutshell

Parasites are common even in developed countries and often go undetected, with key signs including elevated eosinophils on a CBC blood test, unexplained fatigue with nutrient deficiencies despite supplementation, and chronic gut issues after travel. Additional indicators are nighttime teeth grinding in children and unexplained itching without allergies. Natural remedies like wormwood, black walnut hull, and clove target parasites at different life stages, while some controlled parasite exposure may actually help calibrate immune function and reduce autoimmune conditions.

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There are five classic signs that you may have parasites and a natural solution. If you live in America, people have this thinking that parasites only live in other countries. Absolutely not true. 40 million Americans right now have parasites without even knowing it. But the big question is what is a parasite? It's any relationship between two organisms where one benefits at the expense of another. Tapeworms, roundworms are parasites. Fungi, candida can be parasitic, but I think the one that surprises people most is viruses. Because viruses technically are parasites.

Let's first talk about how you would get a parasite. Undercooked meat, pork, is notorious for carrying parasites if you don't thoroughly cook it. Definitely raw or undercooked fish can carry parasites. If you go to a good sushi restaurant, what they'll do is they will freeze the fish for a period of time to kill any potential parasite. The next way is contaminated water. Of course, the obvious one is when you are exposed to water in other countries, but way back in the day, we drank water from rivers and lakes, but our immune system was much stronger. Nowadays, if you drink from a river or a lake, you may be infected because your immune system is not necessarily as strong. Next one is soil. There's a lot of parasites that live in soil. And the parasites in the soil can easily penetrate your skin through your feet. Pets notorious for carrying hookworms and round worms and tapeworms. And how many people sleep with their pets or are in contact with their pets? You also have person-to-person contact. Kids that actually have parasites can very easily give other children parasites even at daycare centers or shared bathrooms or even food service workers who have poor hygiene. Then you have occupational exposure. When I was in practice, I noticed a lot of nurses came in with parasites because of the exposure to a lot of sick patients with parasites at the hospital. And then we have imported produce. See, you don't have to travel to get parasites. The food travels to you.

Now, not all parasites are your enemy. There's something called the old friends hypothesis. And this is really interesting because research suggests that there's a level of parasite exposure that actually might be necessary for calibrating your immune system. I mean, just think about way back in the day how much exposure to parasites we had. Our immune system has been developing for at least a few hundred thousand years. We built this very specialized immune division called TH2 that specifically manages parasite overload. Now, the key word is manage, not eliminate. Okay? They're not just about killing all parasites. What's really interesting, if you look at populations where you have high levels of worm infections, you have very low rates of autoimmune disease, asthma, allergies, and also lower rates of inflammatory bowel disease. I mean, there's even therapies right now like worm therapies where they actually give people certain worms to help them overcome other types of health problems. The reason why that works is because our bodies have coexisted with parasites. Now, I'm not telling you to start exposing yourself to worms, okay? I'm just giving you information on it. If the TH2 system that is used to fighting parasites is no longer fighting parasites because your environment is very very clean or sterile, which it should be, well, there could be then another situation where the immune system turns its attention to other things like pollen allergies. But the point is, if this part of the immune system doesn't have any parasites to fight, a person could be more susceptible to allergies, asthma, and even some autoimmune issues. But TH1 fights other infections, bacterial infections, viruses, cancer.

Let's kind of go a little deeper with this TH2. There are something called Ig antibodies. They go out and coat the surfaces of parasites. So then your immune system can know what the target is. And then we have the mast cell. The mast cells detect a parasite, okay, that's painted or marked by the Ig antibody. They release something called a histamine and then that creates inflammation signals that flush the parasite out. But then we also have something else called eosinophils. They are made deep in your bone and they are released when there's an infection. And what's significant about this is this shows up on a standard CBC test. CBC blood test includes these eosinophils. And so when your count is too high, you want to think TH2 is fighting parasites.

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5 Signs You Have Parasites

Five Classic Signs of Parasites00:00

How You Get Parasites00:30

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