Can worms make you well? Recent findings may point to 'yes'.
Our bodies have evolved for millions of years to be in ecological equilibrium to our surroundings, but also to be an ecological equilibrium. Each of our bodies are an ecosystem of bacteria and, to a lesser extent now than any other point in our history, an ecology of nematodes.
We've always had worms.
Now we don't and it just might be hurting us.
The idea is that our immune system is created to be in balance with the worm's influence on us. Naturally our body wants to fight the foreign nematode invaders, but the worms don't like that and they've actually evolved to suppress our immune response to their presence. That means that with out them our immune system is keyed up and over reactive to things that it'd in it's ancestral setting would have ignored. Enter allergies and a host of gastrointestinal problems--Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.
Solution?
Well, their eggs anyway. And not human worms (so they can't last in our gut and soon die).
Pig Whipworms to save the day!!!
I love how evolution helped us figure out a solution to an every day problem!!
Read an article on this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3604189.stm
