Tapeworm weight loss pills being sold on the dark web as doctor recalls patient’s horrifying story

You can’t escape obesity.

Doctors on YouTube have warned viewers that tapeworm egg pills are being sold on the dark web as a quick fix for weight loss – putting consumers at risk of serious illness and potentially death.

The parasites are known to make a home in the human gut after their eggs are inadvertently consumed via undercooked meat products, with some growing up to 30 feet long as they eat their host’s chewed meals, causing wasting of weight. The strange practice of swallowing tapeworm eggs for weight loss goes back at least to the Victorian era, although it is unclear how often this method was used.

Dr. Bernard Hsu, a US-based oncologist and host of Chubbyemu, a YouTube channel dedicated to sharing stories of medical oddities, reported on a case study of a woman who bought capsules filled with tapeworm eggs using cryptocurrency.

The 21-year-old patient, referred to only as ‘TE’, had been struggling to lose weight conventionally through diet and exercise when she wrote an advert on social media for a ‘controversial’ weight-loss cure with money-and- compelling. after the photos.

“TE was intrigued. A ‘forbidden’ method is one that must be so good and so powerful that it is the only true secret she needs to know,” Hsu began.

TE wasted no time in popping two of the tapeworm tablets and soon saw the results she had hoped for – although it came at the unpleasant cost of regular stomach cramps and bloating. Still pleased with her weight loss, she dismissed the symptoms.

However, her anxiety grew after a shocking bathroom incident, as graphically recalled by Hsu. “She thought she could feel something bumping and slapping her cheeks as she sat down,” he said.

“When she was about to fry, she looked back and saw several blackened, rectangular pieces floating around in the bowl, crawling out of the mass.”

Again, TE described her strange bowel movement as part of the process – fat leaving her body.

But her symptoms got weirder: a few weeks later, she noticed an unusual lump under her chin. It is said that she was then crushed on the mound and then awoke face down after apparently passing out, unsure how long she had been unconscious.

Days of intense headache and cranial pressure followed the episode.

Eventually, she was taken to the hospital with severe headaches and abdominal pain – without telling them about her foray into the tapeworm diet. Typical tests measuring blood sugar levels and bacterial infection came back negative. Believing she might be harboring an unidentified viral infection, doctors treated her swollen abdomen and sent her home without a clear diagnosis.

The headaches soon returned along with a new scary symptom.

“She would have periods of time where she would suddenly wake up in the middle of the day and not remember anything from the last few hours,” Hsu said.

Again, she returned to the hospital. At this point, it had been about a year since she ingested the tapeworm eggs—but her doctors still didn’t know that.

Doctors turned their scope to her brain and found multiple lesions, prompting them to take a wider look throughout her body, where they found more lesions in several organs, including her tongue and liver .

Finally, TE confessed her dangerous diet scam.

They found that TE had consumed two types of parasite. Taenia saginata, or beef tapeworm, matched the description of the rectangular, brown bugs she found in her toilet just weeks after first taking the pills.

It was the second type that caused major problems. Taenia solium, which is derived from pork, is known to exit the digestive tract by releasing eggs into the bloodstream and settling in any type of tissue in the body, such as the brain. While they won’t hatch unless they remain in the gut, intact eggs can cause a number of dire side effects, such as the hard lump—a mass of eggs—TE found under her chin.

This process is called cysticercosis—harmless for some, but a nightmare for others, depending on where the eggs land. Others who have suffered from cysticercosis of the brain have endured personality disturbances and cognitive dysfunction for years before discovering the issue, Hsu claimed.

Fortunately, tapeworms are treatable and TE received medication to paralyze and starve the worms, allowing the body to expel the foreign organisms and steroids to calm the inflammation in her brain.

After three weeks in the hospital, TE was tapeworm free and discharged.

Hsu implored viewers to listen to this cautionary tale: “In an able-bodied person, losing weight through diet and exercise is physically possible, and it has far less risk than intentionally letting extra organisms live inside you. “