MrsFychan

so had a coffee met today, lovely it was too, but I digress. One of the people there was a nutritionist there who was saying that people should be worming not only the animals but the kids and yourselves as well. Apparently once a year on your birthday, so you remember you should be popping a pill.

Is this really a thing that we should be telling people about or just an over enthusiastic nutritionist?

jmh

I have never heard of this, in NZ or anywhere else. I'm frequently horrified at how medicalised our children's lives are becoming.

LoCarb

Well, we periodically medicated our whole family for thread-worm when our kids were young. Isn't this still standard?

scrubbedexpat094

I take most stuff said by nutritionists with a large pinch of salt. I'd rather take nutritional advice from a dietitian, in the same way that I prefer to go to a physiotherapist rather than a chiropractor.

MrsFychan

yes thats what she was talking about, never heard of worming kids and how old do you go up to, I asked her this when she said about worming the kids and thats when she said that us adults should be doing it also.
She also said that as I am on anti depressants now I should be taking fish oils

Charismatic

Fish oil is a thing I think.

Not sure about this worming thing, have you been drinking from puddles or ditches?

LoCarb

Kids pick up worms in preschool to primary school but no hard and fast rule.
If they have recurring itchy bum it's a sure sign of thread worm being present.

The female worm lays her eggs at night around the anus and because it's itchy, you scratch and spread the contamination.
You can feel the little buggers while lying still in bed. Vermox tablets get rid of them.

re fish oils.
I think she was referring to lack of omega 3 being being associated with depression, so taking fish oil could help.

Personally, I found low-fat diets were a contributing factor and now use plenty of saturated animal fats (butter, dripping) and coconut oil etc.

I now totally avoid margarine and canola/soybean oil as they were not part of the human diet until the 20th century.

Lisa Maree

We had a dog and cats growing up and we all were wormed somewhat regularly, 1980s. We've had threadworms once when my daughter was in preschool, she was in agony, now I keep a packet of Ovex in the house just in case but in my experience there wasn't any doubt what the problem was ((boak)) so I don't know how its possible to have them and not know it!

Hazelnut

As a child I had both thread and tapeworm and remember havng a nasty, nasty pink drink from the doctors. We lived in a rural area and had regular interaction with cats, dogs, sheep and cattle. As an adult I managed to pick up ringworm from some rescued kittens I was working with In every case it was obvious there was a problem and it was treated appropriately.

With all our animals our vets advise us to test for worm eggs and only use chemicals if the count goes very high as worms resistent to all the major chemical groups are now a severe problem. Doing regular worming with humans, whether they need it or not, would surely lead to the same problems.