I am a potato, and as a 21st century biological talent, I studied zoology as an undergraduate.
When I turned back, I wrote a diary about popular science, mainly about ascaris and other parasites.
However, good luck makes people, A trip to Shunde, Guangdong gave me a more unforgettable understanding of “parasites”.
Speaking of this, it is shameful, very shameful.
I have learned about parasites
Get ready to try Yu Sang
Last November, I couldn’t go abroad, so my girlfriend and I went to Shunde from Taiyuan.
The most famous local food is yusheng, which is a unique Chinese way of eating sashimi. It is characterized by many ingredients, rich taste, and very particular about the knives, each slice is as thin as a cicada’s wings.
Let’s take a look first:
Image source: Author provided
The local aboriginal friends are super gluttonous, and took us to find a shop that is not available in public reviews, specializing in sashimi. The fish and meat of this shop are now killed, according to the old gluttonous identification, the knife work is very good.
I have heard of the dangers of freshwater sashimi for a long time. When I was still hesitating whether to eat sashimi or not, my friend WeChat told me that I had already selected my food. The remnant of the brain was immediately aroused, and the whole person was ignited. He took a taxi and passed by quickly, leaving all worries behind.
The name of the shop is very ironic now. It was only later that I found out that Entry and Exit Ping An is the most common pergola printing in Guangdong, and no one knows the real name of the store.
Image source: Author provided
The ideal treatment, according to the US FDA, is 15 hours at -35°C, or 7 days at -20°C. But a fresh fish head was served straight up, and I reassured myself that the fish might have been cryogenically frozen long ago.
Shunde’s exquisite fish must be kept in the fish pond in the store for a period of time to consume fat, because fat is the most fishy smell. Then the tail is cut again to let the fish swim and bleed, and finally, it is completely slaughtered, and all the remaining blood is washed away with high-pressure water.
So in the end, only the crystal clear muscles are left. Different parts have different cutting methods. The back meat is cut as thin as cellophane, while the belly meat is thickly cut, which is very tasty after being chilled.
Image source: Author provided
My friend ordered two grass carp, mainly for the purpose of eating four fish in one. The skin of the fish is blanched and then served cold. The body of the fish is sashimi. Make porridge.
I haven’t said much about parasites, but you probably already know why I wrote it.
Yes, I ate it, not less.
Get ready to try Yu Sang
Prelude to death
As a biology talent, I am very familiar with parasites.
China is actually one of the earliest places in the world to eat raw fish. The current habit of eating raw fish is freshwater fish, which is represented by the grass carp mentioned above. This is why it is eaten raw. There will be dangerous reasons.
Because marine fish live in seawater, the osmotic pressure of seawater is different from that of the human body, so it is difficult for general marine parasites to infect the human body.
Freshwater fish, on the other hand, are prone to a large number of different parasites in the southern water nets.
It is said that one of the reasons why raw salmon is not recommended is because the main salmon species will migrate from the sea to the freshwater riverbed to spawn, so they also have the experience of freshwater life.
In addition, these freshwater parasites generally have a life history of intermediary between aquatic plants and animals, that is to say—
Over the course of a parasite’s life, multiple hosts may be replaced, and the human body may be invaded at the right opportunity during this process.
One of the typical and most common ones is that eating raw “water chestnut” may be infected with “Fasciola brucei”, and eating “fish raw” may be infected with “Clonorchis sinensis” “.
Clonorchis sinensis hidden in freshwater fish mainly causes hepatobiliary disease.
Image source: Author provided
Before liberation, parasitic diseases were widely distributed across the country and infected a large number of people. The most terrible one is infection with schistosomiasis, which may damage the liver. Over time, not only People will lose the ability to work, and even more terrible is the loss of life.
The sanitation campaign vigorously carried out after the founding of the People’s Republic of China aimed to eliminate snails, the intermediate host of the schistosomiasis, and to overturn the surface of a large amount of land in the south, so as to suffocate the snails on the surface.
At the same time, eating cooked food is widely promoted. To this day, parasitic diseases are very rare in China.
Food At present, my girlfriend is a very cautious person (girlfriend: I am witty and afraid of death), so I didn’t touch the fish at all.
Finally, the food on the table is almost eaten, but there is still more than half of the fish. In order not to waste, I can only use a large amount of fish like noodles, very proud Stir horizontally in a bowl and snort and eat.
This leads to the thrilling moment below.
After eating Yu Sang, we also went to a craft beer bar, and a night snack bar, which is said to have the best rice rolls with roast goose oil…
It is conceivable that after a meal of gluten, the stomach acid, the body’s first barrier, is seriously insufficient after being diluted by food.
Actually, to be safe afterwards, my girlfriend and I each ate a meal of intestinal worms.
This is a broad-spectrum anti-insect drug with minimal side effects, and it mainly deals with roundworms. The principle is that the worms cannot obtain nutrients in the intestines.
But if it is liver flukes, praziquantel needs to be used as a special drug to kill. Looking back, The last thing I am afraid of is that if the infected insects are not killed by intestinal worms, It may inspire them to run wild in the body and get into places where they should not go, so this kind of random medicine is actually very deadly, don’t follow me.
And all deworming medicines have a dosage problem, and it is far from accurate to take only two pills.
Two weeks after I left Shunde, another pair of friends set off from Shanghai to Shunde, and were entertained by the same old gluttons.
Three months later
Sudden abdominal pain to the point of being unable to walk
After returning to Taiyuan from Shunde, I felt that there was nothing wrong, except that I had diarrhea that night, as did the two friends who went behind.
Three months passed peacefully. My friend originally planned to visit me in Taiyuan on the weekend, but he suddenly had abdominal pain and was unable to walk.
After emergency hospitalization, routine anti-inflammation was done first, but there was no obvious change in indicators, and the number of eosinophils in the blood routine was very high. The Yusheng thing aroused his alarm.
So he immediately notified me, who also had the same meal. As soon as WeChat finished speaking, my right lower abdomen started to hurt. I couldn’t tell whether it was my original cholangitis or me. I was also recruited…
His wife who went with him also started to hurt, and we were like being cursed collectively.
We shared our concerns with the Shunde glutton. He shrugged and said that the Shunde macho body was fine. My friend and I, who were in the black line, began to meet to analyze the possible reasons.
According to my limited knowledge, I assume that if the parasite is Clonorchis sinensis, this is the most typical parasite that edible freshwater fish may have, and it is mainly parasitic The location is the liver we are now suffering from.
I searched the Internet and found that the whole person felt bad. We just compared the symptoms. After a lap, we felt that we couldn’t run away.
I checked the pain area, the pain is so amazing, I followed the instructions completely.
Image source: Tu Wo Creative
We later agreed that the parasite must beJust like the strategic nuclear submarine waiting to launch the command broadcast, you didn’t feel it at first, and suddenly began to act in earnest. Still like a virgin, moving like a rabbit.
After losing the needle for a day, the inflammation subsided.
My friend is also very anxious. Fortunately, we can’t use other search engines. After reading some papers on Google Scholar, he kindly shared with me why This bug can make my stomach hurt.
It turns out that,different from the miniature parasites or cell-sized protozoa as imagined, liver flukes are not small in size, about two or three rice grains and flat in shape. One theory is that if it’s active, pushing in and out of your bile ducts, it’s easy to infect the bacteria in the feces into the bile ducts, and it’s inflamed.
Looking through the data later, it was found that the main reasons why liver flukes are prone to bacterial infection are: Partial blockage of the bile duct, cholestasis, the so-called running water is not rotten, and once blocked, it is easy to breed bacteria. It is also said that liver flukes themselves carry pathogenic bacteria, causing infection.
In severe cases, liver flukes may also crawl out of the drainage tube during gallbladder surgery.
Image source: Guangxi News Channel
At such a time, I, who had taken the lead in the charge, fell into infinite anxiety. I was originally set to be fearless for the sake of food, but I didn’t expect it to be myself.
My friend felt that I was not there for a moment, so I went to check it right away.
It was only then that I discovered that the hospital he went to had no means of testing for parasitic diseases. Moreover, not only is there not here, but there is only one place in Shanghai, which is the Institute of Tropical Diseases of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is located next to Ruijin Hospital. (Note: At present, there are still some scientific research institutions that can detect it, but few are known.)
Go to Shanghai and wait for results
After my friend went to Shanghai for testing, the results came out in about a week. Sure enough.
I feel that the insects are more active during the remote observation. Am I really infected too?
At this point, my friend was hospitalized on the advice of a doctor.
Image source: Author provided
It is said to be hospitalized, but in fact, it is only necessary to take medicine, that is, praziquantel, a special drug for liver flukes. This medicine can even be purchased online, but the dosage is very large.
For example, if I am 75 kg, then I need to eat 78 tablets in total, divided into nine times over 3 days, and I need 9 tablets per meal. Taking pills is the same as eating.
The treatment should be very cautious. If the amount of parasites is large, the side effects are still a bit big. To put it bluntly, it is desperately trying to use scorched earth tactics with the insects. > At the same dose you are not poisoned, the bug is dead, you win.
If it is in the later stage, a large number of worms will die, and the worms will release a lot of allergic substances, which may also cause an inflammatory storm and cause shock.
Everything is in place, and he buys medicines under the supervision of a doctor. The improvement after three days was immediate, and the friend was soon discharged from the hospital. But I, who was watching from far away in Taiyuan, had panicked into a twist, not the gourmet back then.
While my friend was hospitalized in Shanghai, I consulted the professors of the local medical university and the doctors of the Shanxi Infectious Diseases Hospital. They were also curious about my situation.
Although they also helped me to inquire about all relevant institutions in Shanxi, including the Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, they found that there is no serum antibody testing method for liver flukes anywhere in the province.
The suggestion to me was to test the eosinophils in the blood routine first. Fortunately, the preliminary test results showed that this index was normal.
But it didn’t last long, because my friend’s wife’s blood test was also normal, but the parasite infection was still positive.
“Help I’m dying!” I said to my girlfriend.
“Come and see.” She was as calm as ever.
Gosh, I must be infected!
After my friend’s wife was also hospitalized in Shanghai, my mental stress reached a peak, and I began to repeatedly ask my friends about the procedure of seeing a doctor with great anxiety.
After searching, the closest parasite authority to Taiyuan is the Institute of Tropical Diseases of Friendship Hospital in Beijing, but it is very difficult to enter Beijing during the special period of the epidemic. After thinking for a while, I decided to continue my friend’s experience and hurried to the Shanghai Institute of Tropical Diseases for testing.
So on a Thursday morning, I flew directly to Shanghai. As soon as I landed, I went straight to Ruijin Hospital.
Image source: Author provided
The first step is to go to the Infectious Diseases Department of Ruijin Hospital for registration. This is a separate building and strictly abide by the regulations on the separation of the Infectious Diseases Department from the main body of the hospital.
The second step is to draw blood and write a prescription for a visit to a tropical clinic, and then just send the blood sample there.
I hung up an expert number and described the reason to the old professor who treated me. The professor held back a smile and said, if the source of infection is identified, your friends are all recruited, then the probability of your infection is a bit high, and he ordered a test for me to test for parasites.
Image source: Author provided
After the test, it is said that the results will be released within a week, and the hospital needs to go to the hospital to get the report as a diagnosis certificate. However, you can follow the official account of the Institute of Tropical Diseases to check the results in advance.
I don’t know what graduate student is maintaining this public account, and the style is very strange:
Image source: Author provided
The phrase “you will be enlightened” really reassures patients!
After handing in the blood samples, I felt a lot more relaxed, at least from Schrodinger’s parasitic infection to the first step of examination and treatment, no matter what, there must be a conclusion.
It was an extremely anxious weekend. Holding my phone, I was about to bald the official account of the Institute of Tropical Diseases. Keep your mouth shut.
The result was not available on Tuesday, so I couldn’t help it, so I took the initiative to call the Shanghai office.
This was a phone call that was as tense as a college entrance examination score. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to wait for the result of the verdict. The other party replied: All indicators were negative.
Oh, my mother and seventh uncle!
At that moment, I was relieved, leaning on the back of the office chair for five minutes before I got up, and the dull pain in the liver area disappeared in an instant…
I secretly made a decision to firmly live up to my oath: keep this mouth shut.
Finally, just in case, I summarize a testing guide for you:
As a raw food, eating sashimi can cause foodborne illness in the presence of bacteria or parasites, delays between eating contaminated food and called the incubation period. The long incubation period of many foodborne illnesses tends to cause patients to attribute their symptoms to gastroenteritis.
From Shanghai to the north, there are only two places that are convenient for inspection, namely the Institute of Tropical Diseases of Beijing Friendship Hospital and the Institute of Tropical Diseases next to Ruijin Hospital of Jiaotong University. In theory, all provincial CDCs should have the ability to detect parasitic diseases, but many places have been dealing with parasitic diseases for a long time, and many places lack doctors to see a doctor after testing.
In all specimens submitted for inspection, there is only a 1/12 chance of being hit, so don’t panic.
When you have a high-risk diet recently, such as various freshwater fish sashimi, you also need to pay attention to “salmon” here, because there is a situation where freshwater farmed rainbow trout replaces salmon in China, and the daily cooking time Whether raw or cooked, beware of the danger of parasites.
If you have suspected symptoms such as liver pain and unprovoked fever, it is recommended to rule out the possibility of other liver diseases first. In the absence of parasite testing institutions around you, you can first try blood tests and liver B-ultrasound, and follow the doctor’s advice.
Be cautious about taking antiparasitic medicines until you don’t know how parasites are distributed in your body and if you are allergic to medicines.
Finally, I wish everyone good health and no raw food.
Acknowledgements: This article has been professionally reviewed by Tao Zhiyong, Associate Professor of Parasitology, Bengbu Medical College
This article was first published on: Dr. Clove
Author Potato
Planning Antenna
Producer Feidi
The source of the cover image is Zhanku Hailuo