Avoiding Epilepsy Through Diet

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Another review last year confirmed that pork tapeworms taking residence inside our brains “is a significant public health issue within the United States.” At first, though, clinical diagnosis can be challenging. Initial presentations of the disease are often vague complaints like headaches, weakness, dizziness, high blood pressure.

In terms of treatment, in a series of more than a hundred cases published this year, although antiparasitic deworming drugs were found to be effective, about 10% of victims require brain surgery—what’s called an open craniotomy, where you have to go in and basically just dig ‘em out.

They can get into our muscles, too. This is an X-ray of someone’s leg, and you can see how infested the muscle is. And that’s why we can get it from pork—because it gets into muscles.

But what if you don’t eat pig muscles? Well, to all the smug non-pork-eaters out there, if we can find pork tapeworms in the brains of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, we can find pork tapeworms in anyone.

They weren’t sneaking off for schnitzel. It was their pork-eating domestic houseworkers preparing their food. When 1,700 members of the local synagogue were tested, 1% tested positive. The researchers suggested that those “to be employed as domestic workers or food handlers should be screened for tapeworm infection via examination of three stool samples for [tapeworm] eggs.”

So to avoid the #1 cause of adult-onset epilepsy, we may want to not eat pork, and not eat anything made by anyone who eats pork.

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• Wiwanitkit V. Neurocysticercosis: fireflies in the central nervous system. Am J Electroneurodiagnostic Technol. 2010 Sep;50(3):245.
• Moskowitz J, Mendelsohn G. Neurocysticercosis. Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2010 Oct;134(10):1560-3.
• Moore AC, Lutwick LI, Schantz PM, Pilcher JB, Wilson M, Hightower AW, Chapnick EK, Abter EI, Grossman JR, Fried JA, et al. Seroprevalence of cysticercosis in an Orthodox Jewish community. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 1995 Nov;53(5):439-42.
• Schantz PM, Moore AC, Muñoz JL, Hartman BJ, Schaefer JA, Aron AM, Persaud D, Sarti E, Wilson M, Flisser A. Neurocysticercosis in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York City. N Engl J Med. 1992 Sep 3;327(10):692-5.

Images thanks to Drs. J. Moskowitz & G. Mendelsohn, and Nick Oldnall

• blood pressure
• brain health
• dizziness
• epilepsy
• food poisoning
• foodborne illness
• headaches
• high blood pressure
• hypertension
• neurocysticercosis
• parasites
• pork
• seizures
• tapeworms
• zoonotic disease