The debate on whether parasites in humans may be good or bad or how they should be treated continues. This time weighing in the opinion of the French, those decades long raw paleo diet practitioners known as Instinctive Therapy first established by Guy Claude Burger. Today at 77, Mr. Burger continues to contribute his ideas, this time to the raw paleo forum community regarding his view of parasites:

But, isn’t there a major risk of getting worms eating all that raw food, particularly raw meat?

– There again, experience completely belies public belief (not to mention medical myths). A raw diet, properly balanced by one’s instincts, helps one clear parasites, even when standard drugs are ineffectual. Although raw foods contain parasite eggs, what matters is not contamination, but, rather, hosting factors.

You’re not going to tell me that cooking serves no purpose in killing off germs, are you?

– Well, then, you’d have to cook everything. So much for rare steak. No more grated celery, and bye-bye salads! You’d have to do your steaks brown which is carcinogenic!

We can’t eat a 100% cooked diet; scurvy would be the death of us. There’s a whole set of vitamins and life-giving substances that would have to go. A life-giving diet must include a certain amount of raw foods, which inevitably harbor parasite eggs. A better tack would be to wonder why those eggs sometimes hatch and sometimes don’t. Instinctotherapy ensures that parasites never set in. In fact, die-hard parasitoses fall off within a few days.

For instance, we once had a young man over who had been sustaining pinworms for eight months and couldn’t shake them off. Within a few days, he excreted them piles of writhing little worms that seemed to be flushed out of the intestinal lumen when he began eating raw food. He’s been free of pinworms ever since. And the same holds for roundworms, tapeworms, amoebas, and toxoplasmosis.

Some people do die of amoebiasis. If it was as simple as you make it out to be…

– I know that what I’m saying is enough to unnerve the medical establishment: As you say, it’s all too simple! Only, the simplest thing that has yet been devised is to prescribe pills.

Don’t you think that you’re taking things a bit far? Soon, you’re going to be telling me that raw foods are better than drugs. Why did man concoct drugs in the first place?

– All I can say is that facts speak for themselves. I observe and try to understand. Medicine has never had occasion to observe a body functioning under the conditions I have been fortunate enough to enjoy, i.e. conditions resulting from uncooked foods.

Nevertheless, there are wild animals who eat raw foods and who go down with parasitosis and infectious diseases.

– That’s true, but their diet is not necessarily balanced. Man’s presence corners them into impoverished habitats. If they lack space or if they overbreed, owing to some ecological factor for instance the death of a predator they overrun their environment, their food supply quickly turns unbalanced, and their defense mechanisms become blunted. That’s what happened in some wild animal reserves where lynxes and wolves were culled and where deer multiplied and played havoc with the vegetation to the point of weakening themselves and developing a septic eye condition.

And what about amoebic dysentery? Aren’t you afraid of eating raw fish?

– Every time a new parasite or new pathogenic bacteria is identified, people are afraid. A scientist publishes his findings, rumors get started, everyone feels threatened, the media chime in, and all of a sudden, evil is all around where it had previously gone unsuspected. Roundworm is a parasite that has been found in some fish from the Atlantic, since industrial fishing boats started freezing fish on board without gutting them. The worms (which can be seen with the naked eye; they’re two centimeters long), thus have enough time to work their way into the muscle of the fish, and, once man has eaten the fish, the worms travel all the way into the mucus lining of man’s stomach. This is an artificial process, and certainly not the natural cycle of that parasite. Very specific conditions must be met for the worm to infest man.

I think that worsening pollution might account for the growing number of parasites in fish, and overeating on man’s part might possibly explain that his lessened immunity doesn’t stand up to them.

I have never heard of anyone who practiced instinctotherapy properly having developed roundworms. Among raw foodists who eat fish without heeding their instincts, the problem could undoubtedly arise. But, one mustn’t confuse raw foodism with instinctotherapy. Everything is different when one allows one’s instincts to take over. Learning how to interpret one’s instincts is another matter.

So, how do you account for the efficiency of instinctotherapy?

– I’d say, rather, that cooked food is very efficient. On the one hand, cooked food alters the chemical formula of the contents of the bowel tract, thus rendering the environment more favorable for the development of parasitic worms. And for another thing, when abnormal molecules bombard the body, the immune system gives out and is no longer able to ward off undesirable parasites or slow down their development, so they proliferate.

The same thing holds true for infection. After more than 20 years of eating raw food, I have never needed a disinfectant or an antibiotic when I cut myself. It has become a general rule: When one’s diet is right, the body can cope with infections; it rarely proves necessary to disinfect wounds.

Did you catch that last paragraph and the first paragraph? Cooked food gives your body an environment where the immune system gives out and is no longer able to ward off undesirable parasites, so those parasites proliferate.

And of course if this will cause you to get ill and die, then it may be a good idea to do parasite cleansing protocols.

But then again, if you follow the instinctive therapy method of raw paleo dieting, then your body is able to live in harmony with various parasites. And your parasite load is lower. That is Burger’s theory and experience.

Let’s listen to a German lady’s experience, Susan:

Maybe this book can help to make obvious that parasites are neither good nor bad: Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are

During a healing process it can be a good sign when parasites/worms appear. For example when somebody suffers from Morbus Crohn or other inflammatory bowel diseases.

I myself made a personal experience with worms:

A year after eating instinctiv raw eating I got some pinworms. Pinworms are typically for young children and I thought it would be a good sign in my personal healing process getting some. Smiley So I continued instinctive raw eating without caring about the worms and after some weeks they vanished with the help of natural food.

My latest interest in parasites arose from my current tape worms being pooped out. After a terrible experience last September after eating cooked food in a PTA meeting, I came down with intense stomach pain, now I think I may have eaten a flee and that may have planted the parasite in may gut… or maybe not… I’ve been eating raw beef and raw horse… that may also be a source. But my on and off tummy pains got worse by end of November 2010 and I was cured by probiotics therapy. I drank and overdosed myself with various probiotics. I felt great and my tummy became solid. But then I noticed proglotids, live tapeworms in my poop lately. But I feel great on the other hand. Is this part of my raw paleo diet evolution as the German lady Susan has experienced?

You can follow the ongoing discussion of Instinctive Therapy on Parasites at raw paleo forum. Click here.