Parasites Poop Too

So! Time to talk about parasites! We've had symbiotes and commensals already. Once again, I find myself hesitating on the threshold of this writing. I was sticking on commensality because I'm not sure I believe in it: I can't fathom a relationship benefiting one party without having any impact on the other. It's more natural to conceive of a relationship as either symbiotic--ultimately a win-win--or parasitic, where one party benefits to the detriment of the other.
I hesitate now for a different reason, and it's not just that some parasites are beautiful to look at, or that mistletoe, emblem of Christmas-time love, is also a parasite.

Source: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/30000/velka/goldgelber-zitterling.jpg

Instead, my problem is that Parasites and Parasitism comprise such a big, hot topic that if I pick it up I'm afraid I might drop it! Several influential thinkers in the health universe believe that parasites are the #1 cause of just about all human ailments, and that they are lurking everywhere and in everything. And these are highly qualified, legitimate people, like Dr Ann Louise Gittleman and Dr Hulda Regehr Clark. Check out Parasite Rex and the books Amazon clusters with it for some high-jink facts and scary images. I've heard several authorities say that cancer is always associated with parasitic candida. Donna Gates, whose work I admire greatly, asserts that in over two decades of working with autistic children, she has found every one of them to have candida overgrowth.

Let's zoom out just for a moment. Mushrooms and mistletoe aside, most people think of microscopic microbes when they think of parasites. But--diverting as always to my beloved etymology--"parasite" originally referred to a human being. 
Whereas a sus-sitos (the Greek for commensal, remember) is a mess-mate, who sits at table together with the others,  a para-sitos is a gatecrasher, or a dingleberry--a flattering, rather tiresome guest who shows up, hangs around, and stays uninvited to dinner. Sitos means "food" and (as I mentioned before) specifically means "grain," and where "syn/co/com" means "with," "para" means "beside, to the side of," (think "paralegal"), and also "beyond," "contrary to" (think "paranormal"). If you were an alpha male in the ancient world that coined this word, a parasite was your pet toadyish best mate who always said what you wanted to hear, whom your true friends couldn't stand because he turned you against them, and because he fed your denial, sometimes to the loss of your kingdom. So there's something even a bit nastier about this original parasite. Not only does he dine at the host's expense; he clouds the host's vision and obstructs him from doing his job properly while at the same time making the host feel good about himself!
Agh agh ahem... This sounds a lot like a sugar addiction! Dare I say it? Sugar sure can make you feel good while actually strengthening yeast colonies and blocking absorption of minerals and nutrients. I actually started writing about this a couple months ago, when I undenied my own fruitarian sugar addiction, wondered who I was feeding when I fed that, and when I finish my 21-day sugar detox at the beginning of next week I'll share more about the big differences I've been experiencing as a result of feeding different "guests."
Whoa! It was dizzyingly easy to zoom in from the macro level of interpersonal relationships to the micro level of yeast colonies promising sweet comfort if you feed them more sugar. When metaphors transfer from macro to micro this easily I feel delight at the magical, fractal, geometric, sympathetic unity of this mad whirligig of a universe.
Realize this, too: the alpha male's parasite and the yeast colony both don't only feed at their host's expense: they excrete too, and their poop and gas stink! There were no flush toilets in the ancient world, so the parasite pooping in the latrine was an extra strain on resources too, no doubt. And then I think of all the nights this year when I was back on fruit and sometimes even tipping over into more sugary sugar, lying unable to sleep at night with indigestion pains, being one big tortured latrine for my wayward guests. We end up not only not having the proper benefit of the food, but having to get rid of what is in fact toxic waste. (Here's a quick read on acetaldehyde, one of the main toxic wastes excreted by yeasts in the body.)

The fact that parasites poop too has probably been my biggest epiphany recently in understanding why they can be such a problem. But looking on the bright side, our universe is dynamic, relationship dynamics can change, and balance may not look like you expect it to. If humans had no yeast in their bodies, we could get real sick real quick, especially in our present ocean of sugar. In normal amounts, a yeast colony is actually symbiotic--they're part of the cleanup crew. They get to eat, they mop up what our systems can't handle, whatever they poop out goes easily down the drain with the rest. And the dingleberry friend? Our alpha male will indulge his uninvited visits once in a while, especially if he wants to get rid of other visitors, but he'll think twice and twice more about listening to the guy's advice, will pay more attention to his true friends, and some days he'll say "Sorry buddy, dinner tonight's invited guests only. See you later."

This dynamism is what gives me pause with the stricter "parasite as cause of all evils" line. There's increasing evidence (e.g. here) that parasites performed a useful role in pre-cleansed and sterilized humanity. Obsession with cleaning out any and all parasites from the system sounds like similar logic to vaccinating all diseases away. There is a place for parasite cleansing and there is a place for vaccinations, God help us, but with a better understanding of what it takes to be in relationship with the parasitic organism, we might be able to embody better the underlying truth, that we are all connected.