If you are eating sausages at the moment, then I suggest you might want to look away now after seeing what can happen to your body if you undercook them.
If I had to learn about just how grim this is – then so do you. We will share this pain together.
In fact, not only will this likely have you questioning what meat you consume, but it might also result in you choosing to overcook everything rather than undercook food for the foreseeable future.
So where does this start? Why on social media of course – where we keep all the toe-curling horror health stories.
So sorry if you are eating sausages right now (Getty stock image)
ER doctor Sam Ghali decided to share the image of a simple CT scan to his followers on Twitter, however, it didn’t quite look normal.
In fact, according to the doctor, it was ‘one of the craziest CT scans he’d ever seen’.
The scan was of person’s pelvis and upper legs, but there were also some peculiar white splotches dotted about all over the scan.
While you might hope that it was simply an error, the person in the scan is actually suffering from a parasitic infection.
Here’s one of the craziest CT scans I’ve ever seen
What’s the diagnosis? pic.twitter.com/DSJmPfCy9L
— Sam Ghali, M.D. (@EM_RESUS) August 25, 2024
Dr Ghali goes into detail on his post about what exactly the condition, known as cysticercosis is: “Cysticercosis is an infamous parasitic infection caused by ingestion of larval cysts of Taenia Solium, also known as: Pork Tapeworm.”
And it only gets worse from here – trust me.
“So humans become infected with T. Solium by ingesting cysts that can be found in undercooked pork. After several weeks (usually around 5-12) these cysts evolve within the gastrointestinal tract into mature adult tapeworms. This condition is known as Intestinal Taeniasis.” he continued to explain.
“These adult tapeworms then shed eggs which are in turn excreted into human feces.
“It’s very important to note that it is only when these eggs are ingested via fecal-oral transmission, that one can develop the clinical syndrome known as of Cysticercosis.
It is known as the ‘Pork Tapeworm’ (Getty stock image)
“After the eggs are ingested (humans or pigs) they release larvae which penetrate the intestinal wall and invade into the bloodstream (via mesenteric venules) and from there can spread to literally anywhere in the entire body.”
According to the doc, the most common places that these parasites tend to gravitate towards is the ‘brain, eyes, subcutaneous tissues, and skeletal muscles’, where the larvae ‘lodge wherever the end up and ultimately form cysts known as cysticerci’.
Thankfully, a person’s inflammatory response usually ends up killing off the cysts, and resulted in calcification, which gives the appearance seen in the CT scan – often referred to as ‘rice grain calcifications’, Dr Ghali says.
However, if the larvae spread to the brain and form cysts in the tissue rather than other parts of the body, then there’s a risk of developing a condition known as neurocysticercosis.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), symptoms can include ‘severe headaches, blindness, convulsions and epileptic seizures’ or can cause death.
In order to avoid this, Dr Ghail recommends you to ‘do your best to keep clean, always wash your hands, and never, ever eat raw or undercooked pork’.
Sound advice from the doctor if you ask me.