Welcome to Straight Talk on Health. I’m your host Dr. Chet Zelasko. Straight Talk on Health is a joint production with WGVU in Grand Rapids MI. With a PhD in exercise physiology, I’ve been teaching people how to improve their health through diet, exercise, and supplementation for over 30 years. I look at the science behind all the headlines and social media, and let you know whether it’s something to consider or not. You can check out other things that I do on my website Drchet.com and sign up for my free emails.
As I put this edition together, we have an outbreak of a parasite infection that seems to be increasing every day. That parasite is Cyclospora ca-ye-tan-en-sis. The outbreak seems to be limited to lettuce, especially chopped lettuce, found in supermarkets and some restaurants. On the day of recording the podcast, the number of cases was approaching 7700 cases
The parasite Cyclospora is a parasite that is so small it can only be seen under a microscope according to the FDA. What that means is that we can’t see it but when it comes to viruses and bacteria, we really never can. Eating food or drinking water with the parasite yields an intestinal illness called cyclosporiasis. What is the source of this parasite? In this case, the parasite comes from human feces that can be found in contaminated water used to water crops. According to the FDA, it’s unlikely to be transmitted directly from person to person because the Cyclospora parasite needs time, ranging from days to weeks, after being passed in feces to become infectious.
What makes this outbreak so problematic is that the apparent source, lettuce and more than likely, iceberg lettuce, is served without cooking. I watch enough cooking shows to know that some people like some greens cooked like Bok choy, collard greens and even Romaine lettuce. But as a rule, we like lettuces uncooked. Chopped or shredded lettuces are usually done in bulk processing. Even if only 1 out of 100 heads of lettuce are infected, it can be mixed with the uninfected heads thus spreading the parasite to the entire batch. That makes it difficult to identify.
What are the symptoms of the parasitic infection? Watery diarrhea which can be expelled forcefully. I’ve tried to avoid using the common description but in this case, it fits: explosive diarrhea. The other symptoms include frequent bowel movements, cramping, abdominal distress, and loss of electrolytes and fluids.
Who is at risk the most? People with compromised immune symptoms: the very young, the elderly, those with autoimmune diseases such as Rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Lupus, and others. What are the symptoms? Some people who are infected with Cyclospora do not have any symptoms but that’s not the norm. The infection may take 2-14 days until the symptoms begin. Besides the aforementioned symptoms, the FDA says that common symptoms can include loss of appetite, weight loss, stomach cramps/pain, bloating, increased gas, nausea, and fatigue. People may also experience vomiting, body aches, headache, low-grade fever, and other flu-like symptoms.
The real problem is that these issues can last from a couple of days but also to a month or longer. For those with compromised immune systems, the symptoms may go away but return later. During the time people have symptoms, they must pay attention to dehydration with the water loss during the diarrhea. Water, even better a sports drink with electrolytes like sodium and potassium are critical to prevent dehydration.
The good thing is that cyclosporiasis can be treated with antibiotics and that requires a visit to a healthcare provider. Make sure you do everything you can because, while there have been no registered deaths as of this recording, no one wants to be the first one. This parasite can make us feel uncomfortable for a few weeks but with your physicians help, you can overcome it. Just remember: hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!
I stay away from politics in this podcast but the cuts to managing the countries safety in the food supply have hampered the response to this outbreak. Yes, it’s complicated because this is a difficult parasite to find because of its gestation period before it become infectious. But the cuts to research to find better ways of finding the parasite are also manifesting itself in the lack of progress to develop better testing techniques. Simply cutting funding without an analysis to know whether those cuts may be critical to essential services, is the real tragedy here. When you think about, will the next food borne illness also be the results of poor planning when reducing budgets?
I’ve covered the gut microbiome over the seasons of STOH. But let me give you my opinion on the microbiome and bacterial, viral, and parasitic organisms. The healthier your microbiome, the better your gut immune system, and thus your body can defend itself against these types of challenges. For the most part, that means getting enough fiber in your diet every day. The fiber contains something called prebiotics, a term you see more frequently these days. It simply means that it will provide food for the healthy or good microbes in your gut, especially the probiotics. Whether the fiber comes from eating more plant foods such as vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, or whole grains or you get them from a fiber supplement, fiber is a key to helping those microbes keep your gut health strong thereby improving your entire immune system.
I like to keep things simple, and this is only my professional opinion, good bacteria trump bad bacteria most of the time. How do I know that? If you remember, I said that some people may get the cyclospora parasite and do not have symptoms. Why? Without specific testing, we can’t know for sure but I think that they had a better microbiome. We H Pylori and salmonella bacteria in your digestive system all the time and our immune system seems to handle them. But when a diet contains too much sugar, which feed bad bacteria, and not enough fiber, the bad microbes get the upper hand and put our gut immunes system at risk. Take care of your gut and it will protect you as well.
As long as we’re talking food safety here, let me also talk about some issues I have with food competition shows. I’ve repeatedly told you I watch too many cooking shows. But here is what bugged me and what I found out after doing some research.
In the first example, a contestant cooked chicken. When the judges cut open the chicken very near the thigh-leg joint, it was red. They said they couldn’t eat it because the chicken was raw and not safe to eat, even though the meat itself appeared cook and the chef took the temperature of the meat. Based on available research, that doesn’t mean that salmonella is present. The appearance of the red liquid could be fluid from the bone or the iron containing portion of blood cells called myoglobin. So that red, given the temp and appearance of the meat, doesn’t mean the meat is not safe to eat. But the cook was disqualified.
Once the outside of the meat is cooked, there is no reason cutting the meat would bring salmonella to the inside because the bacteria would have been destroyed in the cooking process. I understand the reaction to seeing something bright red in the joint but it doesn’t mean the meat can’t be eaten.
One more? Judges also freak out if there is pink in a pork roast or pork chop. That also doesn’t mean there are harmful parasites or bacteria in that meat. As long as the meat has reached 145 degrees and rested for 3 minutes, the meat is safe to eat. But again, if it’s pink, the judges say it’s not cooked and it’s over. No it isn’t but that’s the prevailing thought.
I’m not suggesting you should eat raw meat, and these cooking temps do not apply to ground meats—they need to reach 165 degrees to kill all the bacteria that were introduced in the grinding process—just like in the shredded lettuce I mentioned earlier. It just seem strange that professional food judges that will eat raw beef in a tartar or worse yet in fish or shrimp “cooked” with lemon juice, lose their minds over a little pink or red in meats cooked to their proper temperatures.
That’s enough of a rant for now because that’s all the time I have for this episode. If you like this podcast, hit the share button and tell your friends and colleagues about it. Until next time, this is Dr. Chet Zelasko saying health is a choice. Choose wisely today and every day.
References: J Food Prot. 2013 Jan;76(1):33-9.doi: 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-12-224.
Foods. 2020 Jun 11;9(6):776. doi: 10.3390/foods9060776
