Man Eats Undercooked Pork Then Doctors Show Him Something Moving Inside His Brain

Eating anything undercooked is not recommended and while fruits and vegetables are still okay to eat raw, consuming undercooked meat is a big no-no. According to food safety expert Jeff Nelken since raw meat has tons of bacteria crawling on it, eating undercooked meat is like playing Russian roulette. Then again, there so many people all over the world who enjoy eating raw and/or undercooked meats, including sushi, sashimi, steak tartare, kibbeh nayyeh, crudos, raw oysters and much more. Meet 46-years-old construction worker Zhu Zhong-fa who resides in Hangzhou in the Zhejiang Province of East China. For nearly a month Zhong-fa was experiencing several episodes of seizures and severe headaches.

Then in November 2019 he started foaming at the mouth and decided to visit the hospital where Dr. Huang Jianrong, from the Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, asked him to get chest and brain MRI scans. After seeing the MRI scan reports doctors were left horrified and utterly speechless – there were over 700 tapeworms inside Zhong-fa’s body, including his brain and lungs. The poor man’s chest was infested with pork tapeworm eggs that had burrowed into his tissue causing cysts. The larvae, which were transported to his brain through the bloodstream, made themselves comfortable there, causing him to experience seizures. But how did pork tapeworms enter his system and what exactly are pork tapeworms?

You see, just a month before his symptoms began Zhong-fa claimed that he had consumed a hot pot that contained vegetables and undercooked pork. And so according to doctors, Zhong-fa had accidentally ingested eggs of a pork tapeworm, scientifically known as Taenia solium or T. solium, from his undercooked pork dinner. As we mentioned earlier, raw meat is riddled with tons of bacteria and so as soon as Zhong-fa ate his nearly raw dinner, the newly hatched eggs were transported from his digestive system to his brain and lungs through the bloodstream.

The newly hatched eggs, or the worm larvae, can wreak havoc on human bodies by burrowing into body tissues and forming cysts that can decay and cause infections. Over a long period of time, people who accidentally ingest pork tapeworm eggs can experience severe headaches, blindness, seizures, and dementia. Coming back to Zhong-fa, Dr. Huang prescribed two medicines, one that killed the larvae and another that helped protect Zhong-fa’s organs from further damage as well as reduce side-effects brought on by the first medicine. After a successful week of treatment, further tests will be performed on Zhong-fa to see if he will continue to suffer any long-term effects of the pork tapeworm eggs invasion.

According to the World Health Organization, T. solium was declared to be the leading cause of death from food-related diseases in 2015. Experts claim that humans can easily get infected with T. solium if they consume undercooked and infected pork. But why just pork? According to experts, pigs get infected with this parasite after they consume human waste. The parasites then start feeding off their bodies and multiply like mad rabbits. So if a human decides to consume raw or undercooked pork, that is infected with T. solium, they indirectly allow the parasite to enter their bodies too. Such was the case of poor Zhong-fa. We can only hope that next time he’ll ensure that his pork is fully cooked before it is consumed.