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There’s no shortage of horror stories out there emphasizing the importance of food safety, and a new tale concerning a man who landed in the hospital after tapeworms invaded his brain will probably make sure you cook bacon correctly for the rest of your life.
There are plenty of risks that come with handling and consuming raw meat, and that’s especially true when you’re talking about pork.
People spent decades ruining perfectly good pork chops until the FDA assured Americans there’s no reason to be scared of a little bit of pink in the middle, but there are still plenty of people who err on the side of caution due to the potential downsides—namely trichinosis (an infection linked to a species of roundworm) and tapeworms that are primarily known for finding a home in your digestive tract.
However, that’s not the only place in your body where they can end up when everything is said and done.
According to The Guardian, the American Journal of Case Reports recently published a paper concerning the cautionary tale of a 52-year-old man who was admitted to the hospital in search of treatment for migraines that had gotten increasingly worse over a four-month span.
The doctors who treated him were initially unable to come up with an explanation until they decided to have him undergo a CT scan after he told them he had a preference for the “lightly cooked, non-crispy bacon” he consumed on a regular basis.
After reviewing the results, they detected a number of sacs (known as “cystic foci”) in his brain. They subsequently ran more tests that led to him being officially diagnosed with neurocysticercosis, an ailment that stemmed from the Taenia solium tapeworms that had slithered into his brain and caused the infection.
The researchers behind the paper determined the illness was “transmitted via autoinfection after improper handwashing after he had contracted taeniasis himself from his eating habits” and were able to successfully treat him with the help of the anti-parasitic and anti-inflammatory regimen they prescribed.
I already liked my bacon on the crispier side, and that’s definitely going to be the case going forward.