Why do people eat healer beetles

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Alternative medicine aficionados believe insects can even cure cancer.

Therapy with healer beetles is carried out in a very unappetizing way: they are offered to be eaten alive, washed down with kefir or seized with bread crumb. Moreover, the "therapeutic dose" is not limited to one insect - starting with one individual, the amount eaten must be increased to several dozen pieces at a time. Only in this case is a healing effect promised.

The life hacker found out everything about what healer beetles are and whether it is true that their use can improve health.

What are healer beetles

Under the name of the healer beetle (aka the healer beetle) there is a darkling beetle from the Tenebrionidae family. It is a small coleopteran pest that feeds on crops. The misfortune of this type of darkling beetle, Ulomoides dermestoides, is the fact that at one time they were included in the list of traditional medicine in Japan and China. People believed that eating coleopteran pests relieves back pain, coughing, asthma, and other problems.

At the end of the 20th century, the beetle gained popularity Argentine Rx: Take 70 Beetles And Call Me in the Morning in Argentina and Brazil. The darkling beetles were raised on home farms and sold in bulk, 1,000 or more. Vendors claimed that eating live beetles could alleviate or cure ailments such as psoriasis, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, arthritis, AIDS and cancer.

It was then that darkling beetles acquired their common English-language name - Chinese beetles (сhinese beatles), or Chinese weevils (сhinese weevils). And then the spread of medicinal beetle science began throughout the world.

Are medicine beetles really good for health?

It is assumed that the chemicals that this insect releases in response to danger are capable of killing cells - primarily those affected by some pathological process, the same cancer or inflammation. That is why healer beetles are used alive - so that they defend themselves. It is curious that there is some truth in this.

So, several years ago scientists of the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution became interested in darkling beetles. They investigated how beetle biomass extract affects the body in neurodegenerative diagnoses (brain-damaging processes similar to human Parkinson's) in mice. The result of BLOCKING OF SENSOMOTOR DISORDERS IN MICE WITH STRIAR DOPAMINERGIC INSUFFICIENCY WITH THE EXTRACT OF THE ALPHITOBIUS DIAPERINUS BEETLE ALPHITOBIUS DIAPERINUS OF THE SENSOMOTOR DISORDERS IN Mice with STRIAR DOPAMINERGIC INSUFFICIENCY turned out to be quite interesting: in those individuals who received almost no brain biomass, the development of motor disorders in the control group slowed down, while the development of motor disorders in the control group in the destruction was obvious.

Scientists planned to find out exactly which chemicals in the darkling beetle extract caused this effect. But for a number of reasons, the study was not continued.

World science is indifferent to beetles-medicine men.

There are very few studies, although some are of interest. For example, in one Cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of defense secretion of Ulomoides dermestoides on A549 cells from them, carried out in vitro (in vitro), it was possible to prove that the protective chemical compounds secreted by darkling beetles actually destroy cancer cells. In another Anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects of Ulomoides dermestoides on induced pleurisy in rats and lymphoproliferation in vitro, realized in vitro and in rats, it was found that the substances produced by Ulomoides dermestoides have anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties.

But still, evidence-based medicine is skeptical about the possible healing power of beetles. And that's why.

Why are healer beetles harmful?

Studies in a test tube or in rodents, to put it mildly, are not indicative - their results cannot be transferred to humans. It is not a fact that consuming darkling beetles will somehow improve your health. But there are many potential adverse effects.

1. Healthy cells may be affected

The chemicals that the beetle secretes when defending themselves are not specialized. They do not care what to destroy: even cancerous or otherwise damaged cells, even healthy ones. Therefore, the risk to the body when consuming darkling beetles can be significantly greater than the possible benefits.

2. There is a toxic effect

In the same study on the Anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects of Ulomoides dermestoides on induced pleurisy in rats and lymphoproliferation in vitro, which found the anti-inflammatory properties of Ulomoides dermestoides secretions, there is an important observation.

When the dose is increased, the extract becomes toxic, that is, it poisons the body.

How many beetles must be eaten in order to be poisoned with a guarantee is not specified. Every beetle eater runs the risk of establishing this personally.

3. After taking beetles, serious complications can develop

For example, acute pneumonia. A case of pneumonia associated with darkling beetles is reported by Acute Eosinophilic Pneumonia Associated with Ingestion of Ulomoides dermestoides Larvae (“Chinese Beetles”) by the American Thoracic Society.

In addition, insects carry various bacteria, including pathogenic ones. So by taking live Chinese beetles, you can get some kind of infection. Whether the risk is justified is a rhetorical question.