My terrain-focused perspective on parasites, why the kill-everything mentality misses the bigger picture, and what caring for your internal environment actually looks like.
Spend ten minutes on wellness Instagram and you’ll become convinced your intestines are an Airbnb for worms.
Tired? Parasites. Bloated? Parasites. Woke up feeling weird on a Tuesday? Apparently SOMETHING SLIMY with 400 babies has taken over your liver and brain.
Then comes the bottle of "ANTI LIFE PARASITE REMOVER, 3.0 EXTRA STRENGTH". Convenient.
F alll that nonsense and let us get to the CORE.
I approach this differently. My perspective starts with the terrain: the internal environment of the body and the conditions we create through how we eat, sleep, move and live.
Before I become obsessed with what might be living inside me, I want to understand what’s happening with the PLACE it’s living in.
Look at the conditions
We understand this when we look at land.
A struggling garden makes you ask questions. What’s happening with the soil? Is the water clean? Is anything getting enough light? What keeps coming back, and why?
Then we look at the human body and suddenly the entire conversation becomes, “What can I take to kill this?”
I think that’s an incomplete conversation.
From a terrain perspective, I’m interested in whether the body’s condition makes it easier for an organism to persist or cause trouble. How well are you nourished? How’s your digestion? Are you sleeping? What are you repeatedly exposed to?
Parasites don’t materialize because your body decided to punish you. There’s an exposure, an organism, a host and a set of conditions. I want to look at that whole relationship.
But you eat raw meat…
Yep. Since October 2023, I’ve eaten raw animal foods pretty consistently. Raw beef, fish, egg yolks and dairy have all been part of my diet.
About three years of eating the foods that tend to make the comment section call an exorcist.
I feel amazing. I haven’t noticed symptoms that make me suspect a parasitic infection. That’s my experience, though, not a lab result or proof that raw food can’t transmit parasites.
What interests me is the bigger picture around how I eat. In The Untamed Diet, I talk about sourcing, digestion, nourishment and paying attention to how your body responds. The food is one part of an entire way of living.
I didn’t arrive here by picking the most controversial thing on the menu. I experimented, paid attention and kept what felt good for me.
That’s also why I care about the terrain conversation. I want to understand the person eating the food, their habits, their environment and what’s actually happening with their health. A label like “raw” tells you surprisingly little about that whole picture.
With clients, that’s the conversation I want to have. What are you eating? What’s your digestion doing? What have you already tried? Are you chasing a symptom while overlooking something you do every single day?
There’s a human being attached to those intestines. Let’s include them in the discussion.
“Enemy” isn’t always a useful starting point
Calling something an enemy tells you to fight it. It doesn’t tell you much about what’s happening.
Different parasites behave differently. Some infections cause significant harm. Some cause no obvious symptoms. The organism matters, and so does the person carrying it.
My terrain perspective is a reason to ask more questions before turning the body into a permanent extermination project.
What’s been wearing you down? What changed before the symptoms started? Are you dealing with an actual infection, or have you diagnosed yourself through a reel filmed next to a discount code?
Your body deserves a little more investigation than that.
What I’d actually focus on
Start with food you digest well and enough of it. Constant restriction while trying to “clean yourself out” can turn eating into a full-time anxiety disorder.
Give sleep an actual place in your life. Get outside. Move regularly. Pay attention to your bowel habits and whether symptoms keep returning.
Look at your surroundings, too. Drinking water, food handling and sanitation belong in this conversation. Loving nature doesn’t mean everything you swallow in nature is doing you a favor.
If you suspect an infection, find out what you’re dealing with. Persistent symptoms deserve investigation. A confirmed parasite calls for treatment appropriate to that organism; supporting your terrain can happen alongside it.
And feeling worse after taking something doesn’t automatically prove it’s working. “Die-off” shouldn’t become a magic word that makes every bad reaction sound productive.
The question I keep coming back to
I’m interested in building a body that functions well, rather than spending my life hunting for the next thing to purge.
That’s what the terrain perspective means to me: paying attention to the conditions, taking responsibility for the daily inputs, and keeping the whole person in the picture.
You can spend a remarkable amount of money trying to kill everything while continuing to live in ways that leave you exhausted.
I’d rather investigate the whole situation.
Want to go deeper?
I wrote The Untamed Diet for people who want to question what they’ve been taught about food and explore a more instinctive approach to nourishment.
It covers my experience with raw animal foods, my terrain perspective, sourcing, digestion and how I changed the way I eat. With considerably more personality than the food pyramid ever offered you.
If you want personal support, work with me one-on-one. We’ll look at your food, digestion, habits and what you’re trying to address before you throw another cleanse at your body. If detox is on your mind, we can sort through what you mean by that, what’s appropriate and when testing or medical treatment needs to come first.
Bring your actual situation. We’ll start there.
