{"id":19664,"date":"2019-12-03T05:11:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T05:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/besthealth.guide\/?p=19664"},"modified":"2021-10-14T01:54:51","modified_gmt":"2021-10-14T01:54:51","slug":"14-symptoms-of-giardia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/besthealth.guide\/14-symptoms-of-giardia\/","title":{"rendered":"14 Symptoms of Giardia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When most people think of parasitic infections, the first things that they imagine include ringworm, tapeworm, and a few other parasites, many of which still end in -worm but aren’t of the same type as the ones before them. But these aren’t the only types of parasitic infections that you can contract.
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Giardia is another common type of parasitic infection that could happen to you in the event of exposure to the parasite or their eggs. While it’s not considered quite as common as parasites like tapeworm, it still ranks as one of the top ten parasites that can and will seek out a human host (and can live happily for months without being detected in the human body.
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Giardia is a microscopic type of parasite that you’re likely to find near infected water, though one that can also spread through contact with objects (or people) that are carrying the eggs of the giardia parasite.
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Think that you might have it? 
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Here are 14 symptoms of giardia that you should know.
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1. Persistent Fever<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As you’ll see from the below symptoms that are mentioned in this article, parasitic infections can wreak havoc on the body and affect many different organs and processes inside the body that people might not even have thought to relate to a possible parasitic infection. 
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One of the first general symptoms that you should look out for is a fever. It’s one of the first health signs that can point to an infection somewhere in the body, and sometimes it might be parasitic in nature if enough of the symptoms you experience are consistent with a parasite. 
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A fever <\/a>is the body’s way of responding to intruders or what it imagines shouldn’t be there. Sometimes the body creates this type of response when it spots a parasite like giardia (or even a virus like the flu) and spikes the body temperature right up to the ceiling to try and get rid of it.\u00a0
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Always treat fever as a serious type of medical symptom that’s best taken care of immediately.
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2. Night Sweats<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Don’t forget that parasites are live creatures just as much as the ones that live far outside of the body and they tend to behave in a lot of the same ways. What this means for the symptoms you are experiencing is that most types of parasites are more active during certain times of the day (or night) than others \u2013 and your symptoms will subsequently increase as the activity level of the parasite reaches a peak. 
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This happens to be true for bed bugs and head lice, but also true for things like tapeworm and giardia. 
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If you notice that any of your symptoms get worse during the night (or during specific times), take note and tell your doctor. Along with a fever, night sweats<\/a> can also be another common symptom associated with a parasitic infection.
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3. Overall Fatigue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Being tired isn’t quite the same thing as feeling fatigued. When you’re tired, you can usually get some sleep or have a power nap for a few minutes and you’ll feel much better when you wake up from either \u2013 but when you’re fatigued, nothing you do appears to make a difference for the real level of tired you are. Fatigue is a serious medical symptom on its own, and it can almost always mean that there’s something wrong in your body.
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Parasites <\/a>like giardia have the ability to feed off the nutrients that would otherwise go to essential processes in the body: This often extends to the energy that your body would need during the day to perform certain tasks.\u00a0
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With this energy taken up by a parasite instead, overall fatigue is a very common symptom seen with many parasitic infections. Treating the infection will usually take care of the associated fatigue or sleepiness.
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4. Diarrhea <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When your body is battling off any type of infection, bacteria, infestation or virus, it can put a lot of energy into fighting off what’s been causing your symptoms \u2013 but in doing this, the body has the ability to magically create new symptoms in place of the old ones. Some of the starting symptoms can include a fever, but these can also progress to ones like diarrhea that put your body in even more danger \u2013 especially if you dehydrate faster, and more so if you can’t get the diarrhea to stop.
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Parasites don’t have to live in the stomach or gut for you to experience diarrhea as an associated symptom. Any type of parasite that affects your immune system or renders your digestive system unhappy can potentially trigger diarrhea as a symptom.
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Always see your doctor for diarrhea <\/a>that continues for more than a couple of hours. It’s vital to find and stop the cause before the condition turns even more dangerous (or even worse, fatal).
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5. Confusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When the body is faced with any kind of severe infection that it can’t get rid of, it can sometimes choose to put even more energy towards trying to get rid of the offender in the system \u2013 which can be a parasite like Giardia <\/a>in many diagnosed cases. While the body is doing this, you have to realize that it’s going to take energy away from another part of the body to compensate for this energy loss \u2013 and this can lead to many other symptoms that one might not associate with giardia or other parasite infections, but ones that will almost always show up.
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Confusion can be a common symptom associated with parasitic infections. In some cases it can happen due to the energy process and the body’s attempt to expel the parasite as described above, but in more severe cases it can be confusing due to the parasites traveling up where they can affect the brain and spinal column. 
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See your doctor if any confusion becomes a symptom regardless of the other symptoms you experience in conjunction.
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6. Appetite Changes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Appetite <\/a>and nutrition are two of the most possibly complex medical elements, and there are a thousand things that can potentially affect them \u2013 and a million different things that this could mean for your health from there. Signs of appetite changes might be hard to spot for some people who spend most of their lives on the road or at work and don’t have a lot of time to eat anyway, but signs of weight changes are much easier to spot when the pants no longer fit (and they often go together with underlying appetite changes).
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Appetite changes are always a serious medical symptom: See your doctor if you experience any changes, whether you want to eat more than usual or suddenly decide to eat less than usual. 
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Either of these factors could signal a serious health problem and were combined with the right symptoms from this list it could also signal a potential giardia infection.
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7. Signs of Vitamin Depletion<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A sudden change in appetite isn’t the only way in which a serious parasitic infection could affect your nutritional habits and throw out the rest of your health in the process. Parasites are live creatures, and in order to stay alive they have to take certain things away from the human host in order to sustain their life inside of it.
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A lot of the symptoms that you’ll experience as a result of giardia infections are because of the parasites doing just that.  One of the further symptoms that you could experience as a result of the parasitic infection inside your body are signs of vitamin depletion.
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General lowered immunity can be one sign associated with vitamin depletion, and depending on which vitamin is being drawn out of your body most, you could experience different symptoms that include cramps <\/a>nail discoloration and increased problems with vision (usually gradual and over time).
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8. Sudden Changes in Health<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When the body has picked up any kind of parasitic infection such as giardia, it’s likely to be affected in a number of different ways \u2013 and the symptoms you experience are likely to get worse as the parasites ilves through its life cycle in your body.  The longer a parasitic infection is allowed to continue in the body, the worse off the host becomes.
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If you notice any sudden changes in your health that you can match together with some of the symptoms that appear on this list, speak to your doctor about the possibility of parasitic infection as the root cause behind it. 
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There are a million possible things that could cause these sudden changes in your health, but the more symptoms you can track down for the same thing the more refined your possible diagnosis <\/a>can become (and the more sure you can eventually be of what type of parasitic infection you’ve picked up).
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9. Sudden Recurring Stomach Upsets<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Everyone gets an upset stomach <\/a>once in a while because of something they ate, and it’s almost a given with bigger events like Christmas and thanksgiving when people bombard their bodies with an assortment of foods they wouldn’t normally consume so much of during any point in the year. This is normal for most people out there, but any kind of stomach upset outside of this sphere can be a very concerning medical symptom that needs further medical examination.
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If you experience stomach upsets on a chronic level and it keeps happening to you, change a few things in your diet to see if this could be the cause: Sometimes it’s your diet, other times your body doesn’t tolerate one or two allergens found in your diet.
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But if you can combine even more of the symptoms on this list, it’s likely that you should get tested for the giardia parasite. 
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10. Changes in Reaction to Nutrients<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When parasites make themselves at home in your body, they’re drawing out of your body’s most essential resources in order to keep the infestation alive. It’s common for people who have picked up a parasitic infection to start feeling tired, sluggish, hungry and to lose weight<\/a> as the infection progresses further inside the body \u2013 whether or not they know it’s there.
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When the body can’t use the resources it needs because these resources are instead being held hostage by the parasites in your body, you can expect a few kind of sudden changes in your body that can tip you off that something is wrong. 
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If you’re taking in enough nutrients for your recommended daily intake but it’s not having the right effect, see your doctor: Some health conditions can cause issues with the proper absorption of nutrients, and parasites have the ability to affect how your body can absorb and process them too: if you can combine several symptoms of a parasitic infection, see your doctor ASAP.
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11. Headaches with No Cause<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Headaches are one of the most commonly experienced medical symptoms there are. Almost everyone alive gets headaches at some point in their lives, although some causes of a headache are entirely temporary and some are chronic.\u00a0 There are a vast variety of different things that could cause headaches, and the list of possible triggers includes dietary factors, medication factors, genetic factors \u2013 and sometimes things like dehydration <\/a>at best.
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All headaches are unpleasant, although not all of them are equally serious.
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If you experience headaches with no seeming cause (and nothing that you do seems to have any effect on reducing the problem), see your doctor to track down the root cause of your headaches: If it’s combined with some of the other symptoms on this list or you can track it down to when you were exposed to something like the giardia parasite, see your doctor.
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12. Generalized Weakness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

General muscle weakness is a serious symptom that can accompany a range of different medical conditions. Most of these medical conditions are serious, and depending on what type of symptoms you experience together with the weakness as the first one, you could have any number of different conditions. How do you know what’s behind the cause of your muscle weakness? The only way to be really sure is to see your doctor and request the proper tests to find the cause. 
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If you have been recently exposed to parasites or you’ve been in any environment where exposure is likely, speak to your doctor about the possibility of a parasitic infection as the cause: Many times doctors don’t test for it just because they didn’t think to, and a mention of the right parasite by the patient can be a vital Eureka-moment for the doctor. 
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Generalized weakness <\/a>can be easy to treat, but the treatment course followed will depend first on what you’re diagnosed with.
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13. Bodily Discomfort<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Other than weakness, one of the most common symptoms of a parasitic infection includes generalized bodily discomfort. Sometimes this symptom will show up with a full-bodied effect where most of the body is affected, where other times it might be restricted to a specific part of the body instead \u2013 and usually one that’s been directly affected by the parasite. 
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Most types of parasitic infections aren’t comfortable for the host: Other than drawing resources and nutrients out of your body, the host is also likely to experience an increase in their symptoms once the parasitic infection has spread or started to move or reproduce. 
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When parasites are \u201cdoing their thing\u201d in the body, so to speak, this leads to a few of the symptoms on this list \u2013 and can lead to general body discomfort<\/a>, bloating, swelling or pain that you couldn’t find another cause for. The right tests can find the cause: Just see your doctor at the first sign of symptoms.\u00a0
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14. Other Signs and Symptoms<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Parasitic infections can cause a range of different symptoms that aren’t mentioned on this list: If you have been exposed to a parasite or if you’ve been in an environment where exposure to a parasite is likely, the first step should be to see your doctor for tests and a diagnosis. Recommend the same to anyone else who might have been at the same place and at the same time and make sure you take the right precautions from there to ensure nobody else in the household or office contracts the same condition you’ve picked up. 
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See your doctor at the very first sign of discomfort or pain. Most symptoms you experience are because of something affecting your body and your health<\/a>, and all of these symptoms can usually be diagnosed and treated once you see your doctor.\u00a0
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In the rare case that what’s causing your symptoms isn’t a parasitic infection, tests and a doctor’s appointment will be just as important and can often be the only way there is to track down the truth.
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