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.
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.
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.
Think that you might have it?
Here are 14 symptoms of giardia that you should know.
1. Persistent Fever
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.
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.
A fever 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.
Always treat fever as a serious type of medical symptom that’s best taken care of immediately.
