Does a paste of dates, walnuts, almonds and raisins steeped in water have scientifically proven deworming properties? No, that's not true: A board-certified medical doctor specializing in infectious diseases and internal medicine told Lead Stories that such a mixture is not proven to be effective. Lead Stories found no evidence supporting the claim.
The claim appeared in a reel (archived here) on Facebook on January 12, 2024. In the video, a female narrator said:
Two dates, four half-walnuts, four almonds and 10 raisins. This will help kill those intestinal worms, get your gut back to health and cleanses your vital organs for your heart and your liver. Steep them overnight in water. And that's them the next morning. Drink all that leftover residue in the morning. And then, with the rest of it, you're going to take it, you're going to grind it down smooth, and you're going to take a spoonful throughout the day.
This is what it looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Mar 20 21:02:53 2024 UTC)
Thomas A. Moore, M.D. (archived here), a Kansas-based board-certified internist and infectious diseases expert, told Lead Stories via email on March 20, 2024:
If only it were that easy!
Simple, inexpensive, homemade solutions are always best, but only when they are effective.
As you might imagine, intestinal helminth infections, albeit common in the developing world, are quite rare in the United States.
That is to say, someone out there is pushing an ineffective treatment for an illness which is very uncommon in the USA. It seems reasonable to surmise these persons are pushing a bogus claim for likes and clickbait to get cash.
Both the World Health Organization (archived here) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (archived here) say that such infections are treated with specific medicines, not with some homemade paste.
Lead Stories found no credible academic research assessing the effectiveness of the mixture made of dates, walnuts, almonds and raisins.
A WebMD database (archived here) doesn't show any natural remedies against intestinal worms that are proven to work.
Yet, it is not the first time that claims about parasite cleanses resurfaced on social media. Some of them promoted the consumption of straightforwardly dangerous substances, as Lead Stories previously wrote.
Contrary to such claims, one doesn't need to operate on the assumption that everyone suffers from parasites at any given moment -- such conditions can be clinically diagnosed.
In November 2022, Dr. Rabia De Latour, assistant professor of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told Rolling Stone (archived here):
Routine empiric parasitic cleanses in someone without symptoms are not based on any evidence. ... Most parasitic infections are spread from contaminated food or water, and risk can increase with international travel to endemic regions, so if you are concerned about this, you should seek help from a medical professional for potential treatment.
Licensed medical professionals also debunked similar claims in articles published by Business Insider (archived here) and Consumer Reports (archived here).
Other Lead Stories fact checks about health can be found here.
