If our stomach acids are some of the strongest acids, how do stomach bugs and tapeworms and germs not get digested in it? How is it that only things like insulin get digested?
In: Biology
Parasites generally don’t come into your system as full-grown organisms. What happens is that you consume either their eggs or cysticerci (cysticerci are sort of like eggs, but are found in the muscle of pigs or cattle in the form of cysts). Both of these are resistant to digestion; both acidic and enzymatic. Once the eggs or cysticerci pass through your stomach and end up in a more favorable environment in the small intestine they will hatch and grow into proper parasitic organisms like tapeworms, roundworms, pinworms, etc. I encourage you to google images of human parasite lifecycles to get a nice general idea.
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