Aromachildhood

Worms

The human body is an attractive home for many a tiny creature, intestinal parasites among them. In this section we will concern ourselves with the most common of these, threadworms, but treatment is the same for all worms. Worms inhabit all types of children  - the good, the bad and the naughty. It doesn't much matter whether your child goes to the top public school or the local St Trinians, the chances are that at some time he or she may contact worms. Worms can be passed from person to person, direct from faeces or, recent discoveries seem to indicate, simply from breathing in the eggs as they cruise in the air.

Wherever the eggs, happen to be, on toilets, on other people's hands, on objects handled by an infected person or even an object that eggs happen to have laid upon, they can very easily be picked  up and transferred to the mouth. Once inside a person, the eggs move through the stomach to the intestine where they develop into a worm. At night, the female worms wiggle their way down to the anus  and lay their eggs. This causes the main symptom - itching. Although some would say this is indeed the only symptom, worms could be the cause of your child always being a bit under the weather.

Worms are responsible for weight loss, swollen abdomen, irritability, inability to concentrate, legarthy, headaches  and teeth grinding. Although none of these may be dreadfully serious, there seems little point in allowing the little cratures to live off your child when they can be got rid of easily.

Threadworms resemble little pieces of white sewing cotton, about half an inch long. They come out of the bowel in stools and can be seen around the anal area or on toilet paper. as small children have an insatiable curiosity about all things that come out of their bodies  it's quite useful to ask the child like the mother who asked her four-year-old daughter to look 'in case the cotton came out'; her child went about terrified that her tummy would fall out because the stiches had come out!

The first line of defense against worms is to teach your children good personal hygiene habits - always to wash their hands after going to the toilet and before eating. All members of the household should have and use their own towel and face-cloth. Any medication for worms given by the doctor or pharmacist will not conflict with essential oil treatment.

The following essential oils are effective used as a tummy rub:

Children in French villages used to wear necklaces made of garlic to prevent them getting worms, nowadays garlic bread or garlic soup is given instead. Certainly worms hate garlic, and a good garlic soup is by far one of the best natural remedies for children. Garlic pills can also help. To counteract the smell of garlic  on the breath, chew parsley.

The life cycle of a threadworm is two weeks, so treatment should be at least that long. If one member of the family has threadworms, all members should be treated.Make up an essential oil tummy rub using the quantities above and rub over the whole of the abdominal area for at least two weeks. Double the dose for adults.

Inhaling the oils helps too, so make up the synergistic blend and ad 2 drops in warm baths and 3 drops on a diffuser in the child's room, or in the hot water-bowl method:

Tapeworms, which do look like small pieces of tape, are paralysed by pomegranates and can then be flushed out of the body with a good purge. You can treat your children without their even knowing it provided you can get them to eat pomegranates, followed by prunes, dried apricots, apples or bananas or whatever for the purge.Dried fruits are more effective than the fresh variety for this purpose.

Pomegranates contain an alkaloid drug, pelletierine, which stuns the worms so effectively that it seems a good idea to make a point of this procedure once a year when the pomegranates are in season just to ensure that your child is clear of this particular parasite.
Certainly, if you hear that there is an outbreak of tapeworms at school, this treatment would be a good precaution. If you have pets, make a pomegranate syrup which can be given daily to the child or give one pomegranate three times on the day you worm your pet.
Roundworm and hookworm respond particularly well to chenopodium essential oil which contains ascaridole.

The Fragrant Pharmacy: Valerie A. Worwood