Research shows that the parasite in bad meat affects memory and learning YEARS after you become ill

As if the diarrhea and vomiting weren’t enough, researchers now think that a bout of food poisoning could make you less intelligent in the future.

If you’ve had food poisoning before, you’re more likely to have poor learning skills and memory and develop schizophrenia, according to parasitologists and evolutionary biologists at Charles University in the Czech Republic.

Previous research has shown this link in the weeks and months after developing food poisoning.

But scientists involved in these studies have attributed this to the fact that people simply don’t feel sick in the immediate aftermath.

But the new research suggests that the personality changes caused by food poisoning last long after you’ve recovered.

The experts from Charles University in Prague focused on two specific insects that affect a large part of the population and can survive in the body for long periods of time.

One of them, called Toxoplasma gondii, is responsible for 800,000 cases of food poisoning every year in the US. Toxoplasma can be found in all types of meat, but is most commonly found in pork, lamb and venison, according to the FDA.

The other, Borrelia spp, is a bacterium responsible for Lyme disease, which roughly affects 476,000 people every year in the US.

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that can prey on many different types of hosts, from humans to cats to the CDC. In addition to bad meat, it is found in contaminated water and diseased cat feces.

Nearly a quarter of people past adolescence said they had contracted the parasite, according to Dr. Jeffery Jones, an epidemiologist and pediatrician at the Centers for Disease Control. It causes roughly 24 percent of foodborne illness deaths in the US.

If you are healthy, accidentally ingesting some of this parasite will likely cause only a mild infection.

But if you have a weakened immune system or are pregnant, you may experience an intense and sudden episode of vomiting, chills, diarrhea, sweating and weakness in response to the parasite, according to doctors at Baylor College of Medicine. According to Nutrition Facts, this may be why you see more Toxoplasma infections in the US as people get older.

According to the CDC, the parasite doesn’t leave your body after you stop feeling sick; it often remains in you for life. Most people will have very few noticeable symptoms, but if you have a weakened immune system, you may develop flu-like symptoms.

The study, that was published in the magazine Folia Parasitologica, surveyed 7,762 people with an average age of 42 years.

About 962 of these people reported testing positive for Toxoplasma and 1,778 of these people reported being infected with Borrelia.

Each of the respondents completed a barrage of tests designed to measure personality traits, memory and cognitive skills.

The people who had previously had toxoplasma food poisoning had slower reaction times and less accurate responses to a general neurological examination called the Stroop test.

A commonly used version of the Stroop test involves participants looking at color words written in different colored fonts. For example, the word blue can be written in a green font and the word orange can be written in a pink font.

The participants must identify the color of the word, not the word itself.

The Stroop test is used in laboratories as a measure of attention span, memory, mental acuity and intelligence Lesley University.

If participants’ responses were slower or less accurate, the researchers generally called that a sign that their memory or intelligence was poorer.

The study authors say their results point to long-lasting effects of the infections, because the behavioral changes did not only occur in people who were in poor health because of the bug.

Participants still had worse memory even after their physical symptoms disappeared, the authors reported, meaning the parasite caused chronic problems.

A 2021 study of 800 adults in Taiwan found that people who got food poisoning from toxoplasmosis were 2.8 times more likely to develop dementia than those who did not. In addition, people who were treated for the disease were less likely to develop dementia than those who were not.

It has also been shown that rodents infected with this parasite have poorer memory and difficulty navigating their enclosure. to a 2023 study from the Pasteur Institute of Iran.

The disease has also been linked to other neurological changes, such as schizophrenia. A 2022 study from the Federal University of Rio De Janeiro found that people infected with toxoplasma were more likely to develop schizophrenia than people who had not contracted the parasite.

Scientists don’t know exactly how this parasite changes your brain. But one theory, explained in a 2023 paper of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences in Iran, said the parasite could alter the levels of brain chemicals that control mood, memory and emotions.

The study found that exposure to toxoplasma caused an increase in a chemical called dopamine and a decrease in a chemical called serotonin in the rodents’ brains. This led to changes in memory and behavior.

Another theory is that the parasite living in your body for a long time can cause a small but consistent immune response in your body, which over time can wear out your brain. according to Dr. Michael Gregera public health specialist and nutritionist.

The researchers of the Czech study concluded that although these diseases appeared linked, they could not yet demonstrate how this happened.