How Not to Get Brain-Eating Worms and Mercury Poisoning

Are you experiencing unexplained memory lapses or brain fog? Ever considered that you may have a parasite in your brain? That apparently was the startling diagnosis received by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 14 years ago from one of the top neurologists in the US, according to a 2012 deposition which has recently been reviewed by The New York Times.

At the time, Kennedy was reportedly suffering from a constellation of neurological symptoms, which led concerned friends to believe he might have a brain tumor. Instead, it transpired that he had a parasitic infection. At around the same time, he said in the 2012 deposition and confirmed to the Times, he was also dealing with acute mercury poisoning.

The odds of dealing with both a brain parasite and mercury poisoning at the same time seem vanishingly rare. But just how rare is each condition? (Very.) And how can you avoid a similar fate? (Pretty easily.)

There are approximately two dozen parasites that we know can reach the brain, says Hany Elsheikha, a parasitology expert at the University of Nottingham, although this doesn’t always happen; many parasites are either cleared by the immune system or end up in the gut. They range from common species such as Toxoplasma gondi, which is believed to have infected around 11 percent of the population in the US over the age of six, to single-celled amoeba that can trigger fatal meningitis. It’s unclear exactly what sort of parasite might have lodged in RFK Jr.’s brain.

While parasite infections are more common than one might assume, they tend to settle elsewhere in the body. “Parasites don’t normally infect the brain, because it has a special anatomical structure which keeps it well protected,” Elsheikha says. “But sometimes they have a special affinity to the brain, and that person has a preexisting health condition or something going on in the background which makes them immunocompromised, and so the parasite seizes the opportunity.”

When parasites have the opportunity to reside in the brain or spinal cord, Elsheikha says, they usually take it, because the brain has a high metabolic activity, which means there is a plentiful supply of sugars on