“Can millipedes/centipedes survive in the human body?!” exclaims this reader in her submission. She asks with regard to the centipede-like creature she happened to spit out when brushing her teeth.

“I had an experience similar to the girl who thought she threw up a worm in the shower,” she continues, though we do not know what girl she is referring to. “I was brushing my teeth, coughed, and spit directly into the sink. I got nervous when I realized something was sort of moving IN my spit. I moved it to a clean area on the counter and took the attached pictures. It looks like the same worm she saw.”

The worm does indeed resemble a centipede: in fact, if she had not said she found the creature in her spit, we would have no doubt that this is a centipede. The multiple legs growing from the sides of its body, the antennae, and the body’s coloration all point to the fact that this would be a centipede.

It may indeed be a centipede: perhaps it ended up on our reader’s toothbrush before she brushed her teeth, or in her toothpaste (though we have no idea how that would occur). Luckily, the worst a centipede of this size can do to a human being is bite/sting them, which will cause pain, but no long-term effects.

However, if our reader believes that the worm did indeed come from her body, then we are afraid that this might be a medical situation. In this case, we are not qualified to identify the worm (so, the identification made above should be disregarded), nor are we qualified to give any direct advice on what our reader can do to solve this issue.

What we can do is point her in the direction of some medical professionals who specialize in organism-related infections, namely medical parasitologists. So, what we can recommend is that our reader do one or more of the following:

1) Search for a medical parasitologist in her area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory.
2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of the closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of the closest big city)”.
3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com.
4) Contact Dr. Vipul Savaliya of Infectious Disease Care (“IDCare”) at idcarepa.com.

We should note that both Dr. Amin and Dr. Savaliya are available for online consultation, so our reader does not need to be in the vicinity of their physical offices to get help!

In conclusion, the organism our reader found does indeed resemble a centipede, though the fact that it was found in her spit is very odd. If our reader begins to experience symptoms of some kind, or has any reasonable cause to believe that this creature came from her body, then we suggest that she consult a medical parasitologist. We hope that this article proves helpful, and we wish her the very best.

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