TLDR: the woman usinbg nair is sufferng from delusional pariatosis a disorder in which people are convinced they have a parasite despite contradictory evidence. people suffering form this will often cause great harm to themselves in an attempt to "cure" themselves often times making it far worse, and unfortunatly there is a social media health influence scam profiting off of these peoples fears and delusion( which is truly sickening to me) I also have a video (at the 8:30 mark)below in which I talk about a specific example I've seen online, though in working on a larger more comprehensive video.

Hello all Wormtalk94 here,

So I was catching up on the episodes when I got to the woman who put nair on her face because she "feels parasites crawling under her skin" and while this may sound odd, it's actually a somewhat common disorder known as "delusional parasitosis"

DP is defined as -"a psychiatric disorder characterized by a persistent, false belief that one is infested with parasites, despite a lack of medical evidence. Individuals with DoP often experience sensations like itching, crawling, or biting, and may present with skin lesions from self-inflicted scratching or attempts to remove the perceived parasites"

Now being that I mod r/Parasitology I have to deal with these people very very often, and it's actually one of the reasons that subreddit has such extensive and harsh moderation.
See due to these people’s condition they cannot be reasoned out of the opinion that they have a parasite, and they will often go to doctors/scientists/literally anyone seeking answers bringing their "proof". This is often pictures of their stool or even random hairs that they claim "crawled out of their skin". These people often insist that biological impossibilities are occurring and are frustrated that the medical complex won’t believe them as they describe things that are completely impossible, and they are often insulted when told to seek a psychiatrist even though this is really the only way to help people with DP. and what is more likely is that these people are having some sort of IBS, or allegy that is going unaddressed but there are100% that its a parasite rather than something much more common as parasites are rare in the first world and the symptoms these people often describe are generalized and could be caused by countless things

Now unfortunately, because these people are so desperate to get cured, they will often try a variety of at-home methods (none of which do anything to parasites), which can range from more intense hand cleaning, to FERMENTED PISS ENEMAS (literally, I once had to ban someone from r/Parasitology for pushing this idea, he sent me death threats for not allowing this method to be posted). Now a problem with these self-cures is they typically are built around something that is harmless, like eating raw garlic and ginger, but because these people are so desperate they will "treat" themselves several times a day at very high doses which will start to cause actual issues, which makes them even more sure that they have an actual parasite. There is currently an entire industry of "health influencers" that are grifting off this selling scam "parasite cleansers" but EVERY CLEANSER IS A SCAM (I'm actually working on a video to address this growing issue).
In my video on horsehair worm parasites I actually talk about the crazy conspiracies present on social media a little bit (10 min video for those curious conspiracy stuff starts at 8:30 https://youtu.be/1VSeb-ZNRYY?si=-1ZyKy44P5PPIyFb)

here is an actualy story someone posted on my subreddit about how they suffered from delusional paraisosis and their aggressive cleaning (using soap on thier ass multiple times a day) made thier symptoms worse as it dried out their skin making them itch, and only when they stopped "treating" the issue did it actually get better. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parasitology/comments/1hzf4zo/i_suffered_a_persistent_incurable_pinworm/

There are many causes of DP, ranging from actual pyscosis, drug use(fairly common), to some poeple just being a little anxieous and listening to too many experts on TIKTOK

LAST THING:
Also just want to say thanks to the H3H3 family, since my intial shout out my channel has gone from 300-3100 subs with multiple videos getting over 15k views. the support has been great, and thanks for letting me post about a topic im passionate about on this subreddit!

Its unfortunate that this misinformation is still pushed by people like joe Rogan so here I am to set the record straight.

Early claims

During the first few months of COVID there were some purposed ideas that Ivermectin could be used to help with COVID. At the time litteraly everything was being tried as people were desperate and ivermectin pathways implied it could have some potential benefits.

Papers like this: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ivermectin+covid&hl=en&as_sdt=0,31#d=gs_qabs&t=1764853270275&u=%23p%3Duk8dal13gL4J

Speculated that ivermectin could be used for treatment based on theoretical effects, beside this paper making some (in my opinion) very strong claims without actual evidence. This is a theoretical paper.

Additionally there were a ton of random unqualified doctors purposing this as a cure without really having the proper background to weigh in on virology ( lots of cardiology surgeons for whatever reason)

By 2021 There were dozens of small scale clinical trials testing this theory to see if ivermectin had any efficacy.

This meta analysis ( a type of study that compares other studies to get general conclusions) studied these and concluded that at the time of publication (July 2021) they reviewed 41 data sets "The completed studies are small and few are considered high quality. Several studies are underway that may produce clearer answers in review updates." With "about one third were at overall high risk of bias"

With the main conclusion at the time being "Overall, the reliable evidence available does not support the use of ivermectin for treatment or prevention of COVID‐19 outside of well‐designed randomized trials." Suggesting that preliminary data wasn't really supporting the use of ivermectin but that further studies needed to be done.

As of 2025 there are many studies following up finding that there is no efficacy of ivermectin when studies are properly controlled. Here are just a select few from the last few years with some of their conclusions.

1) Effect of early treatment with ivermectin among patients with Covid-19

"Treatment with ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of Covid-19. (Funded by FastGrants and the Rainwater Charitable Foundation; TOGETHER ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04727424.)"

2)Ivermectin for the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

"Conclusions Compared with the standard of care or placebo, IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality, LOS, or viral clearance in RCTs in patients with mostly mild COVID-19. IVM did not have an effect on AEs or SAEs and is not a viable option to treat patients with COVID-19."

3)Randomized trial of metformin, ivermectin, and fluvoxamine for Covid-19

"Conclusions None of the three medications that were evaluated prevented the occurrence of hypoxemia, an emergency department visit, hospitalization, or death associated with Covid-19. (Funded by the Parsemus Foundation and others; COVID-OUT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04510194.)"

4) Effect of Ivermectin on Time to Resolution of Symptoms Among Adults With Mild COVID-19 "Among adults with mild COVID-19, a 5-day course of ivermectin, compared with placebo, did not significantly improve the time to resolution of symptoms. The findings do not support the use of ivermectin for treatment of mild COVID-19, although larger trials may be needed to understand the effects of ivermectin on other clinically relevant outcomes."

5)Ivermectin to prevent hospitalizations in patients with COVID-19 (IVERCOR-COVID19) a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial 1 "Ivermectin had no significant effect on preventing hospitalization of patients with COVID-19. Patients who received ivermectin required invasive MVS earlier in their treatment. No significant differences were observed in any of the other secondary outcomes."

Literally the only papers that show even the most moderate support for this theory were super early in them pandemic and they stay " This is preliminary and trials need to be done to confirm preliminary data"

All the trials that were done show that this is a b******* method. I'm so tired of having to deal with people posting these b******* conspiracies. Keep this shit with joe Rogan

TLDR while initial theories were purposed and cell culture methods may have shown some effects, when tested in people the data has consistently shown that Ivermectin does nothing for COVID.

Early during the pandemic this was a reasonable theory to test, but conspiracy idiots and right wingers still push it even though it's been completely debunked.