Hard to swallow...

'Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I'll go and eat worms' - these lines are attributed by some to Spike Milligan. And although he suffered from mental illness, in this case life has imitated fiction with a man in Thailand telling the local newspaper that a 'worm a day keeps the doctor away'.

But before you going digging up the lawn, be advised that this health tip comes not from a scientist at a Thai teaching hospital, but from Paisit Chanta, a firefighter who insists that eating a worm every day has kept him fighting fit for 30 years. 'One day, I was sitting there waiting for a fish to eat my bait for hours and was starving. Suddenly, I realised fish don't die from eating worms so I shouldn't either. I ate them until I was full.'

And in a further twist scientists in the US have concluded that eating worms can actually help the human immune system fight bowel diseases. In experiments carried out on volunteers, physicians found that worms greatly reduce the symptoms of inflammatory and sometimes incurable bowel diseases.

Now a German company, BioCure, is planning to release a medicinal worm drink for sufferers of such conditions. BioCure's medicine, called TSO, contains thousands of porcine whipworm eggs (Trichuris suis). When drunk, they hatch and produce whipworms in the intestines. As soon as the immune system realises there are parasites in the stomach, it triggers an anti-inflammatory reaction which helps alleviate bowel disease.

Gerd Mayer, BioCure's marketing manager, claimed: 'This product is about five times more effective than conventional medicine.' The company is so sure of TSO that it will shortly apply to EMEA for European approval, which will take about five years. The trials, carried out at the University of Iowa, treated 200 people with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease. Symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease, such as abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhoea, quickly disappeared in half of those with ulcerative colitis and 70% of those with Crohn's.

So eating worms is good for you, but just don't tell my three-year-old son - please!