It started so small I almost ignored it. 

Low energy that coffee couldn't fix. A stomach that felt "off" more days than not. Bloating after meals I'd eaten my whole life. That foggy, one-step-behind feeling that made simple days feel hard. 

I told myself it was stress. Then I told myself it was age. Then I told myself it was my diet. 

But it kept going. And the questions started stacking up:

• Why do I feel this run-down when nothing's really "wrong"? 
• Why does my gut react to foods that never bothered me before? 
• Why does every visit end with "everything looks normal" — when I clearly don't feel normal? 

Here's the part nobody tells you: when something's quietly off, the hardest thing isn't the symptom. It's not knowing what you're actually dealing with. 

While reading up one night, I found something that genuinely surprised me — straight from the CDC.

Parasitic infections aren't just a "travel" thing, or a "somewhere else" thing. They're more common in the United States than most people realize — and the CDC itself has said so. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden put it plainly: these infections are "more common in the United States than people realize, and yet there is so much we don't know about them." 

That reframed everything for me. Not because I decided I had one — I didn't know, and neither did my doctor yet — but because it was a real, documented possibility I'd never once been asked about. 

So I brought it to my provider. Instead of guessing, we finally had a specific question worth asking.

Here's what surprised me most — every number below is the CDC's own, not a marketing claim:

• Over 40 million people in the United States carry the Toxoplasma parasite, according to the CDC — and most never have symptoms and don't know they carry it. 
• The CDC formally flagged a group of "Neglected Parasitic Infections" — five parasites (Chagas disease, cysticercosis, toxocariasis, toxoplasmosis and trichomoniasis) singled out as public-health priorities specifically because they're under-recognized and under-diagnosed here at home. 
• One of them, trichomoniasis, affects about 3.7 million Americans — and the CDC notes most infected people never get tested or treated. 
• The CDC has also been candid about the knowledge gap itself: providers may not recognize, diagnose, or treat these infections appropriately, and we have a limited understanding of how many people are affected. 

None of this means anyone reading this has a parasite. It just means it's a real, documented, and often-overlooked possibility — and one worth being aware of, and talking to your own doctor about. 

That awareness is what led me to be more intentional about my gut. Not as a cure. As upkeep.