Have you guys read about this potential new drug? Could be on the market in 2015!!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/pig-parasite-may-help-treat-autoimmune-disorders-174417267.html
I have trouble with this. It reminds me of eating tape worms to loose weight. A dangerous option at best. Deadly at worst.
We are good targets for this type of snake oil. We are willing to try anything to retrieve our lives from AI diseases.
I respect your opinion Joe. With the scientists and drug company involved plus the approval to go into phase two clinical studies.....I do believe this is a bit more studied than the guy on the street selling cactus juice/snake oil with no studies or science to back him. By 2015-2017, if this gets FDA approval and the studies all show promise with little or no side effects, I think I would take it. It's not like I'm 20 or 30 with many years ahead of me. If the years I have left could be made to feel "normal" I'd do it.....when it's my time I doubt if they will be able to tell if it was the SJS related issues or the whipworm eggs that did me in!!! One thing I would prefer..... the stem cell procedures if the USA would get with it and make this an option!
Let's just say, I decided to not even go on into that site and read the article. :o But, thanks for sharing anyway, because we all do that.
susanep :)
I read the article, it sounds like a legit investigation, but I would have a problem taking it, just because it comes from pig poop and basically besides extracting out the whipworm eggs, all they do to it is put it in saline. Yuck, no way I would drink that stuff. Thanks for sharing, I think! : )
Nancy
There just has to be a limit to what we have to do. ;D
susanep :)
So sorry I offended everyone by my post on the latest research....hey, it is what it is!! If you ever analyzed all the "stuff" you've ingested throughout your life, intentional or not, plus all the gunk that has been absorbed through your skin via products you rub onto your body, without knowing what's really in them....AND looked at all the "things' crawling all over your body through a microscope...THEN the "sterilized" whipworm "eggs" would not be so frightening! You may want to go down to your grocery store and see if they'll really tell you what's in those hotdogs you love so much.....has anyone here eaten Tai food??? or other ethnic foods? are you certain about the ingredients within that lovely Chinese dish you just carried out?
Just passing the latest research....I think it's fascinating.
I found it fascinating also. You are not eating the worms & from what I read the eggs do not turn into worms. Kind of like eating fish eggs, they don't turn to fish in your gut.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you engy....I'm glad you understood the article. There's several to read and more to come!
Well, I read the article. It requires much contemplation. It also requires longterm study.
As stated in the article, things seems to morph overtime. I wonder how long it would take for these things to "morph" into something that could handle the human gut and survive.
I have heard of instances of people getting a brain parasite from eating raw pork, I wonder if this is the same parasite.
Sometimes I swallow and it goes down the wrong pipe, what if that happens with this stuff?
I understand the theory, and if it works and turns out to be safe for longterm use (which this would be a "for life" treatment, then great.
But in real life, things morph, people screw up, and bad things happen. Of course, that pertains to all drugs and diseases.
Time will tell. I will stay reserved on the subject and follow with peculiar interest. I am always hopeful that something will turn up.
I can say, we raised hogs when I was a kid. I wasn't the cleanest kid. We had a catfish pond, 30 cats (to keep the snakes and rats down), chickens, hogs, grew corn - and I still have Sjogren's - so I disagree with their hypothesis on "cleanliness" causing AI. Since I had it at a young age.
Having said that, even though the hypothesis on why to investigate this route of treatment may be wrong, it could very well work regardless.
We shall see.
This is what this forum is all about.....lively discussion of information!
The whipworm theory isn't new, just this particular news release is. The theory and study have been ongoing for several years, or they wouldn't have reached the secondary study stage. The first study I saw was this one 7 years ago:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825065
And they had already been doing studies for some time then
The worms are harvested, treated with an acid wash to cleanse them of their " growth host matter" (pig poop) , and then suspended in saline to be swallowed by the recipient. The eggs are notexpected to hatch and have not been shown to have any detrimental effect on a human host. The line I had a problem with was "Yet in that short period they appear to modulate a patient's immune system and prevent it from attacking the body's own tissues and organs."
I'm unsure how something that modulates a whole body system can be assuredly not affecting anything else.
As to the source....remember that antibiotics started out as mold and insulin was originally extracted from pig and cow pancreases harvested from discarded waste in slaughter houses.
Lumbrokinase is made from earthworm poop if I'm not mistaken. I've taken it before. It's a systemic enzyme, which helps pain, fatigue, and brain fog.
One well-known brand is Boluoke. I would still be taking it, but enzymes like this irritate my stomach now. You have to take them on an empty stomach. Lumbro is probably one of the ingredients in Wobenzym too. Not sure.
I'd have no problem at all trying this stuff if it's researched by good, peer-reviewed studies. For heaven's sake, hormone replacement is nothing but horse pee. You'd FAINT if you knew where most antibiotics came from, or the FDA-accepted levels of fecal matter, insect parts, and rodent hair in your bowl of Cheerios. I'm way more afraid of the Methotrexate I guzzle than I would be of some silly little whipworm eggs. Most of our grandparents had whipworms as a kid the same way they had mosquito bites and scraped knees and viruses. You'd have an itchy rump for a week or so and your body would fight them off.
We're non-sterile organisms, designed and evolved to live in the world, not in a sterile box. Put us in a sterile box and we die.
But then again, I spend every day of my life at a barn, which is where I feel most healthy and alive.
There are so many medications that have been pronounced safe and effective only to have class action suits for the deaths and disabilities that they have caused. I remember being told that something had no chance of growing or reproducing only to see that exact thing happen.
Having spent years teaching the scientific method, I have to see the results of their experiments. The current article under discussion appears to be in the hypothesis stage.
Oheck - Observation, Hypothesis, experimentation, conclusion, and Knowledge
I agree with you Joe.....but it's something to watch over the years.
I have no problem eating caviar ;)
I was born ,raised and still reside on a working farm. I have eaten my fair share of dirt.
my sister has Crohns and was doing a lot of research when she first received her diagnosis 5 years back. She drew my attention to the use of live hookworm and pinworms to treat flaring crohns and ulcerative Colitis. the theory being that both humans and various intestinal worms co-evolved together.
To exist and not be excreted to quickly the parasite developed the ability to calm inflammation and immune response in localized intestinal tissues.
One researcher ( who had inflammatory bowel disease ) even became a guinea pig and ingested live eggs- he saw marked improvement in his condition and was able to get off all medications. When he took medication to kill the worms he became ill and flared again. Ingestion of more eggs with resulting infestation brought him once again to remission of symptoms
It is interesting to see some of this initial research ( about 7 years back?) being expanded upon. Not sure how it could apply to non target organs but fascinating all the same
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=helminthic-therapy-mucus
Oh I wasn't offended at all. I just like to add a bit of humor whenever we can. It is how I stay at least somewhat sane. lol...
If it works, great, and if there are those who would like to give it a try to help them that is great too.
I have read the stories about maggots eating on infection, and how that works. I can see it working too if I needed to do that.
Leeches sucking blood for some can be beneficial if they need to get rid of too much iron in their blood. A form of blood letting. I think the condition is Hemachromatosis.
susanep :)
Caviar? Gag. I tried it once. I was at a conference, so I had to swallow the stuff. Unfortunately, the only beverage that was being passed around was wine...
Sharon
I liked the article. Sleepy and Jazzlover are right. There are so many medicines and food out there made of disgusting things, that if we really thought about it we'd never eat again or take meds again. I think that now days, scientists look for substances that no one has ever thought of before. I'm sure they've even checked out toe fungus!
I was also fascinated with the "hygiene hypothesis". I really think that is true. Part of the things we are immune to are what we were exposed to when we were younger. If we lived in a bubble and then came out of it, we would be much more susceptible.
Thanks for the good article Gold!
The NY Times just had an article on whipworm eggs and autism and inflammation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
The hygiene hypothesis has been around for many years. There are two kinds of immune response - one where we develop specific antibodies to germs we contact, a learned response, and one for everything else where we use a generalized histamine response and sneeze out any newcomers, an inborn response. The hygiene hypothesis suggests that without eating as much dirt as we used to and killing off intestinal parasites when we get them, we come to depend on the histamine response too much, resulting in overall inflammation, etc.
If that's true, then it's not only contact but not killing everything off right away with antibiotics. But I grew up with a homeopathic doctor and never took so much as an aspirin until I was a teenager. And here I am...
But the article was interesting. Regardless of the cause of our condition, if there are parasites that have evolved to lower the human host's inflammation processes, there could be some value in them.
We are, indeed, always surrounded by micro- and macrobiota everywhere we go. One time, a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman came into our house to do a demonstration. He put a large white filter compartment in the hose going into the vacuum and showed us all the dirt he collected. BUT we had a binocular microscope set up for fun. He vacuumed our bare mattress and we looked at it under the scope. Yikes - there were things hopping and crawling all over that piece of filter paper, from our bare mattress. There are large numbers of critters inside and outside our bodies at all times; just a fact.
Thanks, Sooki.
I'll sleep much better tonight! ;D
I can't imagine my sofa...more like, I don't want to imagine my sofa. Boudreaux (my Basset) loves sleeping on the sofa.
I suppose I'm immune to just about everything now - which could very well be true. I haven't had a cold since my 20's. Of course, now that I've said that....