Pig whipworm eggs to help fight autoimmune

[cargillwitch]

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

[susanep]

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

[slccom]

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

[Doxie]

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!

[Sooki]

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.

[iraisin]

Thanks, Sooki.

I'll sleep much better tonight!

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....