Published 12 September 2024: Health-promoting worms? Prospects and pitfalls of helminth therapy
A good summary of the topic with the low-down that more research is needed. In regard to celiac disease, the article says that while clinical studies haven't shown substantial results, self-treaters show consistent success (like me).
I've mentioned this before, but doing a gluten challenge at 20 days post inoculation for a hookworm/celiac trial is doomed to fail. Necator americanus doesn't m
I'm still trying my hand at hookworm incubation. This time I set 5 jars going all using the same method, namely small, hermetically sealable jars stuffed with a coffee filter smeared with a small amount of egg infected stool (mine) with about a 1/2 cm of mineral water at the base and left for 9 days. I made sure the filter paper always touched the water and that the stool was moistened well before smearing. To the best of my knowledge, I prepared each jar in exactly the same way. I even weighed
Last week I set four small jars going, and today I gave them a look. Two of the jars were completely devoid of larvae. The other two were "B-" results, enough for inoculation but would require a fair amount of work collecting the larvae as the observed quantity was low. Think maybe 5% of best jars I've seen so far.
I'm becoming convinced this is truly all about the quantity of eggs in the stool. If the colony is having an off day and not releasing many eggs, resulting incubations will alway
Yesterday I inoculated myself with 25 Necator americanus larvae from the small red jar. There were so many larvae, all I had to do was find a couple of drops that had the number of larvae I was looking for and pipette them onto the bandage. No messing with sucking up individual larvae and placing them in a tube. Much quicker, and why having a large crop is a good thing. Why choose the number 25? I didn't feel like bothering with more frequent inoculations, and 25 was as high as I was prepared to
The temperature was cooler for a stretch here near Detroit, so a week ago I decided to have another crack at incubating.
As luck would have it, a day after I set up my jars, the temperature shot right back up again. I don't have A/C in my apartment, so I figured I had just wasted my time, but this morning when I checked one of the small jars I found things were hopping! In just a couple of drops there were all the larvae I would need, bopping and weaving, looking healthy as all heck. I didn
I followed the same technique I used last time that yielded such huge results, but this time basically I got zilch from two small jars. A few corpses and several uninspired zombie looking larvae moping around under my microscope's lens. Not enough to consider spending the time trying to get a harvest for an inoculation.
The only thing different this round was the heat. It's been consistently over 30C in my non-air conditioned apartment this week. Damn global warming!
Since I'm new at t
I had an interesting experience today. I set up 3 practice jars 8 days ago.
The first of the large jars was ok, maybe a little light in larvae. The second large jar was BARREN! I think I saw one larva in my sample. The third, small jar was a surprise though, it was booming! Squirming larvae hanging from the chandeliers, partying like it was 1999. Huge numbers. We're talking 12 larvae in a 40X field of view! Previously I think the record was maybe 4, and that was searching around to get thos
When I first got into hookworms to treat my several severe GI immune conditions, I was confused and filled with trepidation. Six years later, it all seems pretty simple, but I suppose perhaps everything is like that when you are starting out.
The first step is to purchase larvae from a provider listed in the Helminthic Therapy Wiki and when they arrive, slap them on your arm.
Afterwards to save money, if you are into DIY, several months later you can start to incubate to provide your
It took watching a YouTube video to figure out how to use it, and it's a bit touchy, but it does allow me to take pics and video of what I see under the microscope. The device came from AliExpress and costs under $5.
Here's a video of a particularly active larva. Let me know in the comments if the link isn't working.
This larva was from a recent incubation and examined at the 6-day mark. Between the two jars there were hundreds of larvae.
I was in a bit of a rush and didn't finesse the job as well as I would have liked. I ended up using too much stool in one jar and not enough on the other. The overweight one might tear through the threads and sink into the water, and the light one might not have enough stool to generate many larvae. This experience tells me there's some technique to this, and I'm thinking going forward I'll tape down the threads to the outside of jars before placing the stool on the filter and then pipette water
Probably more concise than reading through my blog entries. Note, I'm now doing 10 larvae every 2 months.
Hookworms successful against colitis and celiac disease after medicine fails
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I currently inoculate with 25 Necator americanus larvae every 5 months to keep myself in remission from celiac disease and ulcerative colitis. This works very well for me. If I
This afternoon I tried the last one of those AliExpress sub-$20 microscopes. All told there were four, and I'm including a pic of the most promising one where the tube is suspended above a platform.
Even with top and below lighting and a sample where I knew there was a larva directly in the center of the drop, I still couldn't see it. I could sort of make out other debris, but no, just no.
It's still a cute tool, though. You plug into your computer's USB port and using an app like VLC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHRZkZ_b1sg
Ted Simon uses an incubator and vermiculite. His channel offers several other hookworm related videos, including one where he shows using a microscope to harvest the larvae.
My method doesn't use an incubator or vermiculite and I get good results, but I can't claim consistency as I don't have that much of a track record yet.
I just had a last look at those two jars and this is what I came away with.
The first jar's water probably had about 100 larvae total, the second had substantially more, in the order of 200-300. This estimate is based on how much water was in each jar and how much water I pipetted out of each into a petri dish and scanned. In the second jar that I launched 2 days after the first, I placed more stool onto the coffee filter. More stool = more eggs = more larvae. Collecting larvae from the fir
Both were successful. I think I have incubation down pat now, though I can see how a few refinements of technique might lead to larger larvae yields, not that such increases are necessary if I'm only going to be using 10 larvae at a time.
Once again, the technique is pretty simple. Just use a hermetically sealable jar with 1/4" of mineral water (not distilled, not chlorinated) and put a coffee filter in that touches the water. You can probably see the threads hanging off the filter. They ar
For long time followers of this blog will remember my account of my time at the start of my GI-trouble journey, which largely started in 2005-2008 when I was hit with an abscess, multiple corrective surgeries, ulcerative colitis and celiac disease. This was a particularly bad time in my life. After going gluten-free things got much better, I healed, but I was still left with many food sensitivities, including IBS symptoms and horrible gas.
Since I've been using hookworms, by and large I've
It's been a rapid few days of learning about hookworm incubation. Here's what more I've learned. Most importantly, any microscope that can do 40X will suffice.
That's because it turns out the concern about the distance from the lens to the plate for pipetting was a red herring. All one needs to do is lay down a bunch of very small drops on the slide or Petri dish and use the microscope to find drops that have the required number of larvae. Note the placement of the drops, remove the slide o
The incubation worked.
The biggest expense was the microscope I bought off Amazon, an AmScope SE306. I picked it because it would give plenty of room for pipette work above the sample. I paid ~$370 Can.
The other supplies needed were variously sized pipettes, petri dishes, mineral water, adhesive gauze bandages, bleach for cleanup, paper towels, a garbage bag to cover my desk, and glasses for eye protection. And of course, most importantly, nitrile disposable gloves. For the incubation
I now have all my supplies and my microscope. I ended up buying a better one than I had planned because after doing extensive reading I decided I wanted a dissecting scope, and I justified the extra money by considering it a lifetime investment since I'll be using it for probably the next 20 or so years.
Incubation will begin tomorrow and harvesting will occur 10 days after that. I'm not due for inoculation til April 5th, but there would be little harm in applying 5-10 collected larvae now
It's been more than a month since my last inoculation of hookworm larvae. No issues to report. All told, I probably consume the gluten equivalent of 3 slices of bread+ in an average day. My stools are perfectly normal and there's no sign of any gastric distress. A few weeks ago though, I did find one cheap brand of yogurt that made me ill, something I chalked up to it having too much lactose. I know I'm lactose intolerant. My regular yogurt has no effect on me. All other foods seem good.
I
It's been a week since my latest hookworm inoculation with my usual 25 Necator americanus (NA) larvae. The skin reaction this time has been mild. As I look at it now I just see some redness and several marks, really nothing to look at. The site was mildly itchy for a few days and that was the extent of it. I was using a topical corticosteroid cream 3x a day and I expect that helped. People talk about experiencing a 'bounce' of extra energy or wellness after inoculation, but I've never noticed an
About 10 days ago I was called away out of my city on a family emergency. I had to leave on a Sunday, just before the courier with my hookworms were to arrive. I was frantic because were they to be sent back or lost I might not be able to get more until the spring as larvae often are killed in the cold weather. If that happened, I would soon have to go gluten-free and would experience colitis for months till I could reorder when the weather warmed.
The package was sent internationally but I
It's been suggested that I clarify my claim of being celiac. Something of some importance as I am making the claim that at least for myself using hookworms has improved my life as a celiac, and making that claim on a celiac-oriented site no less.
I have never had a positive biopsy test for celiac disease. There, I've said it.
That said, I maintain that there is very little doubt that I am celiac, and the only reason I don't have that positive test is that I get far, far too sick to be
My renewal date came up on the weekend based on my new inoculation schedule of 5 months and I reordered larvae. All much simpler than it used to be, but I guess that's what you get once you learn the angles. Just a quick email to confirm the price and a visit to PayPal to send the money, and then the Provider then gave me a tracking code. The larvae should arrive in 9-11 days.
Next month I'll order pipettes and vials from AliExpress and in 2-3 months I'll order a microscope and slides from
This week I've been reading up on self supply of hookworms, not just to save money but to ensure access. Covid made getting larvae difficult, and here in Canada it's hit or miss once the cold weather sets in. Larvae don't like temps below 5C and they can die in transit because of the cold. Providers usually resend for free but that still means being symptomatic for the duration. I once spent an entire winter gluten-free because of a DOA shipment.
I've been shopping supplies on Amazon - a bi
