I have several feelings on the matter. First and foremost I feel gratitude. Beginning in my early 40s I was very sick. Because of my out of control immune system I was in great pain and suffered tremendous disability, social isolation, deprivation and vulnerability. With hookworms on board, all that is gone. Sure, with the best knowledge of exactly what foods were making me sick I could have become 80-90% better, but I was still damaged and always a crumb away from being devastatingly ill. With
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
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
This time around I've been using a steroid cream to keep down the inflammation. The results still aren't pretty but I don't have the ugly blisters I usually get. Definitely worth using.
The cream I used was a topical corticosteroid called Taro-Mometasone, aka Mometasone Furoate USP 0.1%, applied every 6–8 hours.
After a week the mark should be almost gone. After multiple inoculations I've never been left with a scar. It has never hurt, just tingled initially and itched some later. Noth
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
In case there was any doubt I'm pleased to report everything is fine. I've resumed a gluten containing diet and haven't experienced any issues. I mentioned my success to the people over at the Facebook Helminthic Therapy Support Group and they were all happy for me. One person said in the five years she's been hosting hookworms she's never considered consuming gluten. She's derived other benefits (remission from colitis) but she never took the step of trying gluten. Makes me think I'm braver tha
So I ordered my first hookworms around July 7th, 2018.
The sales and transport of hookworm operates in somewhat of a gray area. Authorities recognize that seriously ill people are trying helminths like hookworms tin order to get better, but the laws in all jurisdictions haven't caught up with what some people see as a medical necessity. Accordingly, providers of hookworm larvae prefer to operate on the down low. Restricting communication by email and payment by Bitcoin work towards that en
The oatmeal yesterday didn't cause any reaction whatsoever. I decided to take the plunge this morning and ate a whole Wheat Thins cracker.
If anything would unambiguously cause a reaction that much gluten would. In the past pre-hookworms an exposure 1/10th that much would have had me sitting on the toilet for a couple of hours. If I don't react by the end of today I'm going to assume I'm good to go. That would imply that for me the ramp up to a non-celiac state after inoculation with the la
I suppose it's to be expected that a treatment that has the goal of manipulating the immune system could have side effects, and for some people that appears to be true.
Back when I started in 2018 with Helminthic Therapy (HT) I simply asked for 25 larvae from my provider because, well, the price was the same whether I ordered one or 25, so I tried to maximize my bang for my buck. I'm on the large side so I probably contributed to me not having problems with this strategy. Outside of the ini
I believe the answer to that question is an unequivocal yes.
Celiac disease is a debilitating condition that uncontrolled exacts a huge toll on people impacting both their health and their quality of life.
Controlled, by which I mean sufferers make serious effort to avoid gluten, celiac disease still lurks in the background waiting to act on diet missteps and likely contributes to the development of a variety of other health conditions.
Hookworms help with the primary expression
As I've written about before, the last time I ran out of hookworms (or perhaps effective hookworms) was with my first cycle spanning early August 2018 to the first week of March 2019. That end point was when I had to go back on a gluten-free diet. Putting those dates together that's 5 months for 2018 and 2 months of 2019. I was slow in testing gluten that time (because celiac!) but it's reasonable to think I could have gone on a regular diet after 40 days post inoculation.
That would have m
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
Hookworms and the three other helminths are used for a variety of immune conditions, not just celiac disease. John Scott just pointed me towards a collection of blogs like mine where people discuss their experiences at length like I do: https://helminthictherapywiki.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy_blogs?fbclid=IwAR0U6tvguzLaQ0Tl-0gwC-zMPkJrMKIn2tZk018iHiDGuN8L0so01_lbcXA#Blogs
Which begs the question, what is the future for this blog?
What I've done so far is talk about my past, how I got
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
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
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
A few weeks ago I had a bad day marked by considerable GI distress. It was bad enough I figured I must have lost my hookworm colony.
Immediately I went gluten-free and was better, so I thought I'd have to pony up earlier than I expected for my next inoculation. After a further 4-5 gluten-free days I reintroduced meat and gluten expecting the worst, but there was nothing, everything was still all good. Since then I've been on a regular gluten diet and I've had days of perfection where there
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
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
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've had plenty of gluten goodness sitting in my freezer for a month now and the siren call from them was too much for me to bear. A donut and a Crustini sacrificed themselves for science last night. Aside from a little gas I've had no reaction - just feeling fine. So that it's it, 30 days and I'm back in remission.
I apologize for the dramatics but as all celiacs know, risking a gluten exposure is not for the faint of heart. Back in the day I've had some hella violent reactions where I bec
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
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
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
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.
