Jump to content
  • entries
    55
  • comments
    94
  • views
    25,535

About this blog

Celiac, hookwormed, and freely consuming gluten.

Entries in this blog

Hookworms

I started another couple of jars today

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

I just made my hopefully last order of hookworm larvae

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

2
Hookworms

I did a couple more practice jars

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

I bought a doohickey to attach my cell phone to my microscope

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.
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

Hookworms and ChatGPT5

I recently sprang for a ChatGPT5 subscription just to play with it and have found it to be a revelation. ChatGPT5 has become my new best friend helping me to explore and answer questions that have been nagging me sometimes for years. Of course our conversation turned to hookworms and celiac disease as well as my other condition, ulcerative colitis. ChatGPT5 had an awful lot to say on the topic and was able to summarize past research for me and tell me where future research is going. Here's
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

Hookwormed status report

Not much going on to report. My last inoculation of 25 Necator americanus hookworm larvae occurred April 11 2025, and I'm due to start incubating Aug 27 2026 and inoculate again with 25 larvae Sep 3 2025. Over the years I've seen my celiac/ulcerative colitis symptoms return six month-ish after inoculation, so I've settled on a frequency of a little less than 5 months, or in this instance, 4.79 months. Human hookworms (NA) don't reproduce in the body and since my immune system is constantly
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

3
Hookworms

Helminthic Therapy videos

The Helminthic Therapy Support Group on Facebook maintains a repository of all its gained knowledge in the form of the freely available Helminthic Therapy Wiki (Google it). In it there's a listing of videos that the group has found most useful: https://helminthictherapywiki.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy_in_the_media#Featured_videos I did a YouTube search for Helminthic Therapy and found a bunch more, many of them from people from the general public who did their own research. I noted factual
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

Health update

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

4
Hookworms

Harvesting hookworms and a new Discord Server for the Group

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

Getting hookwormed - Step by Step

So you've made the decision to try Helminthic Therapy. What do you do now? 1) First you join the Facebook Helminthic Therapy Group @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/htsupport and make an introductory post. Tell the members about what you hope to achieve and a bit about your medical history. The regulars there are veterans at HT, use helminths (usually hookworms) themselves, and can answer any questions you might have. John Scott is the leader of the group and has been a hookworm host for ye
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

Final thoughts on that practice incubation

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

2
Hookworms

Father, it's been some time since my last hookworm larvae innoculation

I did a 5-day fast in March that really messed up my stools making faecal sample collection problematic. Apparently I'm one of the few people that really need fiber always going through my system to prevent things going to hell, so next time I fast I'll be doing that even though it does break the spirit of fasting. Seven days ago I set up 5 small jars for incubation. When I looked at them today 2 were barren of larvae, 2 were ok but a little sparse, and one was grade A. Having a good concen
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

4
Hookworms

Detailed study of hookworms as therapy calls it feasible, safe, and well-tolerated

https://doi.org/10.1093/ibd/izad110  Published June 15, 2023 in the journal of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, this study is expressly for ulcerative colitis, but because the focus was on safety and tolerance of hookworms as a treatment, the results should apply for any of the myriad conditions people use hookworms to treat. It's a pilot study paving the way for future full-scale randomized controlled trials regarding efficacy. The study used 30 Necator americanus larvae. The self-treatin
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

Day 27 post inoculation

Being sick was a one-day thing. I did buy a gluten-free version of Quaker Oats oatmeal. I'll give it a go today and see if I do better. Celiacs can react to oats, so it's possible that was the source. For the record while fully hookwormed I've eaten hundreds of bowls of regular oatmeal without consequence. The clock is ticking, I hope, until my celiac days are over. From now on I'll aim for a 5-month cycle between inoculations.
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

Day 10 post inoculation

Not much to report. My GI issues have all cleared up, but that's probably because I've gone gluten-free for the month of June. My entry wound has almost entirely healed. Aside from a touch of redness it should be 100% in a couple of days. That steroid cream made a huge difference, not in pain or discomfort really but certainly in aesthetics. Previously the entry wound was ugly enough to scare children. The way the life cycle of the hookworms works after about a week the larvae drill through
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

22
Hookworms

Blast from the past

Yesterday I got sick. Twice. Just like I remember being sick in my celiac pre-hookworm days when I was still eating gluten. A colonoscopy cleanse level sick. I had been eating gluten-free this month letting my critters grow and mature into their adult forms so I wasn't sure what happened. Then I remembered I had eaten a new oatmeal. I didn't say gluten-free on the front but I figured a little gluten probably wouldn't phase me. Well I figured wrong. I checked the ingredients list and yep, in
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

An uneventful inoculation

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

An early incubation and inoculation

I did another test incubation that turned out to be successful. Though it was a month early, I didn't see any harm in inoculating early with 25 larvae. This time I used 5 jars. Three had zero larvae, one had an ok yield, and the last had good/very good population. The included pic is from that last jar. With that kind of density, collecting the needed number of larvae is quick work.  This experience reinforces to me the necessity of using multiple jars. Five seems to be the right numbe
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

5
Hookworms

About those cheap microscope alternatives

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

13
Hookworms

A video showing another person's hookworm incubation method

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.
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

A two for four incubation

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

1
Hookworms

A summary I wrote for the HT Group last year of my colitis/celiac/hookworm experience

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 âš­Home>Personal stories>Detailed stories>Hookworms successful against colitis and celiac disease after medicine fails 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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

A recent Helminthic Therapy research article

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
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

0
Hookworms

A new journey

In the last blog entry it was late July 2018 and my larvae had just arrived. Before going further there is a fair amount of history leading up to that moment that probably should be discussed. Back in 1999 at age 35 and single again I had my first inkling of what was to come. I was into body building at the time and consumed a fair amount of protein powder. I developed a painful reaction to it. I talked to the vendor. They had never heard of any problems. I shrugged it off. Going forward th
dixonpete

dixonpete in Hookworms

2
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

NOTICE: This site places This site places cookies on your device (Cookie settings). on your device. Continued use is acceptance of our Terms of Use, and Privacy Policy.