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About this blog

Celiac, hookwormed, and freely consuming gluten.

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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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Mid-September Health Update

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Side effects of Helminthic Therapy

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Other Helminthic Therapy blogs

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
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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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

What is it like to be on hookworms?

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

So far so good

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Incubation starts tomorrow

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

My first incubation was a success!

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

3
Hookworms

No news is good news

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Re-thinking my reintroduction to gluten

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Still a happy gluten camper

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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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.
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Hookworms

Inoculation was delayed but luckily completed

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

A new batch

A couple of weeks ago or so I started noticing GI issues. Occasional bouts of loose stool, stirrings of colitis, incontinence - all completely at odds with my usual experience. It had been more than 6 months since my last hookworm inoculation so I knew it was time to re-up. Things have changed since I started with Helminthic Therapy. I got hooked up with the Helminthic Therapy Support Group on Facebook and a contact there suggested I try another provider, one that used courier tracking and
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

A huge failure and a huge success with hookworm incubation

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Rating of 4 jars for this incubation round

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

2
Hookworms

Just did the jars for the next hookworm incubation

Took about 20 minutes and 1/2 of that was clean-up. As per what has become my usual process, I prepared five small jars with the expectation of only using the one jar with the greatest population of larvae. Today is August 29th, so given that a week appears to be sufficient time for the eggs to hatch and the larvae to do their thing of migrating down to the water at the bottom of the jars, the harvest date will be Friday September 5th. This time I'll be having a crack at making a video for
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

The results 3 days later - warning, graphic pic

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Sorry for the delay in writing

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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Hookworms

Incubation failure

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
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dixonpete in Hookworms

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