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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
Followers of my blog probably watched Kyla's interview with William Porter from a few months ago. What might have slipped notice is that Kyla has her own YouTube channel where she posts videos about her experiences with Helminthic Therapy and Crohn's Disease. Spoilers, she's about 90% better because of HT. Kyla is very active on Instagram where her page is called @letshealIBD
https://www.youtube.com/@letshealIBD
Helminthic Therapy is used for Inflammatory Bowel Disease generally: celia
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
https://www.helminthictherapywiki.org/wiki/NA_incubation:_super-simple_method_by_Laurel?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGlQJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUN-S9qo1ycPwriUfGr-_YYKVdu0kU_SuuYPPVcA_4q4Q4lrinbrr9g1Yw_aem_yAzwI8x20ZQN4ZIfGsUJzQ
It's very close to what I do, except I wet the stool to make sure it doesn't harden and I use 5 jars at time since experience has taught me that some jars will be barren.
