Hookworm working, feeling great!

Today I’m 10 1/2 weeks into a 75 hookworm dose. As far as I know, I had no worms remaining when I did that top off, because stool tests for ova were negative at the time, but I have had blood work done recently suggesting the new dose is alive and well. My EOS level is quite high, which is consistent with a parasitic infection.

How am I feeling? Fantastic. Today Spring has sprung, the air is so loaded with pollen you can see it blowing in the wind. This year I can smell all sorts of flowers and other plants in the breeze, which is a nice change of pace. In previous allergy seasons when I was not hosting hookworm I was stuck inside, huddled in a dark room next to an air purifier, and shoveling down vitamin C, the only antihistamine I could tolerate. So the scent of Spring is a wonderful, new thing.

It’s a joy to have no asthma, no sinus trouble, and my mood is also really balanced. I have more energy, no more insomnia, my skin is clearing up (less rosacea), constipation (one of many side effects of levaquin) is gone, and I’m starting to gain some healthy weight: 6 ft tall, and 160 lbs. After being underweight for the last 10 years, this is a major milestone. I now weigh what I did before I got sick with ulcerative colitis. On the IBD front, I have not had a flare in a year or more, and the last one was brief, and quite mild.

Besides the hookworm protocol, I am drinking home-brewed kefir daily, and eating raw, organic sauerkraut a few days a week. I have adopted a lower-fat “mediterranean paleo” diet, designed to keep my lipid profile optimized. This seems to be encouraging good gut flora diversity, too.

Apologies for not updating this blog sooner. I’ve been busy working, holding down more than one job, and at times working 12 days straight. Anyone who has followed my blog from the start knows how incredible this is. I feel “normal” again, but in some ways I feel better than I have in about 15 years. Seriously!

PROGRESS..!!

I realize I haven’t updated this blog in a long, long time. Well, I have some admirable excuses. I’ve been feeling so GOOD lately, and have been working outside the house for the last several months. So, essentially, I’ve been too busy LIVING.

The gist of my approach has been to treat SIBO with plenty of olive leaf, oregano oil (never more than 2 weeks at a time with the oregano),  and berberine complex. Occasionally I add a peppermint oil mixture containing fennel and ginger. A low FODMAP diet is another aspect of the protocol, because I began to notice my favorite veggies, like Kale and Collard Greens caused tinnitus, heat in my abdomen, insomnia, and other uncomfortable symptoms. Switching to a diet of animal protein and cooked iceberg lettuce has helped a lot. I plan to incorporate other low FODMAP foods later.

With the herbal supplements, I have been incredibly persistent, and it’s paid off. In fact, with all of this, the key seems to be never, every letting up. I stumbled in the past, and tried drinking homemade kefir. It tasted great, and logic suggests all the flora would do me good, but my gut is not ready yet to digest dairy. The SIBO flared up so violently, I felt like I went all the way back to square one. This was about a month ago.

What’s improving? My gut function is normalizing. It’s been so long since I can recall not being constipated, but here I am now, heading to the loo about an hour after I eat, and having formed stools that are soft enough to pass easily. This is the way crapping should be! I’ve also stopped hearing loud and constant tinnitus. This improved the moment my gut motility started to normalize. No more heat in my abdomen anymore, either. When my SIBO would flare in the past, my entire abdomen, including my lower back, would feel very warm to the touch. Now my skin is cool, like it used to be in the good ole days.

I’m also seeing relief from acne/rosacea and chronic sinusitis. This suggests to me my gut wall is healing, and commensal bacteria is no longer translocating to these areas.

Perhaps the best of all, hyperadrenergic POTS is also gone. No more high pulse and blood pressure. I’m beginning to feel much more energetic, much less brain fog, and my mood is clear and bright. I feel more creative, my mind is more engaged in the world around me, I’m sleeping really well and testosterone levels are now back in the normal range. Yes, I can honestly say I feel frisky.

What still needs improvement? I’m underweight, 6 feet tall and 151 lbs. I’d like to gain 5-10, and this has been difficult in recent years. I am also dealing with a flare of ulcerative colitis, which started out pretty intense, but has gotten much better with probiotic retention enemas (4oz distilled water with 4 capsules “Align” probiotic), delivered in an empty (rinsed out) Fleet enema bottle. I do think the herbal protocol is helping with the UC, too. Perhaps because candida can be a trigger.

My next goal is to build a full population of hookworm (necator americanus), to cope with any remaining food intolerances, and then do another series of fecal transplants, since after all these herbals I’m pretty sure my microbiome is not as strong as it could be. If i can find a particularly happy and calm donor, even better.

Stay tuned.

Finally Gaining Weight

Tonight I got some good news on the bathroom scale — 158 lbs, up from 145 lbs just a few weeks ago. My appetite is pretty good, and I seem to be digesting my food a lot better. So far I’ve done a total of 9 fecal transplants and that may be where I stop for now, as my donor is going to be unavailable for a while. I had hoped to do 10 treatments, but this may be good enough.

It all started with a course of Levaquin last August — suddenly I had hard, dry stools. Even after a lot of FT, months later, I seem to have hit a wall in terms of the volume of my stool. I’m regular now, which is a nice change of pace, but my stools are smaller and harder than I had hoped. This is generally indicative of a low bacteria count. Bacteria help to hold water in stool, which makes them easier to pass.

My goal now is to create the healthiest ecology in my gut possible, with cultured vegetables (sauerkraut, kimchi) and fermented beverages like kefir. I make my own, 32 oz at a time, in a mason jar atop my gas range. It stays a cozy 79 degrees there, most of the day, and I get great results with grains I purchased online.

There’s some debate about the effect of kefir on stool, with most saying the longer ferments cause constipation, while the shorter ones cause looser stools. A friend of mine noted the loose stools may be caused by an abundance of lactose in the shorter ferments. If so, this is not necessarily a good thing for those of us with carbohydrate intolerance. I’d rather ferment it a bit longer, consume less sugar, and get more beneficial bacteria in my brew.

So what else could bulk up my stool and increase the water content? Betaine HCL has been suggested as a more natural way to decrease transit time and maintain moisture. Same goes for soluble forms of fiber, like apple pectin. I cannot handle the sugar in apples, but I can take pectin capsules, and have been adding two per meal lately. Apple pectin can feed bacteria both good and bad, so it’s important to not take it in cases of dysbiosis. Once the flora present is a decent balance adding some fuel should be a step in the right direction. Especially since pectin holds water in stools and reduces friction against the gut lining.

I’m also back on a routine of taking 4K to 6K mg of vitamin C daily. Sometimes it’s buffered, other times I take it straight with food, to reduce the chance of stomach and bladder irritation. Magnesium is another helper, either the glycinate form or the oxide (less absorbed), if i want more of a laxative effect.

Fats also seem to be a universal “mover”, so i don’t shy away from saturated fats in animal protein, and also add liberal amounts of olive oil to the vegetables I steam. If cooking at higher heat, I use grapeseed oil. An added benefit here is higher calories, since I’m still trying to bulk up a bit. Slow and steady wins the race.

Fecal Transplant, Round 2

For quite a few years now I’ve battled with fatigue, insomnia, POTS (blood pressure spikes), racing heart, and anxiety/depression when my gut flora is particularly out of balance. Last January things for me started to get worse in this regard, especially weight loss, pain in my left descending colon, and extreme fatigue, so much so that I didn’t recognize the symptoms anymore as “my usual”. By early April, I was concerned I might be developing colon cancer, and had somehow mistaken the slow, insidious symptoms for gut dysbiosis. I was frightened enough, and sick enough, to start making out my will.

Well, thankfully, it turns out I was wrong. Biopsy results from a colonscopy I had a few days ago came back and the preliminary results show no signs of malignancy. I do have inflammation in my colon consistent with colitis, but I’m not bleeding. Perhaps this is due to the anti-inflamatory capabilities of my Necator Americanus.

Getting the “all clear” was wonderful, but it has not made my health issues any better. I’ve been waking up in a sweat, feeling hot around my abdomen and lower back. It’s like a fever, localized to my gut. My nose is also stuffy, my ears are ringing, my mood is off, and I am quite tired. Too tired, in fact, to get out of bed much of the day.

Since I had some lead time while I waited for the colonoscopy, this gave me the opportunity to call my fecal transplant donor, who I worked with last October, and ask if we could do a round 2. He could tell right away from looking at me how sick I was, and said “yes”. So we got started two days ago, on Wednesday the 18th of April.

Immediately following the treatment, which I self-administered with an enema kit at home, I felt better. In mere minutes I was able to breathe freely, an hour later my mind was brighter, and I was laughing and smiling in a healthy, spontaneous way. Four hours later my entire body was feeling more relaxed, the stuffiness in my middle ears was receding, my balance was better. By the evening I was playing my guitar again, able to smell the distinct odor of wood and glue through the sound hole, and playing with a nuance I hadn’t felt in a few years.

Fecal transplant, for those of us with extreme gut dysbiosis brought on by overuse of antibiotics, is nothing short of revolutionary. My testosterone and leutinizing hormone levels have tested low for a few years now, and after one FT treatment I’ve no doubt my T is higher. Let’s put it this way — knowing what I do about the connection between flora and labido, every middle aged man who goes to his doctor for erectile dysfunction should probably be given fecal transplant as a first line of treatment. Seriously.

My donor left town for a few days and will be back late this weekend. In the time that has elapsed since, I’ve been attempting to use stool stored in the refrigerator to keep my healing going, but the old poop isn’t as good as the fresh stuff. I am relapsing some, with fatigue, stuffy nose, and tinnitus. I am hoping we can continue on for another 7 to 10 days, using fresh specimens, so I can regain my progress and solidify these benefits once and for all.

Eating: the new frontier

I am still enjoying delicious Vivonex (heavy sarcasm) for most of my nutrition, but tried adding a few veggies tonight: purple cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli, steamed in a pot together.

Added a whiff of olive oil and some sea salt.

Aced it. No reactions!

This is pretty major progress for me. Last October any one of those foods would have had me feeling toxic, especially the olive oil and broccoli, due to the salicylates.

So based on what I’ve read about salicylate intolerance, my phase II liver detox is functioning a bit better now, and my gut is in pretty good shape, too. More regular elimination probably takes a bit of the burden off the liver.

Good job, hookworms.

Day 25, signals from old friends…

Spring has come early, bringing with it high winds that fill the air with seasonal allergens. My body doesn’t like this time of year, but today I was on a roller coaster where my stuffy nose would suddenly clear up for no apparent reason. Hello, hookworm. I came in from a walk and lay in bed a while, taking note of how my body was reacting, and felt my parasympathetic nervous system activating, too. For those who are sympathetic-dominant like me, which is basically a tendency toward “fight or flight”, this flip-side (the relaxation circuit firing) can feel wonderful.

My sinus infection is finally healing now, and I’ve been inhaling a 30ppm solution of colloidal silver to treat a mild lung infection (triggered by the sinusitis). As a result, I’m now waking with signs of higher testosterone in the AM, and feeling increased mental clarity and steadiness. I have had low free testosterone and low LH (luteinizing hormone) on my last few blood tests, and this appears to be resolving, which is a relief. Low grade infections can often cause this, and the body doesn’t waste any time bouncing back as this type of physical stress is eliminated.

In terms of the hormonal balancing, I don’t want to ascribe all my improvements to one thing, be that the hookworm or the CS. It really seems to be a combination of each.

On the not so pleasant side of the ledger, I still have some tinnitus in my right ear, which may be a transient immune response triggered by the hookworm, or it could also just be left over middle ear dysfunction from my flu — sinus/ear related. I am also experiencing some insomnia, and epigastric pain for the first time since reinoculating with these 75 hookworm. This is simply a diffused ache in my upper and mid-abdomen — the same thing happened last May, if I recall, as the hookworm were developing.

All good signs, as far as I’m concerned.  Any indication my worms are ‘moving in’ puts me at ease. Here’s to accruing some benefits soon!

3 weeks in…

So it’s now been 21 days since I inoculated with 75 hookworm. I’ve had an upper respiratory flu that morphed into a sinus and middle ear infection. The goal was to avoid antibiotics (I cannot tolerate them), especially because they have contributed to so many of my health issues. Another course of them now could be very damaging and my primary care doctor realizes this. It took weeks, and quite a few home remedies, such as colloidal silver and xylitol neti pot rinses, a few hot showers a day, hot peppermint tea (I can now tolerate salicylates again, much to my amazement!), hot packs on the sinuses and ears, plenty of bed rest and lots of fluids, plus vitamin C. A month or so later, I’m finally starting to turn the corner.

Ironically, the most annoying remnant of this illness is the acne just inside my ear canal, brought on by a high carb elemental diet, the only food I can tolerate currently. “Vivonex”, as it’s called, keeps me going, but the side effects for me seem to be an increase in SIBO related co-infections like acne and rosacea. If I add some veggies throughout the day I get formed stools and less translocating bacteria, probably because the tight junctions in my small intestines are less likely to be breached, simply because my bowel transport is more efficient with the added fiber.

As far as the hookworm are concerned, I’d like to think I’ve got a bunch in me now, but so far the signs have been minimal. It’s impossible to separate the side effects from the flu, although I do think some of my loose stools are worm-related. Time will tell. As far as the timeline of events goes, and accruing benefits, I’m sort of in a middle zone where I may have few indications of the worms truly “moving in” until they start laying eggs, around 7 or 8 weeks at the earliest.

Fingers crossed they are alive and well, and that they can stick around this time!

Helminthic Therapy Support

If anyone would like to learn more about the science of helminthic therapy, share feedback on personal observations about HT, and discuss how their own conditions are responding, etc., please join us on facebook: Helminthic Therapy Support

It’s a closed group, which means no one in your network will be able to see your posts. Just click the “ask to join group” button.

Hope to see you there!

Day 5, and feeling benefits already

Some of the changes I’m experiencing now may be due to a “bounce”, which is a short term high a small percentage of those who do helminthic therapy experience. My first inoculation came with a 5 or 6 day euphoria, where for much of it I felt like i was 19 again. This time around I’ve been sick with a flu virus, feeling fatigued, and having sinus issues, so it’s been difficult to discern what’s “worm flu” and “real flu”.

This morning I woke up feeling hormonally more activated than I’ve been in months, perhaps even a year. For men it’s pretty easy to pick up these clues. No blood test required. My free testosterone has been low for many months, and my luteinizing hormone (LH) is also low. This indicates not a problem with the testes, which in my case are fine, but instead it’s a pituitary malfunction. Basically the brain isn’t able to signal the testes to produce T, so the free T levels remain low. My theory as to why this is happening relates to gut/brain inflammation and SIBO. To further complicate matters, low T can cause gut inflammation, which compounds the entire problem. But this morning I seem to have witnessed the start of a virtuous circle.

My energy levels are still low, so I took a nap around 2pm and as I laid there I took an inventory of my body — true relaxation hasn’t felt possible for quite a few weeks. Today I not only felt calm in my mind, but my muscles were looser, and I could feel that comfortable ‘shudder’ of my parasympathetic nervous system activating. It’s a wave of energy I’ve always felt through my body in association with a peaceful state: the opposite of fight or flight.

Sleep came on quickly, and I began dreaming. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, but I marveled at this all the same — I haven’t had a dream I remembered in nearly a year. I tend to dream when my gut is healthy, or at least I have dreams that are vivid enough to remember at these times. There was also something obvious about it — I was clearly trying to process events that had been building in my subconscious.

Furthermore, I’m also starting to crave real food again, instead of having no appetite and shoveling down my powdered elemental diet. This is the essence of healing!

Reinoculating with 75 Hookworm

I’m going to make this fairly brief, and hope to keep a more regular schedule with updates. Right now SIBO appears to be what’s affecting me most. My GI dr. hasn’t confirmed the diagnosis with a breath test yet, but many of my symptoms can be attributed to Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. It’s not the most pleasant prognosis, but I do think hookworm can be a key part of healing the gut lining and the food intolerance that goes with it.

Here’s my current situation: about 6 weeks ago I was looking with my microscope and found 1 hookworm egg. This is not uncommon to only find one ovum per slide. But in my case I was very diligent and never found another one for a month after. I also had lost my worm benefits. So I’ve since done a 75 hookworm top off dose. It’s an interesting ride, because I’m also fighting a viral flu I got about 3 weeks ago. It’s hard to know which symptoms are virus and which are worm, but I think I can sift through it all and get a decent picture.

Insomnia — hookworm. Low grade fever — virus. Stuffy nose — virus. Tinnitus — hookworm. I’m getting tossed around on the ocean with my old friends. But we’ll make it. Stay tuned for more exciting developments, such as — being able to smell and taste, and eat real food again instead of Vivonex.