Hi all,
I wrote a very long time ago about my Crohn's journey and I thought I would post a bit of a message updating everyone on my current state. When I was diagnosed two years ago I decided to take this disease seriously and I went on countless healing protocols trying to control things holistically. Bone broth fasts, cabbage juice, probiotics, and countless other things made a drastic difference. So much difference, in fact, that I would be mostly symptom free when I took these protocols seriously.
After I had some healing I went on the SCD, and that worked as well, along with some antihistamines that I began taking. (If you haven't tried it yet, antihistamines like Zyrtec and Allegra can definitely have at least a small impact on your disease state as I've found allergies definitely contributed to mine.) But that's beyond the point. When I stayed on SCD (strictly!) and ate absolutely zero processed sugars and grains, paired with my antihistamines and probiotics, I was able to maintain remission.
Then, I went to college. I couldn't maintain SCD anymore. I decided to go back to eating whatever I wanted, but kept taking antihistamines and probiotics. It was a slow decline, but, as I somewhat expected, I started noticing symptoms again about 6 months later. Sigh. And that's when I decided I needed to find another solution besides juicing, fasting, and diet protocols, because those would just be far too hard to do alongside living a normal life.
Drugs were still out of the picture for me (because I would rather do SCD and fasting than drugs), but I wanted a holistic solution to the problem. And that's when I remembered helminthic therapy, which is based on the hygiene hypothesis. Basically, the theory states that our bodies co-evolved with worms and the absence of them is why autoimmune diseases are becoming more and more common in first world countries (and are still relatively rare in third world countries).
So I took the plunge. This theory makes sense, and I believed that between the helminths and healing protocols I already have a grasp on, I would be able to achieve complete remission and then, maybe, the helminths would allow me to eat and live a full, normal life without having to worry about maintaining my health all the time. (For those who don't know, helminths are a known immunomodulator, and there are already pharmaceutical companies that plan to isolate those modulating proteins and turn them into drugs.)
There are communities of thousands of people doing this online and I figured the risks couldn't be too great considering almost 1/12 of the world's population already has a hookworm infection. How could adding one more person cause me any harm? (The other great thing is that all you need is a mebendazole or one whiff of nitrous oxide to kill them.) So I went ahead and did it...
And it's working. Hookworm take about 8-12 weeks before you see drastic improvement and around week 6 I realized that I was starting to put on weight faster than I ever have. I'm now at the end of week 9, and I'm at 154 pounds, which is about 13 pounds since I started doing the therapy. Also, over the last three weeks, almost all of my symptoms have disappeared. Completely normal stools once a day, very rarely mucus anymore, and I can eat whatever I want without suffering what feels like inflammatory sugars ripping through my guts. It's amazing.
And this is compared to 2 and half months ago when the cramps were a daily problem, I was having reactive arthritis in my knees so badly that I couldn't walk to class, and the daily diarrhea was absolutely killing me. I had no energy at all, no will to do anything but lay in bed. Now I have 35 hookworm and 9 weeks later feel awesome. Can't wait to add 100 more hookworm over the course of the year and if the trend continues, I'll be 100% symptom free long before then.
Time will tell if this keeps working, but if the theory behind why helminths work is true (that some people from certain regions have immune systems adapted to hosting them), then I should be able to see residing symptoms as long as I maintain my colony. It's fascinating stuff guys, and even though I was able to control most of my symptoms through rigorous healing protocols, I appreciate having my life back for real this time.
Now I gotta just go het some blood work and make sure everything else is in order... but it will be nice to see a GI and tell him I have crohn's disease with no symptoms.
:biggrin::biggrin::ybiggrin::ybiggrin:
I wrote a very long time ago about my Crohn's journey and I thought I would post a bit of a message updating everyone on my current state. When I was diagnosed two years ago I decided to take this disease seriously and I went on countless healing protocols trying to control things holistically. Bone broth fasts, cabbage juice, probiotics, and countless other things made a drastic difference. So much difference, in fact, that I would be mostly symptom free when I took these protocols seriously.
After I had some healing I went on the SCD, and that worked as well, along with some antihistamines that I began taking. (If you haven't tried it yet, antihistamines like Zyrtec and Allegra can definitely have at least a small impact on your disease state as I've found allergies definitely contributed to mine.) But that's beyond the point. When I stayed on SCD (strictly!) and ate absolutely zero processed sugars and grains, paired with my antihistamines and probiotics, I was able to maintain remission.
Then, I went to college. I couldn't maintain SCD anymore. I decided to go back to eating whatever I wanted, but kept taking antihistamines and probiotics. It was a slow decline, but, as I somewhat expected, I started noticing symptoms again about 6 months later. Sigh. And that's when I decided I needed to find another solution besides juicing, fasting, and diet protocols, because those would just be far too hard to do alongside living a normal life.
Drugs were still out of the picture for me (because I would rather do SCD and fasting than drugs), but I wanted a holistic solution to the problem. And that's when I remembered helminthic therapy, which is based on the hygiene hypothesis. Basically, the theory states that our bodies co-evolved with worms and the absence of them is why autoimmune diseases are becoming more and more common in first world countries (and are still relatively rare in third world countries).
So I took the plunge. This theory makes sense, and I believed that between the helminths and healing protocols I already have a grasp on, I would be able to achieve complete remission and then, maybe, the helminths would allow me to eat and live a full, normal life without having to worry about maintaining my health all the time. (For those who don't know, helminths are a known immunomodulator, and there are already pharmaceutical companies that plan to isolate those modulating proteins and turn them into drugs.)
There are communities of thousands of people doing this online and I figured the risks couldn't be too great considering almost 1/12 of the world's population already has a hookworm infection. How could adding one more person cause me any harm? (The other great thing is that all you need is a mebendazole or one whiff of nitrous oxide to kill them.) So I went ahead and did it...
And it's working. Hookworm take about 8-12 weeks before you see drastic improvement and around week 6 I realized that I was starting to put on weight faster than I ever have. I'm now at the end of week 9, and I'm at 154 pounds, which is about 13 pounds since I started doing the therapy. Also, over the last three weeks, almost all of my symptoms have disappeared. Completely normal stools once a day, very rarely mucus anymore, and I can eat whatever I want without suffering what feels like inflammatory sugars ripping through my guts. It's amazing.
And this is compared to 2 and half months ago when the cramps were a daily problem, I was having reactive arthritis in my knees so badly that I couldn't walk to class, and the daily diarrhea was absolutely killing me. I had no energy at all, no will to do anything but lay in bed. Now I have 35 hookworm and 9 weeks later feel awesome. Can't wait to add 100 more hookworm over the course of the year and if the trend continues, I'll be 100% symptom free long before then.
Time will tell if this keeps working, but if the theory behind why helminths work is true (that some people from certain regions have immune systems adapted to hosting them), then I should be able to see residing symptoms as long as I maintain my colony. It's fascinating stuff guys, and even though I was able to control most of my symptoms through rigorous healing protocols, I appreciate having my life back for real this time.
Now I gotta just go het some blood work and make sure everything else is in order... but it will be nice to see a GI and tell him I have crohn's disease with no symptoms.
:biggrin::biggrin::ybiggrin::ybiggrin: