We need worms

[Newest Reality]

You might think they are disgusting. But our war against intestinal worms has damaged our immune systems and mental health

William Parker is associate professor of surgery at Duke University in North Carolina. His work has been published in the Journal of Surgical Research and the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, among many others.

Did you ever wonder why one in six children has a mental health disorder? One in every six seems to be a few too many, I would think. Did you ever wonder why 20 per cent of women, in the United States at least, have been diagnosed with depression after menopause, and why ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ has mysteriously emerged? Why should almost half of us be allergic to something? Why should more than four in every 10 children be on medication for a chronic condition? Why do more than one in 10 women have an autoimmune condition? When asking why we get sick, we take the first step in understanding the origins of disease. If we find the answer to that question, we become empowered to prevent disease.

Modern medicine does not often bother to ask why. We don’t talk very much about it in medical school or during our internships or in residency. We don’t discuss it with our patients very much either. In line with this attitude, our biomedical research focuses on elucidating detailed mechanisms aimed at developing the next drug, but not on why we need a new drug in the first place. Modern medicine asks what and how: what conditions do you have, and how do we treat them? But we should be asking why – this is the first critical step toward prevention. If we don’t know why something happens, we can’t hope to stop it. We might or might not be able to pull drowning people out of the river, but we really should ask how these people got in the river in the first place. Where are the sinking boats that left these people stranded in the water?

I started out in biomedical research asking what and how, but after stumbling into some inexplicable questions that cannot be addressed by the what and the how, I started asking why. Our Western diet is certainly a factor. And our stressful lifestyle. But we and others are coming to a fascinating conclusion: intestinal worms are almost certainly involved. But it’s not the presence of the worms that is hurting us. To the contrary, the almost complete loss of intestinal worms in modern society is, surprisingly, a very significant problem. Intestinal worms, called ‘helminths’, have caused untold human suffering, killing the weak and disabling the strong. Labelled uniformly as disease-causing parasites by biologists, they have inspired fear and hate, leading to major campaigns aimed at their eradication. The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, was originally formed to eliminate hookworm from the southern US. Their genocidal campaign was very successful, and similar campaigns are now underway in developing countries. This fearsome menace has been virtually eradicated in the US and in western Europe, and we hope to accomplish the same in developing countries. Good riddance.

https://aeon.co/essays/gut-worms-were-once-a-cause-of-disease-now-they-are-a-cure

[Laffy Kat]

1. You first. nt

[Warpy]

2. Yes, I want to smite the author of that piece with persistent pinworm.

I'll wait for real science to determine what our normal intestinal bugs do and how they do it.

Shoot, we've just recently discovered we have a microbiome. Let's hold off a while on introducing parasites our ancestors found troublesome enough to drink distillations of plants like tansy and wormwood that made them sick but killed off the worms.

[Laffy Kat]

3. I do think there's something to it!

A year or so ago, I read a column that I wish to god I had copied because I mention it all of the time and I can't cite it, but it was written by either an immunologist or GI physician. He suggested throwing out all of those expensive probiotics because you can get the same benefits by simply "kissing your dog" every few weeks. I guess dogs have very healthy guts.

It makes sense. And let's face it: those of us who have dogs probably do the equivalent of kissing them all of the time. We probably already share their biomes to some extent.

[Warpy]

8. Most of what you get in those expensive probiotics is bugs you can get

in yougurt with active cultures. If yogurt is too puckery, try kefir.

One thing researchers have noted is that there are many more species in the average microbiome out west than back east and more still outside the US, and that the microbiome changes as we change location, so it's not just the pattern of more antibiotic use back east.

This stuff is really fascinating but it's nowhere near being all that useful for treating illness beyond eating fermented dairy products to reduce the diarrhea a lot of us get with antibiotics.

[safeinOhio]

4. No problem with more research.

Mold turned out to be a life saver.

Penicillium notatum, the fungal species that produces penicillin can grow on orange peels. It can also grown on lemon peels, cantaloupe, bread, and certain types of cheeses. ... Mold spores can cause serious, even fatal, systemic infections if they enter your lungs or your bloodstream through cuts in the skin.

[pansypoo53219]

5. too much anti-bacterial shit. forget the 5 second rule.

[mahina]

6. A couple of abstracts. There are more.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-helminthology/article/practices-and-outcomes-of-selftreatment-with-helminths-based-on-physicians-observations/4B7A97234FCC40EDC958090C80A3AAEB
Cited by 7

Volume 91, Issue 3 May 2017 , pp. 267-277
Practices and outcomes of self-treatment with helminths based on physicians' observations
J. Liu (a1), R.A. Morey (a2), J.K. Wilson (a3) and W. Parker (a1)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022149X16000316
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2016
Abstract

The successful use of helminths as therapeutic agents to resolve inflammatory disease was first recorded 40 years ago. Subsequent work in animal models and in humans has demonstrated that the organisms might effectively treat a wide range of inflammatory diseases, including allergies, autoimmune disorders and inflammation-associated neuropsychiatric disorders. However, available information regarding the therapeutic uses and effects of helminths in humans is limited. This study probes the practices and experiences of individuals ‘self-treating’ with helminths through the eyes of their physicians. Five physicians monitoring more than 700 self-treating patients were interviewed. The results strongly support previous indications that helminth therapy can effectively treat a wide range of allergies, autoimmune conditions and neuropsychiatric disorders, such as major depression and anxiety disorders. Approximately 57% of the self-treating patients observed by physicians in the study had autism. Physicians reported that the majority of patients with autism and inflammation-associated co-morbidities responded favourably to therapy with either of the two most popular organisms currently used by self-treaters, Hymenolepis diminuta and Trichuris suis. However, approximately 1% of paediatric patients experienced severe gastrointestinal pains with the use of H. diminuta, although the symptoms were resolved with an anti-helminthic drug. Further, exposure to helminths apparently did not affect the impaired comprehension of social situations that is the hallmark of autism. These observations point toward potential starting points for clinical trials, and provide further support for the importance of such trials and for concerted efforts aimed at probing the potential of helminths, and perhaps other biologicals, for therapeutic use.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29402395/

Intestinal worms eating neuropsychiatric disorders? Apparently so.
Review article
Kou HH, et al. Brain Res. 2018.
Show full citation
Abstract
A number of factors in Western society, including inflammatory diets, sedentary lifestyles, vitamin D deficiency and chronic psychological stress, are known to induce inflammation and to be associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. One factor that is emerging as a potential inflammation inducing factor is biota depletion, or loss of biodiversity from the ecosystem of the human body as a result of industrialization. Originally known as the "hygiene hypothesis", biota alteration theory describes the effects of biota alteration on the human immune system. Work on this topic has pinpointed depletion of helminths as a key loss to the body's ecosystem in Western society, and suggests that some exposure to helminths, ubiquitous prior to the modern era, may be necessary for normal immune system development. Socio-medical studies of humans "self-treating" with helminths as well as limited studies in animal models strongly suggest that helminth therapy may be a productive approach toward treating a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, including chronic fatigue, migraine headaches, depression and anxiety disorders. However, helminth therapy faces some daunting hurdles, including the lack of a financial incentive for development, despite a tremendous potential market for the organisms. It is argued that benevolent donation for early trials as well as changes in regulatory policy to accommodate helminth therapy may be important for the field to develop. It is hoped that future success with some high-profile trials can propel the field, now dominated more by self-treatment than by clinical trials, forward into the main stream of medicine.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
PMID 29402395 [Indexed for MEDLINE]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28720335/

Not infection with parasitic worms, but rather colonization with therapeutic helminths.
Parker W. Immunol Lett. 2017.
Show full citation
Abstract
No abstract available

PMID 28720335 [Indexed for MEDLINE]
Full text
Full text at journal site
Comment on
Immunol Lett. 2017 Aug;188:32-37.
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[mahina]

7. I remember hearing about this guy.

I’m sorry if I’m repeating what’s at the link but I feel a little leery of clicking it. As I recall he wondered why the incidence of obesity and heart disease or so low in certain countries compared to ours. He actually traveled to those places and work barefoot in areas That were affected by worms. He tried doing the research at home first but he ran into trouble buying hookworms consistently.

So what do we do with this information?