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Intestinal Parasites and B12

slayadragon

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A few times during my illness, I have suffered extreme gut problems subsequent to heavy detox. The first was when I started Rich's protocol back in 2007, when I was living in my moldy house. That resulted in a small intestinal blockage that got me into the "Adverse Events" section of his paper. Over the past year, I've managed to do a lot of really fast detox through my gut, and things have again gotten messed up.

Starting in early January, I decided to put some effort into working on my gut. I did a week of fasting (just 16 ounces green juice and a small amount of pureed vegetable soup daily), then another two months of mostly raw produce. (I don't advise most CFS patients to follow this -- I'm quite far along in my recovery.) This whole time, I was taking a variety of parasite herbs, doing at least a couple of enemas or a colonic a day, drinking a quart or two of homemade kefir a day, and doing other things to support my gut.

I bring this up because it was only after doing all these things that I realized that I had a real intestinal parasite problem -- some intestinal flukes, some pinworm, and a tapeworm! After some research, I got my doctor to prescribe praziquantel, which is an anti-parasite drug. An enormous amount of stuff has been killed off (passing it has been rather extraordinary). This is feeling like it may be really important with regard to my health, but we shall see.

So in general, it is very very very hard to find these things. Even tapeworms, which can be very long (many feet) do not always create obvious symptoms. Looking back, I feel certain that I have had these since 2007, and perhaps all the way back to the beginning of my illness. I actually treated with anti-parasite herbs on multiple occasions and felt like I had made progress, but I now think that I just weakened the parasite (especially this tapeworm) rather than killing it. I've had multiple stool tests over time, spent many many months in the past taking anti-parasite herbs (including artemisinin), and have a really good doctor. Apparently these things are very hard to find and very hard to kill. You can weaken them, but until they're really killed off, they just come back when the intestines get dirty again. (And boy, do they love toxins!)

Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt has been talking over the past few years about intestinal worms, saying that they're really common in this illness and can prevent people from getting better. Based on my own experience, I suspect that may be true. If it's taken me this long to find and address this problem, I can't imagine that others aren't affected too.

Just last week, BiancaS talked here about her experience, which sounds very similar to mine:

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/showthread.php?12722-Methylation-hair-loss/page3&highlight=tapeworm

Now, I bring this up specifically here because some of my reading suggests that B12 (and to a lesser extent folate) deficiencies are common with tapeworms. For instance, in the book "Guess What Came To Dinner?" (p. 49), it says:

>In the intestine, fish tapeworm can consume 80 to 100 percent of the host's vitamin B12. A striking vitamin B12 deficiency or pernicious anemia is the most debilitating defect.

Below are some related articles.

In light of my own experiences and the absurd amounts of B12 that people with CFS often need to get methylation going, I am wondering if intestinal parasites in general or tapeworms in particular might be really common.

Perhaps the reason that some people need so much is because a tapeworm is eating it all? And perhaps they need the activated form because it gets into the system really fast, before the tapeworm gets it?

I think this is worth a discussion.

Best, Lisa

*

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17465485

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14730392

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2204895

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6329550

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7435259
 

slayadragon

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Here's a NYT article on this topic. Of people who need massive amounts of B12, I wonder how many have eaten sushi. I certainly have.

*

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/health/08case.html


The fish tapeworm a beast, stubborn as a dog with a beef bone is reluctant to move, tightly gripping the wall of the small intestine with its two suction cups. The worm requires a powerful purging medicine to persuade it to leave its cozy cave and exit the gut into the light.

After purging, Rita discharged a tapeworm three feet long. Examination of the worm proved Dr. Lipman correct. Diphyllobothrium latum, the fish tapeworm, was identified by the pathologist. Her anemia slowly went away, and her abdominal symptoms disappeared.

The disease is unusual and the diagnosis can be hard to make. It was good fortune that Dr. Lipman had been a resident at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where he had done research on vitamin B12.

In the intestine, the worm is a fierce competitor for vitamin B12. Absorbing the vitamin for its own needs, the worm deprives the bone marrow of a vital ingredient for making red blood cells.

Tapeworms sometimes reach a length of 30 feet and can live up to 20 years. They have a complex life cycle; in adult form they attach themselves by suction cup to the small intestine of vertebrates.
 

determined

Senior Member
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307
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USA: Deep South
awesome! Thanks for the link. I've recently had a colonoscopy, so I guess I don't have any huge worms in the large intestine.

I have used antiparasitic herbs in the past too, and I had quite a bit of joint pain as a result. Dying things, spewing out toxins?
 
Messages
76
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Australia
I hope for your sake slayadragon you don't also have strongyloides - this lovely worm burrows itself in the colon wall and only releases its eggs into the poo.
 

slayadragon

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Based on how I felt since taking the praziquantel, I would say that some of these parasites are quite toxic. They don't have the inflammatory kick of mold toxin/biotoxins, but definitely they are not good things and (especially for people whose systems don't detoxify easily) could make a huge impact on one's health.
 
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Well how did you know for sure you had the tapeworm and flukes and pinworm? You said you were doing healthy cleansing herbs and then finally realized.

I would be very interested in ridding myself of any parasites I have. Surely I have something going on in the intestines. I have had sushi and I bet I drank a little tap water in foreign countries. And I don't trust that all the food in those countries was "clean". I don't even trust that all the food I ever ate in this country is clean (lake caught fish or raw eggs are examples).

Doc would probably not be willing to give me praziquantel without a great reason. Nothing works on tapeworms except a medication like this?
 

slayadragon

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After I did all that fasting and a lot of parasite herbs, I expelled a small amount of crumbly yellow stuff that is indicative of tapeworm, plus some a dozen or so flukes. Praziquantel is the right drug for both of those.

It's really ridiculous how hard it is to get parasite infections treated. No one can find them on tests, and the drugs are really hard to come by too. I have a very good ME/CFS doctor (Dale Guyer), but when I talked to him about this problem in the past, he just suggested artemisinin (which did not help that much). In order to get effectively treated, I had to 1) figure out the problem, 2) correctly identify the parasite, 3) look up the right drug, and 4) figure out how to expel the remains from my frozen small intestines (castor oil and an oxy product). This level of do-it-yourself medicine is ridiculous! It's worse than the mold, because it's something that doctors are supposed to know something about (e.g. how to prescribe drugs for bugs as opposed to how to get clear in the desert or remediate your house).

I saw on another thread (and I don't know if this is accurate) that Klinghardt recommends to some patients a series of drugs to cover all the bases: Praziquantel, Ivermectin, Pyrantel Pamoate, Albenza and Alinia. I think the first one on the list has been so important to me (though I still feel like crap from this die-off) that I'm inclined to go for the others as well.

But I'm really far along in my recovery -- living in a really good place, done four years of intensive detox. Probably if my system were less inherently strong, that would be too aggressive.

In general, I suspect that parasites are a big problem for most CFS sufferers. The idea that I had no idea that this huge yellow tapeworm was present in my body, when I've put so much work into figuring out my health issues, is really remarkable. You'd think that would have been addressed first!
 

aquariusgirl

Senior Member
Messages
1,732
Sorry. what is the significance of a "frozen small intestine" & how can you be sure the excreted stuff was in fact a tapeworm?
fyi, I remember kelvin lord saying he had to continue treating for a year .. in order to wipe out the eggs when he was doing a parasite treatment.. Fun, right? Is there no end to this ****ing stuff?
 

Wayne

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Parasitic Herbal Formula

In general, I suspect that parasites are a big problem for most CFS sufferers.

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for sharing your story here. I've long been concerned about parasites because it seems we are probably exposed to them all the time. I suspect that a healthy person's digestive juices and/or enzymes probably just kill them off before they have a chance to take hold. But people with CFS, most of whom have various digestive/GI tract problems, probably don't have this same ability.

Just as I think conventional medicine in general is in its infancy stage of understanding infectious illnesses, I think there is even less understanding about the ubiquitous nature of parasites, and their involvement in so many health issues; thus the difficulty in having to figure so much out for ourselves. It shouldn't have to be this way, but it is what it is. Congratulations on figuring out this important piece for yourself.

I'm now debating whether to start on a parasite formula (by HealthForce Nutritionals) I've had for awhile, and which I set out on my counter a couple days ago. I'm doing some homeopathy for Lyme at the moment, and it's been recommended I hold off on this for a few more weeks. But I think I'll sleep on it tonight, and decide in the morning whether to get started on this formula or not. Seems like it would be pretty benign to do parasitic herbs even if I don't have them.

Thanks again for sharing your story and experience. I admire your persistence.

Wayne
 
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Yeah, crazy. And many of us have trouble deciphering all the data out there. The good data is limited.

Did you take a standard dosage for a standard length of time? Is is okay to start with that drug, having done little or no other cleansing and detox, or would that lead to worse side effects? Is it a drug that can be tapered up slowly to lessen the side effects? If it's taken at a lower dose, might the parasites adapt and become immune?

My blood had normal levels of B12 and passes other standard checks, but that may not mean anything for my bone marrow.
 

richvank

Senior Member
Messages
2,732
Hi, Lisa.

Wow! This is big! (pun really not intended! :angel:)

I hope this will turn out to be a real turning point in your case, and that it will be all improvement from here on!

Best regards,

Rich
 

slayadragon

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After doing all that cleansing and herbs, I started occasionally getting a small amount of crumbly yellow stuff when I was doing enemas. When I did a lot of reading about this, it became clear that this was tapeworm.

The color of what I'm expelling is exactly what's in that picture, and there's a lot of it. And it's little tiny pieces, as exist with tapeworms.

Indeed, with that many eggs, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't just start up again. Maybe my system is strong enough to keep that from happening at this point. Preventing the establishment of a new one may be a lot easier for it to handle than getting rid of one that's already established. But I think at some point, I will need to do another treatment, just in case.

I'm reading a little bit about how the medications don't always get to parasites, if things are not already cleaned out. I did a whole lot of work to clean out my digestive tract before using the drug.

I've taken herbs a number of times over the course of my illness. In general, if you can get the system really cleaned out and then use the herbs, I think that you can at least push some of these parasites back so that they're smaller and not as problematic. But from everything I've read, it's challenging to actually kill them with that kind of approach. The drugs paralyze them or something, causing the head to not be attached to the digestive wall -- which is the key to killing them without many months/years of effort.

I took 1200 mg, 4x over the course of a day. I kind of don't think they'd become immune due to the action of the drug, but it may be that I wouldn't have been successful in killing it at a lower dose.

It's sort of remarkable that I've been doing as well as I have, really. Just rather lethargic. Recently I don't feel like I have CFS, just chronic fatigue. Most of my biotoxin reactivity is gone. But I can see why I would be lethargic, with a large parasite making toxins and eating up all my nutrition. (And stealing my hormones -- my hormones are still really off.) So maybe this is the last remaining problem, or one of them.

I am thinking that parasites may be much more of a problem than we think, and that when people don't get 100% well when they get to a good location, it's because they have a lot of crap like this in residence holding them back. Parasites more than viruses (which mostly seem to drive inflammation and make people more reactive), I think.

But the problem is -- if the system is really toxic, it's very hard to kill stuff like this off. The immune system is shot, and the bugs love filth.

I do think this may be where all the B12 is going, for some of us. I wonder what would happen if Freddd took this drug, for instance.
 
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Makes a whole lot of sense.

Even I start thinking I'm crazy sometimes. For a while I've wondered about mild "allergic" reactions I have to highly nutritious foods. I think the unwanted "invaders" in our body are rejecting a lot of good stuff. It hurts them but it would help us. Like when you have a yeast infection and avoid sugar, it acts up and makes you crave sugar. I think it happens with other foods.

You know my memory is fuzzy, but a friend mentioned cases where docs would purposely infect someone with a tapeworm or other larger parasite. It was for a certain kind of illness, where the person's immune system was attacking itself. So then the immune system starts attacking the parasite instead, and they feel better. I guess these people are relatively healthy besides the autoimmune part. That's what I was told anyway.
 

justy

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Hi Lisa, this is a very interesting thread! I'm glad that you have figured this out and i hope it brings you further healing.
I took mebendazole last year - one dose because my kids had regular worms (not sure what type - pinworms?) we all took a dose to make sure we were all clear. A lot of my stomach symptoms cleared up temporarily. Si when the stomach problems came back i tooka second dose - this one helped for longer. A couple of months later i discussed this with Dr Myhill at an appointment and she said it was possible that i had another type of parasite - she didnt specify - and that maybe the drug had knocked it back but not killed it. She prescribed a course of the same drug, but rather than one dose 3x a day for three days. On the second night i was up all night with the most appaling pain i have ever experienced (and ive had 4 natural home births - one of whom was 10 and a half pounds!) i was literally crying and wrtiting in agony all night. It felt like something was writing around and ripping up my insides. I dint finish the course - way too afraid.

I have a thread on my experiences with mebendazole here:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/show...ent-for-worms-has-helped-my-gut-a-bit-but-why

Since then it did quiten down for a bit again, but has recently flared up. I keep getting stomach bugs or viruses (i know they are because others in the house get them) but whereas the others are ill with it for a few days mine goes on and on for weeks or even months.
I have very poor nutritional status - despite a very healthy diet for years. I have a ferritin level of 5 despite taking iron supplements for 3 years. I also have low normal B12. The b12 injections are really helping me at the moment.

Now i am back to another stomach bug - this ones been two weeks so far and im thinking about my gut again. I watched a video, i think with Dr Klinghardt and he suggests that parasites will cause you to change your behaviour in order to feed them and look after them. When i have these stomach episodes i cant face any healthy food and crave carbs and sugar and stodgy food - everything else tht i normall eat such as salads makes me feel nauseous.
I wonder if testing for parasites is a good way to go next. Any ideas?
Justy.
 

slayadragon

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I just had a talk with my doctor, Dale Guyer, about parasites. He says that oftentimes in CFS patients, much larger drug doses than usually recommended are needed to kill parasites. On the other hand, people with CFS have a hard time tolerating the drugs.

So it's the same problem as all the other pathogen problems we have. Our immune systems aren't working right, and the terrain of our bodies is abnormal and leads to bugs being present. (For the Lyme and related bacteria, it's the low oxygen levels in the tissues; for the viruses, it's all the inflammation. For this, it seems to be the toxins in the intestines. Muck makes parasites very happy, it seems!)

In my experience, being in a really pristine environment with regard to biotoxins has taken stress off my system, allowing me to treat more aggressively. But of course, not everyone can do that either.

The one CFS type physician who seems to be actively talking about parasites now is Klinghardt. Apparently in some patients, he recommends aggressive drugs, but in others (maybe in ones that are less strong) he suggests natural measures.

You might want to order a book called "Guess What Came To Dinner?" which discusses how to get rid of parasites. This sounds reasonable to me, based on my experiences so far. What they suggest is:

1) Clean dirty gunk out of the colon, with colon-cleansing herbs and/or colonics. (Enemas don't get as high into the colon as colonics, but also can be helpful and certainly are less expensive.)

2) Support the digestive tract. I have found homemade kefir to be really important in restoring probiotics and highly recommend it. (The probiotics in capsules are not nearly high enough potency, in my experience.) I told Guyer that I had been eating a clove of garlic a day, plus some oregano oil and some grapefruit seed extract, to try to wipe out bad yeast/bacteria, and he thought this was a good thing.

3) Modify diet. If people do the things above, then conceivably they might be able to tolerate a better diet. After I started the kefir, my out-of-control sugar cravings went away entirely within a day or so. (Start kefir slowly though!) Green smoothies (made in a Vitamix, a ridiculously expensive blender that I now love) have been really helpful. In general, it's hard for our bodies to get nutrition from raw vegetables. The Vitamix pre-digests it for us, and the fruit makes them really not taste too bad. (I actually grew to crave it.)

4) Kill the parasites. It may be that if the above are done first, parasites may be easier to kill. I used a whole lot of herbs for a long time before moving to the drug. If the parasites are open and exposed, they may be more vulnerable to the drug and die a lot faster. Yours sounds like it was fighting for dear life. (However, note that when I took away the parasite's food source and used the herbs, I started to feel like it was chewing on me. Probably that was a good sign that it was time for drugs.)

5) Take special care to avoid picking up more parasites. No more sushi for me, for instance. (Not all sushi is dangerous, but better safe.)

This is the lab that was recommended to me in terms of identifying parasites. It would be interesting to learn more about them.

http://www.parasitetesting.com/

However, it seems to me that your issue seems to be less that you need to know what drug is appropriate (you already know that mebendazole addresses it) and more that you have to figure out how you can get to the point where your system can use the drug. Maybe if you work on it for a while, you will be able to do that.

I think it's a good thing that we're talking about the topic anyway.

Best, Lisa
 

xrayspex

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lying down right now so can't type too much or too well.
but after I saw cheney in 08 once and he recommended the wormwood and hepasunate -I found out I have some things living in me, ugh.
thing is, wormwood and hepasunate make me feel bad so only take a small dose now and then and feel worse then better and then see stuff afterwards; well its the same looking species the last 4 years and just doesnt clear out.
creeps me out
one doc gave me albendazole recently to try but i havent done it, i feel bad just on a drop of wormwood, can't imagine what strong drug would do to me, I work parttime, cant afford selfinduced flare up, get enough way it is

i know i won't be pristine on my diet, its good but some bad stuff too, sugar, i need carbs, i think i also have some sort of porphyria and low carb diets make me sick. I have spent a lot of time though working on diet and gut over the years and get vry good nutrition.

i dont know, its just another quandry, sick of quandries

i posted this about it recently , had no takers--but its about autoimmune and parasites purportedly being good sometimes, some bugs are good after all, how do we know when its not part of natural order? i know if i was going to take this on (parasite cleanse) the hardcore way, it would be long and hard and pain and maybe be worse after is possible, hard to commit without knowing more...

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/show...atment-vs-parasite-issues&p=246252#post246252

but it sure makes me wonder wish we were more advanced, this stuff makes me think our medical system is so primitive, living in dark ages

oh and I am not sure how long I've been a hostess, but I dont recall seeing them before tried wormwood, cus stuff like tumeric in my smoothie can bring em out too
its possible i got them around 07 tho as I suspect my world travellor friend who did enemas secretly in my loo (yuck! without my permission) or my dog with cancer who had open sores and lived in my bathroom

oh and as far as b12 goes my doc tested mine last year and it was abnormally high, go figure
 

Shellbell

Senior Member
Messages
277
Lisa, have you ever heard of Dr. Omar Amin in Arizona? Parasites are his specialty. Has anyone here ever been treated by him? Over the last 5 years, all my tests came back normal, no parasites from other labs. His lab detected crypto. The other doctor that I was using at the time, uses him strictly for parasite tests because he is so good a detection. I never saw or spoke with Dr. Amin directly, but was getting treatment from the other doctor who wasn't using Dr. Amin's protocol.

Shellbell