Clark's Herbal Parasite Cleanse

[Dainty]

I am currently trying this protocol. It centers on taking somewhat large doses of cloves, wormwood, and black walnut hull extract.

I'm actually doing this more to battle my MCS than CFS, as a know someone who obtained signigicant improvement of MCS from this protocol. But since the herbs themselves are rather strong and known to treat a variety of things I think my experience belongs here.

I have a long history of not being able to tolerate protocols. I'm especially not a big fan of the tendency to claim that any negative reaction is "just detox". After all these years of listening to my body I feel like I can usually tell when something's good or bad for it, and whether negative symptoms are beneficial or not.

So far, from what I can acertain, this protocol has been tolerable and resulted in detox reactions. I've been increasing at my own pace, so currently up to 40 drops walnut hull extract (which is about 1/2 tsp), 2 capsules wormwood and 3 capsules of cloves. Have to completely evaporate the alcohol out of the extract before taking it. Each time I increase the wormwood dosage I get quite severe cold symptoms that last for several hours and then "magically" vanish. Increasing the cloves results in a few hours of fatigue much more severe than is normal for me. Since begining this protocol about a week ago I suddenly only get 6 hours of sleep per night, though I am now experimenting with a way to remedy that side effect. I am also planning to get back on a probiotic to make sure I have enough good bacteria in my gut, since these herbs seem to basically be anti-everything.

I don't subscribe to Hulda Clark's theories, but I know these herbs are used to treat multiple things (including candida) so I figure it's possible they might be beneficial somewhere, somehow. I'm going to try to get up to the target dosage and follow the protocol's chart from there but will stop if symptoms become intolerable or it doesn't feel that my body is responding well anymore.

Has anyone else tried this protocol or these herbs? Anyone have thoughts on it?

 

[Sunday]

I'm interested to hear that this combination is working well for you. I've done cleanses with walnut hull before CFS, and they seemed to work, but I've wondered if it isn't too drastic for us. Interesting to see that, at least for you, it's good.

You are aware that there's a certain toxicity level to wormwood, right? It is indeed very effective at its job (thus the name), and in small doses it doesn't pose a problem for most people. But it does contain the neurotoxin, thujone, a CNS poison (that's the stuff that made heavy absinthe drinkers go crazy). Since you seem to be used to tuning into your body, I'd just advise checking in on this to be sure wormwood's good for you - and I wouldn't keep it up indefinitely, but I doubt you intend to. Wormwood has traditionally been used for digestion and nervous disorders. Ironically, the symptoms of poisoning from thujone and derivatives include digestive problems and convulsions.

I'm not trying to scare you; I think there's a place for toxic herbs if they are used carefully, and wormwood has a long history of use in this way. Just be aware. And I'd be ver interested to hear how this works for you.

 

[Dainty]

I'm interested to hear that this combination is working well for you. I've done cleanses with walnut hull before CFS, and they seemed to work, but I've wondered if it isn't too drastic for us. Interesting to see that, at least for you, it's good.

You are aware that there's a certain toxicity level to wormwood, right? It is indeed very effective at its job (thus the name), and in small doses it doesn't pose a problem for most people. But it does contain the neurotoxin, thujone, a CNS poison (that's the stuff that made heavy absinthe drinkers go crazy). Since you seem to be used to tuning into your body, I'd just advise checking in on this to be sure wormwood's good for you - and I wouldn't keep it up indefinitely, but I doubt you intend to. Wormwood has traditionally been used for digestion and nervous disorders. Ironically, the symptoms of poisoning from thujone and derivatives include digestive problems and convulsions.

I'm not trying to scare you; I think there's a place for toxic herbs if they are used carefully, and wormwood has a long history of use in this way. Just be aware. And I'd be ver interested to hear how this works for you.

Thanks, Sunday. Yes, I'm aware of the toxicity though I admittedly haven't done much research on it. I don't plan for this to be a long-term thing, in fact, I might end up taking a break from it for a week or two (now that I've established some parameters for its effect on me) and then starting back up again beginning at a higher dose, since I've spent all this time cautiously increasing and long-term isn't a good idea. I had to start slow to get an idea of its effect on me, but now that I know I could probably stop to give my body a break and then re-start it at a slightly higher level than I'm at right now an dwork up from there. Hmm.

It's kind of interesitng because I am so outrageously sensitive to chemicals used everyday in normal households but can take wormwood just fine (so far). Weird...

 

[powertool4]

I am currently trying this protocol. It centers on taking somewhat large doses of cloves, wormwood, and black walnut hull extract.

I'm actually doing this more to battle my MCS than CFS, as a know someone who obtained signigicant improvement of MCS from this protocol. But since the herbs themselves are rather strong and known to treat a variety of things I think my experience belongs here.

I have a long history of not being able to tolerate protocols. I'm especially not a big fan of the tendency to claim that any negative reaction is "just detox". After all these years of listening to my body I feel like I can usually tell when something's good or bad for it, and whether negative symptoms are beneficial or not.

So far, from what I can acertain, this protocol has been tolerable and resulted in detox reactions. I've been increasing at my own pace, so currently up to 40 drops walnut hull extract (which is about 1/2 tsp), 2 capsules wormwood and 3 capsules of cloves. Have to completely evaporate the alcohol out of the extract before taking it. Each time I increase the wormwood dosage I get quite severe cold symptoms that last for several hours and then "magically" vanish. Increasing the cloves results in a few hours of fatigue much more severe than is normal for me. Since begining this protocol about a week ago I suddenly only get 6 hours of sleep per night, though I am now experimenting with a way to remedy that side effect. I am also planning to get back on a probiotic to make sure I have enough good bacteria in my gut, since these herbs seem to basically be anti-everything.

I don't subscribe to Hulda Clark's theories, but I know these herbs are used to treat multiple things (including candida) so I figure it's possible they might be beneficial somewhere, somehow. I'm going to try to get up to the target dosage and follow the protocol's chart from there but will stop if symptoms become intolerable or it doesn't feel that my body is responding well anymore.

Has anyone else tried this protocol or these herbs? Anyone have thoughts on it?

Hi,

I am also interested into how this goes. Wormwood in those small doses for periods of about a month or so is not damaging usually. It's the long term use of it. But also depends on the person so listen to your body.

If you go on iherb, they have Kroeger's Wormwood combination and also NOW foods has a product called NOW Blackwalnut. NOW is made up of blackwalnut, cloves and wormwood. Kroegers is a little better in that it's not liquid and it's capsules with wormwood, cloves, black walnut leaf, quassia, and male fern root both of which was recommended to me by a mom of two autistic children (who have very similar biochemical tendencies as those with CFS, as well as gut issues) that have used with lots of success.

I posted those because they are essentially the same ingredients and you could read the reviews on them. And for future ref or anyone else, they are cheaper.

 

[Carrigon]

I can't take wormwood. I got heartpain and pain down the left arm from just a small amount of wormwood.

I had some success with cloves. Cloves will make worms pass out of you and you'll see them. I usually take it as a hot tea.

I also do a pumpkin seed or pumpkin seed oil cleanse and take that for awhile when I'm deworming.

No matter what I try or how long, though, I don't think I've ever fully gotten rid of worms. I had a cat that had some kind of resistant roundworm. We couldn't get it out of him either. And the vet tried all kinds of antiparasitics. He started calling it the super worm. Nothing worked. And I think I have the same one in me.

 

[rebecca1995]

I did this same cleanse a few years ago. I'd had Blastocystis hominis (parasite) for 11+ years, and nothing had gotten rid of it--Flagyl, Iodoquinol, etc. After the cleanse, I had a negative test for the first time. But I'd also done other things for Lyme/tick-borne infections in the interim that could have killed the parasite. So I'm not sure if it was the cleanse that got rid of it, but I was pleased, at any rate.

 

[Dainty]

It's great to see others are interested!

Today I decided to take the full "starting" dosage, and from there decide if I wanted to follow the protocol to the letter for the next week or else take a break and come back to it later. That was 2 teaspoons of walnut hull extract, 9 capsules of cloves and 3 capsules of wormwood. If I choose to continue without a break then from now on walnut hull extract dosage would only be once a week, and the next four days I'd maintain the dosage of cloves and increase the wormwood dosage by one capsule every two days. After that cloves dosage also becoes once a week, while wormwood dosage continues to increase until I am taking 7 capsules of wormwood per day for four days, until that. too, becomes once a week.

I'm excitged to see that I'm not having any major problems with this so far today. Side effects, yes...a bit of a stomach ache after taking the wormwood an dit's painful to gulp down that much cloves, but I suppose that's to be expected. For a moment I was doing poorly right after the walnut extract (this dosage was four times the amount I had yesterday) and it actually felt like a severe allergic reaction, to the point where I grabbed my epi-pen, removed it from its case, and mentally rehearsed the steps just in case. But the symptoms went away on its own, and in hindsight I'm fairly certain it was due to the alcohol, as I'm extremely sensitive to it. I had tried to evaporate all of it out, knew there was still some left, but I thought it was reduced enough to not effect me.

So anyway, still managing to do okay. It's hard to tell if it's helping me any at this point because the lack of sleep is effecting me poorly. Once I get over the first 12 or so days of this protocol everything will be just a single once a week dosage, and I'm asuming that that time will be it's proving ground. Or I could stop today for a bit of a breather to see if I have any improvement as a result of what I've done so far.

I had some success with cloves. Cloves will make worms pass out of you and you'll see them. I usually take it as a hot tea.

How much cloves do you use? The protocol I'm on results in a total of 9 capsules per day, which in my rough measuring results in a total of a little less than a tablespoon (four teaspoons) of ground cloves per day. It is quite painful to get that down (I cannot swallow pills). It's like drinking hot sauce.

 

[Dainty]

I did this same cleanse a few years ago. I'd had Blastocystis hominis (parasite) for 11+ years, and nothing had gotten rid of it--Flagyl, Iodoquinol, etc. After the cleanse, I had a negative test for the first time. But I'd also done other things for Lyme/tick-borne infections in the interim that could have killed the parasite. So I'm not sure if it was the cleanse that got rid of it, but I was pleased, at any rate.

That's very interesting to hear! Did you notice any side effects or die-off reactions that you can remember?

 

[rebecca1995]

That's very interesting to hear! Did you notice any side effects or die-off reactions that you can remember?

Not that I can recall. I think I tolerated the whole cleanse pretty well. But as I said, I can't be sure that's what killed the bug.

 

[_Kim_]

Dainty, you probably already know this, but just in case...

Heat will speed up the evaporation process. You could put some of the extract in a small cup and then sit that in a bigger cup or bowl of hot water.

Good luck with the protocol.

 

[Carrigon]

Dainty, about a teaspoon of cloves per cup of hot water.

 

[Dainty]

Dainty, you probably already know this, but just in case...

Heat will speed up the evaporation process. You could put some of the extract in a small cup and then sit that in a bigger cup or bowl of hot water.

Good luck with the protocol.

Yeah, the reason I'm not using hot water is because Clark specifies that too hot of water damages the anti-parasitic properties of the extract. She recommends lukewarm water at the warmest. Again, I'm not quite sure I subscribe to her thoughts on the subject but I figure as long as I'm taking all this expensive stuff I may as well make sure I'm doing it exactly right.

But thanks for double-checking. I'm actually so sensitive to alcohol that I can't even be near it evaporating, so that set-up would be difficult anyway.

 

[powertool4]

I did this same cleanse a few years ago. I'd had Blastocystis hominis (parasite) for 11+ years, and nothing had gotten rid of it--Flagyl, Iodoquinol, etc. After the cleanse, I had a negative test for the first time. But I'd also done other things for Lyme/tick-borne infections in the interim that could have killed the parasite. So I'm not sure if it was the cleanse that got rid of it, but I was pleased, at any rate.

Hi,

how did you know you had b. hominis? Did you do a stool test?

 

[Dainty]

Bring on the side effects/detox reactions/unclassified symptoms!

Yesterday I woke up feeling great. One of those days where you can't stop smiling because of how good you feel, and you do everything with a little extra flair of energy jsut because, you know, you can.

That lasted all of 10 minutes, until I took my wormwood, and after my first dose of cloves my brain went downhill quickly. Within a few hours I had a migraine-type headache, frantically covering the tiniest sliver of light and then laying int eh dark the rest of the day. The pain, though not fun, was tolerable without pain meds so long as I didn't move, speak, see light, or hear any noise. The worst of it lasted 7 hours, with it lingering another 5 hours after that. During this time I also suffered from minor urinary urge incontinence on more than one occasion, which hasn't happened before. I now have diarrhea. No, I have not noticed any dead worms.

Theories on why that happened: the day before (friday) I had had a massage; perhaps it intensified the detox reaction? One sign of wormwood overdose is a depressed nervous systom, which might cause incontinence. If so then the incontinence should continue and increase with a higher dosage, and if it does then I will probably halt the protocol. Also, this happened the day after my major dose of walnut hull extract (4 times the amount tried previously) and cloves (more than three tiems the amount tried previously) so it could have been "regular" detox reaction from that.

Today I accidentally took a slightly higher dosage of wormwood than was scheduled (5 capsules instead of 4). Besides being more exhausted than usual so far I'm feeling "normal" today. Hoping it continues. Just as a note to myself, I'm on day 8 of the protocol right now...not necessarily how many days I've been doing it, but that's where I am in the schedule. My dosage today was supposed to have been 4 capsules of wormwood, as well as the three capsules of cloves three times a day.

Edit: I just found out that the wormwood isn't only wormwood, it's wormwood, quassia, and male fern. SInce this supplement was purchased from the Dr. Clark Research Association it is certain that this is what I am supposed ot be taking, however, I feel it is somewhat deceptive to have it labeled solely as "Wormwood" and referred to as such in the protocol while only having the other two mentioned in the label's fine print.

Each capsule of "wormwood" contains:

270 mg Artemisa absinthium (wormwood)
75 mg Quassia amara
20 mg Dryopteris filix-mas (male ferm)

They actually mispelled that last one as "Dryopteis filix-mas". I am not impressed.

 

[Dainty]

Okay, so yesterday I did not suffer the headache (yay!) but I did have similar difficulty thinking. Episodes of urinary incontinence have continued, but I took my wormwood mixture this morning before I could change my mind. I just have today and tomorrow until I'm finished with the large doses of cloves, and there are seven more doses of wormwood to make it through before I'm done. I really do seem to be feeling consistently better in the hours right before I'm scheduled to take the wormwood mixture, so my best guess is that it's helping but I won't really know until I have ceased taking it, and with the end in sight I'm reluctant to halt the protocol prematurely.

I see my naturopath on Wednesday...she actually doesn't know what I've been up to, so it'll be interesting to hear what she has to say. Not like I've been actively keeping it from her, I just happened to have made the decision to try this since the last time I saw her.

 

[Sunday]

I'll be interested to hear what you and you naturopath conclude.

 

[rebecca1995]

Hi,

how did you know you had b. hominis? Did you do a stool test?

Yes--it showed up on multiple occasions over the years on a regular stool test for parasites from a regular allopathic doctor.

 

[Dainty]

Today has not gone well, though I don't think it's because of the cleanse. I ate something that caused a pretty bad reaction (second time it had happened) and I think I'm coming down with the flu. An unusually severe bout of flu has been going around in my family, with one member getting a fever of 103.9 degrees and another who never gets the flu coming down with it as well. So I really hope I'm not in the beginning stages of that.

Thankfully my problems with incontinence have not continued. It will be telling if they start up again when the wormwood dose increases (tomorrow) or with the next dose of walnut (in a few days). Today the last time I had to take 9 capsules of cloves; tomorrow I'll only take three and three will become a weekly dose from there. Only 6 days of wormwood mixture are left in the protocol.

Over the course of this protocol my food sensitivities have increased, so that every meal has become a scramble to think up something I can tolerate. I do suspect the protocol has something to do with that, as it is clearly taxing my body. I also have a markedly decreased ability to do some of the things I could a week or two ago due to increased fatigue.

For me, the side effects are severe enough that if there is improvement I don't expect to notice it until after the initial phase of treatment is over and I'm only onteh once a week maintenence dose. If I only recover to previous levels then I will consider it a bust and eventually stop the weekly doses as well. My hope, of course, is that there will be more improvement than that. I'll keep you all posted!

 

[Dainty]

I'm not doing well at all. Yesterday was too ill to get on the computer or even to watch anything. My brain was not functioning well at all...I had to concentrate hard to form thoughts that made sense, otherwise while resting my thoughts were incoherant, a random jumbling of words that made no sense at all. It was similar to a dream where nothing makes sense except for I was fully awake, somewhat of a bystander to my own thoughts unless I made the effort to concentrate on thinking straight. I am concerned that this symptom is a direct result of the wormwood, and it would have been unnerving if I hadn't been too exhausted to care at the time--I just wanted to rest.

There is also the possibility that I'm still fighting the flu. Yesterday and today I had what for me is a slight fever, chills and sweating, sneezing, runny nose, slightly sore throat, and increased fatigue, even moreso than the days before. THese symptoms have continued to a lesser extent into today so far. I've also had to conceed that I'm not doing well with any meats or eggs, a problem I have from time to time and that has reappeared since beginning this protocol, getting worse and worse until this point. And today adds a sinus headache.

Despite these negative results I have noticed one very tangible improvement: my eyes are clear. Yesterday I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and noticed a difference but I couldn't discern what it was, and today I was finally able to put my finger on it: the whites of my eyes are actually white, not criss-crossed with redviens and slightly red from irritation. I'm no longer cleaning white goop out of my eyes once or twice a day because it jsut isn't there. For me, that's huge. I've had these problems with my eyes for the past three or four years, in fact, two years ago I got curious enough to look at my own eye goop under a microscope. I did this on two separate occasions, perhaps a few weeks or months apart, and both times I saw the same thing: long skinny worm-like things that I'm fairly convinced were (dead) parasites, dark mustard-colored eprfectly round things that I have no idea what they were, and groups of round things clomped together that were pale multi-colors. Anyway, if any of those were actually parasites then it makes sense that my eyes are finally cleared after all these years. It's exciting!

My ND was surprised when I informed her of the protocol I was doing, but she did not indicate that I should cease when I informed her of the symptoms I've had prior to this post.

I have four doses of wormwood left before it becomes only a single weekly dose. Tomorrow I take another dose of 2 tsp of walnut hull extract along with 7 capsules of wormwood, which will be the largest dose I've taken to date. This is my first day completely without cloves and I'm celebrating! Gives a chance for my throat to heal from them. Despite this increasingly severe side effects I'm planning to continue, because it seems they are temporary and I'm so close to finishing it would be a shame to give up now.

I'd welcome any other thoughts on the matter, though.

EDIT: For the record, traditional dosing of wormwood is 2 to 3 grams daily as the herb. At 6 capsules I'm currently taking 1.6 grams, and tomorrow and the following days I'll be taking 1.9 grams. So the actual dosing is well within acceptable parameters.

 

[_Kim_]

Dainty,

You're a trooper. I just read through your symptom log and this has not been a fun protocol at all.

The one thing that caught my attention was your description of eye goop. About a decade ago, I started to get milky secretions. Mostly, they would accumulate on the outer corners of my eyes. This stopped for several years, but it's back again.

I think a microscope might be a worthwhile investment. Good idea!!