Posts Tagged ‘Multiple Sclerosis (MS)’

A diet for optimum health

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

The impact on our health of what we eat has long been played down by mainstream healthcare, in spite of considerable research demonstrating the connection, such as the recent study showing a link between multiple sclerosis and diet.

The truth about the importance of diet for health is now at last becoming more widely realised, but only since the advent of the internet and amongst those with the discernment, or luck, to find the nuggets of truth among the boulders of misinformation.

Unfortunately, government agencies still often issue dietary advice that is flawed, or aimed at the wrong target, as in the report recently released by the UK National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) saying that junk food high in saturated and trans fats and salt is responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths.

While it is true that processed trans fats are bad news, a far greater problem is created by sugar and refined carbohydrates, which are arguably the most important driver of chronic disease today, but this truth is effectively kept under wraps by the efforts of a very powerful sugar lobby, a situation that is repeated across the entire dietary spectrum.

Fortunately, a new approach has cast fresh light onto all of this confusion by offering an alternative to flawed official information and commercially-driven dietary guidance.

A leading UK nutritionist has carried out a large survey to establish exactly which foods are associated with optimal health, surveying over 55,000 Britons to compare subjective ratings of health with consumption of specific food groups in order to derive a research-based guideline for healthy eating.

Whereas most research into diet and health compares diet intakes with the prevalence of diagnosed diseases, the online ‘100% Health Survey’ – the largest ever comprehensive health and diet survey carried out in Britain – has, uniquely, compared the diets of those in robust health with those who have a plethora of health issues that may reasonably be expected to progress to disease unless the underlying causes are addressed.

The results show how the sub-optimal health that is the lot of so many today is closely related to diet, and reveal exactly which types of food are associated with good and poor health.

Foods most frequently associated with good health

* Nuts and seeds
* Fresh fruit
* Vegetables/salad
* Oily fish
* Water

Foods linked to neither really good nor really bad health

* Red meat
* Restaurant/processed meals
* Refined foods
* Tea, coffee and cola

Foods most frequently associated with poor health

* Dairy products
* Added sugar
* Wheat
* Salt
* Sugar-based snacks

Consumption of sugary snacks and drinks was by far the best predictor of poor health for every measure of health looked at (energy, digestion, immunity, hormonal and mental health), confirming that sugar is the worst of the ‘bad’ foods – much worse than alcohol or salt. In fact, indulging in sweets and sugary snacks more than double one’s chances of being in poor health, while avoiding them will make one six times more likely to enjoy optimal health.

These findings cut across much conventional dietary wisdom. For example, nuts and seeds, which are often avoided today because of their fat and calorie content, come up as excellent predictors of good health, and both wheat and milk, which are considered by many to be staples and are in almost every form of convenience food, are shown to be associated with poor health.

Another surprise was the impact of alcohol. Results showed that those drinking a unit of alcohol a day, eg a small glass of wine, were less likely to be in poor health than abstainers, although this relationship does not hold up for larger amounts of alcohol.

Collating all the data from the survey, the following general dietary recommendations emerged.

* Increase consumption of fresh, raw seeds and nuts to 3 servings per day.

* Increase consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables to a combined total of 8-10 servings a day.

* Increase consumption of oily fish to 3 servings per week.

* Increase consumption of water to 8 glasses per day (approximately 1.5 litres).

* Reduce the consumption of red meat to a maximum of 2 servings per week, particularly those already in poor digestive health.

* Minimise the consumption of restaurant and processed meals.

* Reduce consumption of refined foods (white bread, flour and rice etc.) to a maximum of 1 serving per day.

* Eliminate tea, coffee and cola consumption or limit these to very occasional use.

* Reduce dairy product consumption to a maximum of 1 serving per day.

* Avoid adding sugar to food or drinks.

* Reduce wheat consumption to a maximum of 1 serving per day (bread, pasta, pizza etc.)

* Avoid adding salt to food.

* Eliminate sugar-based snacks (chocolate bars, biscuits, etc.) or limit these products to very occasional use.

Advocates of the Paleolithic Diet will note with interest the fact that the top six food types identified by this study as being most associated with good health are essentially the same as those eaten by our early human ancestors.

One of the reasons why this type of diet is so good for us is likely to be that adopting a diet for which our digestive system is best adapted alters the balance of our indigenous microbes, favouring intestinal bacteria that are most beneficial to us.

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Fifteen months of relief from food intolerance and fatigue

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

It’s now 15 months since I acquired a team of 35 hookworm to keep my errant immune system in check, and I’m still over the moon with the results – very much enjoying having more energy and being able to eat many normal foods again.

After having had my original cohort of hookworm for six months, I added whipworm and have recently also taken on board another 10 hookworm, in pursuit of hopefully even greater benefits, though it’s too early yet to be sure exactly what, if any help these additions will produce.

At the moment, I’m very much enjoying my new diet. I’ve recently started to make my own kefir (more ‘old friends’ but, this time, of the bacterial variety!) and I’m also eating more food raw, after finding that my gut feels even more comfortable on a raw food diet. Most of my diet is now normal food, and I never eat more than 30 per cent of the special semi-elemental feed that had for so long been my sole sustenance.

On the strength of my experience so far, others with similar problems are beginning to take the plunge and get ‘hooked’ themselves. A very good friend who has the same extreme degree of food intolerance – as well as MS and M.E. (CFIDS) – recently inoculated with hookworm and, after a rather rough ride with the temporary gastric symptoms that can occur in the first few weeks after inoculation with this species, is already feeling better than she has for many years and is just now starting to eat normal foods again.

What has amazed me, when she and I have compared notes, is how uncannily similar her progress has been to my own, with milestones being passed in the same sequence, and at very close to the same timing.

I began to experience a sense of well-being for the first time at about 30 days post inoculation with hookworm, my friend at 43 days. I began suddenly and unexpectedly to take an interest in cooking smells for the first time in many years at day 39, and she observed herself responding unusually positively to seeing food on the TV at 47 days. I experienced real hunger for the first time at 43 days, and she reported feeling the first pangs of hunger at 60 days – and now describes herself as ‘ravenous’! It’s the same pattern, just delayed by a couple of weeks in her case, and she’s recently also said that her temperature control has been a lot better since week 6, and that she’s now needing a lot less sleep, which, again, mirrors my own experience.

I find all of this truly amazing. My own story could easily have been just a one-off case, but add my friend’s almost identical experience, and the whole thing becomes so much more significant.

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Hookworm vaccine: double-edged sword

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Reading the information on the development of the hookworm vaccine may fill most readers with the warm glow that comes from the belief that yet another medical milestone is about to be passed en route to a disease-free world. My own response, however, is one of absolute horror!

Once this vaccine is available, it will certainly have the potential to reduce the anaemia and protein malnutrition suffered by more than a half-billion people worldwide who are infected with hookworm but, assuming that it is effective, it will totally wipe out the worm burdens of all those individuals who receive it. And, if it is effective, long-term, these people may never again be able to host hookworm, and therein lies a very significant problem.

There is a clear link between a lack of intestinal worms and many of the worst diseases of modern Western civilization – devastating autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as allergies, some of which can kill in a few moments via anaphylaxis. And there is also growing evidence that replacing a controlled number of intestinal worms, such as hookworm, can effectively treat these same diseases.

The difference between disease causation and disease remediation is numbers. Many hundreds of worms will cause problems, and the more there are, the bigger these problems will be. However, less than a hundred worms will not cause any health problems, but will provide effective protection against inflammation, allergy and autoimmune disease.

Surely, it would be far more sensible to seek better ways to control the numbers of hookworm being hosted by individuals rather than wipe then out completely. But this kind of thinking is anathema to medical authorities around the world, who are now hell-bent on getting rid of what they can only perceive as a threat.

Not surprisingly, the authorities are being eagerly encouraged in this endeavour by the pharmaceutical multinationals who have realised that vaccines offer them the opportunity to sell drugs not only to the sick, but also to the well. Hence the huge increase in the number of vaccines currently being developed and pressed upon a largely unsuspecting public.

Where all this madness will end is anyone’s guess, but treating hookworm infections using vaccines will likely result in millions of people developing autoimmune diseases, which they will not be able to treat using controlled numbers of hookworm because they have been vaccinated against this organism.

Had I been given this vaccine, I would not have been able to experience the relief from my allergies, chronic fatigue, and Crohn’s disease that the acquisition of a few hookworm has produced. So, from my perspective, the deployment of a hookworm vaccine has the potential to create a nightmare scenario. The only positive side to the development will be the inevitable financial rewards for those who happen to work for, or have shares in the company that manufactures the vaccine!

Quite apart from the above considerations, there are also many question marks hanging over the safety of vaccines in general. These products are a veritable witch’s brew of toxic elements, and medical professionals are continually revealing confronting statistics showing the darker reality of what vaccines may actually do to those who receive them.

Unfortunately, so far as the hookworm vaccine is concerned, the commercial momentum is probably now unstoppable. The only hope for the unsuspecting millions who will be given this vaccine is that it will prove less effective in the long term, in the same way that the mumps vaccine has proven to be ineffective, with protection levels falling off very quickly after administration. I certainly hope that this will be the case!

Related article:

Swine flu vaccine: do you really want it?

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Autoimmune & biotherapy news 9/4/10

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Insulin-producing beta cells can be ‘reborn’. This article outlines groundbreaking research showing that pancreatic alpha cells are capable of changing naturally and spontaneously into insulin-producing beta cells.

After creating an artificial form of type 1 diabetes in mice by destroying 99% of their beta cells, and then giving them insulin therapy to keep them alive, the scientists observed alpha cells spontaneously change into functioning beta cells, a process which continued until enough alpha cells had converted into beta cells to allow cessation of insulin therapy.

Even if such a process occurs, or could be induced, in humans, the immune assault which kills the beta cells would arguably continue to attack any reprogrammed cells, which is why people who have had transplants of insulin-producing cells must eventually return to using insulin.

Although the article doesn’t mention the possibility, one can’t help wondering whether an appropriate dose of helminths might successfully control the autoimmune response and preserve the new beta cells.

‘I was stung by 1,500 bees and I feel great.’ This article reports on the ‘tremendous relief’ experienced by an MS sufferer who was bedridden before trying Bee Venom Therapy (Apitherapy) in which she received 1,500 bee stings to specific sites on her back over 18 months. She is now reportedly ‘back on her feet’, with a much improved quality of life.

There are two types of MS, study reveals. This piece outlines new findings that may revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of MS and give significant hope to sufferers. It appears that there are two types of MS, determined according to whether a patient has Th1 or Th17 immune responses, and that a simple blood test may be able to differentiate between the two. 

The study also showed that only one type of MS responds to beta interferon – generally considered the best conventional treatment – and that the second type may actually be made worse by this treatment. 

UV light may benefit MS, beyond vitamin D. Whilst it has been known for three decades that MS is much more common in higher latitudes than in the tropics, and that vitamin D may reduce MS symptoms, new research suggests that the ultraviolet portion of sunlight could play an even more important role than vitamin D in preventing and/or controlling MS.

Bacterium may be new anthelminthic. A toxin produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) could potentially become a treatment for roundworm infection.

Used as a pesticide for decades by organic farmers, this bacterial protein has also been found to kill intestinal parasitic roundworms in mice and may become a treatment option for humans, perhaps replacing albendazole, the current World Health Organization-approved treatment, to which hookworm and some other parasitic nematodes have shown signs of resistance.

As someone who is hosting hookworm as a therapy, this article gives me some cause for concern, as it mentions that some plants have been genetically modified with Bt genes since 1996 so that crops such as corn and potato can themselves produce the crystal protein, providing protection from insects without the use of pesticides. What concerns me is whether eating these GM foods might have an adverse effect on my highly prized team of gut buddies.

Infection with tick-borne parasite may suppress malaria. This new study suggests that monkeys chronically infected with babesia, a tick-borne parasite, are able to suppress malaria infection when exposed to a simian malaria parasite.

Can evolution explain the rise in certain diseases? This article calls for the adoption by physicians of an evolutionary perspective on health and disease instead of the traditional, Newtonian view of the human body as a perfectly designed machine.

Evolutionary concepts have already helped to explain why some diseases are so prevalent and difficult to prevent: the elimination from our lives of bacteria and worms has resulted in more allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, and our lack of adaptation to new risk factors in modern society, such as tobacco, alcohol, a high-fat diet and contraceptives has resulted in higher rates of cancer.

Further insights may help to explain why disease is generally so prevalent and difficult to prevent – perhaps because natural selection favors reproduction over health, biology evolves more slowly than culture, and pathogens evolve more quickly than humans.

Acne drug/ulcerative colitis link again demonstrated. New evidence has been found of a cause-and-effect relationship between the acne drug isotretinoin (Accutane) and ulcerative colitis – though not Crohn’s disease – which suggests that patients on the medication are four times more likely than non-users to develop colitis within a year. The risk of developing this disease appears to climb in tandem with a patient’s daily dose of the drug.

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Depression: worms may be better than therapy

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Our gatherer ancestors obtained so much vitamin C from their predominantly fruitarian diet that they eventually lost the gene responsible for its synthesis, making modern man dependent on food-source vitamin C.

In the same way, genes that once trained and tuned our ancestors’ immune systems were lost as ever-present intestinal worms took over this role. Unfortunately, however, we in the modern West have summarily dismissed our helminthic hitchhikers and are consequently left with no alternative source of the molecules with which they had supplied us for millennia.

Deprived of the natural regulatory mechanism provided by intestinal worms, immune systems are now attacking harmless environmental antigens (causing asthma), foods (inflammatory bowel disease), or self-antigens (multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and more than a hundred other autoimmune diseases).

Depression is not yet listed as an autoimmune disease, but it may not be long before it is, according to a recent article in Psychology Today.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), which is closely linked to the Western lifestyle, and is rising rapidly up the world’s ‘top ten’ chart of diseases, may not be a mental illness after all, but a mental symptom of an immuno-regulatory disorder of the modern environment.

If this is true, it implies, to quote this article, “… that the most effective therapy is likely to be similar to those suggested by the hygiene hypothesis for other immune-related disorders – and is certainly not likely to be psychotherapy. Worms might do you more good!”

See also: Can you worm your way out of depression?

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Crohn’s disease treatment update

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

The treatment of Crohn’s disease usually involves the use of anti-inflammatory drugs, but these are frequently only partially effective and are also associated with serious side effects. Many patients eventually require surgery in spite of the use of these medicines.

The serious risks associated with Crohn’s medications have again been highlighted recently by a study which found that the immunosuppressant thiopurine drugs – one of the cornerstones of Crohn’s treatment – can increase the risk of cancers linked to viral infections.

Patients receiving thiopurines – such as azathioprine and Imuran – were found to have a more than five-fold increase in the risk of lymphoma compared with those who had never received these drugs. Older male patients with a longer history of inflammatory bowel disease also have an increased risk of lymphoma.

Another recent study indicated that patients with inflammatory bowel disease, especially those receiving thiopurine medications, may also be at increased risk of developing non-melanoma skin cancers.

Only in the last few days, a new warning has been issued about the drug Tysabri (Natalizumab), the multiple sclerosis medication that was approved for use in moderate to severe Crohn’s disease in early 2008.

Tysabri, which had previously been linked with a rare but deadly brain disease called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), has now been confirmed to increase the risk of this disease. Whilst there have been no reports of PML in patients taking Tysabri for less than 12 months, the rate in patients who use the drug for two to three years is estimated to be one case per 1,000 patients.

The search for a better treatment alternative continues with a new multi-centre trial, funded to the tune of $4.7 million, which is about to compare the use of the conventional management strategy featuring gradual escalation of drug therapy with a newer approach combining immunosuppression with a tumor necrosis factor alpha blocking drug and an anti-metabolite.

Turning to studies that are already bearing fruit, potential sources of relief for Crohn’s are being revealed by research looking at the effects of certain nutrients on the activity of this disease. For example, it appears that it may be advantageous for Crohn’s patients to vary the types of fat that they consume, especially to increase the amount of Omega-3 fatty acids and decrease the Omega-6 fats that are now found in extremely high quantities in the average Western diet.

Several studies have suggested that Omega-3 fats – available from oily fish, and fish oil supplements – exert a protective effect by modulating intestinal inflammation, and a new study has found that a high intake of total, saturated and monounsaturated fats, and a higher ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, is associated with higher disease activity.

Another new study has identified a further novel treatment avenue for people with Crohn’s or other inflammatory bowel diseases, in the readily available vitamin D. The study shows, for the first time, that vitamin D deficiency can contribute to Crohn’s disease, and that supplementing with this nutrient can counter the effects of the disease.

Vitamin D impacts the immune system, specifically the innate immune system that acts as the body’s first defense against microbial invaders, and it appears that the inflammatory response, which is thought to underlie autoimmune conditions, is probably the result of a defect in the handling of intestinal bacteria by the innate immune system.

Another potentially hopeful recent study, has found that two compounds extracted from cannabis – the cannabinoids THC and cannabidiol – appear to be able to restore the gut membrane barrier by allowing epithelial cells to form tighter bonds.

Studies being carried out at Nottingham into the use of live hookworm as a therapeutic agent in Crohn’s and other autoimmune diseases is still a very long way from demonstrating efficacy, mainly due to the low numbers of worms having been used in these trials to date, and the inadequately short period that the worms have been left in place.

Nevertheless, existing research, already suggests a high degree of success from the use of hookworm, and the efficacy of this treatment is regularly confirmed by patients who have chosen not to wait for further trials, and have obtained a supply of helminths elsewhere.

Helminthic therapy is therefore arguably the current treatment of choice for Crohn’s disease, especially as it provides freedom from the long-term side effects associated with so many of the available drug treatments. Unfortunately, the FDA has recently banned the supply of helminths to anyone within the US, so American citizens who are too ill to travel are now effectively denied access to this treatment, which is available everywhere else in the world, via the internet, from Autoimmune Therapies.

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Autoimmune disease or aspartame poisoning?

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Some people diagnosed with lupus, MS, diabetes and other diseases have found that their symptoms have disappeared when they stopped consuming products containing the artificial sweetener aspartame.

However, avoiding aspartame may be difficult, as this sweetener can be found in approximately 6,000 products worldwide, including soft drinks, chewing gum, confections, gelatins, dessert mixes, puddings and fillings, frozen desserts, yogurt, tabletop sweeteners, pharmaceuticals and vitamin products.

Those who promote aspartame claim that it helps people achieve a more healthy diet by reducing or replacing the calories in foods and beverages while maintaining great taste. Its advocates point to the fact that simply substituting a can of diet soft drink for a regular soft drink can save 150 calories, and that substituting a packet of low-calorie tabletop sweetener for two teaspoons of sugar three times each day – in coffee and tea, and on cereal etc. – can save 100 calories a day.

But all this hype covers up a quite different reality and a very sorry tale of deliberate deception on the part of big business and government in both the US and Europe. The truth is that aspartame is an addictive, excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered carcinogen that interacts with virtually all medications!

The story of aspartame is laid bare in the movie ‘Sweet Misery’ – the film that Pepsi and Coca Cola didn’t want us to see, but which is now available, in entirety, on the internet.

Those who decide to avoid aspartame after watching this film need to be aware that a new derivative of this sweetener has been introduced by NutraSweet. Called Neotame, the new product is already availiable in the US and has recently been approved for sale in Europe.

The makers of Neotame are promoting their product to manufacturers by pointing to such attributes as its great taste, zero calories and the fact that it’s 8,000 times sweeter than sucrose. They also draw attention to reduced handling charges, shipping and storage costs that will, they say, deliver commercial users significant savings on sweetener formulations. So Neotame is clearly going to sweeten the profits of Europe’s as well as America’s food and drink manufacturing companies, but what will it do you you and me?

Well, it may allow manufacturers to reduce the amount of high-fructose corn syrup in their products, which could be good news but, as Neotame is a modified version of aspartame, and has a very close chemical relationship to the original, this new, ‘improved’ version is likely to carry similar health risks.

Anyone wondering if there is an artificial sweetener which doesn’t carry the risks attached to aspartame and similar compounds should look at stevia, a completely natural, sweet substance that is grown in soil rather than being concocted in a laboratory.

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Swine flu vaccine: do you really want it?

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

The European drugs regulator has given the go-ahead for one of the UK’s two swine flu vaccines – Pandemrix, made by GlaxoSmithKline – for use in adults and children over six months and pregnant women, and the Department of Health plans to start vaccination in October.

The GSK vaccine is made in eggs, so is not suitable for anyone with an allergy to egg, but the second vaccine – to be available soon and made by Baxter – is not manufactured using eggs so can be used in people with an egg allergy. More…

Flu vaccines also typically contain one or more of the following toxic/hazardous ingredients: thimerosal (mercury, which causes nerve cell damage), aluminum (a neurotoxin that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and may be involved in Multiple Sclerosis), squalene (an adjuvant which generates concentrated, unremitting immune responses over long periods of time), Triton X-100 (a detergent), phenol (carbolic acid), ethylene glycol (antifreeze), betapropiolactone (a disinfectant), nonoxynol (used on condoms to kill or stop growth of STDs) and octoxinol 9 (a vaginal spermicide).

Although, according to reports, the GSK Pandemrix vaccine ‘appears safe’, nearly 50% of people in one of the key studies experienced local discomfort or systemic symptoms – i.e. headaches – and it is unlikely that the long-term effects of this vaccine have been determined in the couple of months that evaluation has been carried out.

The vaccine used during the swine flu outbreak in 1976 increased the risk of developing Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) by eight times and led to 500 people succumbing to this syndrome, 25 of whom died before the immunisation programme was halted.

No-one has ever figured out why the 1976 vaccine caused this disease – in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the nerves – and doctors have again been advised to watch for Guillain-Barré syndrome during the current swine flu vaccination programme.

According to a study released by the British Medical Journal, more than half of Hong Kong’s healthcare workers have said they would refuse the swine flu vaccine because of side effects and doubt about its safety and effectiveness. The study suggested that health workers worldwide were likely to repeat this trend.

As an alternative to a vaccine, a daily dose of 800-2000 IU of vitamin D has been shown to more or less eliminate flu symptoms. Vitamin C is also a surprisingly effective prophylactic against viral infections such as swine flu and, if delivered intravenously, will safely and effectively treat the illness, if contracted.

Further information:

More on vitamin D…

More on vitamin C and swine flu…

Other preventive measures…

Face masks are effective…

Swine flu: the phony war…

More on swine flu vaccine…

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MS may respond to inexpensive hypertension drug

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

A new study using mice and human brain tissue has revealed a link between high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis, suggesting that an inexpensive drug already widely used for high blood pressure may also have therapeutic value in MS.

Lisinopril appears to have a lot going for it as a potential MS treatment. It reduces numerous molecular measures of inflammation that accompany the disease, without inhibiting overall immune competence, and it triggers the proliferation of regulatory T cells. Amazingly, when the drug was given to mice after they had already developed full-blown symptoms, lisinopril reversed their paralysis.

Meanwhile, another novel treatment for MS – Helminthic Therapy – is to be assessed in a study at Nottingham University in the UK, It is expected that this new study will add to the existing evidence for the effectiveness of this simple, natural and controllable therapy.

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Probiotics with your sweetener

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Medical News Today report that Heartland Sweeteners have introduced the first sweetener to include a probiotic – Nevella® with Probiotics.

What a neat idea to ensure a steady supply of good bugs, but what a pity that, in this case, the beneficial bacteria have been paired with an artificial sweetener of very dubious safety – sucralose (Splenda)!

Like aspartame, sucralose has been found by independent researchers, particularly in Europe, to be harmful to human health, linking it to weight gain, disruption of sleep patterns, sexual dysfunction, increases in cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus, and diabetes. The problem appears to be that the body does not recognize these sweeteners as a source of nutrition, and therefore struggles to process them, resulting in their storage in vital organs such as the brain and liver, where they can form the basis for eventual cell mutation. 

More lowdown on sucralose.

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Return of the lost worms

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Replacing lost worms to regain health

Helminthic therapy is an experimental approach to the treatment of asthma, allergies and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, which involves the administration of controlled quantities of selected, benign intestinal parasites such as hookworm and whipworm.

The treatment developed out of understanding gained from scientific studies which showed that, while these illnesses have escalated in developed countries during the past 50-100 years, they remain much less common in parts of the world where intestinal parasites are still prevalent.

The aim of the treatment is to rebalance the host’s immune system by replacing one or more of the harmless organisms which have been lost in recent decades due to improved hygiene, sanitation and lifestyle changes.

The organisms used have become masters of the human immune system during millions of years of coexistence with man and are adept at regulating their host’s immune response. In fact, the codependent relationship between worm and man is so close that the human genome is now arguably incomplete without the genes contributed by these organisms.

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