Remember Those Parasites? Those Were the Days...

At the end of the last post, I was going to pretend as if I had Celiac Disease. And I have.

For the last five days or so, I have been a very strict Celiac. If I handed my child a wheat-filled cracker, I washed my hands afterwards. I ate nothing that might even have a teeny bitty chance of having wheat in it.

You'd think that things would start improving but really they haven't. There was one time yesterday when I thought they might be getting better, but....it passed. Ha! Unintentional poo humor.

Then my parents came for Thanksgiving, and my Dear Mom said that she still thought I might STILL HAVE a parasite, specifially one called Blastocystis Hominis. I tested positive for that parasite way back at the end of last year (see Backstory...). I took the drug Flagyl for two weeks. This particularly parasite has been shown to be somewhat resistant to Flagyl, but people keep prescribing it.

 
Doctors are also in disagreement about whether or not Blastocystis is even worth treating because a) there are people who have it and do not have symptoms and b)....well, that's really the only reason. It is apparently beyond comprehension that different bodies could react differently to the same parasite. After I was treated, I had normal poo! YAY! And then the Big D returned.

I went back to this Infectious Disease doc only to be told that if I wasn't having diarrhea "all the time" then it couldn't be because of the parasite. So I didn't even get another stool test because I was sent on my merry way to other specialists.

What interested me the most in my recent Internet ramblings is that many symptoms of having this parasite were similar to having Celiac Disease. inflammation, gastrointestinal distress, anemia, grinding teeth, and weight loss are all symptoms of having a damn parasite. This particular parasite also lives off of starchy foods, like, *cough*, bread. So it seems that all these sypmtoms I'm having could be because of a Celiac-Disease-like-parasite. The site Bad Bugs lists symptoms: "Inflammation, hives, arthritis, low iron, leaky gut have all been associated in the scientific literature with D.fragilis or B.hominis."

And from a study, which I am not going to find again to cite properly because I'm too darned tired: "A patient with persistent diarrhea was found to have biopsy-proved colitis with large numbers of the protozoan Blastocystis hominis present in stool. Extensive evaluation failed to reveal any other potential etiologic agent of acute colitis. Following treatment with a course of metronidazole, the patient became asymptomatic, B hominis was no longer present in stool, and results of a repeated biopsy were normal. These observations are consistent with the role of B hominis as a gastrointestinal pathogen."

Some web sites say that nothing is effective in eradicating Blasto except for serious drugs. I have found some evidence that Oregano Oil taken for 6 weeks could help, one site from Australia that swears Chinese herbs can help, and a lot of evidence that two or three different anti-amoeba drugs (okay, I don't really know how they work) can help rid you of it. These are 'three-combo' drugs: secnidazole, furazolidone, and nitazoxanide. Granted, when I was first diagnosed with this nasty parasite, I was still breast-feeding so my treatment was greatly complicated. But now, now I could take any drug and I'm only hurting myself. :)

From a study on Oregano Oil: "Force and colleagues gave 600 mg emulsified oregano oil for six weeks to 13 adults who had tested positive for intestinal parasites (Entamoeba, Endolinax, or Blastocystis). Parasites could no longer be detected in 10 of the 13 after the treatment. The parasite score (parasites counted under a microscope) decreased for the other three. Seven of the eight who had originally tested positive for Blastocystis hominis reported significant improvement of their symptoms, such as bloating, GI cramping, alternating diarrhea and constipation, and fatigue. Oregano is GRAS (generally regarded as safe), but the oil should be used with caution, as it can be irritating to the mucous membranes. It should be taken with food, partway through a meal, not on an empty stomach. Oregano oil may trigger the  die-off  phenomenon in those suffering intestinal candidiasis or other intestinal microbial infestation due to its powerful germ-killing action."


This morning my dad said that I should make sure the parasite was gone before I just keep spinning in circles. I guess he's right. I have been spinning in circles, trying to figure out what's wrong. But if I have a parasite on board, nothing is really working the way it's supposed to anyway. So I guess I'll go find a doctor who is willing to listen and willing to look for parasites. I'm gonna be really pissed if it's been a parasite this whole time, that I knew I had, and nothing else.