Treating SIBO and sinusitis with NA and TTO

My health declines after a holiday

It was a hot Australian Christmas Day in 2016.

As I look around the table I see my family so energetic and cheerful, I start to think to myself that, if this was six months earlier, I would have been the most energised in the room, the one that could never sit still, compared to the slugged over bed ridden state I was in now.

My health had started declining after returning home from a holiday in Bali. I became severely ill with a viral infection that lingered on for two months. As my post infection symptoms started to stack up, I engaged in every medical test available, with all tests returning back in the normal range apart from a small H. pylori infection which I treated with Sulforaphane. After hundreds of tests and thousands of dollars spent, I soon lost faith in the conventional medical system and decided to take my health into my own hands.

My situation worsens and I seek solutions

In the next year, my post infection symptoms became progressively worse, my digestion was flipped upside down with constant diarrhoea and bloating, I had terrible brain fog, my sinuses became inflamed all day long and I could only breath through my mouth at night, which in turn made my sleep quality horrendous. Though the worse my health became, the more determined I was to regain my pre infection health.

As I indulged in every study related to my symptoms that was available at the time, I quickly realised that the microbiome had such a large impact on overall health. One day I stumbled across a little blog about the effects of helminthic therapy on inflammatory diseases, so I immediately started researching about helminths, which resulted in me joining the Facebook Helminthic Therapy Support group.

Welcoming healing worms

I first inoculated with 25 hookworms in December 2017.

After allowing the little wrigglers to settle in for 3 months before adding another 25 hookworms plus a dose of 50 human whipworms, my side effects were quite mild, as diarrhoea was something that I dealt with on a daily basis as a result of IBS(D). The human whipworms presented the most deleterious side effects, with fatigue, diarrhoea and increased allergies that lasted for around 8 weeks post whipworm inoculation, but eventually reduced over time.

I have now just hit the one year mark hosting helminths, and some of the benefits I have experienced are normalised sleep patterns, increased quality of sleep and an increase of energy. Helminths ameliorated the brain fog I was experiencing, and my diarrhoea has greatly improved. There is still room for improvement in my digestion, but I strongly believe that, over time, this will normalise.

A SIBO test proves positive, but so are my hopes for the future

I think It is worth noting that I received a positive SIBO breath test around 3 months ago and opted for a 14 day course of Rifaximin. To my surprise, the antibiotics had minimal effects on the hookworm egg production, and nor did my sinus inflammation return, though, when I did inoculate again, I experienced some fatigue around 6 weeks post inoculation, just like the first time I inoculated with hookworms.

Right now, as a 22 year old, my health is in a great place. Personally, I have found that trickle dosing 1-2 worms bi-weekly reaps the most benefits for my sinus inflammation. Sometimes you need to take your health into your own hands and not rely of the the health system for answers. Helminthic therapy has given me my life back and I’m really exited for the future of helminthic therapy and the impact it could have on so many other people who are struggling with inflammatory health issues. (Written Dec 2018)