Week 5 - The Going Gets Tough

Hookworm Timeline

The first thing when considering helminthic therapy one should do is to read the Helminthic Therapy Wiki. I read pretty much every page on this wiki before reaching out to order.

Right now I'm in the "side effects" section and I'm feeling it.

https://helminthictherapywiki.org/wiki/index.php/Hookworm_timeline

Day 40 

It's Day 40 since inoculation and I can say that the last few four days (36-40) have been rough with side effects. Four days ago I started experiencing gastrointestinal cramping and fatigue that felt to me like the day before coming down with a bad case of food positioning.  You know when you realize something isn't right and then later that night you're puking for hours on end.

Well this is like that first part without the dramatic puking - more of a fairly constant malaise that would subside by resting on my back.  Last night I felt a little feverish and overall exhausted, I wasn't sure if I'd make it into work but this morning I woke up and my stomach felt fairly settled but I had a gnarly headache. I took DayQuil today to alleviate some of the side effects at work today.

I haven't lost my appetite but have been trying to eat easier foods on my stomach - soups and the like, and avoid alcohol.

I've also experienced a very bad flair up both with psoriasis and more acne-like symptoms than I've experienced in a long time.  I've had psoriasis under my left armpit and a few days ago a flair up "bump" appeared underneath it, similar to my eye-lid flaring up before that...I'm hoping it goes away in the next week.

Staying Positive Through the Discomfort 

Knowing WHY I'm feeling like this certainly helps. So does reading the Wiki and seeing similar experiences. Regulating one's immune system with helminths isn't for the faint of heart. I've been thinking to myself that moving through this discomfort is going to lead to relaxing my immune system, and change in the form of new microbiome introduction is hard.

I've been saying to myself at night before sleeping "I'm healing, I'm resetting, this is good" to move through the malaise.