YUCK!

I am trying to contain my joy right now.

No, I haven't won the lottery. Nor did I just a get a big fat advance for a book. It's more exciting than that. You know how they say that health is the real wealth? Well, that's what I'm talking about here now. I'm about to put it to the test.

As I written about here on OS, my husband has been suffering from severe Crohn's Disease—one of a spate of autoimmune diseases that have plagued the late 20th century—for nearly nine years now. It has been an extremely rocky road, dealing with a disease that has much of the gravity of cancer, without any of the public sympathy for it or awareness about it.

I hate to put it like this—I know it's not a competition—but it's true. There have been times that have been so low that I actually had envy of cancer, which for me is just the other "c" word. I think cancer has more of a support system intact. There are centers devoted to it. People get the seriousness of it. There is a dialogue that surrounds it. I'm not sure people understand the devastation of severe chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases, which can be life-wrecking, and deadly.

My husband and I have gone all over the place in terms of treatments for Crohn's: some have worked—sadly only temporarily, some have not, some have bankrupted us. The last time I wrote about this subject in detail was the day after I wept in front of the televised Obama address on healthcare reform. I couldn't contain myself then either, mostly because my husband and I had recently been scorched by the nefarious U.S. healthcare system in trying to treat this insidious disease. He's been all but paralyzed by it emotionally.

I don't think I need to spell out what that's done to our family. You can imagine it for yourself, and really, I've gotten to the point in which I can't even really talk about it anymore without sounding like Michael Moore, or worse.

My husband has been under the care of specialists for years, with mostly unremarkable results. I've written to them asking if they can suggest other treamtents or drugs. I pretty much get no response. His doctor, I can only imagine, is just as frustrated as I am. Or is he?

Perhaps more importantly: where is he? Why did I have to do all of this research myself? I think I already know the answer to this question, so for now, I'll skip over it...

At some point, I found out about a cutting-edge therapy that has been written about in the New York Times and the Boston Globe and many other publications. I recently found a book that addressed the subject on a broader scale, Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites that Make Us Who We Are, written by evolutionary biologist Marlen Zuk. This may have been what finally pushed me to dig deeper.

After all, no one, not even the specialist, was offering us this information.

Zuk writes accessibly about the hygiene hypothesis. The theory goes that in our efforts to be extremely "clean," we have wiped out all the bacteria that actually might be helpful to us. Scientists, claiming that many diseases arise from an environment that is TOO clean, argue that in our anti-bacterial everything culture, normal stimulation of the immune system during infancy and early childhood is missing, impairing its ability to repsond normally to pathogens.

Zuk writes, "day-to-day exposure to bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms actually helps the immune system" and our cultural obssession with cleanliness might be responsible for partially destroying our ability to ward off certain diseases. "This is not to say," Zuk writes, "that being sick is good for you, but it is starting to seem that rarely being sick can be bad for you." Eating a little dirt, it turns out, is not so bad after all.

So what does this have to do with pig worms? A team of immunologists in the U.S. and in Europe have discovered that exposure to certain whipworms, an experience that mostly occurs in developing countries, can help ward off certain diseases. Since the mid-twentieth century people in areas where, say, malaria is rampant have had far fewer autoimmune disorders than we do in the U.S. and in Europe.

Crohn's, as I have explained in other posts, is one of those autoimmune disorders. It first reared its ugly head in the U.S. among Jewish immigrants in the 1930s . Since then its occurance has gone from one in 50,000 to one in 250.

Crohn's, apparently, is rare in most parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. People, including pig farmers, who are chronically exposed to Trichuris suis, the pig whipworm, tolerate it with no apparent side effects.

So I've been on a search to get me some, and my joy stems from finally finding it.

After much exhaustive research and some back and forthing with doctors and immunologists, I found out more about exactly how my husband can go about exposing himself to the parasites that people who suffer from autoimmune diseases are missing. (It is probably safe to conclude that we are all missing them, but their absence may not be doing all of us this kind of harm.)

Many scientists now believe that the absence could be responsible for allergies, hayfever, and asthma—but that is another post in the making. For now, I can live with my daily runny nose. My husband cannot live with Crohn's, at least not to this extreme, not in the way it has ravaged his body.

So, what it boils down to is this: helminthic therapy, a treatment which the FDA has not yet approved. Essentially it entails swallowing doses of the egg form of the whipworm and waiting for them to whip the immune system back into shape. In some parts of the world, people absorb the parasites through their bare feet, but not so here in our concrete, well-heeled existence far from the farms.

Read more here about worm therapy, if you are so inclined.

Sound disgusting? Yes, it is. But we are now one step closer to the reality of it. I tracked down the specialist in the U.S. who put me in touch with the company in Germany and now, for the first time in my life, I am about to order pig worms in the mail.

Imagine our glee when they finally show up in the mail.

I'll let you know how it goes. I know miracles are few and far between. But, I have read of a 90% success rate with worm therapy as it pertains to Crohn's. Still, I've gotten my hopes up before, and I'm guess I am now making a comitment to raising them again. We're willing to hope a little here.

What have we got to loose? For now, I am about as happy as a pig in you know what.

Oink. Oink. Snort Snort.