BBC NEWS | Health | Eat worms - feel better
Eat Worms - Feel Better.
Who would deliberately drink a dose of gut worms? The answer is Anna Glanz,
an ordinary mother-of-two from Iowa. She's testing the remarkable theory
that not all parasites are necessarily bad for us. Some of them may
actually help us fight diseases. A BBC documentary looks at how some
parasites are so well-adapted to using humans as hosts, that when you take
them away, there are unexpected results.
Ulcerative colitis is a disease of the intestine caused by the immune
system over-reacting - in this disease the white blood cells attack the gut
as though it's a foreign invader, making it bleed. Mother-of-two, Anna
Glanz, from Iowa, suffers from it and gets terrible cramps and sudden,
intense attacks of diarrhoea. The disease is incurable, but she is now
taking part in an experimental trial run by Dr Joel Weinstock, a specialist
in bowel disorders. He's giving her worms to try to treat the disease.
Every three weeks Anna goes to Dr Weinstock's clinic and takes a drink full
of worm eggs.
But Anna reckons it is worth it: "I don't really think of them as being
alive I guess, it's almost just like taking a pill or something. I try not
to think of them as disgusting or anything like that. And I couldn't live
the way I was living. I was desperate to try anything. I just wanted to get
well".
The worms grow inside her gut and then pass out after a few weeks, but as a
result of having these worms in her gut, her ulcerative colitis is in
remission - she doesn't suffer from any of the symptoms any more. Dr
Weinstock reckons that's because we've evolved with worms and actually need
them. Before gut worms were eradicated in the West 50 or so years ago
allergies - caused by the overreaction of the immune system - were
virtually unheard of, now in the UK one third of us suffers from some sort
of allergy.
So scientists are looking to see if there's a connection between gut worms
and allergies, they are wondering if gut worms can somehow damp down the
immune system to make it easier for them to live in the intestine without
coming under attack.
He said: "Worms require humans to survive. In essence the worms are part of
us and it's possible that we've become interdependent and removing worms
has resulted in an imbalance to our immune systems. People have what I
consider an irrational fear of worms. Nobody wants to go to the toilet and
look into the toilet and see something wiggle".
Another person feeling the benefit of a worm infestation is academic
researcher Alan Brown, who picked up hookworms while on a field-trip
outside the UK. The worm hangs around damp earth or water droplets, and on
contact with skin burrows through and heads for the gut. There it attaches
itself to the wall - and drinks blood to live.
However, in western countries, where people are well-nourished, a moderate
infestation is likely to have no nasty side-effects at all. Dr Brown
examines his own faeces under the microscope to try to gauge how many worms
currently reside within him.
"Given the number of eggs there, there's about 300 hookworms in my guts."
However, there's a useful effect - his hayfever has virtually disappeared,
and now he is working on the powers of the hookworm with a view to
developing an asthma drug. He said: "My wife's horrified - she's totally
convinced that one day I'm going to infect the whole family."
This may not be the only parasite that changes the human body to make it
easier to survive. And not all those changes may have potentially
beneficial side-effects. Some may have developed an extraordinary power to
manipulate behaviour. One third of Britons carry the toxoplasma parasite in
their brain.
Its natural home is the cat and it's spread in cats' faeces. It can be
picked up by any mammal, from rats to cattle. The main way we get it is by
eating undercooked meat (which is why 80% of the French are estimated to
have it, with their love of rare meat).
Once we have it we have it for life, there's no way we can get rid of it.
Research shows it somehow manipulates rats' behaviour - it makes rats
attracted to cats - their natural predator, so they're more likely to be
eaten by a cat and the parasite can complete its life cycle.
For years scientists thought it had no effect on our behaviour, but now the
parasite's changing their minds. Recent research suggests that people with
toxyplasma have slower reaction times than those without and are also more
than twice as likely to be involved in a traffic accident than those who
aren't carrying the parasite.
Eat Worms - Feel Better.
Who would deliberately drink a dose of gut worms? The answer is Anna Glanz,
an ordinary mother-of-two from Iowa. She's testing the remarkable theory
that not all parasites are necessarily bad for us. Some of them may
actually help us fight diseases. A BBC documentary looks at how some
parasites are so well-adapted to using humans as hosts, that when you take
them away, there are unexpected results.
Ulcerative colitis is a disease of the intestine caused by the immune
system over-reacting - in this disease the white blood cells attack the gut
as though it's a foreign invader, making it bleed. Mother-of-two, Anna
Glanz, from Iowa, suffers from it and gets terrible cramps and sudden,
intense attacks of diarrhoea. The disease is incurable, but she is now
taking part in an experimental trial run by Dr Joel Weinstock, a specialist
in bowel disorders. He's giving her worms to try to treat the disease.
Every three weeks Anna goes to Dr Weinstock's clinic and takes a drink full
of worm eggs.
But Anna reckons it is worth it: "I don't really think of them as being
alive I guess, it's almost just like taking a pill or something. I try not
to think of them as disgusting or anything like that. And I couldn't live
the way I was living. I was desperate to try anything. I just wanted to get
well".
The worms grow inside her gut and then pass out after a few weeks, but as a
result of having these worms in her gut, her ulcerative colitis is in
remission - she doesn't suffer from any of the symptoms any more. Dr
Weinstock reckons that's because we've evolved with worms and actually need
them. Before gut worms were eradicated in the West 50 or so years ago
allergies - caused by the overreaction of the immune system - were
virtually unheard of, now in the UK one third of us suffers from some sort
of allergy.
So scientists are looking to see if there's a connection between gut worms
and allergies, they are wondering if gut worms can somehow damp down the
immune system to make it easier for them to live in the intestine without
coming under attack.
He said: "Worms require humans to survive. In essence the worms are part of
us and it's possible that we've become interdependent and removing worms
has resulted in an imbalance to our immune systems. People have what I
consider an irrational fear of worms. Nobody wants to go to the toilet and
look into the toilet and see something wiggle".
Another person feeling the benefit of a worm infestation is academic
researcher Alan Brown, who picked up hookworms while on a field-trip
outside the UK. The worm hangs around damp earth or water droplets, and on
contact with skin burrows through and heads for the gut. There it attaches
itself to the wall - and drinks blood to live.
However, in western countries, where people are well-nourished, a moderate
infestation is likely to have no nasty side-effects at all. Dr Brown
examines his own faeces under the microscope to try to gauge how many worms
currently reside within him.
"Given the number of eggs there, there's about 300 hookworms in my guts."
However, there's a useful effect - his hayfever has virtually disappeared,
and now he is working on the powers of the hookworm with a view to
developing an asthma drug. He said: "My wife's horrified - she's totally
convinced that one day I'm going to infect the whole family."
This may not be the only parasite that changes the human body to make it
easier to survive. And not all those changes may have potentially
beneficial side-effects. Some may have developed an extraordinary power to
manipulate behaviour. One third of Britons carry the toxoplasma parasite in
their brain.
Its natural home is the cat and it's spread in cats' faeces. It can be
picked up by any mammal, from rats to cattle. The main way we get it is by
eating undercooked meat (which is why 80% of the French are estimated to
have it, with their love of rare meat).
Once we have it we have it for life, there's no way we can get rid of it.
Research shows it somehow manipulates rats' behaviour - it makes rats
attracted to cats - their natural predator, so they're more likely to be
eaten by a cat and the parasite can complete its life cycle.
For years scientists thought it had no effect on our behaviour, but now the
parasite's changing their minds. Recent research suggests that people with
toxyplasma have slower reaction times than those without and are also more
than twice as likely to be involved in a traffic accident than those who
aren't carrying the parasite.
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