Okay, a 29 year old man has ulcerative colitis, means that he has swelling and inflammation in his colon, causing 10 to 15 bloody bowel movements a day. He gets to the point where he can’t work.

Even though the swelling is your body saying, screaming actually, that “something is wrong!”, the standard treatment offered by a trained medical doctor is to give a product that will “reduce the swelling”.  They are not trained on causes, they will only hope that it won’t randomly “flair up”.

After the steroids stop working well enough, the doctor’s next recommendation was to admit this patient and give him a round of cyclosporine, which is a immunosuppressant.

To emphasize, swelling is a function of the immune system. Swelling occurs as a response to something wrong, like a sprained ankle, in attempt to repair itself.  The blood vessels dilate and allows the immune system to send things to repair the damage. When there is swelling, the body has taken some steps to heal itself.

With this patient, the doctor has recommended an immunosuppressant, which will reduce the swelling and make the patient feel better. But the immune system will be suppressed; the immune system won’t be strong. It would be like turning off the water in the entire house to stop a leaking faucet. Sure, the leak will be fixed, and you could probably get by with buckets of water, but if there’s a fire, you’ll be in big trouble! Side effects of immusuppressants: cancer

And if the immunosuppressant doesn’t work for this 29 year old man, the next step would possibly be a colostomy bag.

So he hears that parasitic worms can treat ulcerative colitis. So off to Thailand he goes, against his doctor’s advice and his condition is greatly improved.

For the full story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/12/09/worms.health/index.html?npt=NP1