Helminthic therapy and the immune systems
In 2008 I was bedridden. Rheumatoid arthritis was so severe that I could eat only if someone else cooked, and get to doctor’s appointments only with help. Standard treatment clawed back function slowly, over years. I was functioning — out of bed, working part time. Better; not well. This was my baseline for over a decade.
In 2020 I started using therapeutic hookworms. Within a year, the difference was total. My days were full, I had energy. Some inflammatory markers settled into normal ranges. The RA was under control for the first time since diagnosis. Three good years followed. I felt healthy.
The Collapse
In the spring of 2024, my fingers started bending. The joints pulled out of alignment in a matter of weeks. Huge nodules grew on my elbows, fast enough to watch. I wore orthotics constantly, relied on walkers and braces, and some days just lay in bed because my feet hurt too badly to stand. Colitis symptoms came back after four years of nothing. Angioedema showed up, new and strange, my throat and lips swelling without warning. I went to the ER more times than I care to count. The hives started this whole mess: whole-body, daily, screaming in pain sometimes.
Looking back on the last two and a half years, I’m flabbergasted. It’s like I had survived being under an avalanche of rocks that never finished.
I eventually figured out that my gut had collapsed. My situation is very extreme and I strongly doubt that any of my readers are facing something like this. Annual shotgun metagenomic tests were the key: the pathological organisms ranked above the 99th percentile, and the beneficial organisms fell to the 1st percentile or lower. My gut had turned from normal to non-functional almost overnight.
Helminthic Therapy Is a Tool, Not a Cure-All
Helminthic therapy has one job. It modulates the immune response — how the immune system reacts once something catches its attention. In my case, it was that food particles were getting past the gut lining and into the bloodstream, and that my microbiome wasn’t doing the job of a healthy microbiome. HT doesn’t determine what triggers the immune system or how much gets in. Those are two different problems, and helminthic therapy only ever worked on the second one.
For years this was enough. The amount getting through was manageable, and a well-regulated immune system could handle it without overreacting. Then the gut barrier failed. The volume of what was getting through changed. Helminthic therapy kept doing exactly what it had always done. It was fighting a fire while something kept pouring gasoline on it.
Whether modulation adds up to real recovery depends on the tissue, not the therapy. Some tissue rebuilds once the attack backs off. Some doesn’t. A joint that’s already been structurally damaged doesn’t grow back because the inflammation attacking it has quieted down.
It’s a tool. My three good years are proof of what it can do — a regulated immune system that stopped attacking its own tissue and stopped overreacting to whatever else crossed its path. The gut collapse is proof of where its job ends. Same body, both outcomes.
And Here I Am
The cascade seems to have stopped. I can’t say for certain it’s over, but the series of crises isn’t happening right now. I think my system found a way to rebalance to a degree, even with the gut barrier still broken and the microbiome still wrecked.
This gave me a break, room to actually deal with the damage instead of just absorbing the next hit. I had surgery on my right hand to address joint destruction and remove a nodule. A second surgery on my left hand is planned. I’m still on helminthic therapy, and I still need it. I’m also pursuing a vagus nerve stimulation device, which works upstream of where helminthic therapy works, calming inflammatory signaling directly rather than training the immune system to interpret it differently. Neither one will fix the gut barrier but they will work together to help my system stay as stable as possible.
I am three weeks past the hand surgery. A day or two wouldn’t mean much. Three weeks is starting to look promising.
I walk barefoot.