Intestinal parasite

Anyone who's checking up on my google searches recently would have noticed a slew of searches about a weird little amoeba called Blastocystis hominis, which I found out I have living in my intestines. I might have picked it up in Europe this summer, or I might have had it for years, since I was a kid spending my summers on a sheep farm in Icelamd. I've been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrom since I was 16, after all, and this amoeba is highly associated with that continual irritation.

But my concern at the present is not to figure out where it came from but to figure out what to do about it.  The doctors aren't sure if it actually causes any diseases, and they aren't sure how to treat it, so I don't know what exactly my doctor will prescribe. I did however find out there was a health food supplemeant, one of those probiotics, called saccharomyces boulardii, which sounds like Parisian sweetener and might do nothing at all, but it's available over the counter that And I figure it can't hurt. It will at least add a different singled-cell organism into my gut, and some say it will eradicate or reduce and control the Blastocystis.

So a tiny bit too much information and only tangentially related to the subject of this blog, but there you have it. Iceland apparently has been making me sick for years.

Comments

Jono said…
A few semesters of bacteriology and immunology actually makes it interesting. Good luck with any "treatment" and I hope it works.

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