Saturday, October 31, 2009

CCFC Video

The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada has created a new awareness video featuring 2 people suffering IBD. A little boy, and an NHL hockey player.


Monday, October 26, 2009

New/Old Research On Treating Crohn's With Worms

In the recent issue of Mental Floss Magazine (Nov 2009) there is an article about a potential treatment for Crohn's Disease using safe worms and bacteria called Helminths that used to be prevalent in our bodies in the past. The research is/was being conducted by Dr. Weinstock of the Tufts New England Medical Center. The article claims that most of the Crohn's patients who tried the treatment went into remission!

There is also an article about this research at Web MD which says that 72% of people who used the treatment went into remission. These are amazing findings, however the research appears to be several years old. (Here's another medical article about Dr. Weinstock's research.)

Since I'm curious to learn whether this research is ongoing and if anything has come from it, I wrote to Dr. Weinstock asking about the status of his research. I haven't heard back yet, but I will post it here if I do.

I find this to be an amazing sounding treatment and I'm flabbergasted as to why I haven't heard about it before. Why are we only being given the option of expensive and dangerous drug therapies or invasive surgeries? I urge all my readers to look into this research and ask your doctor about it.

Here is an article on Wikipedia about it, it is called Helminthic Therapy.

UPDATE - April 7, 2010
I received a tidbit of information about this research from the CCFC:
The helminth exposure work connects with a wide range of "toll-like receptor" and "cell signaling" research that is ongoing among a number of different scientists across Canada. -Dr. George Tolomiczenko

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Wait And See

The phrase "let's wait and see" is as old as the medical profession itself. This pronouncement evokes a strange mix of emotions in any patient; disappointment that no definite answers are forthcoming, and relief that nothing serious was immediately identified. Frustration at the process, impatience and worry.

This was my doctor's response at the end of my recent appointment. The appointment by the way that I desperately tried to get into as early as possible. The receptionist managed to squeeze me into a cancellation that opened up a full 2 weeks before my scheduled appointment.

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your outlook), the pains I described in my last blog post had lasted for two weeks and then slowly subsided. Which means my appointment consisted of me saying essentially something to the effect of "Well, I was having pains..." to my doctor who scribbled notes about the description and duration of the pains. In the end however he suggested it may have been something acute (read: temporary) and said "let's wait and see" if it returns.

So, I'm back to my old situation. Feeling pretty good though a bit tender, and wondering what in the heck that was.

Thanks to everyone who wrote comments about their experiences on the last post- that really helped me to not be so scared!