Update Part IV from the World's Worst Blogger

We got back from San Diego and my husband's uncle died in Oakland at Thanksgiving. He had to go back and stay in California for nine days. He is very allergic to dust mites and had to stay in his aunt's house that had wall to wall carpeting. He got really sick from it. Despite this, he said that he could tell that the hookworms were making a big difference. He felt much less anxiety and much more social than he would normally. (I have noticed this effect as well and wonder now how much anxiety and a desire not to be social is related to inflammation, as a subconscious anticipation of pain if touched or jostled.) He was able to work every day on his computer doing software development and stay up late with his relatives.

Like me, within a few weeks of inoculation, he looked down and got the shock of his life that suddenly, his ankles and feet were much smaller than previously. Like me, he had a huge amount of swelling around his feet and ankles that he was completely unaware of because it had been that way for years. His ankles look chiseled compared to the way they appeared before. His face is now much less swollen, particularly from right below the cheekbones (around the bottom of the earlobe level) to right above the eyes.

He has felt better and better ever since. His sleep is much better; his hypopnea is significantly reduced. The amount of naps he takes have been cut way back. He doesn't have to sleep fourteen hours on the weekends now. He sleeps better at night because he is much less congested. He says he feels as though he has more energy than he can remember in a long, long time. He's started running and exercising at the gym regularly. He's running 5K easily on the treadmill in half an hour and has signed up to race this spring.

When he got back from California, he started making organic dairy kefir at home and drinking it. He's also bought a SCOBY and is making kombucha tea. And suddenly, for the first time in two decades, his diarrhea is gone. It's been gone for three weeks now. Before getting hookworm, he would consume tons of probiotics and improve marginally, but if he skipped a day, it was though he hadn't taken any ever. He simply couldn't maintain enough to not have diarrhea without taking more multiple times a day. It was as though he was constantly just getting off of a course of antibiotics.

He now has the energy to eat better and is trying to stick to a paleo-ish diet. We're starting to wonder how much of his ongoing diarrhea is from having a leaky gut. He thinks that the kefir seemed to reduce it but that he couldn't get real traction until he had hookworm as well.