Earlier quoted context omitted.
sadly, yes.
happily yes?
hahahahaah! indifferently, yes?
Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
41–49 of 49 posts
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#42'Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.' Although I do not doubt the infection rates I am sceptical about the conclusions. Any woman that does not LOVE cats is obviously not warm and…
Anyway I love cats since I was a kid and I am male! Worth the infection if I have it and perhaps the reason that so far I have not catch AIDS! I like cats too, but I feel like I am missing something here. How did you get from "I love cats" to not getting AIDS?
I think the idea is he loves cats, not women.
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's good to hear that your only lasting effect is a tiny blind spot; can you yourself observe it, or is it only noticeable on an eye exam? Histoplasmosis IIRC is caused by a fungus spore. It's common in the ground everywhere, however in certain areas it's a lot more prevalent for some reason, I believe the states surrounding the Ohio and Mississippi rivers are the main place in North America. It's apparently on 80%…
You say you have medical knowledge. Regarding your claim that the ringworm cured your psoriasis. I find that a very exciting claim, if true. There are other cases of people using parasites to cure illness. Is anybody using ringworm as a psoriasis treatment?
Well my experience with doctors was, at around 7 I was diagnosed with eczema due to clusters around my elbows. At around 10 a doctor performed a scraping, which produced pin-prick bleeding that is Auspitz's sign, so pretty much guaranteed psoriasis. At around 17/18, after having had psoriasis for 10 years I went to the doctor because the large patches (some were as large as the palm of my hand) had turned smooth and slightly yellow in the middle, but still appeared to be psoriasis on the outside. He said I'd 'obviously' been misdiagnosed as it was clearly ringworm and he started me on a broadspectrum antifungal.
The antifungal barely worked, but UV is known to be a treatment for both fungal infections and psoriasis. After my first round of antifungals I had a vacation scheduled for the south of France, the infections got better, but when I returned to the UK and by the time I'd got another appointment it'd flared up again. This occurred several times, after my third round I had basically a 2 month vacation in France and no medication. By 6 weeks the ringworm had cleared up and when I returned to the UK my doctor confirmed I was clear.
I visited my regular doctor again (not the one I'd dealt with the ringworm with as he was more specialist, plus on vacation) and she was amazed at my lack of psoriasis, except she confirmed (with a Auspitz's sign) that I still have psoriasis of the scalp.
I've always visited the south of France and Spain and a lot of other mediterranean destinations and none of them ever cleared up my psoriasis, it often went into remission but the scaling remained. So this makes me believe the ringworm (due to it removing a lot of the plaques) allowed the psoriasis to go into complete remission, which removed the food for the ringworm (it had only infected my existing psoriasis and not the rest of my body).
The ringworm left me with discoloration for about a year and I was fortunate enough not to get psoriasis nor ringworm on my nails (they can turn them into claw-like things). I wouldn't advocate it, but 25% of psoriasis patients get a fungal infection, so many might get lucky enough to have it happen to them too. It certainly didn't outright cure it, but I believe it acted as a catalyst of sorts that helped to remove it (I still have psoriasis, but it no longer covers 20% of my body, in fact it only occurs on my scalp, where the ringworm fortunately didn't spread to).
I have, however, read of tape worms being used for the treatment of a few other diseases, including Asthma and IBS (Crohn's specifically IIRC). Incidentally 50% of children with Asthma and eczema/psoriasis have the same defective gene (for filaggrin production), it's also believed Crohn's and hayfever (a condition I also have, but has severely diminished since my psoriasis has cleared from my skin) share the same gene. For asthma and crohn's there is already 'Helminthic therapy' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy), which typically uses pig whipworm, which is only transitory in humans (IE it only lives a short time). Not only does it have higher success rates than medicines, but it also has less severe side effects (hookworm I believe has higher success rates, but causes more people to have side effects and carries slightly worse side effects).
Perhaps in time helminthic therapy will spread to psoriasis treatment, as in theory it should work with any autoimmune disease. Hope this gave you some more info, personally I'd vote for helminthic therapy over ringworm for treating psoriasis, as the side effects of ringworm (whilst generally benign) can be very visual; the discoloration only stayed for about a year with me, but can apparently last considerably longer. I'm sure many women would prefer stomach cramps than potentially life-long discoloration of the skin (at the beginning it seriously looked jaundice in places).
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never seen the danger of no jokes come to life. The other danger, that we end up as mostly one liners, is reality for both slashdot and reddit.
I think Slashdot's and Reddit's problems run deeper than one-liners. /. has some features I think would be interesting to add to HN (meta-moderation is a very interesting concept), while HN has some interesting things /. would stand a lot to gain if implemented (the idea editors shot down stories rather than post them).
Whatever Slashdot's problems, they're still the gold standard in moderation systems, and something about that site seems to encourage long form comments- something I often miss here.
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#45This parasite is indeed real and widespread, and the reason you don't notice its effects in others is because its effects are rather minor, resulting from small brain infections and increased dopamine at certain sites (I had no luck pinpointing the location of these, unfortunately). The most agreed-upon effect appears to be that the parasite results in decreased neophilia. What a sensationalist story like this one wi…
Thanks for clearing this up. Because I have been wanting to keep a cat since forever. Taught me not to jump to conclusions without research.
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#46This parasite is indeed real and widespread, and the reason you don't notice its effects in others is because its effects are rather minor, resulting from small brain infections and increased dopamine at certain sites (I had no luck pinpointing the location of these, unfortunately). The most agreed-upon effect appears to be that the parasite results in decreased neophilia. What a sensationalist story like this one wi…
How do I know whether I am infected or not?
From the article:
> So after I submitted the paper I put down my 30 bucks and got a blood test," he says. "It came out negative. I was so surprised."
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's good to hear that your only lasting effect is a tiny blind spot; can you yourself observe it, or is it only noticeable on an eye exam? Histoplasmosis IIRC is caused by a fungus spore. It's common in the ground everywhere, however in certain areas it's a lot more prevalent for some reason, I believe the states surrounding the Ohio and Mississippi rivers are the main place in North America. It's apparently on 80%…
You say you have medical knowledge. Regarding your claim that the ringworm cured your psoriasis. I find that a very exciting claim, if true. There are other cases of people using parasites to cure illness. Is anybody using ringworm as a psoriasis treatment?
Perhaps by "other cases" you're alluding to accounts like this one, of using intentional hookworm infection to treat allergies. If not, you may find it interesting:
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#48My friend who's a 24 year old (extremely cute) female, who eats your Standard American Diet (but on the healthy side), took a 40 day juice fast about a year ago. After about day 30, she passed a huge ball of worms in her stool. Let me emphasize "huge". Like, a babies fist. Needless to say, she had some parasites. I now fear the juice fast... and, in a weird way... her :)
Curiosity and revulsion combine. What exactly about an all juice food regimen would kill off that ball of parasites?
Re: Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
#49My friend who's a 24 year old (extremely cute) female, who eats your Standard American Diet (but on the healthy side), took a 40 day juice fast about a year ago. After about day 30, she passed a huge ball of worms in her stool. Let me emphasize "huge". Like, a babies fist. Needless to say, she had some parasites. I now fear the juice fast... and, in a weird way... her :)
Curiosity and revulsion combine. What exactly about an all juice food regimen would kill off that ball of parasites?
Yeah, ditto on the curiosity and revulsion. Is this a normal occurrence when juice fasting? What kind of juice? And when it was all over, any after-effects?