What I Learned from 10 Doctors About Blastocystis Hominis Symptoms

Whether it's an herbal product that kills parasites or drug combo, they can be kind of hard on your systems, but everything can be a little harder on you if it kills parasites. We want that to work as well and as quick as possible. Some basic things that we can do to help the system out. One would be— Hey, it's Dr. A. I've been teaching and researching in the integrative and naturopathic medical community for 30 years plus at this point. And I've been seeing patients with cancer and chronic illness For decades, I use this YouTube channel to answer questions, and today we want to dive into a question that was essentially: I was diagnosed from a test from my doctor with some sort of parasite called Blastocyst hominis, and they said it wasn't a problem. And I went to another doctor, and they said it is a problem. Now I'm confused. Is this an issue for me or not? So first off, what is this little creature? Well, this is a microscopic parasite. It's often Often found on a stool test. A lot of times they they call it an ova and parasite test. Usually they do three samples, so it's an O and P times three, and then there's other testing that you can do as well. But it's not uncommonly found in people. Now most people, not everybody, are not just getting stool testing done because they feel good and they just want to know what's in there. Most people to get stool testing done, there usually has to be some symptoms or something going on. So you might be sent for stool testing if you have cramping. Nausea, diarrhea, constipation, symptoms of IBS, other symptoms of GI issues, and your physical exam is sort of unremarkable, and the doctor wants to kind of make sure that there's nothing, you know, growing in your GI tract that shouldn't be there. Another reason might be that you recently traveled to another country and you're now having symptoms, and they want to see what it is you brought back from the other country. And then there's other reasons to do these tests as well. So usually there was some reason to get tested in the first place. And that's a really important thing in regard to any creature that shouldn't be in your GI tract, or there shouldn't be a lot of it in there, whether it's a parasite or not. And that is that there's always context with the microflora in the GI tract and its effect on your health. So in our practice, we look at how healthy are you to start with? Is this causing symptoms or not? And what would happen if we left it alone versus trying to get rid of it? So blastocyst, B. ham is one of those creatures in the gut that some references will say this is one of those things that can be normal, even though it's really not supposed to be there. It can be asymptomatic, it can be non-pathogenic. So more often than not, we leave it alone. We don't mess with it. Other references will say, well, it is a pathogen and you should probably try and kill it. So why would there be a difference? Well, part of it is if If you're just going on whether it makes you symptomatic or not, then the references that often say, well, it's it's not critical to get rid of it, it's it's not that pathogenic, etc., are mostly looking at you know a lot of people that have blasto don't have symptoms, so that's their endpoint they're looking at. But what about other things that might be maybe we should try and get rid of this? Well, number one is it's a pathogen, and if you find it on a lab test, it's probably there in a large amount. Now why is that important? Well, a A large amount of a pathogen can be different, especially in your gut, from a small amount of pathogen. Many people have heard of people, and a lot of times in the hospital or outpatient, and they'll get C. diff, Clostridium difficile, and they'll wind up with, you know, pseudomembranous colitis, very bad, a lot of GI symptoms and all that. And you think about, well, C. diff was there when we started, but it didn't give me any symptoms. And then I took some antibiotics. Now I've got C. diff overgrowth, right? So there is a difference pathologically in the effect of a tiny bit of something like C. diff and then an overgrowth. That's the pathology. Blasto is similar. You might have in a normal population, if you look hard enough, some blasto in a lot of people, especially asymptomatic people. If it's a small amount, you're not going to find it on most testing, but it might be there. But if it overgrows for a number of reasons and starts to either non-symptomatic or symptomatically affect you, then that's when we want to consider maybe we should kill this thing and get rid Now, another question came up and that was, they tried to treat my blasto and I went through this course of treatment with some drugs and I got a lot of stomach upset and everything. And when they retested me, I still had blasto. This is also not uncommon at all. There's a couple of reasons for that. One is sometimes people or the bugs have a resistance to the first drug that was used. Could happen. The other is, and this is something I've seen clinically, blastocyst that is persistent, meaning it outlives treatments that try and kill it, often is a symptom of a deeper problem being more pathological biofilms in the gut. But biofilms are a way that organisms that shouldn't be there and some that should be there hide. If I have a lot of microbes in a biofilm and I bathe the GI tract in killing antimicrobials, I may not kill them because they're hiding in the biofilm. So persistent blasto is often a sign that we need to do some work on biofilms. The Other thing that becomes important is the levels of testing. So there's a couple options here. One is you get your O&P times three standard stool testing, and they find blasto, and maybe they find some other stuff that grows, and you've got you know a mix of some parasites and some bad bacteria or something like that, maybe some fungus. One of the things that you need to be careful with is if I have blasto, I may also have other things that aren't going to die from the treatment for the blasto. And so if I have a pathogenic level of a fungi. Fungus like Candida or something, or I have a pathogenic level of some other, you know, creature that's in there, and the treatment for Blasto doesn't cover those other organisms, what I'm going to do is kind of chase, chase my tail from an infectious disease point of view, and I'm going to have less efficacious treatment because I'm going to kill maybe the Blasto but not the other guys. So testing can be very important to find what we might call collateral or co-infections, because if our goal is to get rid of the bad guys and get them down to these low numbers and restore the GI microflora, can take some time, but that's associated with better health, then we shouldn't have any large amounts of other pathogens. So that's a real common thing that we see. Now, this often brings up the question, are there deeper levels of testing than just the O&P that I did, you know, through my gastro or my primary care? And certainly there are nowadays. What I always tell people is if you find any pathogen in the stool on an O&P times 3, there's a lot of it there. It has to be pretty obvious. So there are other tests testing that can be done that will include like the O&P structure, but they may add on things such as cultures. So it might be cultures for fungus, there might be cultures for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, and there might be cultures for other stuff. And then there might be some genomic PCR-type testing or other related testing looking for the genetic signature of things like viruses and certain other things that might be pathogenic. And then there's some other immunologic tests that are done as well. So reason that we might use sort of testing is somebody maybe has a normal O&P, but they still have all these symptoms and we just want to cast a broader net. So these other tests are available to do should you want to go looking a bit deeper. And sometimes if someone's chronically ill, whether or not they have a lot of digestive things going on, the digestive tract is so critical to the rest of your health, it's worth doing some of these other deeper levels of testing. Now, what would optimize? Let's say you are going to do a drug or a natural version of an anti-blast costos sort of treatment, what else could optimize that treatment so that we get the most out of it? Because whether it's, you know, an herbal product that kills parasites or a drug or drug combo, they can be kind of hard on your system. Certainly the drug's probably a little bit harder, but everything can be a little harder on you if it kills parasites. So we want that to work as well and as quick as possible. So some basic things that we can do to help the system out: one would be to decrease the inflammation in our gut so that what dies, dies, and we don't have a lot of collateral inflammation, which will reduce the side effects of your treatment and discomfort, et cetera. But if you're sensitive to foods, or certainly if you're allergic to certain foods, don't eat those when you're trying to do these treatments, 'cause they'll just create more inflammation. The next thing is things that are generally promoting of secondary inflammation, like a lot of simple sugars, for example, those can trigger some of even your normal bacteria to overgrow or some of the inappropriate bacteria or other things to overgrow. Or fungus to be more active. So if you're going to do something to get rid of a parasite, the less amount of simple sugars, probably the better. And then anything else that you might be sensitive to, probably best to get rid of that. Now, what way would an option to be well-rounded in treatment be, whether or not, you know, you had a recidivistic infection that keeps coming back even though you treat it or not? Well, normally, if I'm going to give somebody one of the drugs that might be used to kill, say, Blasto or one of its cousins, I'm going to give that drug, but I'm also going to give it along with an herbal anti-infective. Now, there's different types of herbs that you can use. People probably heard of things like, you know, black walnut and other extracts of plants that are kind of anti-parasite. A lot of the herbs are kind of anti-multiple things, whether it's oregano or other stuff. So usually I'm going to give those natural products alongside the drug if I'm going to give a drug, especially like in little children, we might just want to do the natural stuff. And, and sometimes the people that have failed drug therapy. We just do the natural stuff. The next thing that might make it more efficacious is something that will help disturb the biofilms. All right, I'm Dr. A. Thanks for all those questions about parasites and blastocysts specifically, and we really appreciate all the new members of the channel. We appreciate all the current members. Please like, share, subscribe, do notifications so you know when we put new videos out, and the community is growing, and we hope we're answering your questions. Thank you very much.