Helminthic therapy is an experimental therapy used to treat autoimmune conditions and other immune system illnesses. In this interview, Sidney Baker, MD, explains what this therapy is and describes pros and cons, clinical applications and how he has used this therapy in his practice.
About the Expert
Sidney Baker, MD, is a Yale Medical School graduate and former assistant professor of medical computer sciences, Peace Corps volunteer, family practitioner, Gesell Institute director, founder of Defeat Autism Now!, Linus Pauling Award recipient, and associate editor of integrative medicine. He is the author of Detoxification and Healing, The Circadian Prescription, and, with Jon Pangborn, Autism: Effective Biomedical Treatments, and various journal articles. He practices functional medicine in Sag Harbor, New York.
Transcript
Karolyn Gazella: Hello. I'm Karolyn Gazella, the publisher of the Natural Medicine Journal. Today, my guest is Dr Baker. We have a fascinating topic. We're going to be talking about the experimental immunotherapy known as helminthic therapy. Doctor Baker thank you so much for joining me.
Sidney Baker: Thank you for the invitation.
Gazella: First of all, please explain exactly what helminthic therapy is.
Baker: The word helminth is from the Greek root for things that are curvy, or turn in circles. Helicopters is another example of something that goes round and round. The Greeks identified the kinds of worms that we see over this kind of thought that if they curl around, and they move in a circular way when they're put in the dish. The word helminth only can into usage in sort of middle of the 1800s and now refers almost exclusively referring to worms that are in peoples intestines, and therefore, they get easily confused of course with the word parasite, which as it happens is a long implication. Helminthic therapy is the introduction worms that are missing from the digestive tract of people, and they provide remarkable benefits to people who have what we might call the loss of immune tolerance.
Gazella: Great. Now, from a scientific standpoint, what does the scientific literature to us about this therapy, at this point? Are there any recent studies that kind of stand out for you?
Baker: The book to read is An Epidemic of Absence, by Moises Velasquez-Manoff. He's a New York Times writer. He's written a lot of good books, and this is a wonderful review of the evidence supporting the use of this approach to therapy. In addition to that, there was a very important publication going back to 2006, I think, by a scientist at the University of Iowa, at the time. Now, [inaudible 00:02:35] who had the brilliance to put through a human investigation committee saying it was ethical to do an experiment in which people of all sorts of colitis were given certain types of helminth, I'll call it [inaudible 00:02:51] is a name for worm, and [inaudible 00:02:56] means pig, so it's a pig whipworm, I gave pig whipworm eggs to people with all sorts of colitis, and 50% of them [inaudible 00:03:04] were cured. This was a spectacular piece of work, and very persuasive, and that was [inaudible 00:03:12] on this approach from years ago.
Gazella: That's fascinating. I want to dig into kind of the practical nature of this therapy. I'd like you to describe, you know, where does the practitioner get the helminth? How do they know which helminth to use? How is it administered in clinical practice? How long does the therapy last? Give us some of those clinical details.
Baker: For the clinician, it is kind of a rough territory in that there isn't a single way that you can get all the different kind of helminths that are on the list, there are just a few choices to make, and it's all kind of now under the radar of the regulatory agencies that might be involved in things having to do with health. Therefore, one has to find ones own way to a certain extent by searching on the internet to find resources. There are basically three kinds of worms that are now available for therapeutic use.
One is the human bookworm, in which you find someone who has the eggs, or the larvae of the bookworm, and they put it underneath a bandaid on their skin, and it goes through your skin, and into your body, and does its job, eventually establishing itself in your digestive tract through a complicated path, from skin to the digestive tract. These are available in a kind of not official network of people who provide them. There are rather expensive. Sometimes people go out of the country to obtain them, but they can be gotten by mail.
The other kind is the one that was established in a study that I showed, that I mentioned a moment ago at the University of Iowa, and that was the [inaudible 00:05:26], and this is available online and are shipped from, they're made, so to speak in Thailand, out of [inaudible 00:05:37], and they are then shipped out of Europe, and they come in a little bottle, and they come in different dosages, and there's information on the web on how to use the TSL, and they're very effective. I used them for a number of years. They're quite expensive, like $500.00 for a little vile.
That was one of my motives for pursuing another option that came to my attention from a professor of surgery at Duke University, who's an expert in many things, and he was lecturing at a meeting where I was lecturing too, but I was talking about TSL, and he said, “Well, there's something else we might have coming along.” He did develop his approach, which is called HDC's, which I'll explain in a moment. It was about two years of our correspondence after he said, “Well, I'm working on something I think will be more affordable, and better than the TSL,” and finally said, “I've got it,” and I went down to Duke, and I learned how to start my own little ranch to raise these things. I provide them for my patients, and for patients of other doctors. These same things can be obtained from other sources online.
In the United States, it's hard to get the biome restoration version, which comes from Europe, and getting things like that across international boundaries, especially the United States is kind of awkward, so they supply them to other parts of the world, but I think at the moment biome restoration, which is biomerestoration.com, is their website address, which explains a lot about how these things work. It's worth visiting the website. I don't think you can get them in the United States, now. It's not a very open market, but it's worth a try if you're inclined in that direction.
Gazella: Let me just stop you there, once, when you say HD, do you say, H, T as in Tom, C, or H, D as in Dog, C?
Baker: Yes. H, D as in dog, C.
Gazella: Okay. Got it.
Baker: Are you listening carefully, it stands for hymenolepis diminuta cysticercoids.
Gazella: Got it. That's a mouthful.
Baker: [inaudible 00:08:04]. What they are, are a larvae form, or intermediate life cycle stage of the rat tapeworm. Now, think back 10,000 years to when you great, great, great, great-grandmother was inventing agriculture, and the guys are out doing hunter gathering things, but she being a wise woman figured there must be a better way for human beings to eat, and she started planting seeds, and eventually this turned into what we call agriculture. The main stage of agriculture, and the main stage of agriculture are the grains, like wheat, corn, oats, and barley, and rye, and so on.
There were two creatures watching her plant the seeds. One of them was a rat, and the other one was a beetle, who didn't know at that point he was going to be a grain beetle, but that's where the conversation began between these two creatures. One said to the other, “These human beings are so cool. They are doing this for us. They're learning how to grow grains, and we were going to go live in the grains [inaudible 00:09:08] planet earth for the rest of time.” Indeed, that's what happened. The creatures that are part of the lifecycle of HDC's, I call them little dudes, for various reasons, they're little dudes, I also have trademarked them as [inaudible 00:09:25] because they're really a probiotic, and they're just kind of stronger in many ways than regular probiotics.
The idea that these are foreign to human consumption is wrong, because the HDC's and rat poop have been in the grain supply of planet earth since the beginning of agriculture, and all of the precautions that are taking in these big grain elevators that you see when you're driving out through the Midwest, or other places, these grain elevators in all the ways of storing, and transporting grains are visited by rats, and these creatures that live off of rat poop, where they get hydration from the rat poops in the dryness of the [inaudible 00:10:14].
Grain has to be kept very, very dry to keep them from being moldy, so it's not a good place to get a drink of water if you're a beetle, but if there are rat poops in there, you've got something moist. When you eat your Wonder Bread, or your croissant from the restaurant you're getting a little bit of rat poops, and beetle parts in there, so it's not as if these are foreign to human consumption, it's just that in a more lively form they are, but the whole idea that they might be dangerous in some obscure way is completely dismissed by not in the history of it as well as the research done by William Parker at Duke validating the fact that these things are really completely safe.
It's hard to find a medical intervention, especially one of this importance that you can describe as safe. I mean, look at the TV these days with people with autoimmune problems where they have a nice lady dancing across the screen telling you all the horrible things that this thing that she's [inaudible 00:11:14] can do to you, well, suggesting that she's already a doctor, and get your prescription for this stuff. In other words, the neighborhood where these HDC's are active is in mainstream medicine in an extremely dangerous neighborhood, where the HDC's even though they may not be appealing to people who [inaudible 00:11:39] word worm is kind of scary, they are a bargain, transformation that we see from people, and people taking them is really the most dramatic thing I've seen in 50 years of being a doctor.
Gazella: Wow. I mean that is fascinating, and there's got to be kind of a yuck factor that you have to get over when talking to patients, but I'm assuming that if somebody has a pretty serious autoimmune condition at that point they're willing to go the distance.
Baker: You're right. Actually when you see a little tiny vile about the size of the tip of your pinky finger, little tiny plastic vile, with a little bit of salt water in it, and in there are two, or three, or 10, or 20 microscopic organisms that you can barely see as little white flecks, if you hold it up to a bright light, you can barely see it with the naked eye. Also, it's comforting to know that under the microscope these things are really cute. They really look like something, I mean after all we eat oysters, and all sorts of funny things.
Gazella: That's true.
Baker: And eat them raw, and people, you know, they pay $10.00 for [crosstalk 00:12:49]. It's really not such a yucky thing, and you're right there is a kind of way of thinking about this, which I call the BROCS, B-R-O-C-S, and I think we practitioners, and our patients should heed when we make a decision about whether to do something like this. B, stands for the benefit. R, stands for the risk. O, stands for the odds. C, stands for the cost. S, stands for the stakes, and the stakes are often what drive medical decisions even though we often think, well, gee, what are the odds that this operation is going to help my whatever?
But stakes are really important in what we do, and there are certain people out there with very high stakes problems. When you consider that the cost of these things is very minimal, and the risk is almost zero, about as close to zero as you can get from any kind of intervention, medically. The benefit is huge. Then, when you consider the stakes that it makes the decisions, so it's definitely the kind of thing that people should have a clear head, and thinking through, and not just say, “Oh, yuck. I won't do it.” I haven't had a patient, yet turn me off on the yucky thing.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: The person is not a patient, but a neighbor didn't want them because her doctor in New York said, “Well, we're giving you this other strong medicine, and how would we know which was working, or giving you a problem?” The typical kind of medical [crosstalk 00:14:28]-
Gazella: Right.
Baker: Excuse.
Gazella: Yeah.
Baker: Nothing really quite thoughtful.
Gazella: Now, is this a one dose thing? Once you put the worms in, they just do their work, or do you have to do multiple doses?
Baker: They swallow them in water, and it's nice to take a little oil with them, because that stimulates bile secretion. Bile helps the little dudes take their coats off and go to work, they shake hands with immune system, and you begin to see an effect within hours, and over the next two days, a little bit of a tummy ache, sometimes hyperactivity in children, insomnia in grownups. A little indication that this handshake is taking place. Rarely do we see people who have reactions that are a little alarming, but they're not dangerous, they just are a robust response.
Then we repeat the dose every two weeks, because these little guys do their job, and then they look around, and they say, “Well, this is not a digestive tract of a rat, so I'm out of here.” Then you need to repeat it every two, three or four weeks, and you need to try it for maybe 12 weeks, six doses, and during that time we know whether it's working or not, so you're not investing a vast amount of money in something that could go on for years to see if it's going to work. Usually we know right away, really, in the first two or three doses that we're on target with it, and this is something that is interesting that this can be determined even in individuals who have very complex illnesses, such as autism.
An autistic child has many, many symptoms, and lots of confusion, and problems with communication, and just response to pain, and so on, but we can tell very quickly within the first three or four doses usually that we're on the right track. It's not rocket science, it's very straightforward, and as I say there's a chance of maybe one in a 100 of acquiring a little rat tapeworm, and if you get it, then you don't have to take the dudes anymore, because you have your own pet worm. Some people find that yucky, so there's a very simple worm pill, the same kind of thing you'd give your dog or anybody else, a child with pinworms to get rid of it, and now we're finding it's a very common place, this medicine is everywhere.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: I've had a patient who's had a good response to the HDC's, and whose decided he's going to keep his little pet tapeworm, because after all in human beings who never had tapeworm poses no risk. There are some worms, of course, some intestinal parasites have a habit, or at least an occasional skill like making a branch office in your brain, or your liver, or something like that, which is obviously a very yucky thing, and so that's not a thing that happens with the rat tapeworm. [crosstalk 00:17:45]-
Gazella: I was just going to ask this tummy ache, and then insomnia, or these side effects after that are mild, are they fleeting? Do they go away after a day or two?
Baker: They're fleeting.
Gazella: Okay.
Baker: The generally tend to return a little bit with each dose, and then on the negative effects they disappear, and the good effect remain.
Gazella: Now, in your clinical practice are you using this as a primary treatment, adjunct treatment, both? Any contrary indications where you would say, you would not mix it with a pharmaceutical, anything like that?
Baker: The only thing that suppresses the immune system removed from the game is the participant needs to be healthy to respond, so if you're on chemotherapy, or prednisone, or steroids, and things like that your immune system isn't working well enough to be able to respond by doing the magic that we call the restoration of immune tolerance. The word restoration is a very important word in this conversation, because there are not many treatments that doctors, especially, MD's give to people that restore something to people, and especially in the realm of treatments that we now see on TV for autoimmune problem, everything takes something away from you, which for example, the ability to respond to an infection, or whatnot, it's they suppress the immune system.
Immune suppressants are of course the competition for this, but they're also a contrary indication because not that it would be harmful at all, it's just that you'd be wasting your money to take something to restore immune tolerance when your immune system is not in a position to restore its tolerance, because it's been handicapped by different kinds of chemotherapy, or thyroid medication.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Speaking of wasting money, you mention that the TSO is about $500.00 per vile, and the HDC's are more economical, about what's the price range of the HDC's?
Baker: About $100.00 plus FedEx.
Gazella: Okay. Yeah.
Baker: It ships with ice packs, overnight by noon delivery the next day, so it depends on how far you live away from a source. There are a few doctors around the country whom I've trained to do this, and if you live close to one of them then the FedEx would be cheaper.
Gazella: Yeah. I see that. I'd like to talk a little bit about the conditions. Now, you mentioned autoimmune, in general, and you mentioned autism. Let's drill down. When you're talking about autoimmune, I mean that gambit is broad, autoimmune can literally effect any part of the human body. Is it all autoimmune do you think, or is it targeted autoimmune conditions?
Baker: In the sense of your question, it's all autoimmune, and I should add that I just had the privilege of introducing you to [inaudible 00:20:55] audience of [inaudible 00:20:58], Institute of Functional Medicine at a meeting, annual meeting in Florida, and he's the world, I think, safe to say he's the world's foremost immunologist. He's a wonderful guy, and the first sentence in one of his books, one of his many books that he's edited reads, “Some would say until it's proven otherwise all chronic illness is autoimmune.” If you read the 52 chapters in this book written by experts in infectious disease, and immunology you come to the conclusion that all chronic illness is infectious, including autoimmunity, so in other words he makes a sandwich with infection, and autoimmunity on the top and the bottom, and in between is all different kinds of chronic illness.
Now, in that batch of chronic illnesses, some that are all ready defined as autoimmune, I mean go right back to the [inaudible 00:21:49] autoimmune problems, which is a list now of 22, or so different so called diseases. That's well established. Now, [inaudible 00:22:00], and so on, but also there are other things that some years ago would not have been thought to be autoimmune, because nobody found the antibodies. Take alopecia for example, now, we know alopecia is associated with antibodies to your hair follicle, so now it's the classic autoimmune problem, but in hyperthyroidism now hyper and hypothyroid is they're both recognized as autoimmune a few years ago, there was only hashimoto that they said, well, that's autoimmune, but the hyperthyroid isn't [inaudible 00:22:35].
As the dealer goes around the table, it turns out there's going to be a recognition of the truth of what Doctor [inaudible 00:22:48] that will embrace almost all chronic illness even illnesses in which there's another ideology that's pretty well understood, but there's an autoimmune factor going on that has to do with the way that antibodies work in the body [inaudible 00:23:08] for monitoring health, and keeping an inventory of all the body parts, and all the things else that comes on board, so as we redefine what we mean by autoimmunity I think it will become clear that something like the HDC's would be good for everybody.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: Because it restores something that's been part of the human microbiome since the beginning of time. The experience I had living two years in Africa was very informative from this perspective. I was a Peace Corp volunteer, I was between my second year residency, and my chief residency in pediatrics at Yale, I decided to get out, and see the watery part of the world, but I ended up in Africa, and I saw thousands of beautiful people, I mean really stunningly handsome, healthy people, but of course I saw since I was there as a doctor I saw a lot of pretty sick people. I didn't see anybody with an autoimmune, or allergic problem while I was in Chad.
Now, this was, and I should say that everybody that I saw did have what we would call in those days, parasites, saw different kinds. By the 1990s the truth of the statement abide by what I just said was established as a high science, in other words, by the 1990s it became scientifically unquestionable that the reason why people in Africa don't have autoimmune allergic problems is that they have a gift from nature that has always been part of the human microbiome it consists of helminths that is organisms that are bigger than fungus's and bacteria, and big enough so that in the eye of the beholder of looking into a toilet it looks yucky to have this creepy, crawly thing.
It's true that some people who have a burden of extra worms can be quite sick with various strengths, but a small amount of them it's good for you, and now that the truth of this is well established it is quite clear that the word restoration then means even more than I was just referring to, that is if you restore the microbiome to the way it should be with at least a taste, a sampling of something that is helminthic then it will restore tolerance to people who are inflicted by everything from hay fever, to alopecia, to hashimoto thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, and so on.
That doesn't work for everybody, because that's the way the world works for all of us doctors, but 50/50 are very conservative odds in terms of if you want to know the odds, it's better than 50/50, and it's going to be beneficial in a very dramatic way. Not just, I feel a little better, you know? That doesn't get you far in terms of statistics, but when it's all better, when your thyroid antibodies go away, and your golf score falls from 80 to 70 now you know that you've really gotten a hit, and that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Gazella: Right. Well, you mentioned alopecia, and I'm going to disclose to our listeners that there was selfish reasons why I wanted to reach out to you, I find this topic to be fascinating, but I also have been diagnosed with alopecia areata universalis, which is the rarest form, and I know that you did a talk about alopecia describing a couple of case studies that you've had using this therapy. You know, alopecia is considered an extremely difficult condition to treat, I should know. There actually is no treatment for me with this condition. Why were you successful, specifically, with alopecia, and the helminths?
Baker: Well, because alopecias an autoimmune problem, and should respond. The younger you are the better. I mean, this is a truth that goes all the way through medicine, if you're up to teenage, the probability of your alopecia getting better with helminthic therapy is way over 50/50. After that, it gets lower, so I have one daughter of a friend, a clinician, who is in the same boat with you, and we tried her on the HDC's, and it didn't work for her-
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: But, it was worth a try. I do have older patients from going way back who have responses not only to the HDC's, but I should add the antifungal medicines, my first patient who I treated with antifungal for his alopecia it was a little boy with alopecia totalis, and he was about five or six years old, and I become under the influence of Orian Truss, my dear friend, now, dead, who was the person who pioneered the idea that very high doses of antifungals would do well for all sorts of autoimmune problems, and his work has not gotten out as it should into the world.
I've done my best to push it, but the medical mainstream rejected the idea, and did so in a very stupid way, but effective way. I had this boy, and I thought, well, why not try him on a high dose of antifungals, and I tried him on a small dose, because the antifungal in question had just come on the market, [inaudible 00:28:52], and I gave it to him, and bingo all of a sudden he started sprouting patches of hair, and I have a series of photographs showing patches of hair, tufts of hair, little clusters coming back, and we did this in such a timid way, because the [inaudible 00:29:08] drugs were new at the time, and it was scary fine print, but it turns out that the fine print was over stated.
Over a period of time his hair grew in completely, he's now a grownup with a full head of hair, so he was cured, now there's a word that's pretty important in this dialogue. The reason I gave the talk about alopecia at the IFM meeting is because I think it's an important concept to figure that the word cure, and autoimmunity can occur in the same sentence, so the patients that I have seen with alopecia have been cured with either antifungal drugs, or with the HDC's. Here's a model of an absolutely classic autoimmune problem, antibodies to your hair follicle and, so on, so it fits the autoimmune model perfectly. Yet, here's a treatment in the face of, as you point out, a complete absence of any other effective treatment really when you come down to it, that isn't immune suppressants, which are scary.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: It opens a door to a new way of thinking about autoimmunity.
Gazella: Yeah. It absolutely does. Now, do you use the high dose antifungal in conjunction with the helminthic, or are they two separate therapeutic treatment protocols?
Baker: [inaudible 00:30:33] really. I have one little boy, one little girl who came down from Connecticut, and she had alopecia, so I said, “Well, I'm going to give you this medicine for your fungal things, and some sacrifices were already, I'm going give you the [inaudible 00:30:50],” and then six months later I didn't hear from her, we [inaudible 00:30:53], and I saw her mother, and I said, “How she doing,” and she said, “Oh, she's all better. We're so pleased. We're so grateful. Her hair is just wonderful.”
Gazella: Wow.
Baker: [inaudible 00:31:02] and she said, “Oh, she didn't want to take the [inaudible 00:31:05],” she said, “Doctor Baker said this other stuff would be fine, so I don't like the way [inaudible 00:31:10] tastes.” She was a pure HDC experiment.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: She had a yeast problem, but see the HDC's do some amazing things to the microbiome. That's how she worked out. I think people should be free to try both, or either one. There's no reason why you can't take antifungal drug along with the HDC's.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now, you know-
Baker: [crosstalk 00:31:41] probably about, well, if we're talking mostly pharmaceuticals that the antifungal drugs, but that's only because that's where my experience is. I know many of the listeners have a lot of experience with non-pharmaceutical antifungal drugs, but I think when it comes right down to it my experience with antifungal drugs at least for proof of concept is to go first of all to [inaudible 00:32:06], which is of course over the counter, so to speak, but then if you really want to walk away from something saying that it didn't work, you should go all the way up to [inaudible 00:32:18], and things like that.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That makes, I was actually going to ask about the natural antifungals, so thank you for bringing that up. You know, this strikes me that it has maybe a similar concept to fecal microbiota transplant, FMT therapy. Are there any similarities, or am I off base on that?
Baker: You're right on base.
Gazella: Okay.
Baker: Exactly. I think that the FMT, especially now that it's become generally available on the black market, or blue market, or whatever you want to call [crosstalk 00:32:55]-
Gazella: Yeah.
Baker: It's generally available in ways that are safe and effective. I think that it's definitely worth a shot if you're dealing with anything like this, even if you don't have GI symptoms. We know the microbiome is really the headquarters for most pathology, now, so one is justified in assuming that if you have an autoimmune inflammatory, or chronic problem that fecal transplant is definitely, it should be on the list of options.
Gazella: Right. We've actually written a lot about that in our journal, and have been following the research, and I would agree, I think that's pretty exciting. Now, speaking about the future, what do you think the future holds for helminthic therapy? What can we expect to see regarding maybe more research, different clinical applications? What needs to happen in order for this to become more widely accepted, and widely used with really optimal outcomes?
Baker: Well, somehow it has to survive for long enough under the radar, so that it would be a very unpopular move on the part of regulatory authorities to try to stamp it out.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: This is a problem that we have to wrestle with, because there's no simple answer to it. It's not something that the pharmaceutical companies are likely to want to do, and it's also something they would want to undo.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: One has to imply that the pharmaceutical companies are not exactly ethical, and I think that may be the case when it comes to the marketplace. I don't know what's going to happen. I decided that I felt obliged to do something that would be helpful to people, and to take, so to speak the risk of sticking my nose out, and doing something about it. I've been gratified, because so many people have benefited, but everyday I wonder, well, what if I get a knock on the door, and say, I have a clean room where I make them, I tend to all of the rules that are necessary to do it in a safe way, but that doesn't, you know, you have some bureaucrat or somebody who wants to exercise authority, but all those things wouldn't help much. I think the best one can do I think is to spread the word. I have trained a few doctors around the country to do this, so that it's better to have more people doing it.
Gazella: Right.
Baker: That's a very difficult question.
Gazella: Well, I applaud you for taking the risk, because this is actually how medicine should be with pioneering doctors willing to step outside the box, and try new things for the patients who are suffering. It sounds like you have certainly taken on that role, and thank you. Thank you so much for doing that. Is there anything more you'd like to add, or let our listeners know about this therapy?
Baker: I think we've covered it pretty well. I should reinforce the idea that all the things that I have learned from paying attention to my patients and listening to them for the last 50 years, this is the best thing, but I would want to emphasize that the legacy of Orian Truss, who wrote the book, The Missing Diagnosis, that if you're going to get it get the first volume of that, they made a second edition, but the first one describes his case report for using high doses of nystatin, I mean really mouthfuls of nystatin, which is pretty hard stuff to take in treating people with all sorts of chronic autoimmune problems. In my universe, the HDC's are on the one hand, and putting something in that is missing from the gut is on equal footing with taking something out, and that is getting rid of the yeast in the gut.
Gazella: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Baker: Our culture is full of yeast, because of sugar, and the diet, and all that. I think that listeners must get on my platform here for a second, read Orian Truss's book, and believe what he has to say. I met him in 1978, and since then I've been giving people high doses of antifungals with absolutely spectacular results. Now, when I say a high dose, just for example right now I have two patients sort of in parallel one on introconazole, whose in France, an autistic boy, and another one in Boston who's an autistic boy, and both of them, especially the one in Boston, he's near the end of the trail, he's absolutely broken through. He was a really way, way down autistic boy who couldn't talk, or do anything, behave. When we got him on introconazole he came to his mother and he said, “Mommy, I'm all better.” I mean it was enough to just open your heart.
Gazella: Right.
Baker: And he really is all better. He's going to be a little genius. I've seen this with autism for years now, this is a very hard sell among my colleagues, even the ones who are regular mainstream prescription writing MD's, who can put introconazole, and things like that pretty easily. But indeed sometimes you do very high doses. The boy in Boston is on multiple, he's a little boy, and he's on multiples of the adult dose, and his liver function tests are just fine, and he has gone from being a hopelessly autistic boy to being okay, and that is worth the risk that is considered when you encounter this stuff.
Gazella: Yeah.
Baker: This is something people need to consider, because I hate to think that if I disappear from the planet, and Orian is in his grave there's nobody out there reminding us that this antifungal thing is an importance that's equal to helminthic therapy.
Gazella: Yeah. That sounds fascinating. I'm very pleased that we're able to help you get the word out, because you're doing some exciting work with your patients, and helping a lot of people. I want to thank you, again, for joining me today.
Baker: It's such a gift from you to allow me to reach out to so many people. It really is. It's great for my morale to feel that I'm not just sitting here talking to myself. Thank you very much.
Gazella: Absolutely. We will spread the word. You have a great day.
Baker: Thank you. You, too.
