Reading a book about parasites, Parasites: Tales of Humanity's Most Unwelcome Guests, by Rosemary Drisdelle. If you have even a remote neurotic streak, this book will push you over the edge!
I get to chapter 6 where my happy little world takes a serious blow. It says that mankind and parasites have lived a long time together and while we hate our body lice, scabies and intestinal crawlers, there is a mounting body of evidence that says they are beneficial to us! IN fact, there is research into the area that intestinal worms tweak our immune system, give it a thwack to see if it's running. In populations that have low worm infestations, they have correspondingly high auto-immune illnesses and allergies.
p. 148 "...Second, research with animals show that helminth infection does alter the immune response, and numerous accounts now exist of people who have successfully treated disease with worms. Hookworms have found use in treatng hay fever and asthma. Trichuris suis, the whipworm of pigs, has helped people with inflammatory bowel disease acheive remission. People with multiple sclerosis tend to have milder disease if they also have worms."
The author goes on to say that the human body is not able to attack a worm with enough gunpower to evict an adult worm from our system. To be able to do so it would have to release weapons of mass destruction on its own tissues, damamging ourselves in the process. But over the kajillions of years mankind has carried worms, we have developed a certain amount of defense and immunity, that the presence of a certain amount of intestinal parasites, they act to get our immune systems up and running. Like a dose of vitamin W, vitamin Worm.
STOP THE PRESSES! I am not saying there is or is not validity to this claim. It would require further study and investigation before I made a decision. But let's say that it is true...I immediately wondered what inadvertant, unexpected damage I might do to my chickens by launching on a program to keep them worm free? Am I creating wimp chickens whose immune systems have shut down for lack of use? Maybe by wanting chickens with squeaky clean intestinal tracts, I am shooting myself in the foot and putting them at risk of poor health?
It was an astounding thought, completely the opposite way of thinking. It made me stop and wonder.
On the up side, my birds are not worm free and despite occasional worming, most of us have wormy birds anyway. I worm to give their guts a fighting chance, NOT to ensure they never have a worm. I also worm my meat birds since they don't really need immune systems, they are going to be dead in 10 weeks anyway. They are not designed for a long, healthy life into old age. But if some of us worm often with the aim of total irradication in mind...maybe we ought to rethink the vigour of our worm attack.
I will continue to worm twice a year and keep a NoPest strip in the coop to ensure as much physical comfort for my birds as I can. Who needs to be driven half mad with the sensation of crawlers? However, I still think this was an approach that most of us have not considered. Balance in all things and in the greater scheme of things, some exposure to common gut worms might be good for us all. ICK!
I get to chapter 6 where my happy little world takes a serious blow. It says that mankind and parasites have lived a long time together and while we hate our body lice, scabies and intestinal crawlers, there is a mounting body of evidence that says they are beneficial to us! IN fact, there is research into the area that intestinal worms tweak our immune system, give it a thwack to see if it's running. In populations that have low worm infestations, they have correspondingly high auto-immune illnesses and allergies.
p. 148 "...Second, research with animals show that helminth infection does alter the immune response, and numerous accounts now exist of people who have successfully treated disease with worms. Hookworms have found use in treatng hay fever and asthma. Trichuris suis, the whipworm of pigs, has helped people with inflammatory bowel disease acheive remission. People with multiple sclerosis tend to have milder disease if they also have worms."
The author goes on to say that the human body is not able to attack a worm with enough gunpower to evict an adult worm from our system. To be able to do so it would have to release weapons of mass destruction on its own tissues, damamging ourselves in the process. But over the kajillions of years mankind has carried worms, we have developed a certain amount of defense and immunity, that the presence of a certain amount of intestinal parasites, they act to get our immune systems up and running. Like a dose of vitamin W, vitamin Worm.
STOP THE PRESSES! I am not saying there is or is not validity to this claim. It would require further study and investigation before I made a decision. But let's say that it is true...I immediately wondered what inadvertant, unexpected damage I might do to my chickens by launching on a program to keep them worm free? Am I creating wimp chickens whose immune systems have shut down for lack of use? Maybe by wanting chickens with squeaky clean intestinal tracts, I am shooting myself in the foot and putting them at risk of poor health?
It was an astounding thought, completely the opposite way of thinking. It made me stop and wonder.
On the up side, my birds are not worm free and despite occasional worming, most of us have wormy birds anyway. I worm to give their guts a fighting chance, NOT to ensure they never have a worm. I also worm my meat birds since they don't really need immune systems, they are going to be dead in 10 weeks anyway. They are not designed for a long, healthy life into old age. But if some of us worm often with the aim of total irradication in mind...maybe we ought to rethink the vigour of our worm attack.
I will continue to worm twice a year and keep a NoPest strip in the coop to ensure as much physical comfort for my birds as I can. Who needs to be driven half mad with the sensation of crawlers? However, I still think this was an approach that most of us have not considered. Balance in all things and in the greater scheme of things, some exposure to common gut worms might be good for us all. ICK!
