Are You Chasing the Wrong End of Dientamoeba fragilis?

Ever feel like you’re chasing your own tail trying to treat & find the source  of GIT parasites in some patients?!  Well guess what, you just might be!

We’re seeing more & more patients test positive for Dientamoeba fragilis and increasingly patients struggling to eradicate it and prevent relapse. And then there’s Blastocystis hominis affected patients… and then those lucky enough to have both. 

Well, while we might have been grouping D.frag together with B.hominis, being the two most common GIT parasites in humans, looking for what they share in common,  they are worlds apart (we think!) in terms of how they are transmitted to humans. (more…)

It’s Landed At Last! Aka ‘Kids’ Guts Can Be Mental’ [ft. Threadworm] Recording

Standing at the podium, I looked down at my notes & slowly read out the title of my presentation to the hundreds of people attending, ‘Paediatric Digestive Issues & Neurocognitive Abnormalities’ and briefly froze thinking, Holy Heck (!) this is someone else’s presentation!  Seriously. No, this is not one of my work stress dreams.  This happened. I thought…oh my how am I going to deliver this, it sounds very complex and lofty and scary!!

Then I saw my scribbled hand notes on the page, the unofficial name I had affectionately given this presentation as I researched, compiled my case studies and brought it into being, months prior and I instantly relaxed…oh…Kids’ Guts Are Mental…now that I have some serious experience with and something to say about! (more…)

End of Year CD Clearance

As we head rapidly towards the change over of our calendars we would like to offer you a special on the very best educational recordings from 2014 – buy 2 CDs before Jan 31st and receive one complimentary Premium Audio Recording of your choice  OR purchase 4 CDs and receive a 3 month Premium Audio subscription for free

It’s been a busy year during which Rachel has delivered 7 very successful new seminars in the area of mental health and  beyond, most notably fortifying her role as a leader in the field of diagnostics and pathology interpretation.  This has included collaborations with ACNEM, Biomedica, Health Masters Live, MINDD and Nutrition Care, however, each recording is classic Rachel – full of fresh perspectives on diagnosis & treatment, colourful analogies  & humour.  In case you missed some of these this year or want a copy for keeps – here’s a quick summary of the 2014 recordings included in this end of year offer: (more…)

I’m coming to Sydney!

So far this year I’ve been doing most of my presenting online which has been fantastic because we can all be in our PJs and no one’s the wiser (except now!!) but I do miss the face to face seminars where sometimes the real magic happens thanks to the two-way dynamic between you and me!

So guess what?  I’m coming to Sydney on the 31st August (and then Brisbane 6th September and then Melbourne 13th September) to touch base with many of you again.  I’m joining forces with Rachel McDonald from Biomedica to talk about the real world application of naturopathy in mental health conditions.  (more…)

Picking up Parasites?

Many of you would now be aware of the shift from culture (stool MCS) to gene-based stool testing (stool PCR) which has now become available under Medicare subsidy. While this has been an exciting development that promised greater accuracy for the detection of parasites in our patients, there remains limitations.  One of the biggest is the fact that the PCR test is based on just one stool sample compared to the 3 day samples used  in the culture test.

While this is rationalised, both by the pathology companies and some doctors, by higher test sensitivity and specificity, it flies in the face of our understanding about the irregular shedding of parasites i.e. the presence of the parasite in an infected individual’s stool can vary  from nothing to severe, just day to day, therefore diagnosis must be based on several days of stool collection to account for this.

A practitioner I mentor, faced with several patients with negative PCR results but a clinical picture and other pathology results (raised eosinophils, impaired iron levels etc.) that strongly suggested the presence of  parasites has been debating this with her shared care providers trying to encourage them to still refer patients for the stool PCR but performed over several samples.

She came across this article as a nice piece of supportive evidence Irregular shedding of Blastocystis hominis (Venilla et al 1999): ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9934969

While there are numerous other studies confirming the irregular shedding of most parasites this is a handy paper perhaps to use to strengthen the case for PCR stool tests performed over 3 days rather than 1.  Let’s face it – it’s a big enough ask to get our patients to collect stool – we should really ensure we have optimised their chances of getting an accurate result!