Re: [pct-l] Giardiasis, filtering water....and crypto too

[Kevin Corcoran <kevin@hughes.net>]

Goforth brings up some good questions on this subject....it's been
mentioned here before that Flagyl can be way rougher on your system than G.
For water treatment I prefer to take advantage of the weight savings with
iodine tabs as well, but I hike mostly in the desert where ya want the pump
to get the scary-looking stuff out of still pools of water, so mostly I
pump......

On a related note, anyone on this list knowledgable about Cryptosporidium?

There's been differing info circulated on effective water treatment for
crypto.  I read somewhere that it cannot be filtered out on account of its
tiny size.  The scariest thing I read is that once contracted "it cannot be
treated."   :-0   Does this mean that it's impossible to eradicate from
your system, that one must learn to live with its debilitating
effects.....or merely that no practical, effective medication currently
exists to fight it, and that only the human body's imune mechanisms can
deal with it.....?
Just me wondering.

Kevin Corcoran


>I was planning to just take iodine on my thruhike (crystals -use a satuated
>solution), I have used this method for 25 years and have never gotten
>giardiasis when I actually treated the water and when I am preparing my own
>food and washing my own dishes.  Waiting a hour for the iodine to disinfect
>can be hard when you're really thirsty.
>
>Nevertheless, I have had giardiasis 3 times.  Each successive time it got
>worse, and Flagyl (the treatment ) is a potent antibiotic which I would
>just as soon not take ever again.  I got it the first time in Nepal where I
>was staying in "teahouses", and there was no sanitation.  Dishes were
>washed in the ditch, and there were no toilets at all. Everywhere,you had
>to be careful where you stepped.  The second time was a mystery for a year.
> It seemed to come from the Calf Creek campground water (near Boulder,
>Utah) because of the timing of the incubation period and onset of sickness.
> When I went back the next year to the same place, I decided to be careful
>and only use the nearest municiple city water, which was in Boulder, Utah.
>In between trips, we rendered some assisstance in a bad accident, and I
>meet the local EMT.  She mentioned that some of the Boulder town kids might
>be thin because of Giardiasis. Red lights started flashing!!!! It turns out
>the town water is untreated and from a beaver pond ( "G ="Beaver Fever").
>Too late, we were sick again by the time we got home.  The water that you
>least suspect can be the problem; makes no difference if everybody else is
>drinking it. All those people going to the Escalente area and the New Grand
>staircase park be forewarned  - many of the canyons there, even ones that
>are dry part of the year,have got lots of beavers in them.
>
>I had some doubts about using iodine for 5 months as well, but figured that
>I I could use it to Kennedy meadows, and be very careful thereafter in the
>Sierras to see how much use there was in the watershed of any particular
>watersource.  I wonder about Jardines statement that you can build up
>immunity.  I do know that infection of most diseases is dose related - the
>more innoculum , in this case Giardia cysts, the more likely you are to
>become infected. and also there are tremendous individual differences in
>the titer level (number of cysts/liter) required to infect.  Some people
>can drink directly from a tremendously polluted source and never get sick;
>others are sick drinking small amounts of water from sources that are have
>very little pollution.
>
>I noticed that Jardine takes Flagyl in his first aid kit, which meant to me
>that he thought there was going to be a good chance that he was going to
>get sick.
>
>About ten years back, I got a Katydn Micro filter.  You need to be Hercules
>to use the thing, it is a major feat to get a single quart of filtered
>water with this gadget. We used it once.  It got parked on a shelf
>permanently.  I have decided that If I got a filter it would be an MSR
>micro, which has a nice handle, rather than the plunger mechanism of most
>filters like the Pur.
>
>Mostly I wanted to use the iodine alone because of weight considerations.
>And I know I can trust iodine if I use it right.  I have been on two trips
>where filters broke. Everybody ended up using my iodine.
>
>Question: how many people have gotten sick in the stretch between Campo and
>Kennedy Meadows?  Have any of you thruhikers used iodine alone, and carried
>no filter?
>
>Sincerwely
>Goforth
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