When a 69-year-old Seattle woman underwent brain surgery earlier this year at Swedish Medical Center, her doctors were stumped.
Last January, the woman was admitted to the hospital’s emergency department after suffering a seizure. Doctors took a CT scan of her brain to determine the cause, finding what they initially thought was a tumor. But an examination of tissue taken from her brain during surgery a day later showed she was up against a much deadlier attack, one that had been underway for about a year and was literally eating her alive.
“When I operated on this lady, a section of her brain about the size of a golf ball was bloody mush,” Dr. Charles Cobbs, neurosurgeon at Swedish, said in a phone interview. “There were these amoeba all over the place just eating brain cells. We didn’t have any clue what was going on, but when we got the actual tissue we could see it was the amoeba.”
The woman died a month later from the rare organisms that entered her brain after being injected into her nasal cavity by way of a neti pot, a teapot-shaped product used to rinse out the sinuses and nasal cavity, according to a case study recently published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The study was authored by Swedish doctors and researchers who worked on her case, including Cobbs. The publication doesn’t identify the victim.
The woman’s infection is the second ever reported in Seattle — the first came in 2013 — but the first fatality to be caused by it. In 1990, researchers first became aware that this type of amoeba can cause disease in people, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in November. That report found there have been 109 cases of the amoeba reported in the U.S. between 1974 and 2016. Ninety percent of those cases were fatal.
Amoebas are single-celled organisms, some of which can cause disease. Since they thrive in warm soil and water, some local doctors are growing concerned that the woman’s deadly infection could be among other southern-hemisphere diseases that may become spread northward toward the Pacific Northwest amid warming temperatures. The organisms are commonly found in South America and Central America, but may now have a better chance of survival in other, usually cooler places, such as Washington.
I used to buy water filters from Jones but I'll be honest, you'll save A LOT of money just buying a water distiller and distilling your own water. Distillation removes everything toxic, including toxins and viruses.
Jace Jones
I do have a basic water filter also for the tap, but those basic filters only remove most heavy metal contaminates. Don't think they can remove fluoride or tiny bacterial viruses unless you get something really damn expensive. So stick with a basic cheap filter and something to distill that water.
Jace Carter
Note that, like an old coffee machine, you will have to clean the distiller with vinegar every so often. I clean mine out once every two or three weeks.
Charles Howard
whoever created that STUPID meme obviously doesn't rrealize the correct way to type it is C'MON
Gavin Clark
Water distillers remove minerals like magnesium or iron, which are important nutrients for your body.
Xavier Sanchez
You can get those nutrients naturally elsewhere in foods, or from supplements if need be. Not a big problem. I much rather have clean water and get those nutrients from certified organic vegetables and high quality unprocessed meats.
Grayson Diaz
No you dumb nigger, deionized/distilled water latches onto those chemicals inside of your body. Drinking distilled/deionized water on a regular basis strips that shit from your body and makes you piss out essential minerals. There's a reason we use DI water to chemically clean PCBs.
Brody Howard
all you have to do is boil water those amoebas have been known to get into people who have been swimming in relatively warm/calm waters like ponds or lakes. you get water up your nose and the amoeba gets up into your brain.
Brayden Watson
is the immune system not able to deal with these amoeba?
Luke Howard
Do you have a reliable source that proves this? If so, then maybe I'll go back to the filters.
Evan Cooper
we ingest amoebas in water all the time, but our digestive tracts kill them.
the reason she died is because she ignored the instructions and warnings included in the stupid neti pot nasal cleanser, and flushed her sinus cavities with tap water.
Gavin Powell
trust me…………
he's absolutely correct
Anthony Gutierrez
just drink filtered alkaline water
Charles Gray
Gastrointestinal amebiasis is an infection of the large intestine caused by microscopic one-celled parasites commonly known as amoebas (Entamoeba histolytica). … Harmless strains of the parasite (Entamoeba dispar) live there without causing damage.
John Carter
It doesn't happen often. But most summers, several Americans – usually healthy, young people – suffer sudden, tragic deaths from a brain-eating amoeba.
What Is a Brain-Eating Amoeba?
Amoebas are single-celled organisms. The so-called brain-eating amoeba is a species discovered in 1965. It's formal name is Naegleria fowleri. Although first identified in Australia, this amoeba is believed to have evolved in the U.S.
There are several species of Naegleria but only the fowleri species causes human disease. There are several fowleri subtypes. All are believed equally dangerous.
N. fowleri is microscopic: 8 micrometers to 15 micrometers in size, depending on its life stage and environment. By comparison, a hair is 40 to 50 micrometers wide.
Like other amoebas, Naegleria reproduces by cell division. When conditions aren't right, the amoebas become inactive cysts. When conditions are favorable, the cysts turn into trophozoites – the feeding form of the amoeba.
Samuel Cooper
Can you guys provide some proof of this? Thats all I'm asking about because I have been drinking distilled water for a while with no health problems. I would imagine I could get these nutrients from other foods anyway, or from supplements.
Andrew Sullivan
ok
Brody Fisher
Where Are Brain-Eating Amoebas Found?
Naegleria loves very warm water. It can survive in water as hot as 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
These amoebas can be found in warm places around the globe. N. fowleri is found in:
Warm lakes, ponds, and rock pits Mud puddles Warm, slow-flowing rivers, especially those with low water levels Untreated swimming pools and spas Untreated well water or untreated municipal water Hot springs and other geothermal water sources Thermally polluted water, such as runoff from power plants Aquariums Soil, including indoor dust
Naegleria can't live in salt water. It can't survive in properly treated swimming pools or in properly treated municipal water.
Most cases of N. fowleri disease occur in Southern or Southwestern states. Over half of all infections have been in Florida and Texas. How Do People Get Infected With Brain-Eating Amoeba?
The term "brain-eating amoeba" makes the amoeba sound like a tiny zombie stalking your skull. But brains are accidental food for them.
According to the CDC, N. fowleri normally eats bacteria. But when the amoeba gets into humans, it uses the brain as a food source.
The nose is the pathway of the amoeba, so infection occurs most often from diving, water skiing, or performing water sports in which water is forced into the nose. But infections have occurred in people who dunked their heads in hot springs or who cleaned their nostrils with neti pots filled with untreated tap water.
A person infected with N. fowleri cannot spread the infection to another person. How Do Amoebas Get in the Brain?
Studies suggest that N. fowleri amoebas are attracted to the chemicals that nerve cells use to communicate with one another. Once in the nose, the amoebas travel through the olfactory nerve (the nerve connected with sense of smell) into the frontal lobe of the brain.
Robert Jones
Vitamin and mineral supplements don't absorb worth a shit
Trust me: you can trust me when I say 'trust me'
Xavier Mitchell
Some don't, it depends what brands you get and if they are in silica gels. If you get high quality vitamins that are liquid and drop them into water they will absorb much better than the ones in silica gels. The same goes for most supplements, stick to the liquid formulas as much as possible. Or open them up and dilute them with water, and chug them down.
Jordan Reed
liquids: true….
Trust me: I know you're correct
But trust me: without food, the liquid supplements have nothing to bond to, and will be eliminated in your urine
the amoeba that liquified a portion of her brain…… trust me….
Jeremiah Cruz
...
Juan Flores
I thought chemistry was a required course in American school? Who the fuck let these boomers pass?
Landon Morgan
Trust Me: the education system in America has become SO bad, that the average college entrant reads at a fourth grade level
( and I'm not joking )
trust me
Ian Brown
Chlorine status: vindicated
Wyatt Richardson
It was all going uphill until Common Core came out.
We had restored the excellence/mediocrity divide (AP classes,) we were bringing back vocational education ("career tech,") we were setting up to give teachers pay bonuses for their actual impact on students not just their bureaucratic ranking, and district administrators were on the verge of finally facing accountability for their decades of embezzlement and child abuse.
But no, we had to have a "greater good" government instead.
Carson Garcia
When I used to snort drugs I would usually stick my finger under running water tip my head back, and let a few drops of water drip off my fingertip into my nostrils to help any residual meth, heroin or cocaine completely dissolve and absorb….
TRUST ME…………………
it never caused me any brain dmange flut wipm ut ut blephm dtraj what what wsa I talk
Its deliberate subversion, the communists have basically infiltrated and successfully dumbed us down to a point of no return.
AMEN. And now schools will even punish teachers if their grades are low (I know someone who is a high school teacher who told me all about this). Some teachers are having to FAKE GRADES to get their students to pass….. just so they won't end up fired. They HATE this system and most the "boomers" are packing up and leaving now.
Mason Wilson
I'm not the type of person who has an agenda, and feels the need to attribute everything bad to Communists or Jews….
but it was DEFINITELY deliberate
trust me
Robert Powell
'boomers': ppl who got to experience life when it was still recognizable, before they started busing black students into white schools, and before the downward spiral of the education system began….
translation: I'm proud to be a boomer
Jose Myers
Perhaps this woman was too stupid to understand what distilled water means
It's really not any one generation's fault, its the fault of systemic and ruthless corruption. The central banking system is heavily involved with this corruption too.
Aiden Bailey
According to Stormy Daniels, Trump's penis looked a lot like a neti pot spout
Uh, no. You do. I rarely post reports about the guy. TV-head on the other hand, different story.
However, I DID just post this, proving I show NO bias:
Nathan Jenkins
No… You…
Charles Rodriguez
No sympathy for hipster scumbags
Nolan Perry
Those instructions say "distilled or filtered water", but not all filters will kill amoebas. You probably need a UV filter at least. Simply letting the water boil for 15 minutes should work too.
Camden Murphy
Just drink heavy water to balance it out.
Zachary Perez
She did it with tap water though, and thats the problem. I doubt it was boiled, or filtered or distilled.
Adam Nelson
Why do people do this? Water does not belong into the nose.
Normally yes, but only when you put the water where it belongs: in your mouth and down into your stomach. You are not meant to squirt water up your nose right next to your brain.
Parker Thomas
learn2read
Jace Rogers
If you drink them, they're harmless. Your digestion handles them no problem. If you irrigate your sinuses with them, however, there's a chance they can cross the barrier into your brain. That's a problem because your immune system isn't as active in your brain. There's a barrier to keep stuff from crossing from your blood into your brain, but if something does get in, you're generally in serious shit. That's why the irrigation pots like this lady was using warn you to boil the water you use in them. This lady failed to heed the safety warnings and poured parasites into her sinuses, and they started munching on the nice meaty neural tissue she neglected to make use of.
Jose Wright
You can add the trace minerals you need back to distilled water, just get a dropper from any water store and add 3 - 5 drops per gallon of distilled water. Drinking distilled water on its own is not healthy.
OK, I'll look into that. Thanks. Also, does this apply for filtered water too?
Nicholas Jackson
This is why its important to preserve the blood-brain barrier, it's like your brain's own immune system in a way. Heavy metal toxins damage the blood-brain barrier, so does too much sugar, so do toxic additives like aspartame and sodium nitrites. So do certain drugs like meth. When the blood-brain barrier breaks, you mental state declines rapidly within a decade leading to Alzheimers disease and inevitably death. The only way to survive that once it happens is through serious lifestyle/diet changes and strong detox.
Henry Johnson
Now all we need is a soy beard for the one on the right.
Hudson Fisher
This subject was posted here last month Boil the water first
sage
Ian Ortiz
Go back to school
Asher Davis
What a waste of energy boil it or buy bottled sage a this subject was here 2 weeks ago
Adrian Roberts
this ameobia is found literally everywhere in nature. It's extremely rare to contract it because generally speaking, even if you get water up your nose if you're swimming in a lake, it's a very small amount and is expelled quickly. You don't need to get a fucking water filter unless you're squirting cups of water up your nose with a high-tech turkey baster.
So, if you look at it closely with good eye sight, can you see it move around?
Alexander Gray
Got any reading material on this? I've been drinking too much soda the last few years, and now you've worried me.
Zachary Gomez
Luckly she survived because she's a woman and they don't have a brain to begin with.
Thomas Gray
You won't need it for filtered water as filters aren't usually potent enough to filter everything anyways. Distilled water + trace minerals is the way to go imo.
Justin Bell
Seattle isn't part of the United States so it doesn't count tbh
