I got giardia along with 4 out of 5 members of my family while traveling in Thailand, India and Nepal from December of 1985 until April of 1986. However, it is also true that everyone I knew who traveled to Nepal from the United States or Europe in 1985 and 1986 also got giardia. So, I'm thinking I got this giardia most likely in Kathmandu, Nepal from the feces in the dust there both human and animal because at that time there were not as may paved roads there as now. So, whenever a car or truck went by it stirred up all this dust all the time we were there.
Some of the after effects I have learned about from a nurse practitioner who was also an Ayurvedic specialist here in the U.S.
She said that it is quite common to become within 10 to 20 years of getting giardia a hypothyroid condition like I presently have likely had since then but wasn't diagnosed until 2006. By 2006 I believed I would be dead from whatever was wrong with me any year at that point. So, when I was finally diagnosed as hypothyroid (low thyroid output of thyroid glands) I went on Armour Thyroid which comes from pig thyroids and I then started feeling like I was 20 years old again. Presently that is 14 years ago.
The other problem which I have not had is an auto-immune response which people who have had giardia at some point in their lives from visiting 3rd world countries often have too. So, in this I have been very lucky that the hypothyroid condition (when diagnosed) was treatable and from that condition I'm now fine at age 72.
I got giardia along with 4 out of 5 members of my family in 1985 an 1986 in India, Nepal or Thailand likely.
by the time I flew to Bangkok, Thailand and then Narito Airport in Japan and then my final destination of San Francisco, California I looked like I had been from a concentration camp in europe in World War II I was so skinny. When we returned to San Francisco we went to see a doctor who was a foreign disease specialist here. She said that the medicine to cure the disease would harm our children's livers and so we shouldn't do anything since we had returned home because she said it would automatically slough off within 6 months time. This was her recommendation especially for our children.
At the time I was seeing black spots before my eyes from starvation from protozoa eating my food before I got nourishment from it. However, she was right that we were okay within about 6 months back closer to normal. But, my now ex-wife and I both have had a hypothyroid condition from that experience when we both were age 37. The rest of our kids as far as we know have no ill effects so far from this experience.
I don't regret going to Asia and spending 4 or 5 months there because it was a lot like going to another planet. However, while I was there I periodically would find I was freaking out at different near death situations we all encountered in various ways while we were there. However, by praying all the time we were all okay out of this experience which like I said was more like going to another planet than anything else.
Culture shock was the most extreme in India and Nepal and not so much in Japan and Thailand because they are more like the U.S. in many ways. But, in the mid 1980s at least India and Nepal were NOT at all like anything that life was like here in the U.S. then.
Why?
Mostly because there was no state compulsory education in Nepal or India then. So, over 1/2 or more of the people in both countries had never even been to 1st grade and had no social discipline at all from a U.S. or European point of view.
This meant that some people could be dangerous in unexpected ways.
However, I won't travel to Mexico at all because I tend not to feel safe when there. However, because people in India believed in karma at that time I felt perfectly safe from attack in India and Nepal. But, I was deathly afraid of dying from bad food or water while I was there. Food and water could and will kill you (at least then) if you weren't really careful in the mid 1980s in either country if you weren't really really careful then.
However, there are places in each of the 50 states where it isn't safe to go which might be as bad or worse than you will ever find in 3rd world nations.
It's like anywhere on earth: "You really need to talk to a local so you know where it is safe to be and where it isn't safe to be because it isn't always obvious to a foreigner."
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