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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS) ― In the developed world, there has been a steady increase in allergies, inflammatory bowel diseases and autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 Diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Some wonder if we're too clean for our own good.

Dr. Homer Boushey is chief of the Division of the Allergy/Immunology at UCSF Medical Center. He said to CBS station KPIX-TV, there is a lot of concern that something that we're doing differently from the way humans did it for a very long time is causing this really dramatic increase in allergies and asthma over the last 50 or 60 years.

He talks about a theory called the "Hygiene Hypothesis" and wonders if there is something about getting down and dirty early in life that's beneficial to a developing immune system.

For proof, Dr. Boushey said look no further than the human body, which is jam-packed with microbes. He explains how our bodies are kind of like Muni buses, crammed with the organisms, saying "there are more bacterial cells in us than there are 'us' cells in us."

Dr. Boushey said co-existing with these microscopic creatures may help maintain a healthy immune system.

With that in mind, a growing number of Americans are choosing to co-exist with creatures often found in the human gut and dirt.

Jasper Lawrence is one of them. He used to suffer from debilitating allergies and asthma which he says wrecked his life. On a visit home to England, his aunt commented on his appearance. Lawrence had gained weight thanks to the medications he needed to take. He felt fatigued and sick.

Then Lawrence saw a documentary that changed his life. The documentary was on helminthic therapy. The therapy involves infecting humans with hookworms or helminths. Once the hookworm sets up shop in the human, the creature secretes a chemical that appears to dampen down the immune response and alleviate allergies and asthmas.

Lawrence tried to secure helminths through a doctor and on websites but to no luck. He finally decided to get infected the old-fashioned way. He would walk barefoot across the open fields of Western Africa, where, thanks to no modern sanitation, he would hopefully pick up some hookworm larvae.

He was successful, explaining that you know when a hookworm gets into you.

"When a person first gets infected," Lawrence explained, "You get an itch at the site where they first enter the skin. You may cough. And feel fatigued and experience a little diarrhea."

Once he was home, his allergies and asthma disappeared. He then got the idea to help others, by providing the hookworms over the internet.

He explained that once inside your gut, the helminths live for at least 5 years. They lay eggs which leave your body via human feces. Lawrence now incubates worms in his gut in order to retrieve eggs in his feces to provide to others. Currently he is hosting 75 of them. He said the worms go through a rigid purification and screening process before they're provided to other people.

Humans who incubate the eggs, according to Lawrence, are screened every 3 or 4 months using blood and stool tests to make sure they are not carrying any exotic bugs or dangerous organisms.

One beneficiary is 36-year-old Todd Troutman who works in the high tech field. Before he tried hookworms, Troutman suffered from severe allergies and asthma since early childhood.

His allergy attacks were so severe, he moved to environments where there were few trees and grasses.

Troutman found Jasper's story on the web and contacted him through his company.

To infect himself, Todd applied a band aid on his arm. On the gauze was hookworm larvae. They then entered his body through his skin.

He said his allergies and asthma have finally gone away. But, he cautions, you can accidentally kill the hookworms, and then the problems flare up again.

He once had oral surgery, and the anesthesia apparently killed the helminths.

As for the cold hard evidence that this therapy works? Researchers at the University of Nottingham conducted a study in 2006. The study involved 30 participants who suffered from severe chronic allergies.

Half of the volunteers were infected with 10 hookworms. Tests showed their t-cells began to produce much lower levels of the chemicals associated with an inflammatory response. The volunteers also raved about the allergy symptoms disappearing.

That proof is intriguing, according to Dr. Boushey, but he wants to see more hard evidence using a double-blind, placebo controlled study.

Dr. Boushey believes these helminths may be secreting a chemical that dampens down the immune system response, so the immune system chills out. If that's true, helminthic therapy may have applications for other immune system disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and even inflammatory bowel diseases.

However, until he sees more rigorous studies, Dr. Boushey reminds us, that hookworms are parasites, and they can cause problems, like anemia. The other concern: that the therapy is experimental and not regulated by the FDA.

That doesn't bother Todd. He has no regrets about the treatment.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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