Giardia

"If I'm thirsty and don't want to wait a long time before drinking, I'll go ahead and drink without treatment"

Benjamin,

For about an ounce you can set your mind at ease. Check out the Mcnett Frontier Emergency Water Filter System. It looks like a big straw with a filter that removes giardia, crypto, and some bacteria, including E. Coli.

Tom, that's a nifty little straw. I wonder if it could be rigged to screw onto a bottle, or be used somehow as a gravity filter in camp…… Any ideas?

“Taking the highest concentration measured in the Sierra (0.108), we can make some calculations. The probability of finding 10 or more cysts in a liter of water—to have at least a one-third chance of contracting giardiasis—is about 10-17. Ten cysts in 10 liters of water, about 10-7. In fact, one would have to drink over 89 liters to have a 50 percent probability of ingesting 10 or more cysts.” (Rockwell, 2003)

This is an interesting bit of statistics. 89 liters seems like a lot, but really that’s only about 14 days of consumption for me. So worst case according to these stats in the sierras is a 50% chance of contracting giardia over a longer hike. That seems pretty high to me.

Of course we all would do our best to avoid the worst sources. So the odds are lower. Maybe only 1 in 100? 1 in 1000?

All I know is that the 1 is a real number that the statistics can not eliminate as myth. And I never want to be that 1 again.

@bcrowell

I was in Mammoth when I first started getting symptoms so the incubation period would likely put it somewhere between crabtree meadow and VVR, but it could have been as far back as kennedy meadows. Doesn't narrow things down to much. Even the test doesn't identify the source. It could have been giardia contracted from another hiker, from bad cheese. No way to conclusively know. But I always practiced pretty good hand sanitation, and didn't share food, so the only thing I could do better is filter my water.

The symptoms match giardia and flagyl cured it. I had symptoms for over a week the first time until I got drugs. A day later I was ok. I got to a doctor earlier the second time and again I was ok a day later. Not conclusive proof but enough to convince me it was a protozoa or something else that is treatable with flagyl.

…

"Tom, that's a nifty little straw. I wonder if it could be rigged to screw onto a bottle, or be used somehow as a gravity filter in camp…… Any ideas?"

Travis,

Your dream has come true. Check out their Frontier Pro filter. It does just that.

Tom

The 2oz. Frontier Pro can be screwed directly onto a Platy (or any other bottle with 28mm screw thread).

The 1oz. Frontier Straw cannot be screwed onto anything. You just dip the filter into your water container and suck on the straw.

I have had it twice. the main symptoms: diarrhea, possibly vomiting in the very beginning, gas, burps that smell of sulfur. I did not lose my appetite other than when I was doing the serious bathroom time. Mostly I was still hungry. The doctor we saw said the lab tests often do not show anything – if the symptoms are indicative of Giardia he will prescribe first and start testing only if the Flagyl does not do the trick. Flagyl is nasty stuff, by the way – makes your mouth taste like you've been chewing on metal. In Nepal in the mid-80's, I got Tinidazole instead – much less unpleasant and worked faster as well. But I don't think it is available in the US – or wasn't in 1988 when I got my second case of Giaridasis.
If not treated, it can go away on its own, or last a long time. Many people can harbor the organism without having any symptoms. I spoke with a mountaineer in Nepal (Pete Athans) who told me that some of the high-altitude climbers he knew would take a course of the drugs before a Himalayan trip just in case, as they had found that they would get sick once they got up high and the body was under stress, even though they had had no symptoms at lower altitudes.

some interesting info here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinidazole, see also link to metronidazole (Flagyl)
Franco

recommend avoiding this drug, or avoiding whatever makes taking it necessary. It's like chemo for the digestive tract.

It's Flagyl. And, yeah, it's bad news for the G.I. tract, especially the liver. Some of the critters it kills are even worse news, however; Think amoeba, giardia's big brother, for instance. You're right, though, that it is better to not get careless in the first place. I'd recommend obeying Ben's 4th Law of Consequences, religiously.