I’ve read a lot of good about Ivermectin for human use. First and foremost it’s shown to kill parasites like nothing else. From bed bugs to head lice to lethal worms living inside the intestines or in the blood stream, or even under the skin. Ivermectin does what no other medicine can do: it can kill parasites with one single dose with little to no side-effects. To me this sounds like a high tech, modern and reasonable alternative to home-remedy parasite cleanses based on drinking concoctions of garlic and walnuts. Furthermore Ivermectin is reported to have anti-inflammatory, anti-viral and anti-cancer properties. What’s not to like? Can I buy it already?

As a first step I went to the nearby blood lab to have my blood tested for antibodies against Strongyloides. Strongyloides is a common parasite in South East Asia that can infect humans easily, but for people with a healthy immune system they can go undetected for decades. My results came back negative.

However, I still wanted to try this “miracle” drug. The pharmacy had a big warning label on their website, “AGAINST PARASITES ONLY.” I got 8 pills for 160k VND, less than 8 USD.

I decided for 3 rounds of 0.2mg/kg, which seemed to be the safe thing to do.

3 days later

I’m not sure if Ivermectin did anything for me. I felt neither positive nor negative effects. However, it was a fun experiment. For me it was not nearly as scary as big media makes it sound like, and not harmful at all.

UPDATE 3 months later

I repeated that experiment a few more times. One time I caught a bad cold from riding a motorbike for several hours alongside the Vietnamese coastline, while wearing a wet T-Shirt. I believe Ivermectin helped me to recover faster.

On one occasion the above brand was sold out, so I bought Ivermectin from another brand (Opelomin 6, from the same pharmacy, also for human use). With this other brand however I did not feel well. I felt nauseous and had heart palpations for several hours. It seems like there are different qualities of Ivermectin, or they mix other things into the tablets, in order to cause side effects when taking higher doses. When I switched back to the AT brand these side effects did not occur any longer.