Morgellons Watch

Right now you are surrounded by billions of fibers.

This is perfectly natural, since fibers are everywhere. But if you think you might have a fiber disease such as Morgellons, then you need to able to distinguish normal fibers from fibers that are part of the disease.

Here’s a quick experiment. Turn your monitor off for a second and look at the screen. Covered with dust right? Look closer (get a magnifying glass if you have one), you will see the dust is mainly comprised of tiny fibers, about 1/16th of an inch long (1mm or so).

Where do they come from?

The biggest sources of fibers in the home are paper products and clothing.

Paper products are things like facial tissues, toilet tissue and paper. Paper is actually MADE from fibers. When you tear paper, the edges look like this (60x magnification):

That’s just regular letter sized paper, the kind you use in your printer. Paper is actually made of millions of fibers!

Here’s the same piece of paper at 200x

Those are some pretty serious fibers. Tiny though, only about 20 microns in diameter. They are visible to the naked eye if you have good eyesight.

Another common paper product is facial tissues such as Kleenex. Here’s some Kleenex at 60x:

See it’s just like paper, made from millions of fibers - the fibers are just more spaced out to make it softer.

All paper products are basically the same, made entirely from cellulose fibers (extracted from wood).

What about clothes?

When you wash your clothes and dry them in the dryer, some of the fibers in the clothes come off, and that’s what makes the lint. If you look at lint under a microscope, it looks like this:

You can see it’s made from all different kinds of fibers, all different colors. Both from the clothes that were in the dryer, and other fibers the clothes might have picked up as you wore them, perhaps in contact with other clothes, or the clothes of other people you touched, or off furniture.

When paper, clothing or furniture shed fibers, the tiny fibers float around in the air and land on surfaces. Often they will land on you. If you take a fresh post-it pad and dab the sticky part over your face a few times, you will find it get quite a few fibers on it. Like this (10x):

Here’s a close-up (60x):

Not many, but I bet you did not think there were any fiber on your face, eh?

So, all these fibers flying everywhere from natural sources. If they touch something soft, they stick to it. So you tend to always find a few embedded in (and under) scabs or any mucus-like stuff you have one your body. Like this:

Notice how the fibers here are just the same as the lint in the dryer. This indicates they are probably fibers from clothing. Paper fibers are probably there as well, just a bit harder to see.

What can we conclude?

There are lots of fibers on every surface and floating around in the air. This is not a bad thing, as the fibers are just paper or clothing fibers. The fibers will get on your skin, and get inside any damp lesion.

It’s almost impossible NOT to find fibers on your skin. Everyone has them, just most people don’t notice them, since they don’t look closely enough.

http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about1958-1152.html

“Also, I have noticed that for me the colour of the fibres depends upon what colour is next to my skin. I was getting a lot of red fibres when I was wearing a red thermal. I have stopped wearing red and they changed to blue. I’ll make a note when I change back to red.”

Is this a clue? Is it possible the fibers sense what color you wear and change color to match - some kind of camouflage?

Or… could the fibers actually be coming from the clothes you wear?

Fibers, as I shall explain shortly, are everywhere.

Morgellons.org has, for a long time (since 2002), shown two pictures titled:

Objects emerging from lesion on child’s lip at 200x

The two photos were probably taken with a QX3 microscope, and have an image size of 512×384 pixels (standard size for QX3 and QX5 microscopes) and they exhibit the characteristic lighting of QX microscopes.

Here is one of the photos from Morgellons.org:

Here is a photo I took on a QX5 at 200x

Notice the similarities. The size of the “structures” are almost identical. They exhibit a characteristic “flattening” in places. They have similar lengths, thickness and variety.

What are they? Kleenex tissue, stained with blood.

Here’s the same thing at 10x

The only difference here is in the color, which can be accounted for by the lighting, and the amount of blood soaked into the sample. Mine just had a tiny bit of blood on it, so the fibers are not fully soaked.

So, the fibers that were found in a lesion on a child lip look exactly like Kleenex soaked in blood. Does it seem at all unlikely that if you (or your child) has some seeping lesions on their lip, then they might at some time dab them with a Kleenex, perhaps leaving a few fibers?

Morgellons.org also says the fibers “have tentatively been identified as cellulose”. What is Kleenex made from? Cellulose (refined from wood pulp).

While this does not explain the dark fibers in other photos, it’s an obvious and simple explanation for the “Objects emerging from a lesion”, and Morgellons.org should no longer be claiming that these are somehow unusual, unidentified, hyphae-like structures.

They look exactly like Kleenex fibers, soaked in blood. That’s probably what they are.

Maybe some suffers have fungus?

http://www.doctorfungus.org/mycoses/human/human_index.htm

Seems reasonable

Tinea actually has hyphae and spores and is very common

Less common is T. pulvinata.

There are 20 species of dermatophytes

Is it SCABIES?

Or is it really an Unidentified Parasite?

Or a total rip-off?

The site http://www.cure-skin-parasite.com/ is preying on the fears of people who think they have something along the lines of Morgellons.

They have a ridiculously long home page - fully of testimonials like

” Doctors said I was delusional and I knew what I had.. Those things hurt and I couldn’t sleep! I had spent literally thousands of dollars on doctors & treatments that didn’t work! I can finally say, after using your products and doing everything you suggested, I am finally parasite free! ”

I’m convinced!

Unfortunately they have such a wide range of products for sale, that I don’t know what to buy. Looks like the best value is the “Human Mite and Unidentified Parasite Family Superpack”, recently reduced from $339.95 to $199.95. Sweet! What do you get?

2-8oz. Mitactin Spray
1-8oz. PuraCleen Healing Spray
1 Gallon Rejuvenating Body Wash and Skin Conditioner
1 Gallon PuraCleen Disinfectant Cleaner
1-Free 2oz.Mitactin Salve
1-Mud Pack

Okay - let’s look at their “Mitactin Spray”, normally $39.95 for 8oz (or $199.95 for a Gallon). The ingredients are listed as : “Nonionic and anionic surfactants “. A surfactant is a “wetting agent”, something that reduces the surface tension of liquids. Soap is a surfactant. Nearly all cosmetic creams contain one or more surfactant. How is this special? What does it do to the mites that any other soapy spray would not? Can’t I just make my own from water and some 2-in-1 shampoo?

Solution of nonionic and ionic surfactants is used in the pesticide industry as “Adjuvants” - an additive to make the pesticide “wetter” and to spread over the surface of plants more. Perhaps that’s where they got the idea from - pesticide without the harmful chemicals!

Next Up: The PuraClean Healing spray 8oz for $39.95 - now this actually has an active ingredient: Benzalkonium chloride. Yup, just one - and it’s the same active ingredient as is in several other products, like the ringworm cream, and the skin burn cream. What is Benzalkonium chloride? It’s “A yellow-white powder prepared in an aqueous solution and used as a detergent, fungicide, bactericide, and spermicide“. According to Wikipedia it “must not be mixed with anionic surfactants” Whoops! Better not use it with your Mitactin spray! And don’t use soap!

But benzalkonium chloride is at least known to work, such solutions are “rapidly acting anti-infective agents with a moderately long duration of action. They are active against bacteria and some viruses, fungi, and protozoa.” - nothing about mites though. Probably covering the bases.

Bactine is a benzalkonium chloride spray. About $20 for 8oz. You can get 32oz for $6. It’s sold as “Foot Rot and Ringworm Spray for cattle,horse, dogs”. Some people are allergic to benzalkonium chloride.

Moving on, what do we get in our “1 Gallon Rejuvenating Body Wash and Skin Conditioner”? The “active ingredient” is again benzalkonium chloride, but we also have “hydrooxyethyl cellulose, propylene glycol, cetyl trimethyl ammonium chloride, octoxynol - 9, methyl paraben, citric acid, fragrance. ” All these are normal inactive ingredients in cosmetic creams, except for octoxynol-9 which is a spermicide and an inhibitor of various pathogens. Huh? Sounds like an active ingredient to me. It’s actually a non-ionic surfactant, perhaps as used in other potions.

Then: “1 Gallon PuraCleen Disinfectant Cleaner” ($69.95) - Purified water, cetyl trimethyl ammonium chloride, fragrance, color. and an active ingredient: Benzalkonium chloride. Just like the other things we got in the pack.

A note on “cetyl trimethyl ammonium chloride” aka Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride aka CTAC, aka cetrimonium chloride (and lots of other names) It’s a cationic surfacant. Calling it CTAC is a bit obscurantist, as it’s better known as Cetrimonium chloride. It’s generally used in conditioners.

If you really want some of the magic ingredient, Benzalkonium chloride, it’s generic Zephiran, you can get it extra strength at Trask Research - where they make 1:750 aqueous solution. One gallon for $99.95. More expensive? but wait - for dermatology applications up to “oozing and open infections”, you can use a 1:5000 solution. So that makes about 6.5 gallons, or just $15 per gallon! Yay! And a gallon is $640 worth of PuraClean Healing spray!

Finally the feebies - Micatin Salve is like Micatin spray, but as a salve, exact same ingredients. The “Mud Pack” contains “Diatomacious Earth, Rosemary Oil, Tea Tree Oil, & Antimicrobial formulas” and is “Manufactured in our FDA approved lab”

What does the FDA Recommend for lice?
http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/lindane/lindaneQA.htm#14
Scabies:
Crotamiton cream and lotion 10% (Eurax) - Rx
Permethrin cream 5%, (Acticin, Elimite) - Rx
Permethrin cream rinse 1% (Nix) - OTC
Head and pubic lice:
Malathion lotion 0.5% (Ovide) - Rx
Pyrethrum extract 0.33% with piperonyl butoxide shampoo (Rid) - OTC
Permethrin cream rinse 1% (Nix) - OTC

Hmm, DermaTech has none of the above.