Your thoughts on Giardia

Everytime I'm out and about on the trail and passing by a creek, river, lake, so on and so forth in the back of the backcountry, I wonder if I were to drink that water straight from the source right now, would I get giardia. For example, this last week my father and I were backpacking in the Sawtooths and were nine miles well into them with water the entire way flowing past us. The first 7 miles I wouldn't have thought once about drinking the water straight for the simple fact it was obvious horses had been on the trail and had contaminated the water with the usual horse droppings along the way. Fairly annoying in my mind but that's another subject all together.

But once we got back to the pass we would be climbing up the next day, it was more than apparent nobody but people come back this far and not that many at that. And I always wonder if back that far in, away from the vast majority of people, if giardia is such a huge problem as it is closer to the roads and first few miles of trails. I'm always tempted to do it just to see what happens. That or put it in the nalgene bottle and see what happens while I'm home and not in the middle of nowhere. And my water sources would be fairly well chosen, fed by fresh snow melt and springs.

I'm just curious as to what others thinking is on this as well as experiences. I'm more tha confident that they're numerous.

Matt,

About three years ago I stopped treating on the last day. Zero problems and the water tastes great and cool. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

I am careful about where I harvest water. Must be a side stream from a remote drainage with a very short distance between where it fell and where I am gathering it. And it must be running, but not the outlet of a beaver pond. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Cancer treatment includes destroying the immune system. The immune system can be rebuilt and I think we can develope a tolerance for the bugs in the water. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Putting on flame suit. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

here's a good article on the topic.

http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/articles/water+risks.html
There are an estimated 99 million cases of intestinal infectious disease annually in the United States from a wide variety of pathogens, so treating backcountry water won't necessarily reduce your risk by much.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3128825?dopt=Abstract

Yeah, that is my curiosity. I could only assume that if I were to drink the water more often then my body would be able to deal with whatever is in the water more handily. I'm worried that it is nothing more than a nice thought though, haha.

Immunity may be possible according to Robert Rockwell. Speaking only of Giardia, being infected doesn't mean you get the disease. The feds estimate there are two million cases of giardiasis annually in the U.S. but something like 25 million people who are infected.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.ht...&st=cse

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5401a2.htm

That said, most intestinial bugs that affect the general population aren't Giardia. There isn't really enough data to speculate on what backpackers get.

I recently read of a deal in Grand Teton National Park where through an entire season they invited anybody with diarrhea (not just backpackers) for a free test and treatment. They got 178 people of whom 8 percent had giardiasis, 28 percent had Campybato-something-er-other.. and 60+ percent had no detectable bug at all.
http://www.wemjournal.org/pdfserv/i0953-9859-003-03-0241.pdf

Along this same theme, I have often wondered if there is any data whatsoever to support the idea that streams today in the Sierra are more likely to be contaminated than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Back then we always drank from the streams, and only treated water that was standing and looked funky. Never had a problem or heard of one I have read some articles stating recent measurements of Giardiasis, but no comparison of current and past measurements.

It's been mentioned on this board numerous times, but here's an interesting article, with a different point of view than most:

http://www.yosemite.org/naturenotes/giardia.htm

Very interesting article. I wonder if some people are more susceptible than others, and less likely to recover spontaneously from Giardia infection - thinking of myself here, of course, at least in the latter category. I am reasonably sure I had it once in Nepal, and it disappeared very quickly after over a week when I took a dose of Tiniba (mentioned in the article). My SO has had it a few times (also mostly acquired in Nepal), and is so familiar with the accompanying symptoms that he was able to diagnose it in an acquaintance by, ahem, the smell of the guy's farts.

Great article. Kind of confirmed a lot of my thoughts as they were. I'll still pack my filter but I don't think I'll be using it in the backcountry so much.