about leeches

Leeches are 'worms' with suckers on each end. Leeches can range in size from from a half of inch to ten inches long. They are brown or black in colour. Some feed on decaying plant material. Others are parasites, feeding on blood and tissue of other animals.

Blood-sucking leeches suck your blood in two ways: they use a proboscis to puncture your skin, or they use their three jaws and millions of little teeth. They live just about anywhere there is water. Leeches find you by detecting skin oils, blood, heat, or even the carbon dioxide you breathe out.

Leeches do not feed often. That is because they take in a lot when they do feed. 

Doctors often used leeches in the past to draw blood. Some barbers used to do surgery as well as cutting hair, and they used leeches. When a barber finished surgery, he took the bloody bandage and wrapped it around a pole to show he did surgery, too. That’s how the white and red swirled barber pole came to be.

Today, maggots and leeches are being used for different reasons. Scientists are studying leech saliva. They believe the substance that stops or prevents blood clots will one day be able to be used on humans. Researchers have also identified several medical compounds which can be developed from leech saliva. The anticoagulant and clot-digesting properties of these substances make them potentially useful as drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes. Leeches can be "milked" for their secretions without being harmed, and research is continuing into the possibility of synthetically engineering leech saliva.

And leeches are still being used to suck blood! Doctors are now turning to leeches to help restore blood circulation to grafted tissue and reattached fingers and toes. In 1985, microsurgeons in a Boston hospital used leeches to save the ear of a 5 year old boy that had been bitten off by a dog. The leech can remove any congested blood to allow normal circulation to return to the tissues, thus preventing gangrene from setting

leeches fact

1.      There are 650 known species of leeches.
2.      The largest leech discovered measured 18 inches.
3.      About one fifth of leech species live in the sea, where they feed on fish.
4.      The leech has 32 brains - 31 more than a human.
5.      The Hirudo leech lays its babies within a cocoon; whereas the Amazon leech carries its babies on its   stomach - sometimes as many as 300.
6.      Not all leeches are bloodsuckers. Many are predators which eat earthworms, etc.
7.      The Amazon leech uses a different method of sucking blood. It inserts a long proboscis into the victim, as opposed to biting.
8.      The bite of a leech is painless, due to its own anaesthetic.
9.      The Hirudo leech injects an anti-coagulant serum into the victim to prevent the blood clotting.
10.    The leech will gorge itself until it has had its fill and then just fall off.
11.    The leech will gorge itself up to five times its body weight.
12.    The first leech was used in medicine about 1000 B.C., probably in ancient India.
13.    In the past, people would stand in the lakes and pools dotted around the country and when the leeches attached to their legs they would put them in baskets and sell them. Today the Hirudo leech is an endangered species.
14.    The original surgeons were barbers and they used leeches to cure anything from headaches to gout!
15.    The nervous system of the leech is very similar to the human nervous system and is of enormous benefit to researchers in their quest for the answers to human problems.
16.    The nearest relatives of leeches are earthworms.
17.    Leeches can bite through a hippo's hide! 

removing a leeches

If you are bitten by a leech and are compelled to remove it before it has had its full (leeches drop off on their own when they are done feeding), you can do so by following these steps:

NOTE: Is it generally not advised to attempt removing a leech by burning with a cigarette; applying mosquito repellent, shampoo, or salt; or pulling at the leech. This can result the leech regurgitating into the wound and causing infection much worse than the leech bite itself.

In the case that a leech invades an orifice like your nose, ear, or mouth you have a slightly more serious problem since the leach will expand as it fills with blood. If you have access to strong (drinkable) alcohol or hydrogen peroxide you can try gargling (if the leech is in your mouth). Worst case scenario you may have to puncture the leech with a sharp object.

medicinal leeches

Medical leeches have been used for more than 3,000 years, from the days of the pharaohs to the 18th and 19th centuries, when women of fashion put leeches behind their ears before a ball to attain rosy cheeks and shining eyes.

A written leech reference is found in the Bible, in Solomon�s Parables.
Unusual leech features were used by Plinius (1 century a.d.), Galenus ( 131-200), Aetius (335- 454), Avicenna (980-1037).

The leech industry has been developing for so many centuries. In the 18th and 19th centuries medicinal leeches were applied as a necessary measure at any disease. By the early 1900s, Europe annually used 120 million leeches. But medical science soon forgot about leeches as a result of rapid advances in chemistry and pharmacology and the global conflicts that took place in the first half of the 20th century. Aspirin and antibiotics eclipsed nature’s slithery healers; but only temporarily.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, medical journals began to print short articles that strained the credibility of modern minds steeped in scientific principles. Leeches cure both male and female infertility. They restore atrophied ovaries and reverse azoospermia (the absence of spermatozoa). They cure commissure problems and eliminate cysts – conditions that many woman have been unfortunate enough to experience. Several hirudotherapy sessions took care of certain ailments without invasive surgery! There were even more incredible tales. After 7 years of trials and observations, 26 cases of atrophied wombs showed signs of restoration! 

There were some reports of leech benefits in oncology. Malignant tumors disappeared without the side effect of chemotherapy or invasive surgery. Clinical tests demonstrated that combining drugs with hirudotherapy significantly increased the drugs’ effectiveness.

Further tests showed that leeches helped to cure glaucoma.

It got to the point where the evidence could not longer be ignored. Facts can be persistent things, especially when professional hirudology associations and hirudotherapists threw their weight behind the arguments and researchers turned to leech physiology.

Bloodsucking aid

A simple principle lies at the heart of all hirudo-miracles. When leeches feed, they restore the flow of blood in healthy as well as damaged organs. Of course they don’t do this intentionally. Their saliva contains a natural thinner. Hirudin, that dilutes all organic obstacles: arterial sediments, cysts, clots and mutant cells that surround and protect malignant growths form the immune system’s agents. The leech needs the blood to circulate freely. Leeches don’t just drink blood, they feed by filtering it. In 20 to 60 minutes, a leech can go through several liters of blood, filtering and thinning it before it is returned to the vein. The 15-20 ml that it retains is the trash that your immune system couldn’t process and which can cause health problems. The filtered and thinned blood now circulated freely through your capillaries and arteries and works its own miracles as it harmonizes your body’s functions. This is especially noticeable if are being treated for hypertension or varicose veins. In addition the leech injects close to 20 unique enzymes and microelements that are active biological cleansers into your bloodstream. Hirudotherapy also reduces stress and normalizes sleeping patterns. Of course, it’s not the leech’s intention to relax you: it just wants to have a quiet meal, so nature has endowed it with capacity to calm and distract its host so it doesn’t notice the leech feeding!

Incidentally, it’s the enzymes that made the leech powder potent. Today, leech extract is an active component in anti-varicose creams and other medicinal cosmetic products.

In addition to all this, leeches sense which organs are unhealthy and target them. Their diagnosis is more accurate than endoscopies!

Needless to say, if you decide to undertake hirudotherapy you’ll need to be under a specialist’s supervision. Our bodies have thousands of interconnected energy points, and it often happens that to heal an ulcer, leeches are applies not only to the solar plexus, but also to the spleen and kidneys. Every cure has its own hirudo map!

The most surprising thing is that hirodotherapy is one of modern medicine’s most painless treatments. Don’t be afraid to try it. You’ll lie there waiting for the bite, but all you’ll feel is a slight prick and then a pleasant pulsation. And that’s it.