A Beginner's Guide To Microscopes & Bacteria Identification

Wow just given a Nikon microscope? That's a serious piece of equipment. Lucky dog!

Sounds good mustard seed. I'll see what kinds of disposable facilities are around here. I'd love to see your own spirochete pics if you have them

bluelyme said...
Yay tnt ..you are the bomb ...you have phase contrast ya?
yes gh ...protozoan pic plz?

Ha Ha Ha, bluelyme, YOU'RE a bomb! Yes, I do have phase contrast up to 1000x, both dark and bright phase. I like dark phase contrast better. I also have darkfield up to 1000x, and just got an adjustable iris 100x plan objective to get better results with my oil darkfield condenser. I can't wait to see how much clearer it makes it at high power.

Microscopy is SO much fun! It's the coolest thing about these infections! Because being sick & wasting away sure ain't no fun.

As for someone being given a Nikon scope....wow, you'd better go play the lottery! Even if it's old, that's quite the gift.

Georgia Hunter, you really need to show us those protozoans!

Looks like some sort of fungal structure or what?

Georgia Hunter said...
They are not very remarkable to look at, but I was pleased to know I wasn't crazy. This is with no stain and only an altered iris changing the amount of light. They always seem to replicate into 3 or 4 more protozoans.

I was pretty sick and borderline anemic when I was doing this and don't have spherocytosis. The pics at higher magnification came out blurry.


tinypic.com/view.php?pic=aaacut&s=9#.WEkcYlyrGzk

Other things I found.

A lot of these guys.
tinypic.com/view.php?pic=35cjrb5&s=9#.WEkf91yrGzk

My sister had these:

tinypic.com/view.php?pic=j8lenk&s=9#.WEkgxFyrGzk
tinypic.com/view.php?pic=ofdjtj&s=9#.WEkhKlyrGzk

Would love to see that first one with higher mag.

Healing98 said...
Psilociraptor, yeah I guess I was lucky. They bought new dark field microscopes for a lab and gave away the old microscopes.

Georgia Hunter, What is the magnification resolution of your images? I hope to be able to take these types of images some day.

Healing98, was the scope you were given equipped with darkfield too? Do they have any more scopes to give away?

Healing98, you should be able to get some videos or pics with just a point and shoot camera through the eyepieces. Even a phone cam will work. Shooting through the eyepiece works very well for me, and that is usually what I do since it's unhandy to set up my laptop with my CCTV camera or my microscope camera every time I want to get footage. I usually have to zoom in a little to get an image through the eyepiece.

Gh what was the tx for your sister..? My mom had similar structure ...

Mustard, I never did look at my pathogens under oil. I knew they were there because of how I responded to Mepron but never looked at them under high magnification. I guess I figured I didn't know enough for me to benefit from seeing them closer.

My sister has adjusted her diet similarly to what I have and was able to stop her blood pressure medications but doesn't have any active treatment for pathogens.

I did my first smears today with the quick dip Blue recommended. The stain works amazing. It's super easy to use... a lot easier than a true Giemsa. Here's the link to what I bought:

www.shopmedvet.com/product/dip-quick-stain-kit-complete-kit/Laboratory-Equipment-and-Supplies-Stains

After 2 smears I haven't seen anything suspicious however. I thought for sure I'd see Babesia right off the bat.

Wow really interesting.
I wish I would have had a microscope in the 7 months of asymptomatic bliss between when I got bit and when I started to get sick.

What is a nematode?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRFTG35PdsU

TOOTY said...
This is a great thread and a wonderful reference for those new to microscopy, Mustard Seed. One thing I noticed on your first post was instructions to clean the slide with alcohol prior to doing a smear. That should be ok for live blood (although you may get fibers in your smear if using an alcohol swab), but for a stained smear, the alcohol will act as a fixative for the bacteria that may already be on the slide out of the box. This may give you a "false positive" for bacteria in your blood once you stain your smear.

What I have been doing is cleaning my slides with soap and running water and allowing them to air dry as much as possible before doing a smear (for both Giemsa-stained or live).

I do the same as you, with the soap and water. Thanks for the reminder, I'll add it to the original post!

Great job on finding the Maltese cross, blue!! Does your friend have any symptoms?

about washing them, yeah, I've wondered about possible bacteria in the water, but the slides I buy aren't sterile, just pre-washed. And, the wash job on them sure isn't very good because they are pretty cloudy if I look closely. The thing to do would be to stain a slide straight out of the box and see how many bacteria or other stuff is on them. Then you'd know. I just haven't done that yet, but instead opted to wash them myself.

I'm sure a person could purchase sterile slides, but I would hate to see the price tag on them. Then again, maybe I'd be surprised and find that they are relatively cheap.

Yeah I've been saying that for a while myself. Just look at the Alzheimer's research. One group finding spirochetes consistently, another finding fungi, another virus and chlamydia and now Macdonald is saying nematodes. In fact the whole concept of Lyme disease needs to be revised and it amazes me in this day and age that medical establishment still considers borrelia burgdorferi the causative agent of Lyme simply because of historical findings which are now largely outdated with information on innumerable coinfections with overlapping symptoms that are largely difficult to diagnose and separate. I think there's just so much research on Lyme that it's easy to get caught up in all the information about biofilms, and persiter cells, immune subversion strategies that people get the idea that it's some super pathogen. But if you look a little harder those are just fundamental characteristics of microorganisms and Lyme is just an archetype for other infections and chronic illnesses. We are ecosystems and that is all. We must understand that our undoing is often not the result of one pathogen but how our lifestyles and interactions alter the behaviors of those communities as a whole

In fact, now that I whacked that p chem final and can be at ease for a little bit I just received Lida H. Mattmans (text)book "Cell Wall Deficient Forms: Stealth Pathogens". I'm only about 4 chapters in and it's admittedly very difficult to read not having any formal background in microbiology. But so far it seems indispensable for anyone who really wants a deep look into pleomorphism and stealth pathogens. There is a lot about spirochetes but it is also very clear right of the bat that they are unique in these capacities in very few ways. I believe you can find the table of contents and some chapters through google books if you wanted to check it out before buying. It's not for the lighthearted and I'm having a seriously difficult time myself. I have to keep google open while reading just for terminology I'm not familiar with. But I figured I'd share since some of you may be more attuned to these topics or at least equally committed to understanding them. I'm not aware of a more thorough resource on the topic. Though unfortunately you can tell data is scarce in some sections