Posted by bleauberry on January 16, 2014, at 15:19:07
In reply to which antibiotic to choose?, posted by Brot on January 16, 2014, at 8:38:48
Longtime lymie here so I know a bit about antibiotics and the symptoms you described.
What you described looks so familiar. If you are suspecting inflammation, that looks accurate to me. If you are suspecting a mystery chronic infection, that looks accurate to me. Tell-tale clues are in your post.
Most likely is lyme. Only 1 in 10 is diagnosed. Almost all have psychiatric issues. But, there are a handful of other bacterial suspects, mold suspects, and viral suspects. Just from personal journey experience and observation, it is probably bacterial and if so, lyme. But there is no way I or anyone could know that. We have to look at the entire clinical picture and see if it is consistent with our suspicion or not.
The diagnosis is made more clear with a test of ABX (antibiotics). You already did that. And in your test, you felt better than in a long time, and then you got worse. Right? That pattern is, in my opinion and the MDs who taught it to me and use it themselves, diagnostic. You had the pattern.
When we start an antibiotic, the bugs don't die right away but they are pretty much stunned, slowed down, stopped, going on defense, going into hiding.....their daily activities basically stop and because of that they are not spewing out their usual neurotoxins and all of a sudden you feel better! But....in short time, a few days maybe, they start to die and they do so in massive numbers. That feels bad. Even though it is actually the right direction.
Do you know what a Herxheimer reaction is? You described one that you experienced.
Minocycline did not make you feel unwell. The death it caused did. All the death and toxins in the blood at that time....imagine what happens when those poisons hit your brain receptors and nerves! The anxiety/glutamate stuff you described....that wasn't glutamate. That was Herxheimer.
Mino is so strong, if chronic long term infection is suspected, it sometimes has to be started as low as 25mg every other day for weeks or months until it can be increased! It's actually not that strong in potency, but in its ability to work intracellular. Some of these bugs live inside our cells!
I've been on about a dozen antibiotics. Of the tetracycline family, it was almost always Doxycycline. That's the most common one. It doesn't kill. Only suppresses. That is, until the dose is increased to 400mg. At that dose it does cross the blood brain barrier, but not at lower doses, and it kills. Doses of Doxy less than 400mg are probably not going to get you where you want to go.
Tetracycline, according to the big guns in the lyme world, has the least "plateau" effect and the least "relapse" rate of mino or doxy. While most MDs use Doxy, high up specialists prefer Tetracycline based on clinical observations, and Mino is usually reserved for suspected intracellular infections. It is often too strong to start with. It is easy to find tons of people who had to stop it early. Dose was too high, that's all.
Any "lymie" knows what I am saying here, common knowledge, but to folks outside of that population, it can all appear bizarre and new. Not bizarre and not new.
If you got with Doxy, make it 400mg. The max is usually 200mg. I have been as high as 600mg. I only weigh 124 pounds, so that is proof how relatively safe that one is at high doses. If you want to follow the big guys in the know, then go with Tetra instead.
All that said, one antibiotic is not likely to achieve your goals. Commonly 2 to 3 at the same time are required for several reasons. We don't know what bug we are dealing with and testing is unreliable or unavailable. So we have to assume different angles and approaches.....the results of that tell us more of what we need to know. For example in my own journeys, the response to various antibiotics and the disappearance of a certain set of psychiatric symptoms, all was consistent with Bartonella (a tick co-infection) but not so much borellia the main lyme badguy. We did not know that until after, not before. These creatures are very smart on defense, genius actually, and they can easily evade the mechanism of a single antibiotic. They are not so lucky when attacked from 2 or 3 different angles.
Co-infections require different drugs. For example, another common one is Babesia. From ticks and cats. But it is not a bacteria, it is a parasite similar to the malaria bug. Malaria drugs and herbs are used in lyme disease for that purpose. They are also used for arthritic treatments apart from other effects.
I think you would find a few herbs very helpful. Resveratrol by Paradise Herbs (make sure it is made from Polygonum Cupsidatum not grapes). Too much to write here, but it is a primary herb for anti-microbial and anti-inflammation. Another is Cat's Claw, the Samento version of it works better in my experience. Cholestyramine is a prescription powder to mix in drink intended for lowering cholesterol, but we use it to soak up the toxins. That alone makes you feel a lot better, and throws a monkey wrench into the whole inflammation thing, taking their fuel away from them.
Curcumin is powerfully anti-inflammation. Others such as boswellia, ginger, willow. And plenty of antibacterial antifungal and antiviral herbs. No shortage of choices.
Half my life went to depression and psychiatric. It was actually lyme the whole time, but looked like depression. That's the way it is sometimes. Most of it went away over months as I took antibiotics. The only psych drug I never tried was nardil. None of the others worked, but antibiotics did what they could not. Antibiotics even blew ECT in the weeds by a long shot.
Infection in your head? Could be. Hope something here is of help for you.
Feel free to ask any ABX questions or inflammation questions any time.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1058650
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20140104/msgs/1058674.html