Antibiotics: Why or Why Not?

Traveler - That's awesome! I can imagine growing your own food to be very satisfactory. Not being able to hold down a full time job is another reason i went this route. I can tolerate physical labor, it's mental stress that kills me the most.

The Dude Abides - haha maybe for a small fee i should put up a liveable shed on the other side of my property and rent it. My property is right next door to an ecovillage though, so lots of rentals and rooming options available for this type of life style. I've just been very fortunate that Lyme has not inhibited my capacity for physical labor too much.

The Dude Abides said...
The prices in my area keep going up (whether renting or buying) and I hate having to work so much just to maintain something that's not really what I want! But, I imagine a lot of people feel that way.

Sure seems that way!! I've been very very very fortunate to have the means to act on it. I have a lot of friends struggling with student debt and loans and moving closer into the city, working multiple jobs, struggling to free themselves from that sort of thing... I haven't even really been impacted by the financial reality of it yet as i've been a dependent til now... But as soon as i was confronted with that i was like "i'm going to take the money i have now and invest it in NOT living this way"

I had a really bad yeast infection in my chest because of the IV abx. I also had a blood clot in my arm from the pic line and spent a week in the hospital. Still, I am in favor of abx. Why?

neuro lyme = syphilis of the brain (spirochetes)
babesia = malaria (protozoa)

If the doctor told you you had syphilis of the brain and malaria - would you take herbs or abx?

Psilociraptor said...

LongJourney said...

If the doctor told you you had syphilis of the brain and malaria - would you take herbs or abx?

Herbs. Definitely herbs. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/3/821.abstract

"Whole plant treatment proved even more resilient than the double dose of pure artemisinin. The resilience of whole plant may be attributable to the evolutionary refinement of the plant’s secondary metabolic products into a redundant, multicomponent defense system"

Does it mention how the Artemisinin was prescribed?
Maybe it was given for two weeks straight...or longer... and confusing Resistance with the fact that if taking Artemisinin for a longer duration (LLMD MR says no more than 3 days) - the small intestine can produce an enzyme that 'kills' it - rendering the Art useless.

Also with an isolated constituent - it's not advised to take it alone - it should be prescribed with at least one med to prevent resistance (if that is indeed happening)
Did the study mention what was paired with the Artemisinin?

finally - Artemisinin is herbal - it's not Pharma...it's just the active constituent of the Artemisia.

The people I have come across in my 'neck of the woods' - that caught it fairly early - did antibiotics and never relapsed.

One is many, many years healed (20 +)
One has been in remission for 2 or maybe 3 years now (i've lost track)
One (a child) has been symptom free for a year now.

Those are just off the top of my head.

Oh..and one chronic - symptoms 20+ years - treated with abx for 3 1/2 years and has been in remission for a year and a half...or so.

I'm not advising anyone to do herbal or antibiotics....it's up to the individual.

We have healing stories on this forum in both camps - herbals, antibiotics...and also people who did both.

Good point Girlie.

Mustard Seed said...
Guys, honestly, do antibiotics first.

There are a TON of chronic Lyme patients we will never see on this forum because they go to a doctor, take a few weeks to a few months of antibiotics, notice slow and steady progress, and then get better. They don't sign up for HealingWell because they move on with their lives fairly quickly.

We're all here because we're the tough cases, and are looking for alternatives.

My advice to a Lyme/chronic Lyme patient would be do antibiotics, and heck, even do antibiotics + herbs at the same time.

But if you do herbs only and 2 years later haven't gotten better, well you can't really complain about anything.

What if a person only does antibiotics for two years and doesn't get better?

The Dude Abides said...


It's a great question, but I'm not sure that antibiotics would be an automatic decision for me. Because I don't know anything syphilis or malaria, I'd have to look further into the matter.

Is malaria bacterial? I was under the impression that antibiotics only worked on bacteria. But, as I said, I'm rather clueless in this area.

After all the discussion in this thread, I can clearly see the question "Should I take antibiotics?" cannot be answered definitively. Like most questions, the answer is "It depends."

Malaria is a parasitic infection.
Babesia is also a parasitic infection - so the Pharma includes an anti-parasitic/anti-malarial drug.

The Dude Abides said...

Girlie said...
Malaria is a parasitic infection.
Babesia is also a parasitic infection - so the Pharma includes an anti-parasitic/anti-malarial drug.

Much appreciated, Girlie. The best thing for me to do is not get any further infections!

Have you sorted out which co's you do have?

Mustard Seed said...
Guys, honestly, do antibiotics first.

I never took antibiotics. Doing great on knotweed alone. It is plenty strong as an antibacterial. I would only recommend antibiotics in early illness when the stakes are high. After that you're on your own either way. Even in early illness there's no reason to think they're better. Simply backed by more research. Which is why i say go that route when the stakes are high. Once you're chronic you're chronic and it's up to you how you wish to get back to health. There are few promises in the late stage.

"Does it mention how the Artemisinin was prescribed?
Maybe it was given for two weeks straight...or longer... and confusing Resistance with the fact that if taking Artemisinin for a longer duration (LLMD MR says no more than 3 days) - the small intestine can produce an enzyme that 'kills' it - rendering the Art useless.

Also with an isolated constituent - it's not advised to take it alone - it should be prescribed with at least one med to prevent resistance (if that is indeed happening)
Did the study mention what was paired with the Artemisinin?

finally - Artemisinin is herbal - it's not Pharma...it's just the active constituent of the Artemisia."

Right, I'm aware of that. The point i was trying to demonstrate was the inherent combinatorial therapy present in plants. The problem is not whether it's made in a lab or in a plant. The problem is that isolated chemicals are very easy for microorganisms to adapt to whereas plants full of numerous antibacterials and virulence inhibitors are not. Which is what this study demonstrated. They used pure artemisinin because that was the point they were trying to investigate. Whether resistance to a drug could be overcome by the corresponding whole plant. The administration was oral i believe but it didn't extend far beyond two weeks and the progress was monitored daily. From the day of the administration of both therapies there is an immediate difference in parasite load between the two.

"The idea of the abx is to supply the sufficient amount of poison to kill the parasite without killing the host. Concentration and half-life have all been tested in trials and the drugs used for borrelia and babesia are mostly old antibiotics. They have been tested for generations and are cheap in other countries. So this is not cutting edge at all.

The risk of trying the herbal route is that the infection may spread even more. Babesia can cause death. And borrelia can cause permanent damage.

There are several options for drugs, combinations, and dosages. The idea is to get informed before going to the doctor so we can ask for what you want and discuss treatment.

If this last treatment hadn't worked, I was ready to be in a hospital for 7-10 days for a trial of abx, probably penicillin. I am a strong believer in abx. "

I'm aware of this too. Like i told mustard seed, in the acute phase go with whatever is backed by the best research. When we're talking about the chronic phase however there are inherent problems with antibiotics as the chronic phases are characterized by intracellular localization, alginate production, morphologic and metabolic changes, humoral dysfunction, potential reactivation of viruses and secondary colonizers and so on. All that standardization concerning concentration and half-life is important for emergency scenarios but it's a drop in the bucket concerning all the variables involved in advanced disease. Most antibiotics have been shown ineffective against addressing all these issues. Doxycyline is ineffective against round bodies, most antibiotics will not degrade biofilm, address viruses, stimulate immunity and so on. Herbs on the other hand are factories for the production of varied antibacterials, antivirals, quorum sensing inhibitors, adhesin inhibitors, efflux pump inhibitors, secretion inhibitors, biofilm degrading compounds, adaptive and innate immune stimulants, etc. You are literally consuming the plants immune system. Of course, not all of this is available to the human but it is for many plants which is why indications have been borne out of thousands of years of use and should be valued in the treatment decision process. My disease had been relatively stable for over a year. I was very sick but risking very little from experimentation. My only problem all this time was in fact that the herbs worked too well and forced me to drop the dose considerably to which i am now well adjusted and doing great.

Though i respect the decision of those who are in rapid decline or emergent scenarios to choose antibiotics, i still have to assert the point that they are not fundamentally better than herbs. For many reasons. The appropriate study and application of herbs can address many current issues regarding recalcitrant infections and their sequelae and reduce resistance. And also for the fact that manufacturing and use of pharmaceuticals is a primary driver of environmental dysfunction. So this has less to do with me caring how individuals treat their own illness than it does with cultural delusions that are propagating mass dysfunctions. While the research remains thin on herbs i respect anyone who chooses antibiotics. But what i really want to happen is the attitude to change so that someday soon the research won't be pharma biased but rather be representative of the best of our efforts

Post Edited (Psilociraptor) : 5/31/2017 3:56:29 PM (GMT-6)

During my 2+ year stint (and counting) taking abx's I also did Buhner's Babesia and Bartonella protocol simultaneously. I absolutely herxed when adding in certain herbs and/or increasing quantity. This tells me personally herbs do kill the pathogens also. I couldn't do both because it was just too much and for me trying to navigate the world of "natural" healing approaches was just too daunting and varied to want to take a chance given my debilitating symptoms and me being he only breadwinner in the family with young children.

I've also been fortunate in that none of the abx except malarone and cefdinir caused side effects.

I got a better one for you Dude. My wife is also infected with lab positive Lyme, Mycoplasma and by symptoms is believed to also have Babesia and Bartonella. She either got sick from me via sexual transmission or her own tick bite (fairly sure its the former). She's been sick almost a year and she sleeps multiple hours a day on top of night time + all sorts of crazy symptoms.

Wish that black cloud raining on my family would move out to sea sometime...