Back Pain At It Again

Savedbygrace12 said...
I am only 29 but this back pain has definitely gotten pretty bad this year. Not much seems to settle it either except for moving around. Resting and sleeping don't seem to change things a whole lot and seeing chiropractors and pelvic physical therapists hasn't done a lot for it. It's right in the lower region of my back where my spine meets my hips. When I was 20 and fell down a staircase an MRI actually showed moderate degenerative changes and a protrusion in my L4-L5 and mild changes in my L5-S1. I saw a chiropractor at that time and it seemed to help a lot. This time I'm not sure what will help because not much of anything has. I'm also leery of going to a rheumatologist and have them put me on harmful medications and give me diagnosis(es) that may not even be true.

I'm just unsure of what to do at the moment and was wondering what you all think and if you have advice!

Truly thanks for all and hope your December is going great!

29, that was around the age when I contracted Lyme. My back got really stiff and sore, I couldn't even sit upright in a chair for a half hour due to severe sciatica and sore mid/lower back. My hamstrings would burn like crazy!

All this didn't finally didn't decreased and became nonexistent until I took Dapsone, a known persister cell drug by Dr. H and Dr. K. And the year afterwards followed up with Disulfiram.

Through the 5-6 years of antibiotic treatment, traditional antibiotics did help my back pain and sciantica, like flagyl which penetrates deeply, saturate the tissue, and even cross the blood brain barrier. But nothing as effectively as these two drugs, which have long half lives and penetrate deeply into the tissue of the body.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15474398
Hard to say which tick pathogen causes the back pain, as spirochetes in general I've heard love to travel to the spine. But I also recently seen a few articles about a Bartonella and sciatica link.

I've also had a screwed up thyroid for the last 8 years, it wasn't until I got on a np thyroid, then later followed up with iodine/selenium that my bartonella flared permanent and I had to go on specific antibiotics for bart. There's a Dr. Hirsch that talks about the link of bartonella to the thyroid, worth a watch.
https://youtu.be/tgjjtdapfdi?t=912
https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=4149462

Come to find out, scientists are discovering a lot of people's back pain, slip discs, and sciatica could be solely due to some form of bacteria.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1334054/doctors-stumble-on-infection-clue-to-sciatica-cure.html

said...
Specialists in Birmingham have found slow-growing bacteria of the kind that normally lives on the surface of the skin in spinal tissue from nearly 50 per cent of patients with sciatica.

Problem is, Doctors are so quick to pull the trigger on surgery because they see dollar signs. The medical industry hasn't caught up or doesn't want to catch up to recent findings on sciatica and back pain, remember lot of money to be made off of pain pills and surgery versus a cure such as an antibiotic. Welcome to the corrupt medical system, that's not in the business of curing, but in the business of disease management and symptoms maintenance.

Dapsone is the drug what helped me the best, along with Disulfiram, which looks to be the possible cure for Babesia/Borrelia, but probably not Bartonella. Bartonella is probably the reason why I never reached remission after taking these two, but who knows, it's a very complex disease and I'm sure biofilms also play role. But I'll say this, never did I think I contracted the 3 B's 9 years ago when I got bit. I never felt that sick... But what happens I guess is these pathogens become stronger and more resilient as time goes on in your body, especially if you use weak drugs that don't kill the persister cells. As Dr. B has said, if many lyme patients had gotten a proper diagnosis and received the 3-4 week of doxy, coinfections like babesia and bartonella wouldn't give us such a hard time in the long run. But I'm not so sure, as some strains of Babesia are very drug resistant like Duncani, I suspect there's some even stronger strains of Bartonella.

Problem you'll have is first finding a great quality Doctor that actually practices with similar treatment such as Dr. H in New York, Dr. J in DC, or Dr. B as you'll find out, most LLMDs, literate or not still don't want to use these persister cell drugs because they don't want the risk of side effects or lose their license. But there's a huge difference in using something like Dapsone or Disulfiram versus something like Doxycycline. And as we're finding out, eradicating your microbiome could make making the disease a lot more chronic and worse by reducing your immune system, as Dr. Kim Lewis from Northeastern reports, Disulfiram doesn't kill off any of the microbiome. So basically keeping your immune system in tact while you wake up dormant spirochete persister cells and kill them with Disulfiram. I think I remember Dr. H from New York saying that's a benefit of Dapsone too, that's it not hard on the microbiome.

Savedbygrace12 said...
When I was 20 and fell down a staircase an MRI actually showed moderate degenerative changes and a protrusion in my L4-L5 and mild changes in my L5-S1. I saw a chiropractor at that time and it seemed to help a lot. This time I'm not sure what will help because not much of anything has. I'm also leery of going to a rheumatologist and have them put me on harmful medications and give me diagnosis(es) that may not even be true.

I'm just unsure of what to do at the moment and was wondering what you all think and if you have advice!

Truly thanks for all and hope your December is going great!

I suspect all these degenerative discs could probably be reversed with the right treatment and drugs.

And really, a great question considering this recent finding, as I remember seeing this a few years back... lol How much a cheap drug like Disulfiram could help a lot of traditional patients with back pain, if for many of them there's a some sort of slow growing bacteria involved causing their spinal issues. That be a good question huh? Probably another question that wouldn't want to be answered by big pharma or the corrupt medical system.

Doctors - "Oh longterm antibiotics aren't safe."

Me: So opioids are?

Me: And oh yeah, Disulfiram isn't an antibiotic, and it can eradicate the bad bacteria and keep the good in-tact.

Doctors: Well that's drug is for alcoholics only, sorry.

Post Edited (Charlie55) : 12/5/2019 8:35:09 PM (GMT-7)

Savedbygrace12 said...
I was diagnosed with Bartonella just last year as well. However most the providers believe I’m past it now and most my Lyme stuff even if though I don’t feel that way.

I think Mandy Hughes said it best in the Lyme Documentaries Under Our Skin, no one knows your body best but you. lol I think it was her that said that, nice woman! If you still feel very sick and have inflammation in your hamstrings, spine, and hips. Most likely the bacteria is still there. I always bring up the Dr. Sapi study which showed biofilms and spirochetes in a woman after 16 years of antibotic treatment.
https://youtu.be/_gojg7qzomw?t=12m15s

While 6-12 months is a good guideline to treat for coinfections like bartonella and babesia, I really don't think there should be any limit when something like biofilms are involved. There'll be times where you have to take breaks from treating babesia or bart, then use herbs for awhile, then maybe target borrelia, then back on babesia or bartonella again.

And like what I told Aerose91 in this thread, changing my diet around, cutting out sugars and carbs entirely, just eating lots of vegetables and meat, has really induced more herxing for me. Also allows me to handle my bartonella neuro symptoms better too. SIBO may also play a role in keeping this disease chronic,like what Dr. Rahbar said.

Georgia Hunter hinted to this as well, I think he's onto something with SIBO!!!

https://www.thesibodoctor.com/2017/04/03/the-sibo-doctor-podcast-dr-farshid-rahbar-sibo-and-lyme-disease/

TheSIBODoctor.com said...

Dr Rahbar’s special interest areas include dysbiosis, SIBO, leaky gut, and measures that help these conditions. Like many other experts, he believes that GI integrity is crucial to the treatment of Lyme.

So what Dr Farshid Rahbar is saying, healing your gut, may help you reach remission quicker. I think healing your gut probably involves eating a strict diet, no sugar and carbs, just meat and vegetables, and taking a high dosage of probiotic pills. Probably worth a try listening to his podcast!

Savedbygrace12 said...
I’ve seen the best providers out west for Lyme too in my state but yeah none have done those drugs. It’s always been tindamax, minocycline, doxy, flagyl, etc. and they all made me so much worse and so much sicker. I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t afford right now also too see a LLMD especially with it being $400-$500 a visit. It’s frustrating for sure.

It's a big problem, as many of those drugs don't target the persister cells. Drugs like disulfiram, dapsone, pyrazinamide target the persister cells. For some like this woman here, none of the antibiotics worked to treat her bartonella until she tried pyrazinamide.
https://youtu.be/bzu0weofvm8?t=5979

I eventually took my treament into my own hands, because I wanted to live, I ended up in the hospital multiple times due to severe herxing from the antiparasitics I used such as primaquine and coartem. But through all that hell, I ended up getting over the plateau that seemed endless. I firmly believe that babesia is just as resilient as Malaria and may have some form of dormant persister cells like hypnozoites. No proof of that yet, but we do know through the Yale study that traditional antiparasitics aren't working against this parasite, so that's not a good sign.

https://news.yale.edu/2018/11/29/yale-scientists-develop-new-system-study-emerging-tickborne-disease

said...
They also tested four current drugs that are used to treat the disease and found that the parasite has low susceptibility to these therapies.

I think Stephen Buhner's herbs like CSA formula helped me tremendously after primaquine, then also a-bab. The problem with some of the antiparasitics is you can only take them for a week or so, herbs you can take longer. However, through my experience I haven't had much success holding bartonella back with just herbs, I eventually had to go back on bactrim and another antibiotics. Bartonella is a whole different ball game! However, oregano oil sure is super strong for biofilms and bartonella persister cells with bactrim. Dr. H in New York is using oregano with bartonella specific antibiotics and he's saying his patients are having a lot of success.

Savedbygrace12 said...

For now I’m just taking nanosilver, homeopathics, vitamins, wild yam root, T3/t4 compound, LDN and supplement for my estrogen dominance.

Thanks for everything though!!

I truly think it all helps, but I think the persister cell drugs like dapsone and disulfiram can really get you over plateaus, did for me tremendously.

I think more LLMDs will start using disulfiram once they get the safer dosage down pat and not resulting in herxes that send you to the emergency room due to things like psychosis. I know some lyme patients are saying on the disulfiram facebook page that the higher dosage results in more success, but I've been though the psychosis stage, not fun.

Post Edited (Charlie55) : 12/5/2019 10:54:26 PM (GMT-7)

This will probably sound familiar, but the most important things I have found for my lower back pain/stiffness are core strengthening exercises and yoga.

I also try to sleep on my back if I can. Usually I end up on my side sleeping with a pillow between my knees

Savedbygrace12, are you currently treating Lyme/Bartonella? If not, when did you stop it? Maybe it is connected with no treatment?

I had back pain in lumber and cervical areas since I was teenager already with Lyme disease but without diagnosis. The pain was coming and lasting from few weeks to few months and later going away. Sometimes it was paralyzing. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease after reaction to Prednisone prescribed for lumber back pain after MRI showed disk herniation in both lumber and cervical areas of the spine. A year ago I started taking antibiotics for Lyme/Bartonella/Ehrlichia and three months later the pain was gone.

Maybe you had some bacterias hidden in the biofilm in lumbar area and now they became active again? It is just theory, I am quite new to the treatment of Lyme, despite having it almost the whole life.

Good luck!