had to stop treatment due to diarrhea.....any advice greatly taken

Having a mini melt down over here - and appreciate all you loyal followers to this site helping newbies like myself:

Basically, I think my regime was too much as my gut has been really screwed up since December I have had undigested stools for quite a while but not diarrhea - now with the IV abx and antimicrobial to treat SIBO I got diarrhea so stopped everything. Its been 2 days since stopping everything and the diarrhea is still constant with churning just recently change in color from yellow to green. I don't have abdominal pain when I press on it though. Dr did a C-diff test and one was positive and one was negative. Im really scared - is it possible it could be herxing or just my body really upset and needing time to calm down? No real foul odor noticed......dr did order me oral abx since he said better to be on safe side but im super scared to take it with my other gut issues. I feel so freaked out that Im like worse than before I started treatment :/

Thanks Girlie for the kind words but what if it IS C-diff? Obviously in a week Id know for sure cuz it would get worse but have you ever had diarrhea last a long time due to treatment? This is gonna sound weird but my left leg (starting today) feels swollen yet its not. I had this same thing like 2 months back and it just went away on its own. I wonder if its anxiety related. I hate this so much and I have so much empathy for all you other people going trough this. It is really hard to start a protocol (my first one) and then have to stop it abruptly for an issue I did not even know existed a week ago

I’ve never had c-diff but I think it’s one of those bugs you get when your microbiome gets out of balance. They have prescription probiotics to treat it I think (vsl/visbiome) though I might be confusing that with h pylori (one that causes ulcers). I have had loose stool before as a form of herx or just flat out side effect from various drugs. But I don’t know what’s causing yours. You should talk to a dr before taking this advice, but maybe cholestyramine would help? It detoxes if you’re having a herx and also tends to make people constipated. It wouldn’t solve your problem if it’s c diff but might give some symptom relief.

I've read in like 10-20% of cases it can clear up on its own. If it were to happen, its should happen in the first week. If not, you're going to have to treat. If you had a positive test, I would assume that there's a good chance you have it. Stool samples are notorious for sampling error in that what's in one section of the stool may not be in another part of it, so it seems more likely to me that what happened was the first test picked up on the c-diff and the second test just missed it for that reason. Seems more likely than the first result was a false positive. But thats just my own reasoning.

It's good that he's retesting. Hopefully it does go away on its own. What antibiotics did he prescribe?

Wrt the other gut issues, is it like a bloating/gassy feeling? Or you dont want to eat type of feeling? It may be SIBO, and if so it would be worth getting tested for it. I'm going to assume it is, because...it probably is.

My SIBO started before most of my other symptoms. I think either stress, or inflammation, or both affects the autonomic nervous system which slows down motility and the stomach starts to get out of whack and dysbiotic as things just sit down there and ferment, particularly in the small intestine. In your case, the antibiotics were also probably a big part of it.

Either way, as I've detailed on this blog many times, I spent a lot of time battling SIBO. And it seems to make my symptoms worse when my stomach is worse. I spent 6m doing a lectin free, organic very strict ketogenic diet. It really helped the symptoms, and my stomach felt great, but unfortunately even while on keto my hydrogen breath test came back positive. As soon as I came off the keto though and ate some starch the SIBO came back. This was about 6 weeks ago, and I felt awful for a few days.

Since then, I made a few simple changes that really helped me after listening to a couple pod casts which really seemed a bit sharper than the rest (and I've read/listened to a lot on this subject). Dunno if they will help you, but my stomach feels great and I can actually eat some bread and carbs now and not feel awful.

-You should go ketogenic/paleo at least for a couple months til the gut feels better
-PHGG (partially hydrolyzed guar gum) has been great for my gut. Some say when you have gut issues to stay away from prebiotics as it feeds the bacteria, but its not true. PHGG is very selective and feeds the good bacteria which crowds out the bad guys. I'd highly recommend getting on some. Its a slow burner, not going to change your symptoms overnight, but everyone w/ gut issues should be on this
-I've been experimenting w/ different probiotics. H Pylori Fight is one ive been using and seems to help. Also starting Visbiome soon. But there's one that has helped me a lot. Its called Biogaia w/ l reuteri dsm 17938. This particular strain is very antipathogenic and crowds out the bad guys. the biogaia has a low CFU count (200m i believe) so you have to turn it into a yogurt. Its freaking delicious and i honestly think its been helping my stomach a lot
-Bitters. This sounds too simple to make a difference, but i really think it does. You want to stimulate digestion to get the bowel moving. Bitters does exactly that. Take between a teaspoon to a tablespoon of swedish bitters before bed to get the colon moving while you sleep. Motility is everything.
-As mentioned, I havent started the Visbiome yet. Its on my list of things to try. It may be beneficial for you, however, as it's one of the highest CFU count probiotics out there with several keystone strains. I've heard of others with C-diff using high dose probiotics to crowd out the c-diff. Just an idea, again I dont have experience with it myself, and as with any probiotic there's always the chance it temporarily increases symptoms, but I wouldn't think this is a concern in this setting.

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It is. You dont want to mess around with it. You fix that first, and then work on the other stuff.

Have you ever tried taking "Florastor". That stuff really worked well when I had issues early in my treatment. I also assume you are taking a good amount of probiotics, as previous replies have suggested. I went through several years off loose stool sx , and I actually would track them as one off my 20 or so major sx I had in my daily log. Many abx do list diarrhea as a side effect, and Lyme and co's do play havok with the gut when they fighting back against treatment. The first (and only) time I added Augmentin to my protocol it triggered a very severe case that took a month or so to improve after stopping it.

I hope you do rule rule out c-diff first. and good luck.

You should take the Vanco, and Pls try the Florastor also, it was extremely helpful for me. I had a tough time even driving to work for 40 minutes without having to stop somewhere on the way. It is highly recommended on another Lyme forum, and I'll loosely quote one of the Mods... "It will even stop Niagra Falls". She was right!

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I think it makes sense to take the vanco given those results. Problem is that it will do a number on your microbiome too and may make the SIBO worse in the end. You will need to focus on your gut for a while when youre done, and that may help your other symptoms as well. My best gains in neuropathy symptoms have come through gut healing.

Did they say what kind of SIBO you have? Is it methane or hydrogen? You can ask them about ways to heal the gut but they wont have any suggestions other than rifxaxamin (if its hydrogen) or rifaxamin + neomycin (if its methane). You can try taking it, it will help temporarily, but ive found for chronically ill people like us it almost always comes back.

I've tried rifxamin 6x. My convo w/ my GI went like this:
Me: Well why is this happening. I think its from a dysbiosis in the large bowel that grows into the small one
Him: Thats a good question. The answer is we dont really know
Me: Well is there anything else we can do? What about antimicrobials
Him: Thats a good question. There's just not enough data to show how they work
Me: What about pre/probiotics?
Him: We just dont have the data on that.
Me: What about diet?
Him: You have to live your life, you cant eat like that forever
Me: Then what do we do?
Him: Rifaxamin

SMH. GIs are morons they have no clue what’s going on down there. If it’s a clearly pathogenic bacteria like h pylori or c-diff they can prescribe the abx, otherwise they’re useless for this chronic illness stuff

Look at the suggestions i gave for ways to improve the SIBO. There are other things you can do as well. Someone else mentions florastor which may help as well.

In additio, I've mentioned this before, but you definitely have small fiber neuropathy. It's likely affecting your autonomic nerves as well, which is why youre getting so many gut issues and anxiety and a bunch of other symptoms. It could and probably is being caused by the bart. Or something else is triggering inflammation. Either way, IVIG is a great treatment for it. You should find an LLMD/neuro who can diagnose you with SFN and is willing to prescribe it, it may change your life and make it easier to treat the infection.

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 5/21/2021 3:01:58 PM (GMT-6)

You’re going to read a lot of misinformation.

The vanco will only help the SIBO temporarily by killing everything, then it will come back, probably worse because youre disrupting your microbiome even further

I think the antibiotics disrupted your micro flora which allows the sibo and then the c-diff to take hold

I would take the Vanco and then I would highly recommend getting on PHGG, it really did wonders for my sibo.

There’s a lot of info about taking things like candibactin to kill the SIBO. Sometimes it works but I think the only way to truly beat it is by building your microbiome back. That’s where prebiotics come in. And some targeted probiotics.

DCD is it OK if I email you? You seem to know a lot about the gut. My SIBO was/is hydrogen dominant but the score wasn't high it was like 24 total (21 & 3 methane). My Dr wants me to hold off on taking anything while on the vanco for 10 days cuz of how upset my biome is from taking so much stuff - he said we would rebuild it after. Im concerned I should take something. Heard of SBI Protect? I was thinking to add that as iI read t binds to C-diff too and then maybe ONE probiotic only as Ive had trouble in the past with them but maybe cuz it was killing stuff off? I don't know. Let me know thanks! Also may start a new tab regarding breast milk as Ive heard it discussed before

JMF84 said...
Saccharomyces Boulardii is great to treat C-dif and to prevent it while on ABX. Read reviews on it.

I take 5 billion 2x day (am & pm) w/ meal.

I read that too little too late. My LLND did not put me on this. He put me on other probiotics that did not contain it. I wonder if this could have been avoided.....:/ I dont like the medicine I am on. I feel weird.

Tracy - how are you doing today?