Is there a way to make the immune system fight chronic infections like Bartonella?

Hi forum. I'm a 24 year old male. Have been living with a chronic Bartonella infection since i played with a cat. That was when I was either 5 or 6 years old, basically a kid. So I've had this infection undiagnosed for decades, and only found out about it like a year ago and started aggressively treating it with antibiotics. And have made a big difference, but the progress is slow. It seems that bartonella is actively ignoring the abx by going into a persister state or by acquiring resistance to abx. And it seems that lately abx don't stop the inflammation, which tells me that the infection has become resistant.

My symptoms:
1) Anxiety (OCD, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety)
2) Depression (irritability, crying spells, moodiness)
3) Tourrete' s syndrome (head or face movements that are involuntary)
4) Fatigue (low energy, might be due to the bacteria causing mitochondrial dysfunction?)
5) Brain fog (no executive function, no recall memory, concentration issues)
6) Visual disturbances
7) Autism spectrum disorder (probably asperger's syndrome with a lot of uncontrollable rage)

I was put through the years on all sorts of psych meds that didn't address the underlying issue of undiagnosed bartonella infection. Of course those psych meds ultimately failed (ssri, mood stabilizers etcetera).

I tested myself for lyme and babesia, but came negative and my symptoms don't match those 2 infections and also I never had a tick bite or a rash that I could recall, however I had a cat encounter when I was a kid, but my symptoms started years later nonetheless.


Therefore, what I'm suffering from is a chronic Bartonella infection. Chronic is the key word, because there are people who can get bartonella and fight it off once and for good, whose immune system started a cytokine storm the first time they encountered the pathogen. That doesn't seem to happen with a lot of people who develop chronic symptoms.

From what I had gathered around the internet, it seems that infections like Brucella, Bartonella, Chlamydia and possibly other slow growing intracellular infections shut off your immune system to ensure their survival. Bartonella mainly lives inside the red blood cells and while living intracellularly, it shuts off apoptotic cell death programming that is a part of every cell in your body, which helps a cell destroy itself when it has faulty DNA programming to prevent things like cancer. Bartonella seems to modify our DNA which lets the bacteria persist and not be destroyed by the immune system (because the immune system doesn't even recognize it).

I've taken oregano oil, monolaurin, rifampin, doxycycline and a bunch of other pharmaceuticals and herbs only to reach a point where bartonella either enters a long persistent state of ignoring the abx or worse, becomes resistant. I think mine became resistant to doxycycline and monolaurin, however there are lab studies which show that it shouldn't become resistant to doxycycline, but it seems it becomes. Oh well, what do you expect from some small lab study in a Petri dish.


Either way, abx alone wont cure probably someone of a Bartonella infection if it evades your immune system to persist in the body forever. I'm asking you folks here, have you found some ways to turn the immune system on so that it can detect bartonella or is it pretty much impossible once you are infected?

Post Edited (recoveryguy) : 10/10/2021 10:01:33 AM (GMT-6)

You don't seem you understand the science of why bartonella even becomes chronic. That is why your antibodies always come back negative, it's because it shuts off your immune response. Bartonella is the hardest to treat out of all 3B. Bartonella shuts off your immune response so that you don't end up with a massive cytokine storm and a high fever (as seen in Covid).

Both lyme and babesia don't shut off your immune system. Lyme particularly changes it's outer surface proteins to not be recognized by the immune system, but it doesn't stop it from producing cytokines. Babesia mainly cause neutropenia (a lack of white blood cells), but it doesn't stop the production of cytokines. Bartonella on the other hand, does stop the production of cytokines, which you need to fight infection. That's the reason you don't get a fatal fever with bartonella if you're also infected with borrelia and babesia. Both babesia and borrelia appreciate that bartonella has shut off the production of cytokines.


Bartonella becomes resistant to any antibiotic, herbal or prescription, so the reason I'm searching for a long lasting cure is that you can't go using those forever. It's a shame that I probably won't find anyone knowledgeable enough to aid me in curing this infection, that's if it can be cured at all. Antibiotics also have a hard time penetrating everywhere in your body, so they only can take you to a certain amouny of recovery.

Has anybody here any valuable info about tricking bartonella into being actively seen and killed by the immune system? The whole idea that you take some kind of psych meds like depakote to trick bartonella into becoming active and then killing it with minocycline is meaningless. Our immune system should be doing all of these, but it doesn't because it's being controlled by the bacteria. What can be done? I'm really frustrated with the idea that I might need to take abx for the rest of my life.

Post Edited (recoveryguy) : 10/10/2021 1:10:43 PM (GMT-6)

What has toxo to do with any of this? Toxo is a problem in HIV positive people. And once toxo becomes reactivated due to HIV, one has to be on antibiotic treatment forever, since the immune system will never be able to clear it out on it's own. So toxo is incurable and not even my health problem.

Garzie said...
there is a guy who frequents these lyme forums who believes he has found a way of "switching back on the immune system" to clear Bart and lyme.

some of what he has to say is interesting - but he is a kind of unusual character in that it can be hard to discuss his ideas with him if you are not 100% bought in from the off. as you will likely have found for yourself - there is so much false information around this subject that sufferers are quite understandably sceptical or at the very least want to ask questions which typically does not go well.

i will find a link to his website though in case its of interest.

the protocol is based around known immune stimulators
-echinacea
-black cumin seed oil
-and later astragalus

i think there is some merit to some of what he has to say - the guy has done a lot of in depth research and is kind of joining the dots. the problem i have is that no one treatment we know of works for everyone - so i doubt its a panacea - and this is perhaps just another N=1 type thing that worked for one person.

my partner got well again with only ketogenic diet and some Buhner herbs early on and some adaptogens later - some likely would get better over time without any intervention - some get infected but never get ill at all - its a spectrum and everyone is different

https://nbprotocol.proboards.com/thread/184/nb-protocol-dosing-directions

Well, my whole question is based off of that guys research. I read his forum entirely. I'm taking Echinacea, coconut oil with monolaurin and a few others as per his suggestions and I improved for a bit, but then I found that monolaurin was mainly killing bart but not changing anything really epigenetically. It's still really hard to demonstrate that dietary epigenetics is a real thing. I've read some other studies about epigenetics and how it can help prevent or cure chronic illness, and the problems the researchers encountered was that you would need to take a compound that would have to have great gut absorption + be bioavailable + not be degraded by immune system or other factors. So far, extra virgin olive oil was unable to make a difference in a 2016 study from Europe I believe.

That guys forum is interesting, however he can't prove what he took really helped him. We would need randomised clinical trials to prove that. We need to demonstrate itp in real world humans, not just lab experiments.

Post Edited (recoveryguy) : 10/10/2021 3:05:07 PM (GMT-6)

Could taking LDN help at all?

i meant to add

one of low dose naltrexone's main effects is immunomodulatory - and it works very well for some people
however for people with lyme and or autoimmune conditions or CFS it can be very very potent and you have to start low and go slow - to give you an idea - it has taken me around 1 year to get to 3.3mg - but it does help

the other immunomodulatory approach i am taking is Ivermectin - there is a decent amount of research on its immuno modulatory effects - and its is being used for this purpose in Lyme patients by LLMD's - it hasn't been a miracle drug for me as you sometimes read about - but i think it has helped the recovery process speedup - so that is a win

then there are immune modulating herbs as written about by Buhner - in fact most of the herbs he advocates for lyme are really immune modulating herbs - as he doesn't believe in treating it with direct antimicrobials - many have multiple effects but the ones i think have helped the most in thsi regard are
Salvia M / Dan Shen
Chinese Skullcap
Eleuthero
probably others - but these are the ones that i think helped my system fight the infection better
i am also taking all his other recommended herbs from his second edition version of Healing Lyme - with the expanded protocols - previously i only took knotweed, andrographis and cats claw - and did not make any significant progress.

diet and lifestyle have been as big as any of the above for me
i have made myself do daily exercise throughout the illness - unless i was bed bound - and believe it has helped - i now do exercise with weight each 3rd day - and despite my illness and how unnatural it feels - i am getting stronger - it is an immunomodulatory behaviour - its not just drugs or herbs that do so
diet has had at least as large an effect as any of the things above - for me even though i was eating very healthy foods before - i took a noticeable step forward as soon as i changed to a ketogenic whole food diet - basically low starch and low sugar and everything made from scratch at home - no packets, paleo products or processed food of any sort. the effects of this were quicker than anything else also - and there was no Herx like reaction - just a period of 2-3weeks while your body adjusts.

so for me its a multipronged approach - with no one big thing - but many small things moving the needle each just a little - but the cumulative effect is enough to move me forward slowly but surely

hope its of some use to you

I took Septra DS recently, and it seemed to bring the Bart out to where I was responding to Rifampin again. It apparently did some good, as I had a much better week after clearing the herx.