Bartonella treatment options without antibiotics

I have Buhner’s Bartonella book - I’ll take a look

The basic protocol:

JK, Sida Acuta, Istatis/Houttuynia, alchornea, EGCG with Quercetin L-Argnine, Cordyceps, Red Root, Milk thistle seed, Hawthorne, rhodiola. Ashwaganda ,Pomegranate juice
Vitamin e


That’s a lot!

Many of us just pick a few - like JK, Sida Acuta and Houttuynia

Edit to add: Buhners website that is no longer monitored or updated has a core protocol for bart:

https://buhnerhealinglyme.com/

bluelyme said...
i had good results with zhangs allicin and hh2 combo from hepapro.com
fwiw bactrim either worked too well too quik and caused subsequent nerve damage or my nurse thinks it was a mild sjs and sulfa induced vasculitis( wasnt fun, still aint)

Sulfa drugs are a bit of a coin flip. Usually they are quite effective for Bart but may or may not cause various nasty side effects, including SJS which is probably the worst you might get. Sulfa drugs may cause a deterioration in kidney function and an alteration on radionuclide renography ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nep.12200 , https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22351681/ ).

Bart drugs are usually heavy on your body.

I see you asked Bluelyme about the HH 2
I believe it is double strength Houttuynia.

Scroggins said...

Wladek: Is disulfiram a sulfa drug, by any chance? I was thinking about trying it but had read it wasn't effective against bartonella specifically.

Not sure about disulfiram. Haven't tried it and haven't done a lot of research about it.

Sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim aka Bactrim DS is a sulfa drug. There's Septra too, which is just trimethoprim. Works for Bart, especially in combination with clarithromycin and rifampin. It has a much larger risk profile though. If you google Steven-Johnson Syndrome images you'd probably need an equivalent of herbs grown in Chernobyl area to inflict similar damage.

if you are interested in treating bartonella through mainly herbal approaches you may wish to read my thread called "could this be Babesia - microscopy + bart content"

as that is what i am doing and i am documenting some of my findings there

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=4268122

so far this seem to point to the following

1, extensive and various types of biofilm in the blood seems to be a feature of bartonella infection

2, fibrinolytic agents do seem to dramatically reduce this

3, fibrinolytic agents alongside herbs and Methylene Blue do seem to be reducing the level of infected red blood cells over time - in a way that did not seem to be happening with the same antimicrobials and MB for 12 months without fibrinolytic agents

i started with bromelain - as i knew my gut tolerated that and its fairly mild as a fibrinolytic - as i was wary of strong reactions as i am moderately sensitive to meds and herbs

i have since moved onto lumbrokinase and find that 4-8x as strong per capsule - so having to go slowly

other options are nattokinase ( somewhere between the tow above in strength i think ) and serrapeptase - perhaps around the same as nattokinase i think

in terms of treatment - there is no established standard of care for chronic bartenellosis.
everyone is experimenting.

if lyme or babs or other coinfections are in the picture then its not fully understood how they impact treatment response / other than to make treatment generally more difficult.
there also seem to be some strains of bart that are harder than others to shift
and of course a great deal of individual variation in terms of host response

some people get well after a few herbs for a month or so
some after a few short courses of common antibiotics ( my partner did )
others are still sick after 2 years of clarithromycin and rifampicin

i did several months of doxycycline, azithromycin and rifampicin - but only made modest improvements in that time - then had to stop due to raised liver enzymes - hence my mainly herbal approach now

MB is being used by bartonella patients and their doctors because there were some studies done in vitro in one of the USA universities ( Zhang et al ) that showed it worked very well for "stationary phase bartonella cultures" - where traditional bart drugs did not.
there have been no randomised controlled trials for bart - but several patient groups are reporting useful progress with it.

the original toxicity trials done decades ago did show some toxicity long term in dogs and rats - there were signs of mutagenic effects - which will be what Dr SP will be referring to - but there have also been numerous human trials/roll outs for malaria at high doses - and this does not seem to be the case in humans (it is not uncommon for some drugs to be toxic to some lab animals and not humans due to differences in our biology - chocolate and cannabis are both toxic to dogs for example) - but that's about all the information we have right now.
when used for bartonella its usually as an adjunct in combination with other abx - and the doses are much lower than in malaria treatment by 4-8x - so that's in its favour.

the options for truly effective bartonella treatments are very limited
some favour very long courses - 2 years or more - of high dose clarithromycin and rifampicin - but some patients fail even this
after that all drugs seem to be higher up the scale of toxicity and higher risk

i know Dr SP favours a doxy or Tetracycline and fluconazole combo - and i think that's worth a try - as long as safety labs are done - as fluconazole can be a bit risky

Zhang identified a few others in the same study as MB - already FDA approved - and some people are experimenting with these also - nitroxoline and clotrimazole come to mind - but to my knowledge there is no clear leader at present

I am in remission with Bartonella being my dominant infection.
However my llmd did treat me for Babesia/ Lyme first for about 4 or 5 months (can’t remember exactly)
Then aggressively treated Bartonella/Persisters (and Lyme) for about 7 months.
IT WAS BRUTAL… but I am now considered in remission.
I am still on a maintenance protocol (taking abx for one week per month)
I am slowly increasing the time off between cycles .

Quin - What exactly did you take, and for how long? Just trying to get a sense for how long I would need to be on them. The references to 1-2 years are a bit intimidating!

Girlie - If I remember correctly, you were seeing Dr. J, right? I almost went to see him instead of Dr P back in 2019. Now I'm no longer in the US so it's not really an option.

Good to know, thank you.

Thanks, Quin. I've done a couple of pulses of atovaquone + azithromycin. I had only a mild reaction while taking it, but seemed to improve substantially afterward. I didn't realize it was effective against bart - my doctor prescribed it and I assumed it was for Lyme.

I had read that dsf wasn't effective against bart. If there's any possibility it is, I may try that next. Low and slow, of course.

Interesting. What about DSF with some herbs for bart, like sid acuta and houttuynia?

I haven't tried sida acuta or houttuynia, so I'm not sure what effect these have on bart. But in general with these infections, there is a risk that certain things will not kill it, but just really piss it off and make it behave aggressively.

Things that have been reported to 'flare' bartonella in this way include disulfiram, valproate, and kaletra. Probably other things too, but those are the ones I remember being mentioned.

This is also a risk with borrelia. There aren't as many things that piss off Lyme, but I've seen this sort of aggressive response to claritin. 10 mg claritin (loratadine) isn't nearly enough to kill borrelia, but it makes it mad. When I take claritin, the bacteria become active and release some kind of toxin that makes me sweat and feel nervous and not sleep well. I've found that when the bacteria are busy doing this, antibiotics like minocycline or azithromycin will easily kill it, and then the 'toxic' reaction stops and I get a regular herx where I feel sick and tired.