Alternative treatments, acid reflux from Abx

I am dealing with acid reflux from oral antibiotics (again!) and think I need to drop 2/3 of my protocol to give my gut a break.

I’m looking into herbs again… did Buhner herbs in the past but had trouble tolerating the alcohol tinctures —also because of acid reflex —and some of the Buhner herbs only seem to be available in alcohol tincture form. Saw a recent post mentioning Green Dragon which I am planning to look into. What alternative treatments would you do or consider in my place for Lyme and Babesia?

All I care about right now is staying at least somewhat stable, and whenever I’ve suspended treatments in the past I’ve gotten worse very quickly.

Any input appreciated. Thanks!

Have you tried to sandwich the abx with food?
That’s what I did - even if the bottle said on empty stomach.
I didn’t eat a full meal - just a few bites - take the abx and a few more bites of food.

Worth a try.

My mind also goes to treating the reflux. What have you tried for that so far? Other members swear by D-limonene to stop reflux. For me, I needed to stop eating or drinking at 6 p.m. and stay very upright after meals (this was difficult because I was bedridden at the time and had awful POTS). Maybe you have tried everything for reflux with no luck, but it seems like the simplest solution.

If you cannot tolerate that small amount of alcohol, have you looked into mast cell activation syndrome or histamine intolerance? Treating those, if you have them, might help you tolerate antimicrobial treatment much more easily.

I took D-limonene after reading astroman's posts and it worked exactly as described. Honestly one of the few supplements I have ever taken that have lived up to the hype.

Thank you for all the questions and recommendations —

My acid reflex gets almost instantly better once off of oral antibiotics though I have also made some changes to things like : eating and diet, when I do exercise and PT , and when I lay down, which has maybe helped a little bit to improve the symptoms.
For treating I’ve been doing herbs like slippery elm and DGL powder and the occasional use of Tums.

The times I’ve looked into MCAS I thought I didn’t have it but I do seem to have histamine intolerance (or something like it) which has maybe flared up recently. The extent to which I have addressed The Histamine stuff has been in diet (though I just realized there are some things I’ve been eating which are actually more risky for histamines!) so maybe I haven’t done very well with that. Currently making some more changes there. What else do people do for histamine intolerance?

I’ve had and probably still have candida and I’m still on a low-dose of fluconazole.
And I have been taking the antibiotics with food and after eating a decent amount, but for a while I was taking the minocycline right before meals.

Also, I have been taking a higher dose probiotic the past couple years, a little over 200 billion CFU twice daily, which is why I was even more surprised and discouraged to have the trouble with the reflex. I think my past history with a Doctor who loaded me on 4 and then 6 oral antibiotics with a proton pump inhibitor (pantoprazole) to block the acid reflex (all of this without adequate probiotic and without my really understanding what was happening) did a real number on my gut which I believe I’m still recovering from 7 years later .

When taking something like d-limonene or Pepcid while still on antibiotics what tends to happen? While I haven’t taken either of these and don’t know much about them my thinking has been that they would improve the acid symptoms while the abx may continue to irritate and damage the gut — potentially making things worse for gut-immune health and overall healing down the road. Is this right? I guess any amount of abx damages the gut to some degree and those dealing with Chronic Lyme often need to do that to get adequate treatment. But I guess I’m wondering if at some point, when acid reflux is more of a problem and not just a mild thing, it becomes counterproductive to recovery to improve the acid reflux symptoms if it means that staying on the antibiotics will continue to irritate the gut past the point of “safety or health“ and knocking out the “good” bacteria faster than they can colonize in the gut? I’m assuming that’s part of the problem with acid reflux though I don’t actually know…

I know that I said in my last post all I care about is staying somewhat stable, and that is true but I also wouldn’t want to create more problems down the road for myself if treating the acid reflux (so that I can stay on the antibiotics) means having to get off of the antibiotics at some point anyway (because of gut issues) in a worse condition. Maybe i’m wrong about this… Because of my experience on the proton pump inhibitor with the wild west doctor I am especially cautious around this kind of stuff…

On the other hand maybe the Pepcid or d-limonene could help me to remain on the antibiotics as a short term solution to stay stable while I figure something else out. And if that’s what you all were suggesting in the first place forgive my rambling—I can be a bit slow. And I am definitely interested in the success people have had with the D- limonene… And someone else recommended Pepcid to me recently so I will look into both of those more.

Thanks again for the help and sorry for the essay length response and the 5000 questions

OK, good to know. It definitely looks promising. And I see there’s a lot of older posts about D-limonene as well. I hope I can tolerate it with the histamine intolerance ( Citrus and all), probably worth a try in either case though