Quick relapse when off meds? How to break cycle?

One thing I've noticed is when I stop a protocol or switch to something less effective my babesia symptoms quickly return and with a vengeance! In a matter of a day or two they come roaring back like I felt when I was un-diagnosed.

What the heck is going on here? Is it just I need to be on stuff longer? Is it that it's only holding back the tide (so to speak) and once I stop back it comes? How do you measure such things does it take weeks or months of a potential trend?

Would love to hear what people are doing to see if they are just weathering the storm or making progress. Thx.

How long have you been in treatment?

I treated Lyme for 12 months, Bartonella for 9 months and Babesia for 12 months. Not everyone needs to have as much treatment as I do, but if your symptoms haven't resolved and you have treated 2 months past that point, then you are stopping treatment too soon - the symptoms returning in full force confirm that.

girlie - i'm on my 3rd protocol right now. the 1st one never fully resolved my symptoms after a few months so we switched. the second protocol did resolve my symptoms entirely but never for longer than 7-10 days at a clip then i hit a wall and had a week+ of symptoms so we switched again. i'm now on my 3rd regimen and its nowhere near as effective as the second one.

traveler - i got sick oct 2014 and started treatment in mar 2015 so been in treatment about 7 months.

cd3764 - this may sound strange but i've never herxed due to medicine. i don't think i herx maybe because the bug load isn't chronic and/or high. then again i can't say for sure as i haven't been sick that long and don't have a lot of history. i'm constantly struggling with whether my symptoms are herxing or whether the medicine regimens i'm on are effective or not.

the current regimen i started 2 weeks ago (zithro/tinidazole M,T,W,Th then Alinia F,Sa,Su). for 10 days i felt crappy. the alinia seemed to illicit a flushed/hot feeling in my head which i've never had before. the zithro/tinidazole didn't appear to be doing much or maybe i was herxing. my chest pressure came back which has been gone for many months. i felt i was regressing so i popped a few cefdinir and within a few hours i felt better. coincidence? probably not.

i'm very confused on whether the new regimen is working or not and giving it 4-6 weeks seems like a lifetime of being debilitated when i know popping some cefdinir seems to make me feel better. i need a more controlled study i know.

thanks for listening and any follow up replies.

hey traveler. i'm still a skeptic but you may be right hence why i come here and value your opinions ;o) i should give it at least a month to see if a pattern emerges and i'm going to do that.

i drink lemon water daily (2 whole lemons in 24 oz water at minimum). i do epsom salt baths a few days a week.

Traveler said things waay better than I ever could.

Treating Lyme and Co's is a marathon and we need to give each type of treatment a fair chance at being effective for us.

It's not uncommon for people to wait 3 months or more (and some wait a LOT more) before experiencing improvements....all the while they're suffering with herx symptoms.

Truly, the return of a symptom indicates that there was still infection in that area. Remember: it's the toxins (caused by dead bug parts) that drive our symptoms.

I am currently experiencing herx symptoms that are a milder version of those I had on abx. I hadn't experienced these symptoms when following the full Cowden protocol for almost 6 months before transitioning to my current treatment protocol.

My current treatment protocol is hitting parts of the infection missed by abx....and by Cowden. The fact that the herx is much milder tells me that my infection load is lower.

This is how things go with treating these infections. It's an up, down, all the way around, backwards, upside down, you name it, makes you nutz type of experience.

Reading Buhner's books really helped me understand how these infections impact our bodies. The process we go through to heal from them makes sense based upon this. We are dealing with very complex bacteria. We have to play their game if we're going to win....and that means understanding the facts related to successful treatment.

Treat long enough....and detox, detox, detox :)

I want to be clear that I'm not picking on you in any way. I promise that I only want to do what I can to understand and to help if I can. I promise, even though I'm like a bull dog with a bone as a wonderful friend once explained ( you know who you are!).

I did not intentionally imply that you were haphazardly bouncing from one protocol to another - not at all. If I had suspected that I would have said things in a much harsher way as that's very dangerous for a number of reasons. So I apologize that I wasn't more clear.

Basically, a herx is due to dying bacteria releasing toxins, so if you can remove those toxins from the blood stream at a higher rate than they are coming into it, you can relieve your symptom severity some. Easier said than done though, especially if that person has the gene mutation that prevents the body from detoxing effectively like many of us do.

If it's just that symptoms are returning due to, say - using an ineffective protocol for yourself - then you won't be able to ease your symptoms no matter how much detoxing you do. At least that's been my experience and that of almost everyone that I've talked with.

You should try drastically increasing your detoxing and have the MTHFR testing done and see if that doesn't help. The testing could confirm that your body has the gene mutations that prevent the body from being able to detox effectively, although there are "work arounds" for it.

thanks traveler great advice and i do appreciate your informative and thoughtful responses. you don't need to volunteer your time to do any of this so its much appreciate and needed ;)

you said something very interesting, that if you detox and its a herx you'll feel better versus worsening of symptoms and no effect from it. that's something i can experiment with so thanks so much for that tidbit.

i know there's a section on detoxing but aside from lemon water and epsom salt baths do you have any other really good detoxing methods?

Rikky1 said...

i know there's a section on detoxing but aside from lemon water and epsom salt baths do you have any other really good detoxing methods?

Activated charcoal was really effective for me, when herxing it's really effective to take it before bed on empty stomach, gets toxines from your gut. Toxins produced by Borrelia are excreted by the liver into the bile and in the intestines, where they unfortunately get reabsorbed back. So there is a vicious cycle you can break with activated charcoal, see page 13 (borrelia neurotoxin) on the Burrascano Guidelines:
restormedicine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/burrascano-2008-guidelines.pdf


Then there is Chlorella, Japanese Knotweed (Resveratrol), and ofc lots of water with lemon...plus saunas...

I used to do saunas 3 times per week. Best is infrared saunas but regular saunas are quite good too, hot showers, steam bath, anything that can get you sweat, that will help you release ammonia and will take some strain off your kidneys:
jap.physiology.org/content/70/1/371.short

it's been almost 3 weeks since i started my new regimen (crypto, zithro, tinidzole M,T,W,Th and alinia F,Sa,Su) and the worsening of symptoms have calmed down. my main head issues are ok but the chest pressure and throat has acted up more versus last regimen.

i'll have to chalk this one up to the meds being effective at least somewhat as symptoms are switching around. i see the LLMD on Thurs so we'll see what he says.