Houttuynia for bartonella, how effective?

Does anyone have any personal experiences with Houttuynia for bartonella? How effective is it, and can it be combined with other treatments? Can it be used alone, or must it be used in combination with other things? Do herbals ever run the risk of granting a bacteria any form of resistance to them or other related compounds? Can herbals like Houttuynia be used in conjunction with antibiotics?

Thanks, I suspected that about herbs.

Im on clarithromycin and rifampin ATM, but dont really feel much progress being made any more since starting the rifampin. Not sure why. I thought resistance, but rifampin isnt supposed to be able to be resisted while being used together with a macrolide until many months of use. Felt the absolute worst the first month on just clarithromycin twice daily, and then it seemed to get much better, but its just plateaued. Not sure if thats because the first month did most of the killing, or what. Now in month 4 going into 5, and... eh.

Not sure whats going on honestly. Ill be seriously pissed if Ive been on these antibiotics for 4 months now and the infection is now resistant to them though. Apparently thats not supposed to happen this early, but, I would not be surprised with me.

Lots of people plateau at different times in their treatment. Do you think your doc would be open to rotating abx or adding in an herbal protocol? If you have not felt any herxing or improvement in 3 months, it's time for a change - whatever the reason.

The thing is, we can only identify 2 or 3 Borrelia (Lyme) species at this point, but there are over 100 that can cause human illness, so we have no way of knowing if the different species require different treatment or not. By switching up your protocol in some way, you may just find something that will work better with your body to heal you from whatever strains you may have.

The key is to remember that we all need different amounts of things in order to help our bodies heal, not just abx, but herbs and supplements. Not only are we unique individuals with different types of needs for our bodies, and possibly different infections/strains, but we also have different weaknesses in our body.

I see him on the 7th, so Ill be talking with him about it. He said last time I saw him that with clarithromycin, there is at least a 6 month window before bartonella starts becoming resistant to it. I trust his expertise, but not sure what to think about feeling very little gain on Rifampin.

There has been minor noticeable herxing. Minor. Nothing like the first month, which was almost intolerable, and Im pretty strong when it comes to uncomfortable states and enduring them, but the first month was very bad on just clarithromycin. Doc said he was very surprised by that, because people dont usually react that way to clarithromycin, and took it as a good sign that the bacteria was highly non-resistant to it.

Thats why I wonder if the rifampin isnt doing much it seems, because theres very little left for it to act on.

But both those antibiotics just make me feel strange in and of themselves as well, including dysphoria from rifampin, so, if they have done their job, I dont want to take them longer than necessary. I just hear about people saying "Oh I felt SO MUCH BETTER after my first two weeks on xyz", and Im just wondering when thats going to start happening to me, cause honestly I feel like s---. Just not as bad as the first month.

So am I not herxing? I dunno, maybe its just one, long, drawn out never ending herx, or the infection is now resistant to everything and its exploding back. Who knows. Just wondering if this can be sped up by herbs or something, because my patience is now wearing thin.

Thanks for the links, I will look into them.

I have four of the tinctures used to detox, but some of those actually make me feel worse. I have the sense that at least one of them is either bactericidal, or just not agreeing with my body. Not sure which it might be though.

I totally agree about herxing from detox. I definitely do.

Another possibility for what you are describing, is that even though you have bartonella (and probably tested positive for it), that you may also have babesia too. Biaxin (and Azithromycin) has anti-protozoan properties, as does Rifampin. I don't know who you are doctoring with, but THE DR. M (Bart guru) told me that about the Rifampin himself. But, the "cidal" effect on protozoans would not be enough to make headway with Babesia (if that happens to be your highest load). According to that doc, you just piss the (protozoan) bugs off, but don't kill them. Of course, that drug combo WILL kill Bart. That we know. At least for most people and the typical strains of Bart (since that is the combo the guru uses).

So, maybe consider testing and treating for Babesia???.... or some other protozoan infection like Toxoplasmosis, or even Protomyxzoa Rheumatica (the Fry bug).

Just something to consider.....

On the herx said...
I see him on the 7th, so Ill be talking with him about it. He said last time I saw him that with clarithromycin, there is at least a 6 month window before bartonella starts becoming resistant to it. I trust his expertise, but not sure what to think about feeling very little gain on Rifampin.

There has been minor noticeable herxing. Minor. Nothing like the first month, which was almost intolerable, and Im pretty strong when it comes to uncomfortable states and enduring them, but the first month was very bad on just clarithromycin. Doc said he was very surprised by that, because people dont usually react that way to clarithromycin, and took it as a good sign that the bacteria was highly non-resistant to it.

Thats why I wonder if the rifampin isnt doing much it seems, because theres very little left for it to act on.

But both those antibiotics just make me feel strange in and of themselves as well, including dysphoria from rifampin, so, if they have done their job, I dont want to take them longer than necessary. I just hear about people saying "Oh I felt SO MUCH BETTER after my first two weeks on xyz", and Im just wondering when thats going to start happening to me, cause honestly I feel like s---. Just not as bad as the first month.

So am I not herxing? I dunno, maybe its just one, long, drawn out never ending herx, or the infection is now resistant to everything and its exploding back. Who knows. Just wondering if this can be sped up by herbs or something, because my patience is now wearing thin.

Sorry your LLMD makes my blood boil. I am hoping that you are not seeing the same LLMD that I saw that told me bartonella gets drug resistant. My LLMD should have just said "well I personally know how else to treat this" instead of the resistance part because their is no way to actually quantify that statement if you are not blood positive. I was very very upset after the discussion with my LLMD at the time and did a lot of research on the matter. Frankly their is little scientific evidence to that claim. I have seen a couple other of LLMDs after and they didn't agree with my first LLMD either. This claim is strictly hypothetical based on your herxing. Dr.Breitschwerdt who has 30+ years of extensive research on bartonella and his colleagues who actually are teaching at ILADS don't support the drug resistant claims based on studies. He mentioned in his papers 2-3 cases of drug resistance in 30+ years. In that case herbs worked pretty good. Bartonella does come back after treatment but that isn't due to "drug resistance" just all of the bartonella wasn't killed off yet and it takes a LONG time to kill ( unless you go nuclear with cipro option which could have bad side effects ).

I wasn't herxing really hard after 6 months and hard herxing at the beginning on biaxin + rifampin combo. So I thought hey this isn't working. My blood tests a year later have shown I was killing bartonella at a pretty good clip. The biaxin + rifampin combo takes a long time to kill. Breitschwerdt recommends 8-12 months of treatment. I wish I would have seen it through. I was off the abx for 1 year and I will have to go back on them as I stopped treatment too short. Oh well. Live and learn.

I would agree with others here saying you could add detoxing. It helped me get a lot better just aggressively detoxing only. A lot killed debris jams up the system pretty good.

Herbs are always and option too. I personally had a really hard time with the side effects. Traveler had great luck with them!!!!! The Rifampin + biaxin combo is really easy on the brain kills compared to some of the other bartonella herbs / abx I personally have tried. It seems everyone is a bit different with our bodies. Personally, I try to avoid encephalitis herxes whenever I can!!!!!!

All the best. J MOON

Jackie Moon said...


Sorry your LLMD makes my blood boil. I am hoping that you are not seeing the same LLMD that I saw that told me bartonella gets drug resistant.

No, he hasnt said anything. This is just my personal speculation out of frustration.

My LLMD said theres generally a 6 month window to just be on clarithromycin if you need to be, without any resistance developing. I was on it for 3 months, because apparently the bartonella I have is/was really susceptible to it and there were some extremely uncomfortable reactions to it when I began taking it twice a day. I was told that is very uncommon, because clarithromycin is generally very well tolerated (and I presume isnt generally over-the-top deadly to most bartonella infections).