Anyone used high dose cryptolepis/sida acuta?

I am now taking 40 drops of Cryptolepis twice daily 5 days in a row each cycle.

1/4 tsp = 25 drops = 1 dropperful.

so 80 drops is little more than 3/4 tsp.





I had previously taken the CSA about 1/4 tsp 3X day. (or 25 drops 3X day)

So are you taking 1 tsp of each Crypto and Sida?

And are you taking the 1 tsp 3X a day or total for day?

I reached a max dose of about 3/4 ts of sida three times a day, when I plateaued I added minocycline.

In pharmacy, the standard is 20 drops per teaspoonful which is 5ml. This can sometimes vary per dropper and be 15 drops per tsp, but 20 is the standard.

It's interesting that you say the cryptolepis seemed to help the most. Might be worth pursuing more babesia treatments. And there are other herbal agents as well, things like neem, berberine, artemisia, etc. Don't know if you've tried those already...

Cryptolepis used to make me herx like crazy (even off just a few drops). But after a while it lost effectiveness for me even as I did huge doses. I think dosing at high level like that is fine for short term like Buhner says. Might want to consider rotating to other antimicrobial herbs after that. Can always cycle the crypto back in later on after the break from it.

I'm just glad to hear you are finding new effective therapeutics for your situation! that is exciting and promising!

sandyfeet said...
"Might be worth pursuing more babesia treatments."

When you mentioned earlier, Psilociraptor, that you relapse so quickly when stopping herbal treatment it made me wonder if you had bartonella as it's supposed to replicate quickly. Babesia is also a rapid replicator is it not?

Interested to hear that you don't herx from crypto anymore sebreg. Were there other herbs you found particularly useful yourself? I liked berberine before I knew I had lyme, now I'm a little leary of it. Neem and artemisia also worry me a bit.

Peeps I have no idea what I've got and I'm done speculating lol. Cryptolepis is not specific to babesia. It is active against a broad spectrum of bacteria and protozoa and in fact Buhner recommends it for this purpose in his antibacterial book. My symptoms are not close to babesia at all. I don't know about bartonella. There are a lot of pathogens on this planet, most of which we don't even know are pathogens yet.

SebReg, I thought cryptolepis stopped working for me too. I herxed at a few drops. Then bumped up to 30 and stopped herxing/improving. But when I started going up to a tsp is when it started working again. Also herxing has nothing to do with the size of the organism but the state of hypersensitivity to it. By definition a hypersensitivity is a reaction that is far out of proportion to the amount of noxious stimuli. You could be very hypersensitive to a small mycoplasma or not so much to a larger protist. What they release aren't true "toxins". It's just pieces of the bacteria/protist that cause the immune system to react



GH - very confused by this. Those are some big drops. Or are you using a different measure of tsp? I'm just using the tsp from my kitchen. It takes me about ~4-5mL to fill it roughly which is about 120 drops from a tincture bottle. Or 4mL where each mL is 30 drops



Anyways I'm scared to take more but it's kicking my diseases butt so idk what to do lol. In the clinical trial they used 2.5g so I'm not understanding the math here. My thinking is 1:5 in a 4 ounce bottle for simplicity sake is 1 ounce correct? ie 26g? round to 30? 120mL in the bottle divided by 30 grams equals 4mL per gram? Equals 250mg per dropper? So the equivalent of the clinical trial dose would be 10 droppers? This is in line with buhners dose for acute conditions. But he recommends a tsp of powder for chronic conditions. Which is usually like 2g which seems large.

I can never make the math in herbalism add up. Add in the toxicity trials where they're using 2000mg/kg which is like 144g of cryptolepis but somehow science says that humans require 12 time less than mice? Which is still an enormous 11 grams? High dose users if you can please sacrifice your kidneys to science so I can have some clarity on this issue, thanks.

Sebreg: "GH - very confused by this. Those are some big drops. Or are you using a different measure of tsp? I'm just using the tsp from my kitchen. It takes me about ~4-5mL to fill it roughly which is about 120 drops from a tincture bottle. Or 4mL where each mL is 30 drops"


I think the tincture 'bulb' must be larger for pharma tinctures..as that dictates the volume of liquid you pull up.

I used the baking teaspoon and it's 25-30 drops for 1/4 tsp. Did that once and to check a few years ago.

That is the standard for herbs.

Thanks Psilociraptor for your insights. When I first heard that size of organism thing I was immediately drawn to the idea. But no matter what I respond to babesia treatments to such a degree that I think you are right, my system has a crazy response to it either way. Some people don't get much response to babesia treatment even though they have it, so I'm certainly susceptible but I probably also have a significant load (?).

At the same time, given how much I feel my lymph nodes flaring when I hit babesia, I feel that a lot of stuff is being processed and the herxes are always longer, deeper, more sustained for that infection in my case. So the possible explanation that the organism is larger and my systems take longer to clear the debris feels plausible. Not saying this is right, but my intuition is absolutely drawn to it (been wrong before though so who knows!). But your point about immune system having hypersensitivty to this organism also makes sense to me, it could also be that both these things are factors?

Ah, I'd always presumed cryptolepis was more specific for protozoal infections, didn't realize it had such broad range of activity.

Honestly man, nothing stopped my herxheimers lol. Only lowering the dose. Size is going to have SOME influence as you're still processing more antigen. But what I'm saying is it's not going to be directly comparable across two different organisms because each one will have a different degree of immunogenicity. Even different strains of the same bacteria can range from mildly inflammatory to highly inflammatory. So you have to factor in the relative immunogenicity before you can make any sort of meaningful guess as to how size impacts the response.