Posted 11/3/2019 10:03 PM (GMT 0)
Borrelia is a very crafty family of bacteria. I have a grudging respect for them. They can convert to their cell wall-deficient form to evade your immune system and antibiotics, which kill by breaking cell walls. They can corkscrew themselves into your tissues to escape from antibiotics in your blood stream. They form biofilms to protect themselves. And most annoyingly, they can form dormant cysts that can hang out inside of you for decades while you live comfortably symptom-free and then pounce back to life when you are weakened by a stressful event or unrelated illness. So crafty!
Pulsing lulls them into a false sense of security. They think that their attackers are gone and will reemerge and replicate and circulate, making themselves available for killing. People typically pulse with more than one type of antibiotic, I believe, in order to address various forms. Some antibiotics are bacteriostatic (meaning they keep the bacteria from replicating) while others are bacteriocidal (meaning they kill bacteria) so sometimes people might be on bacteriostatic meds while their bodies stabilize from herxing or other issues. Also, sometimes people's bodies (especially guts) need time to recover from the antibiotics themselves, or to allow herxes to wane. (A bad enough herx can land you in the hospital and do damage, so it's not better for you to kill if your system can't handle it. Slow and steady!)
Others will have more insight, I'm sure, but this is my understanding of some of the reasons that some LLMDs are proponents of a pulsing treatment schedule with pharmaceutical antibiotics (and sometimes herbal antimicrobials as well).