Penicillin Antibiotics Helping?

Hello Emma - welcome to the forum.

yes, penicillin is active against Borrelia ( the bacteria that causes lyme disease )
in fact, amoxillin ( another penicillin type drug) is one of the standard drugs prescribed for lyme - eg in people who cannot use doxycycline

its possible that even after a short course then stopping you might feel better

my ex-fiancé had ear infections that re-occurred since childhood - she also had lyme and bartonella - and she was prescribed clarithromycin for that - she took 10 days of clarithromycin at 2x 500mg per day and made a large step forward in her health - so it can happen.

others take 2 or 3 antibiotic combinations for many months and do not make much progress - so it seems highly individual. the degree to which the individuals immune system is functioning as well as which infections are present seem to be two of the most significant factors involved.

if you are having difficulty tolerating continuous treatment you might consider a pulsing approach to antibiotics

several Lyme literate doctors use pulsing approaches for tough cases who have difficulty tolerating treatment
and some of them use pulsing for all their patients - e.g Dr J
his clinic has videos discussing why they take the approach they do - for example here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u5OOlMd2mc&t=39s

the idea of pulsing is that its actually harder for teh bacteria to adapt to on/off pulses of antibiotics than it is for them to survive continuous antibiotics - as each time you stop taking antibiotics - they start to wake of from their dormant persister state - and then you dose them again - and laboratory experiments found pulsed dosing killed all the lyme bacteria - even though continuous dosing with the same antibiotics did not.

typically 2 or more drugs are combined to treat chronic lyme - including in pulsed regimes
eg Penicillin and a cephalosporin antibiotic - or - doxycycline and a macrolide antibiotic

but lyme does not develop antimicrobial resistance so you can start with one drug and add another later
though it may still be better to use 2 drugs if you have co-infections - as some of these are known to be able to develop resistance to single antibiotics over time.

if you have found penicillin helps you - then thats a good sign - and it make sense to keep using that as a basis for your treatment plan

hope its of some help

ref detoxification

often its best to do whatever detoxification steps you are going to do continuously and all of the time - rather than only when symptoms of herx flare up - by which time its often too late an you are already behind the ball

i think this is mainly why they don't seem to help me much when i try it that way

but many things contribute to better detoxification - not just detoxification treatments

-gentle exercise - moves lymph and increases sweating
-good sleep - many detox pathways are activated during sleep - esp the brain own detox pathway
-sweating - via any means - sauna, baths, foot baths etc etc
-micronutrients - needed for production of detoxification pathways
-hydration and electrolytes
-sufficient fibre in the diet - (helps trap bile and toxins in the stool)
-diverse diet - especially types of plants - creates diverse microbiome - helps break down toxins in the gut

there are probably many more examples - and some will likely work better for each individual - or fit better into their lifestyle or situation than others

some LLMD's recommend getting your regime with whichever of these you are going to use stable and continuous - with the idea being to build some headroom of detoxification benefit - so that treatment doesn't push you are as into the red - and is therefore more tolerable