HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

What's the deal with antibiotics? I'm confused.

Support Forums
>
Ulcerative Colitis
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 7/13/2012 4:37 PM (GMT 0)
So antibiotics can cause UC (not "real" UC but antibiotics-induced UC? Right?).. but also help you when you're flaring. Right? I keep reading different schools of thought on UC, different theories and postulations, different solutions and miracle drugs or supplements, but I've never quite understood the finality of antibiotics, should we be taking them or no? Cause my new GI insists on giving me antibiotics every time I flare, and wait and see if it helps, before giving me prednisone. It never helps. And now someone just told me UC-sufferers should never take Cipro, but that's what he keeps subscribing. confused
Posted 7/13/2012 4:39 PM (GMT 0)
is the doctor leaning more towards Crohn's and not UC?

I've not heard of a any GI on hear continually prescribing antibiotics for UC...

Say again what other meds? Can you not take 5ASA oral/rectals?

q
Posted 7/13/2012 6:05 PM (GMT 0)
I'm on Lialda and can take all drugs just fine, as far as I know. There has never been any question as to my having UC, and no suspicion of Crohn's (thank god!).
Posted 7/13/2012 6:48 PM (GMT 0)
The first law of IBD is that everyone is different. If antibiotics do not help you then don't take them. There are dozens on this forum who are convinced that antibiotics are what gave them UC in the first place.

But there are others, like myself, who have been helped by antibiotics. For example check out some of the threads describing how many have been helped by triple antibiotic therapy:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=38&m=2088679
Posted 7/15/2012 8:20 PM (GMT 0)
My son has been helped tremendously by Antibiotics in the past. I know it seems strange, but its true. I guess everyone's gut is different and there is no "one size fits all". He is in the middle of a flare right now and he's on antibiotics and we're just praying that it will bring him some relief. So far he hasn't had much luck with the standard med's that they use for UC. In fact, he recently switched from Asacol (no longer working) to Lialda. As soon as he increased his dosage from 1 to 2 tablets per day, the diarrhea returned. This disease is just so hard to figure out!
Posted 7/16/2012 12:35 AM (GMT 0)

BabeintheWoods said...
The first law of IBD is that everyone is different. If antibiotics do not help you then don't take them. There are dozens on this forum who are convinced that antibiotics are what gave them UC in the first place.

But there are others, like myself, who have been helped by antibiotics. For example check out some of the threads describing how many have been helped by triple antibiotic therapy:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=38&m=2088679

Couldn't both be correct though BITW?  I believe that Antibiotics opened me up for UC.  But that's because i had never heard of probiotics back in 1999 and no one suggest the need to repopulate after being on antibiotics. I then got a stomach bug and soon after whammo first UC symptoms.   But I'm also of the opinion that Antibiotics could definitely help UC - many on here attest to it.  That is wipe out all the bugs and start fresh but with the definite need to reopulate (as you said in another post) with S.Boulardii and other probiotics.  So a simplistic view maybe that given the right antibiotics to reboot your gut  - by wiping everythng out and then repopulating correctly may be a  good 'cure'.  I'm thinking about it as a potential next step. But the need to repopulate is crucial.

 

 

Posted 7/16/2012 1:40 AM (GMT 0)
I tend to agree with you Jimbo. I also believe that antibiotic over-use with my son tipped the balance of his gut flora and brought on his UC. While he was flaring last year he responded well to vancomycin. After his last round of vanco we started fecal transplant to repopulate his flora. I do know of some though who hadn't taken much antibiotics prior to being diagnosed and who don't respond to antibiotic treatment. I guess you have to try it and see.
Posted 7/16/2012 5:04 AM (GMT 0)
Antibiotics can help or hurt. My original flare started when I took Biaxin, and I was able to get out of the worst flare of my life, in terms of resistance to treatment, with the triple combo therapy. The thing to remember is antibiotics have a profound effect on intestinal flora which can be good or bad. Taking a single antibiotic can kill healthy flora while leaving resistant bad bugs. Taking the triple therapy kills pretty much everything and allows the flora to rebuild from scratch.

What kind of antibiotics did the doc have you taking? You have to be careful because taking the wrong kind or combination can lead to antibiotic resistance for certain hard to kill pathogenic bacteria like MAP or fusobacterium.

The triple antibiotic therapy has completely changed my life. It eradicated nasty inflammation from my rectum and sigmoid that nothing else could touch. My last colonoscopy showed almost a complete healing with only a small section of very mild inflammation in the ascending colon and terminal ileum that was listed as backwash type UC inflammation after pathology.
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply