Break Time

[patchoulee]

I am glad to hear you are back in the swing of things hope everything continues to go well for you…….

 

Angela

[tbird2340]

John, thank you for posting and sharing your journey..

If you don't mind can I ask why you decided to go to MP? You said you were on AP for 14 months and felt to be almost in remission? Did blood tests etc also agree with that (RF, Anti-CCP, etc)?

Just curious why you then decided to try the MP.

Thanks! 😀

[John McDonald]

I was and am very happy with my AP results but I decided to try the MP for several reasons.

1. My RA didn't clear completely on AP, very substantially but not completely. If it is microbial, then why can't we kill of the rest of the buggers? Same idea for those of us who have a setback after 5 or 7 years. I wanted to see if I could take it further.[/*:1jzp8sq8]
2. The MP science, the disease model, makes more sense to me than any other I have heard for RA. That doesn't mean that it is right, but the story is cogent and remarkably complete and the model seems to have remarkable predictive power. In physics at least, a model that predicts well is a good model, however complete or incomplete, until a better one comes along. MP phases 1 & 2 do to us about what they claim they will.[/*:1jzp8sq8]
3. I got a systemic yeast infection at about 14 months and that made my RA symptoms temporarily surge. That took me back to item one above.[/*:1jzp8sq8]
4. This is embarassing, but I couldn't resist the experiment. It turned out to be successful for me. But looking back, what made me want to be my own guinea pig? There was only maybe two others on the MP for RA at that time, now there are many. But however I rationalized it, I was just plain intrigued and curious.

[/*]
My RA is substantially gone now, much more so than when I was on AP alone. This is deeper than remission and I am starting to bandy the 'cured' word just a bit. But I am herxing in other tissues now. That makes sense if RA is a microbial infection. Why wouldn't other tissues also be infected? So now I am sticking it out on the MP to clean up these other areas. MP phases 1 &2 were very clear wins for me. MP phase-3 (3 antibiotics in combination with Benicar) has been hard and I wonder when it will ever be over; part of my motivation for the vacation.

-john

[Anna]

[user=3]John McDonald[/user] wrote:

1. I got a systemic yeast infection at about 14 months and that made my RA symptoms temporarily surge. That took me back to item one above.

   [/*:15l7lkex]

John, were you taking probiotics?  If you did, then why did you get systemic yeast?
Or probiotics doesn't prevent it as much as we think?

[tbird2340]

[user=3]John McDonald[/user] wrote:

I was and am very happy with my AP results but I decided to try the MP for several reasons.

1. My RA didn't clear completely on AP, very substantially but not completely. If it is microbial, then why can't we kill of the rest of the buggers? Same idea for those of us who have a setback after 5 or 7 years. I wanted to see if I could take it further.[/*:3hnhr29f]
2. The MP science, the disease model, makes more sense to me than any other I have heard for RA. That doesn't mean that it is right, but the story is cogent and remarkably complete and the model seems to have remarkable predictive power. In physics at least, a model that predicts well is a good model, however complete or incomplete, until a better one comes along. MP phases 1 & 2 do to us about what they claim they will.[/*:3hnhr29f]
3. I got a systemic yeast infection at about 14 months and that made my RA symptoms temporarily surge. That took me back to item one above.[/*:3hnhr29f]
4. This is embarassing, but I couldn't resist the experiment. It turned out to be successful for me. But looking back, what made me want to be my own guinea pig? There was only maybe two others on the MP for RA at that time, now there are many. But however I rationalized it, I was just plain intrigued and curious.[/*:3hnhr29f]

My RA is substantially gone now, much more so than when I was on AP alone. This is deeper than remission and I am starting to bandy the 'cured' word just a bit. But I am herxing in other tissues now. That makes sense if RA is a microbial infection. Why wouldn't other tissues also be infected? So now I am sticking it out on the MP to clean up these other areas. MP phases 1 &2 were very clear wins for me. MP phase-3 (3 antibiotics in combination with Benicar) has been hard and I wonder when it will ever be over; part of my motivation for the vacation.

-john

Thanks for the explanation John. I appreciate it. Are there just the three phases for MP?

[John McDonald]

I slipped up on my probiotics and diet during a vacation while driving in Oregon and I did indeed get the yeasties. After that for a couple of weeks every carb or sugar that I ate my bowels tried to turn into beer; most unpleasant. Doc fixed me with a single dose of diflucan. After 2 weeks a struggle with supplements and careful diet I wasn't curing the yeast, but within an hour of taking the diflucan I had considerable relief and was all better within a day or so. But it was a shock to have my RA surge back when I had that infection.

Marshall believes as I do now that our disease is caused by intra-cellular bacteria; that these bugs infect our white blood cells, especially the phagocytes. He claims that is why our gut cannot fight off yeast (or anything else), because our white cell defenders are all compromised while providing host to these bacteria. He claimed that at some point of treatment we should need probiotics anymore; that our healthy macrophages will successfully beat the yeast at that time. My gut improved amazingly on the early MP. Before that, each year I was crossing off foods that I could no longer eat comfortably, but well into phase-2 (two antibiotic combo) I found I could resume eating many of these foods again. So I tried doing without probiotics as well and he was right, I don't need them anymore.

Tbird – At one time, when I started, there were only 3 phases on the MP. First one antibiotic, then two in combination and then 3 in combination. When I master the 3 abx combo I will rotate one of these out for another previously unused antibiotic until nothing I can do will elicit any kind of herx any more. The idea is that if I cannot elicit a herx no matter what I do, then my body may then be free of microbes and free of disease. The MP more or less ends at that point. However the endgame is more complicated for a very few people who begin to struggle with herxing even without antibiotics. One reasonable but unconfirmed theory is that  when the macrophages become well they start making antimicrobial peptides again. Those are a natural body made antibiotic that sick macrophages probably can no longer make. But that makes an additional antibiotic for the phase-3 mix over which we have no dosing control. These people also recover after this sort of 4th phase but it extends things out some more for them. I am not there yet so I don't know if I will be in that number or not.

-john

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