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HI: Is it okay to start on oral Minocycline before IV Clindamycin? If so, how would one dose Minocycline daily? Thanks a million. Heidi
Hi Hotten,
You’ll find the Doctor Packets in the site Resources Recommended Reading section, here:
If you haven’t found the FAQ section of the site yet, it’s very worth reading through them all. FAQ 15 may be relevant to your question.
When Dr. Brown saw patients (as described in book and video in Resources section), patients often had long-standing disease and were treated as in-patients in his hospital so that Brown could tend to them should herxing arise. Those days are long gone and, unless a patient is working with an experienced AP doc who recommends IV clindamycin, oral therapy is started beforehand. It’s more a question of logistics now. As outlined in the Pulsed Protocol Doctor packet, the purpose of IV clindamycin is:
Patients with severe or long-standing disease are started with a series of daily intravenous or intramuscular antibiotic treatments for a period ranging from one to three weeks. Clindamycin is given to eradicate long-standing L forms of bacteria resident in the gut, respiratory tract, genito-urinary tract and other areas to allow greater permeability of the tetracycline family of antibiotics and diminish the variables of disease. Clindamycin is concentrated in the phagosomes of the neutrophils, and therefore accumulates at the site of inflammation.
Hi Heidi,
I thought I would chime in here and point out that minocycline isn’t the only antibiotic that is used to treat RA. There are several that are used for that purpose. Another antibiotic that is commonly used to treat rheumatic diseases is doxycycline. And there are good reasons to consider it. For example, it is a safer antibiotic, and is easier to tolerate, especially in the early part of treatment. It does tend to be more likely to cause stomach upset, though, but that is easily mitigated by taking it with some food. I found that doxycyline tablets were easier to tolerate than the capsules (possibly because they take longer to disintegrate than the capsules). There are also different forms of doxycycline. The hyclate is the form most commonly prescribed, but there is also doxycycline monohydrate. The monohydrate form is supposedly gentler on the stomach.
The reason I am mentioning all of this is because I know of people who quit in their first month because they couldn’t handle the resulting die-off reactions and (temporarily) increased inflammation. I know, from personal experience, that if I had started with minocycline I likely would have quit within the first week or two. I took doxy for over three years, and when I tried to switch to mino, the reaction was so strong that I had to cut way back on the dose and gradually switch over to mino. This process took several months. If I had started out with minocycline, without having reduced my bacterial load first using doxycycline, I am certain that the die-off reactions would have been much worse.
This decision, of course, is between you and your doctor. However, I thought that you might benefit from my experience and what I know about these two drugs.
Phil
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
- Albert EinsteinHi Heidi,
HI Phil: I wanted to ask you what you thought about IV Clarithromycin?
Do you mean IV clindamycin?
Phil
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
- Albert Einstein
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