Minocin Herx after restart

[Nancy]

Hi,  I know I have posted about this on other threads but figured if I gave it its own thread maybe more people might see it!  Sorry for those of you who have already read it!

I was on Minocin 200mg bid for 3+ years with NO herx at all and wonderful results.  I went off to get pg and nurse my first baby.  When I went back on I started having fevers, joint pain (different from my SD pain) and chills/sweats which just kept getting worse.  It did loosen my skin immediately so I stopped the treatment.  I got pg again and again after nursing I went back on Minocin.  This time I only went on 50mg once a day as to avoid these reactions but alas they came back slowly.  I thought it might be my disease as they were very slight so I upped the Minocin and they came back with avengence and stopped when I stopped it again.

Obviously I am devastated to not have my magic green pills! 

I have read a lot of you do Clindy and or Zith w/ Minocin.  Has anyone had these reactions from the Minocin????  I am so afraid to start again.  But……I am on Doxy right now and it is not working.  I am considering pulsing as well……..any thoughts???  Maybe should I try pulsing my Doxy first?  I actually have it at 300mg a day now and still nothing.  I the only way to know if the reaction with Minocin will return is to try again.  I just wish I could know if it was Herxing or not and how to control it.  I have been researching MP but am quite frankly overwhelmed with the thought. 

Any, and I mean ANY thoughts on the matter would be GREATLY GREATLY appreciated….I am feeling like I am the only one that has had this experience and am alone in my battle to save my life.  I know my doc is somewhat closed minded to changing his protocol.  I love him dearly and credit him for saving my life, but at the same time am feeling like I did many years ago before I met him!!!!!

HELP me please!

Nancy

[linda]

It sounds like the mino but I have to tell you that my symptoms returned with a vengeance after my pregnancies- about 6 weeks after my kids were born. You're right tho, the only way to tell what's going on is to start back on the mino and see what happens. Good luck,

linda

[Kim]

Hey Nancy,

So sorry you're having a rough go of it, especially with little ones to take care of.

I'm one of the SD people that have had excellent results with pulse dosing—200mg MWF and every other Friday substitute the Mino with Zith.  Dr. S. in Iowa is fine with the pulsing.  The daily dosing did not agree with me at all.  Even now, I feel better on the non-Mino days.  The daily dosing is very hard on your gut which could be contributing to your problem; maybe become gluten sensitive.  Have you considered the Clindy IVs?  Dr. S. would do a phone consult with either you or your doctor.  I'm sure by now he's seen it all.

Sure hope you can get things calmed down soon…….kim

[John McDonald]

Dr. Brown and now Dr. Marshall thinks these diseases are caused by occult bacteria. If so, your diagnosis, that is, the arbitrary name that doc gave your disease, may be mostly about which species of bacteria you have and which tissues they are parasitizing.  It seems common for people to evolve new diagnoses if they have the disease for a long time. My point is that whearas you were diagnosed with SD, if it is bacterial and if the bacteria weren't eliminated, why wouldn't we be a candidate to have other tissues infected. This class of bacteria loves to parasitize and neutralize the white immune cells, so once we have acquired even one specie then we may become susceptible to acquiring new ones that prefer other tissues.

From reading these BB pages it is also really common for women to have profound changes during and after pregnancy. My own dear wife acquired adult onset asthma and insulun resistance, both idiopathic auto-immune conditions, during her two pregnancies. She is responding very well to antibiotics (AP and later MP). Karin got her RA immediately following pregnancy. It is a familiar story. I am sure there are hormonal components, but following Marshall, how much susceptibility might the mom get from the huge amounts of vitamin D in the pre-natal supplements?

When Cricket (my bride) started dipping into my doxy for her asthma (200mg QOD) she was shocked to have alternate day, painful herxing in her finger joints. She had undiagnosed, incipient rheumatoid arthritis like mine. Virtually all of her herxing for many months was about the incipient RA and only later did she begin coughing and hacking as she cleared the asthma. So I imagine that during your antibiotic hiatus and during your pregnancies your microbes spread to new tissues. You may have acquired new species as well. I think you are herxing.

Most SD patients on the Harvard Protocol say they do not herx. But they take abx twice daily. A few daily dosers have experimented with alternate day dosing as and some or perhaps all have reported herxing as a result. It is really hard to tell if you are herxing if you dose daily. The constant high serum level of antibiotic masks the dose dependant herxing. Moreover, Minocin is both antimicrobial and also immunosuppressive. Among Marshall's cohort they argue that the immunosuppresive bits are emphasized in twice daily dosing. Indeed they suggest twice daily dosing as a means to stop intolerable herxing. They often go on to argue that Minocin won't kill microbes if taken twice daily but I disagree with that. No matter how immunosuppressive Minocin can be, it is still mighty hard on microbes.

Herxing may be the key to understanding these protocols. After years of thinking about it I can't think of any better explanation for herxing other than bacterial destruction. If the diseases are strictly auto-immune, our own immune cells attacking our own tissues, then we should never herx from taking antibiotics. But if we can do anything with antibiotics that elicits herxing, say dosing QOD or combining them with heat or combining them with an ARB or multiple antibiotics, then I would have a very hard time arguing that someone who is herxing is not infected.  Moreover, our adaptive immune systems are simply marvelous. I wonder if our immune systems had really set about to attack our own flesh, why aren't we quickly reduced to a puddle of enzymes and amino acids?

Leaky gut, celiac, candiasis? Wouldn't you expect to be susceptible to these conditions if our macrophages, the bulldozers of our innate immunity were neutralized by parasitic bacteria? So which is the cause and which is the result?

Check out this illustration of how mycobacterium tuberculosis parasitizes a macrophage. http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~terry/Common/phago053.html. The mycoplasmas work in a very similar way.

[karin1013]

Hi, John! How have you been?? Just read this post from LAST YEAR! Just wanted to clarify, I did get RA right after pregnancy, but I never took and pre-natal supplements or vitamins at all (extreme vomitting throughout pregnancy prevented that).

 

Take care, my dear. ~Karin

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