posted
My friend just called me and told me she pulled a tick off, she is heading to doc. How long should she be on Doxy?
Posts: 845 | From Northeast | Registered: May 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
6-8 wks is what I would want .. 400mg per day
-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96222 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Doxycycline, alone, is not enough.
Alone, it can cause the lyme spirochetes (what the microbes are called because of their corkscrew shape) to go into cyst form. The cyst form requires a different kind of medicine. If this aspect is not addressed, chronic lyme can develop.
Still, not all ticks carry lyme.
And, there are various strains of lyme. So, that's why there are some folks for whom short courses of just one antibiotic did well. It's just that this is not the typical case and luck is very hard to predict.
Back to "not all ticks carry lyme" - but many do (if not most in some areas). And it seems that every tick that carries lyme also carries OTHER tick-borne infections, for which other Rx are required.
Antibiotics (especially just one) will not cover all the bases.
COMBINATION TREATMENT is best (and rotation is often of help), even if it were to be "just" lyme (which it is nearly never).
It would be best for your friend to be seen by what we call an LLMD (lyme literate MD). They should be assessed for the possiblity of that tick having carried lyme - but also other infections.
LIVER SUPORT is also a cornerstone of treatment. It's essential to help the body tolerate treatment and manage the toxicity of lyme.
PROBIOTICS are also required. Best if started even before picking up the antibiotic. Probiotics are vital to the gut health & to help prevent systemic Candida infections from developing. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- You might share these links with your friend:
WHY you need an ILADS "educated" or "minded" Lyme Literate doctor (whether MD or ND, or both) - starting with assessment / evaluation. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- While each LLMD and LL ND has their own preferences - and each person with lyme & co. requires an individualized protocol, every good LL doctor should have knowledge of this protocol - and one that resembles it in the major aspects.
�� Nutritional Supplements in Disseminated Lyme Disease ��
J.J. Burrascano, Jr., MD (2008) - Four pages
[If the link does not connect, Go to pages 27 - 30 in the original link above.] -
==============================
It's very important to have this book as a reference tool for self-care and support measures. It answers so many questions in detail that is impossible here on the forum.
OLIVE LEAF EXTRACT - LINKS -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- When taking Doxycycline:
STAY OUT OF THE SUN
STAY UPRIGHT for an hour after taking. Even if sitting in a high back chair for neck support, be sure the entire torso is nearly upright. Otherwise, doxy can irritate the esophagus.
TAKE WITH FOOD (but NOT with any dairy products or supplements that contain a high level of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, etc.). These minerals can lessen the amount of doxy that the body can use, lowering the therapeutic level.
Generally, separate these 3 categories by a couple hours of both "clock directions" - Rx; Support Supplements; Probiotics (best alone).
Repeating: STAY OUT OF THE SUN - totally. Cover up, even hands, ears - even in the car.
An specially fabricated sun umbrella can help but not just any umbrella. It must meet certain specifications in the fabric used.
A tightly woven hat with a brim, cotton gloves (like a pharmacy carries for "treatment" of dry skin) . . . long sleeves with tightly woven fabric that is loose enough as to not be too hot.
Cotton is best as other synthetic fabrics can be so hot. But it's hard to find cotton that is woven tightly enough. KNIT cotton can cause sun to shine through. So, avoid ribbed knits and go for woven fibers.
Some of the skin cancer support sites can instruct about fabrics designed especially to repel the sun's rays - and also be breathable.
Be careful of Sun "BOUNCE" too - if in shade, it needs to be without any glare or bounce of the sun rays. Not all shade is equal.
Do not trust sunscreen and, IMO, so many are toxic that it's best to avoid them anyway. The skin is a major organ of detoxification. Lyme is a very toxic infection and treatment (while required with infection) adds to the load carried by the liver and kidneys.
So, the skin takes up the slack and needs to breathe. Slathering on any body product that contains petroleum will block the skin's ability to help clear the body of toxins.
For safe sunscreens (and other products free of petroluem), though still not necessarily adequate protection for a "doxy" burn
posted
Thanks everyone. So, she calls me back to tell me her doc gave her 2 pills. Yup, that's right...2 pills of Doxy.
She got bit last year too and didn't do anything at all about it. This time the ticks head broke off in her leg.
She says "I don't want to be on antibiotics for six weeks!" Oh god, do I ever wish I could have even made the decision.
I swear my friends think that I was making this stuff up. They don't seem to take it very seriously. Like they always said, "But you don't look sick."
Posts: 845 | From Northeast | Registered: May 2011
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Did the doctor remove the tick head from her leg? - AND some tissue around it? Hope so.
If that tick head is still in her leg, it MUST be removed - under magnification & bright light - with a surgical blade immediately.
This can be done in a doctor's office but most don't know to do it - or why it's so important to the rest of the patient's life.
It's never, ever, good to leave even any tiny tick part in the body. If that tick is infected, any of its body parts could also be carrying that and it could continue to infect as long as the tick part remains in the body -
- especially the full head.
In some places in Europe, it's common to remove a small area of tissue around the tick part being removed. It's so very important. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- As to her reaction, and your reaction to that - I get it. I've had the same experiences with friends who might even just toss the tick back onto the trail.
Her doctor said "no lyme in our state" and she believed him even after seeing me suffer for years. Even with my sharing some of my "educational findings" - we both used to work a the same college and, I thought, both knew about researching, etc.
Somehow, there is a huge disconnect.
When that friend refused to see a LL ND I recommended just a mile from here (no LLMD in my state) she did take some Allicin and Andrographis I offered her - my very own supply for a month -
found out later she took for only a week as she just "didn't want to keep swallowing any kind of pills" and they made her pee a bit too often.
A couple years later, though at times I wonder with some of her physical symptoms - she does seem very healthy.
Now, there are many variables, of course. But I was shocked that she did not trust the years and years of research I've done - in so many manners of speaking.
I'm shocked she refused to see an expert (though the money is a huge matter). I was more shocked that she could not even take my own supplements, at no cost to her, that I gave her and would have continued for several months.
She just didn't want to swallow even "vitamins" -- I shared some detail about Allicin and Andrographis - all professional sources.
I loaned her a DVD of "Under Our Skin" - to this day, she's not yet watched it.
If that tick she had embedded for hours was infected, I'm hoping that - just maybe - the combination of Allicin & Andrographis for a week might have offered her some level of protection.
We will never know for sure, of course. But I'm shocked at the refusal to learn, or to trust my own research if she refuses to see the LL ND so near to us.
She'd rather trust her family doctor because he is so sure "there is no lyme in Oregon." -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
See if you can explain the controversy to her, that there's no way two pills are going to stop an infection if she got one. Tell her her quality of life can potentially go down the tubes, so better to be a little inconvenienced now then pay a heavy price. Also, she would need to see a Lyme-literate practitioner for appropriate response.
When I work with people, I really listen to what they're saying, because those are their blocking thoughts - I usually need to address that before they will do anything different.
Question, Keebler, or anyone, when you say the doxy will drive the bacteria into cyst form - I thought 400mg doxy is what people are prescribed, for 6-8 weeks, for an initial bite. I have not heard of Lyme doctors prescribing more antibiotics in the beginning - comments?
Posts: 13116 | From San Francisco | Registered: May 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Robin - she watched UOS for me back when I first got sick. So she knows. I guess she's just willing to take her chances.
Posts: 845 | From Northeast | Registered: May 2011
| IP: Logged |
Sammi
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 110
posted
RC1, you tried. Six weeks of antibiotics is better than up to six years or more! I think it is very hard for people to understand if they are not often around those who are infected.
It is a shame. Early infections are curable. Once time goes by, you cannot go back. Hopefully the tick was not infected.
Posts: 4681 | Registered: Oct 2000
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Robin,
From what I've read, IMO, it's important to address the cyst form before even the first antibiotic is swallowed. I'd want it hours before the antibiotic.
However, you are correct, most LLMDs do not do this. They should. As Eva Sapi's (and others') research on this topic becomes more well known, more may.
Still, for most patients new to all this, they are very hesitant. Insurance companies certainly don't want to cover combination treatment from the get-go and IDSA powers that clobber LLMDs are ready to pounce as combination treatments, too.
By the time someone usually reaches a LLMD, though, it's too late and they are no longer looking at early treatment.
Burrascano's guidelines were written before Eva Sapi's work on how, in a very short time (I'm thinking 20 minutes?), doxy can make spirochetes turn to the cyst form.
Doxycyline is not likely the only antibiotic to have this action.
Everything you thought you knew about cyst busters is wrong . . . Eva Sapi . . .
Doxycycline worked according to plan. Doxy inhibits protein synthesis - it kills bacteria, including Lyme, by action within the cytoplasm, inhibiting the manufacture of proteins required for the bacteria's survival.
Doxy and others are commonly referred to as intracellular antibiotics.
Spirochete loads decreased by about 90% while cyst levels increased by 200% - just as expected. . . .
. . . Amoxicillin killed 90% of spirochete forms - OK, but -- it also killed 68% of the cystic forms!
Amoxicillin and other cell wall drugs are not cyst busters - only specific anti-parasite drugs kill cysts - or so we thought.
Well let�s think again for a second: what are cysts? . . . .
- Full blog entry at link above. --
[ 04-23-2013, 07:02 PM: Message edited by: Keebler ]
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Regarding issue of "some don't seem to get sick from a tick bite" - or it's much simplier for some. There are many variables. Not all ticks carry lyme is just one. The STRAIN is another.
I tend to think the degree of the cystic form matters greatly - and the OTHER infections as well. The liver health also is a huge issue.
And, for some who seem to have managed very well with no or little treatment, will that remain so?
(I must have missed the links when I saved this to my file notes)
From Pamela Weintraub's CURE UNKNOWN --
[I'm not quite clear whether this first part is PW work or not. My note saving is a mess with this but the point is that strain variations can matter greatly, even if this part deals with the rash.]
What many people don't know is that 10 strains of lyme cause only the lyme rash. They don't cause any lyme disease at all. So, that's why a person can get a rash and just take a little doxy and be fine. They actually would have been fine even without the doxy.
But, before you decide that that is you, be sure you did not have any lyme symptoms at all.
Here is an exerpt from the book "Cure Unknown" by Pam Weintraub in which she talks about this aspect of lyme disease:
Cure Unknown excerpts
p. 342
tells how Ben Luft, infectious disease specialist and Daniel Dykhuizen, evolutionary biologist, working together at Stony Brook went out into the field collecting ticks and analyzing Borrelia.
A few years later, they had a graduate student travel the Eastern seaboard as far north as New Hampshire and south through the Carolinas collecting ticks infected with B. burgdorferi spirochetes.
p.343 �The Borrelia were duly isolated and compared for differences in their genes.
Eventually the researchers focused on twenty strains, each with a different version of the changeable OspC. Working with those twenty strains, Luft learned that six didn�t infect humans and ten caused only a rash.
Only four of the twenty could leave the skin to invade other tissue like the heart and joints or the brain.
The most virulent of the strains turned out to be the prototypical B31, the version of B. burgdorferi � ultimately isolated by Burgdorfer and Barbour at the Rocky Mountain labs in 1981.
The implications are profound. One of the most important is that if just four strains of the twenty cause disseminated infection, then the roster of rash-based studies on the treatment of early Lyme disease, conducted from the 1980s to the present, would have to be reassessed.
Take a moment to ponder the simple math: It would be impossible to accept results based on the assumption that 100 percent of Lyme rashes can cause invasive disease when a significant percent cannot.
Some of the classic studies claim very high cure rates for early infection; yet if the causative strain were of the rash-only variety, then even orange juice would be a �cure.�
Are recommended treatment protocols truly curing most of those with early, invasive borreliosis? Or has noise from rash-only strains obscured less rosy results?� (p. 344) -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Recently posted by Lymedin2010:
I reached out to her & asked if she was coming out with a sequel to her "Cure Unknown" book.
She replied as follows....
"Update coming late spring. Will be published as new edition and update alone will be 99 cent ebook"
(posted by Lymedin2010) -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thanks, Keebler - that's fascinating that a Lyme rash might not be infective - I personally have not heard of that happening - usually when someone has a bull's eye rash, they're sick.
Also, I know that preventive care usually means 400mg doxy. Maybe a beginning infection does get knocked out by doxy, but a later one goes into cyst form? I'd like to hear some more medical feedback on this question.
Posts: 13116 | From San Francisco | Registered: May 2006
| IP: Logged |
Keebler
Honored Contributor (25K+ posts)
Member # 12673
posted
- Robin: "Maybe a beginning infection does get knocked out by doxy, but a later one goes into cyst form?" (end quote)
Not later, immediately - with the first dose - doxycycline can cause lyme to go into cyst form. -
Posts: 48021 | From Tree House | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
The Lyme Disease Network is a non-profit organization funded by individual donations. If you would like to support the Network and the LymeNet system of Web services, please send your donations to:
The
Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey 907 Pebble Creek Court,
Pennington,
NJ08534USA http://www.lymenet.org/
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic