This is for Lyme, not Babesia, by the way.

There seems to be a potent multiplier effect on spirochetes in the process of being forced into L forms and cysts by a penicillin when a little artemisinin is added.

The Artemisisin causes the already overinflated keets to inflate more and burst into tiny dead bits. All at once and violently. Most every one that is in the serum anyway. The scientific term is it lyses them.

It is a very powerful effect from a very little bit of medicine and could potentially put one in shock and cause the mother of all herxhiemers... If alot of skeets happenned to be out of their cellular hiding places at the time. (Not that unlikely.)

I recommend waiting to see if any guinea pigs die before even thinking of trying it. It was more than a little scary when this lab rat discovered it. Maybe it can be tamed a little and used more gracefully.

Have any of you heard of this effect, or actually had a Dr. treat you with a Beta Lactam / Artemisinin combo before?

I was fishing a little for reports of nasty reactions yesterday, but was hesitant to say what had happened lest some other cavalier brave soul send himself to the morgue with a herxheimer.

It has interesting possibilities once it is tamed and is understood a little better.

If you have a good microscope with phase contrast that can see them in live blood it is very theraputic watching them die!

To be fair I think I'm about done with lyme and just doing a final babs cleanout so I'm maybe not the best test subject.

I let somebody else know about this who took artemesinin along with bicillin and got quite a reaction although supposedly babs free....maybe he'll weigh in on the subject. (Arf Arf)

I had been watching how the spirochete forms would begin to swell up and spin violently until they eventually became the spherical 'L' forms after taking Penicillin. This is well known and it doesn't kill them unfortunately.

I had a theory that since fluid goes inside the membrane as they inflate like little dirty grey balloons, if another antibiotic that was more lethal to them were already in the serum when this happened, that antibiotic would be trapped inside the membrane with them and maybe would eventually kill them. A theory.

I had taken dose of a penicillin to get this effect going fast enough to watch how it worked. There were lots of them to watch, we are pretty all septic with theis stuff.

Anyway, I had noticed that some of the stages formed rings that looked similar to Malaria, and wondered if some might actually be Malaria since I have had that... So I went and took a few Artemisinins just for good measure without giving it a thought.

About 20 minutes later I started to feel really lightheaded and clammy, so I got a fresh drop of blood from a finger and looked at it... all the while feeling even more ill.

What i saw was most of the various Borellia forms in the serum I had been watching had exploded, a few were exploding as I watched, and there was massive debris in my blood that looked like coarse black pepper... the remains of exploded Borrelia.

I did not know if my red blood cells were going to start exploding next, killing me as there are spirochettes coiled up in many of them too.

Fortunately they did not, and I did not. It did put me into a mild state of shock for awhile though with blood pressure down about 15 points and rapid heartbeat. It took a couple days to clear all the toxic debris too.

I don't recommending anybody EVER killing that many at once.. not that we have ever had the means before.

I had no inkling there was any kind synergistic effect of Artemisinin and a penicillin together, nor that there was antheing on the planet so brutally lethal to the nasty critters. It just blows them to little bits and the little bits float up like dead fish.

More of us need to buy microscopes. It is amazing what you can find out if you just look to see what happens when you take your medicine instead of guessing.

Some things just give them a good aerobic workout, us a bad herxheimer from their wastes, and don't kill a single one.

Another med might be working, but not continued because we do not know it worked.

It helps to be able see what you are doing!

Now that we have found the atomic bomb for Borrelia we are trying to figure out how to use it in a controlled systematic manner.

I will share as we learn more and it seems to be able to be used safely.

Another warning: It is one of those reactions where nothing happens at all, then suddenly if the threshold is passed they all start exploding at once. This is what can put you shock. You won't to be driving at the time it hit you, and it can be delayed or come in more waves up to 24 hours later.

It is best to just wait and watch what comes of this little experiment. If it turns out to be useful we will share. As you see there is much to learn and need for caution.

Oh... It seems to have destroyed all the cysts I had been watching too. I have not been able to find one again.

Was something this effective right under our noses all the time and we never noticed?

Maybe we would have if we had even bothered to look.

I guess I could give you a blood sample but it really didn't do anything, might as well have taken doxy (which doesn't do anything either in my case)

....or maybe I'm cured.

I've been reading many posts on how these combo's were working well for them. Now I'm not so sure...anyone else have reactions they'd like to share?

That would mean that the reaction you had when taking these drugs was unrelated to what you saw in the scope. I personally have never had anything cause a noticeable reaction that fast.

I think all that is happening is that if some keets are already inflated like balloons by the well documented action of a penicillin... Artemisinin has a potentiating effect of some kind that pushes them to inflate some more and then burst. Very low tech but they die.

It is encouraging that nobody else has reported more than a bad herx from this combo, as it would be a shame to find a really effective tool and have it be too dangerous to use.

I have not been on any kind of really intensive ABX therapy like many of you have. Just Doxycycline, various penicillins, and now just 100mg Minocycline BID.

My blood was literally swarming with the things when this interesting little effect was noticed. I probably have a pretty heavy load, even after this many have been taken out.

I think that is why I got hit so hard when so many were killed in the space of an hour. The herxheimer.

From your comments my safety concerns were probably a little overcautious, but that was the mother of all herxes.

I have noticed too that at different times of the day there are hardly any seen in the blood serum, outside the cells. At other times... seeming to correspond to the achy feeling i often get in the afternoons... there are more than you can count. So timing may have a big effect.

What I am doing to test it out is replacing my PM minocycline with 1g of Amoxy and 200mg of Artemisinin. I was using the grapefruit juice to keep the Art absorbing properly in my gut.

I had not considered that grapefruit juice's acid might interfere with the Amoxy, but it seems to still work. In fact 1.5g Amoxy and 300mg Art seemed to be an overdose for me in terms of how much toxic dead borrelia debris my body could handle at once. I may just be dealing with a higher load than some of you.

I am not sure if continuing the 100mg minocycline in the AM has any influence. It might, as there is some documented action of the 'cycline type ABX's against the Bb cell wall too.

A good science experiment would eliminate that extra variable, but what i am doing is killing them off by the billions and I am feeling tremendously better. So I am not fixing what isn't broke. At least not right now.

Lou...
I'm getting fresh samples and immediately dropping a cover slip on and viewing them. That is about as close as you can get to real time in vivo observation with low tech means.

Alot of what is observed is before and after snapshots of the blood. In one case a sample had numerous Bb that were hyperinflated into large dark grey spheres with rapid movement inside. 15 minutes later they were mostly floating granules of debris

The blood protected by a cover slip stays alive suprisingly longer than one would think though. The spirochetes themselves are very hard to see in a fresh sample because they are so transparent. After it sits for an hour they start to get distresses and develop enough contrast to be visible.

when this was my FIRST POST in like two days.

Sorry, Im being gruffy.

To get right down the point:
I think your observatiosn are great and NOT skewed. Its the same thing a lab would do, and just to let ones know- RBC's contain Oxygen to being with.

YOU CAN and I HAVE reacted VERY quickly after taking artemisinin ( within 15 minutes). I thought I was going to die. I had taken it in the past, and it did not do that to me. I went off abx for four months and then took one- WOW.

I've actually read that that is how artemisinin works- by literally blowing it up.

Its very effective also. I didnt have jaw pain , etc for a month after that one pill, but boy did I think it made me relapse. ( NOTE- I was doing anti candida stuff too at that time , as well as just a two day dose of Rifampin) .. so artemisinin may or may not

be the quash of my pain.

ANyways, where did you purchase your microscope? I am interestd in buying one asap.

The setup is just about any decent quality biological microscope with a 100x oil objective AND with phase contrast.

Seeing these transparent spirochetes is like trying to see broken glass at the bottom of a swimming pool without phase contrast.

Mine is just an old relic that belonged to a retired doctor, and it works fine. Nothing elaborate is needed.

There are probably a few decent used ones on ebay at any given time for a reasonable cost.

Also some inexpensive new ones... but if it says "Phase" in the title make sure the one you get actually has the phase contrast kit included. It is a $500 option that can be installed on some and the ads are a little deceptive.

Taking a microbiology class at local college might be another option if available.

If you buy one and are ufamiliar you might at least need to hunt down a helpful microbiology student to show you how to use it. It is not difficult once you are shown, but you have to know how or you will end up damaging it.

It is interesting stuff and good exercise for the mind at the least.

I shoot up 2.5 cc of benzathine penn 2 times a week.

I'm just taking 2 500mg amoxicillin with 2 artemisinin and grapefruit once a day in the afternoon when my keets seem to come out and play.

I am also still taking 100mg of minocin in the am because that is what I was on.

It is very potent. If they venture into the serum they likely die.

Having them die in the serum instead of in your cells is desireable too, as it is easy for the body to clean them up there and does not destroy your cells.

There is also a synergistic effect to taking a tetracycline with a penicillin in the case of Bb... contrary to the common wisdom.

Forget the anitbiotic action of a penicillin as far as how it might be able to chemically kill a bacteria. That part is irrelevant.

Just think of it as a simple mechanical pump. As it pumps the keets full of fluid and inflates them like little balloons it also pumpss any other antibiotic in your blood right inside the cell membrane and traps it there.

When taking the minocycline I notice the inflated spherical Bb forms that don't rupture from the artemisinin seem to sicken and die. I am speculating the minocin is doing that.

I'm sure it would pump just about any other antibiotic inside just as well. It has to be a simple generic membrane in order to stealth the immune system...and thus does not have the luxury of being selective what passes through.

The membrane that makes it so hard to kill is also its achilles heel.