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CFS is a Bacterial Infection

xks201

Senior Member
Messages
740
I've had CFS for 3 years. I've spent probably one hundred thousand dollars on treatments. I'm on every hormone you can possibly replace. I've ran multiple treatment protocols. I recommend you guys try double the dose of doxycycline standardly prescribed. 200mg 2 times a day.
The reason I got interested in this bacterial theory is because I had constant symptoms of bacterial infection. Burning/very foul smelling stool, acne, etc. I even had symptoms that Dr. Hyman (who is now dead) said were related to bacteria infection like joint inflammation and high blood pressure. I had gotten on high blood pressure meds and still it was out of control.

Even scarier, just like I had read from the work of Dr. Hyman, I was passing this CFS to girlfriends. They would come down with stomach problems and chronic fatigue. They would even say "I feel like I can't lift my body". These were girls that had extremely healthy immune systems before meeting me. Just like in the article of Dr. Hyman and his colleagues where patients would come in and the whole office would come down with CFS. He would treat them with IV or higher dose oral antibiotics and their CFS would disappear. Google dr. hyman and all the results. His first name is on the link below which may help.

Naturally we don't come across people who claim to have been cured of CFS.
I stumbled upon links to this guy http://articles.cnn.com/1997-02-19/...ions-sick-veterans-chemical-exposure?_s=PM:US

200mg doxycycline twice a day is helping me unlike nothing else really. And I have had stool tests done from regular labs which show no out of place bacteria. All my problems started when I went to Mexico.
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
Doxycycline is also an anti-inflammatory, as well as an NMDA receptor antagonist. So it might not be helping for the reasons you think (bacterial infections).
 

mellster

Marco
Messages
805
Location
San Francisco
This theory is not new but very interesting - there is another scientist in the Ukraine who makes similar claims, but with a lot more sophisticated testing and titrating of the right ABx. I am interested in this theory and there could be a lot to it as it would explain all the treatment failures so far - however a lot have tried ABx as well and while they have given some significant temporary relief it didn't stick either. Keep us updated about your long term progress. Also if this is true, natural antibiotics should be somewhat effective as well if taken in high enough dosages (with less risk of resistance and side effects). cheers
 

xrayspex

Senior Member
Messages
1,111
Location
u.s.a.

nanonug

Senior Member
Messages
1,709
Location
Virginia, USA
Burning/very foul smelling stool

This is a known symptom of steatorrhea. Among other things, steatorrhea can be caused by bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine that deconjugate bile salts. As someone that was initially cured by nuking the gut with high-dose Xifaxan, I have no doubts in my mind that in many cases, addressing gut infections cures CFS.
 

jimells

Senior Member
Messages
2,009
Location
northern Maine
I had gut problems for years: bloating, pain, loose stools, going frequently. The doctors never showed the slightest interest in helping me with this. Too yucky? Anyway, I foud an article discussing grapefruit seed extract and fructose malabsorption. I think it was an interview with Dr Cheney. I quit eating anything with high fructose and purchased the grapefruit seed extract. It was a 'miracle cure' for me, with big improvements in just a few days.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
I much agree with bacterial infection in the gut a major problem for me too (as you all describe) - a high dose course of Amoxcillin following extraction of two infected roots much improved GI problems. Can't help feeling it's not the whole story though and still tend to think of enteroviral (whichever) origins. Reason being declining cognitive issues came first, then gut "motility" (could barely swallow with all the other ME symptoms) and finally the worst bowel problems.
 

Jenny

Senior Member
Messages
1,388
Location
Dorset
I've had CFS for 3 years. I've spent probably one hundred thousand dollars on treatments. I'm on every hormone you can possibly replace. I've ran multiple treatment protocols. I recommend you guys try double the dose of doxycycline standardly prescribed. 200mg 2 times a day.
The reason I got interested in this bacterial theory is because I had constant symptoms of bacterial infection. Burning/very foul smelling stool, acne, etc. I even had symptoms that Dr. Hyman (who is now dead) said were related to bacteria infection like joint inflammation and high blood pressure. I had gotten on high blood pressure meds and still it was out of control.

Even scarier, just like I had read from the work of Dr. Hyman, I was passing this CFS to girlfriends. They would come down with stomach problems and chronic fatigue. They would even say "I feel like I can't lift my body". These were girls that had extremely healthy immune systems before meeting me. Just like in the article of Dr. Hyman and his colleagues where patients would come in and the whole office would come down with CFS. He would treat them with IV or higher dose oral antibiotics and their CFS would disappear. Google dr. hyman and all the results. His first name is on the link below which may help.

Naturally we don't come across people who claim to have been cured of CFS.
I stumbled upon links to this guy http://articles.cnn.com/1997-02-19/...ions-sick-veterans-chemical-exposure?_s=PM:US

200mg doxycycline twice a day is helping me unlike nothing else really. And I have had stool tests done from regular labs which show no out of place bacteria. All my problems started when I went to Mexico.

Thanks for this, but I was on this dose, and higher, of doxy for over a year - no change. I think quite a few of us have tried doxy and other abx for alleged bacterial infections, including Lyme.

Jenny
 

xchocoholic

Senior Member
Messages
2,947
Location
Florida
I've been experimenting with antibiotics lately too. Not this one tho. Just clarithromycin and metronidazole. Both for h pylori. I'm now trialling keflex tho for recurrent utis.

Just curious, does anyone else have low good bacteria counts on a metametrix test ? I'm negative for bad bacteria on this test but I assume that's because they didn't find the ones they normally looked for. So I coud have some bad ones.

I just wonder if our guts won't allow us to populate them with healthy bacteria. And if so, why not ? Is something eating it or destroying it ? I've been on probiotics for years. I'll be taking Metagenics next so I'll know if I just wasn't taking the right kind.

I read recently that bismuth, a heavy metal, interferes with bacteria by blocking it's ability to use iron. This is why they use pepto bismal for h pylori. (It doesn't appear to kill it completely tho)
Does this mean heavy metals in our guts could be causing this ? I was positive for mercury a couple of years ago ...

tx ... x
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I've been experimenting with antibiotics lately too. Not this one tho. Just clarithromycin and metronidazole. Both for h pylori. I'm now trialling keflex tho for recurrent utis.

Just curious, does anyone else have low good bacteria counts on a metametrix test ? I'm negative for bad bacteria on this test but I assume that's because they didn't find the ones they normally looked for. So I coud have some bad ones.

I just wonder if our guts won't allow us to populate them with healthy bacteria. And if so, why not ? Is something eating it or destroying it ? I've been on probiotics for years. I'll be taking Metagenics next so I'll know if I just wasn't taking the right kind.

I read recently that bismuth, a heavy metal, interferes with bacteria by blocking it's ability to use iron. This is why they use pepto bismal for h pylori. (It doesn't appear to kill it completely tho)
Does this mean heavy metals in our guts could be causing this ? I was positive for mercury a couple of years ago ...

tx ... x

To my knowledge, probiotics do not permanently colonize the gut. And the good bacteria gets eradicated by the antibiotics.
 

anciendaze

Senior Member
Messages
1,841
I've explored properties of a number of drugs people with ME are given in the hope of gaining insight into causes and treatments, without necessarily accepting the opinions which drive specific treatments. From painful experience over many years I have learned that few drugs are highly specific in their actions. (Psychoactive drugs are notorious for having multiple effects, so that the indications and side effects may swap places on pharmaceutical literature without changing the chemical at all.)

This has made me alert for evidence of effectiveness in cases which make no sense if you only consider the primary action of a drug. One of these showed up years ago in Japan when a patient was treated with minocycline for a urinary infection shortly after onset of acute schizophrenia, complete with hallucinations and delusions. The antibiotic appeared to not simply relieve the symptoms, but to cure the patient. This work was followed by trials in other countries which confirmed that sometime this antibiotic can head off the development of schizophrenia, if started early in the course of the disease. Note that some other patients treated in these studies had no apparent bacterial disease.

Further digging showed that Minocycline has some antiretroviral action. The chemical similarity between Minocycline and Doxycycline caused me to check the research on that. Doxycycline also has some antiretroviral action. Since many known retroviruses impair immune response, even specific activity of phagocytes dealing with bacteria, the correlation with bacterial infection could be a consequence of an undetected viral infection, not the primary cause of disease. This could have relevance to the use of long-term IV Doxycycline or Minocycline treatment for Lyme disease. The borelia spirochete could be part of a superinfection on top of an undetected slow viral infection. Parasites found in people with similar symptoms (babesia, giardia) could even be hyperinfections.

I'm still trying to track down evidence that other drugs given to patients with similar problems have weak antiretroviral properties. Acyclovir is sometimes used to treat patients with high titers of EBV, CMV or HHV-6. It has enough antiretroviral activity so that it has been proposed as a cheap generic which might be of use against HIV where more sophisticated and expensive drugs are unavailable. The interesting thing about this is that it only inhibits reverse transcription in cells dually-infected with HIV and EBV or another herpes virus. The conditions which produce antiretroviral activity are precisely the indications doctors using it to treat ME/CFS are looking for.

If anyone reading this has other reports of drugs given for any indication which surprisingly turn out to have antiretroviral properties I would like to hear about them. One example turned up in antiseizure medications, though the mechanism is more complicated. I recall hearing reports about antidepressant medications, but can't separate reports about improvements in the condition of AIDS patients taking them from the assumption that these improvements in proviral load are entirely the result of better patient compliance with other treatments. If you don't want to post here, send me a PM.
 

heapsreal

iherb 10% discount code OPA989,
Messages
10,089
Location
australia (brisbane)
with bacterial infections we get i think we need to be on abx for long periods. I use doxy 100mg twice a day for chronic sinusitis from a staph infection, it appears to work well and i feel better but not a cfs cure for me. I think all these infections we get are opportunistic because our nk function is crap.

cheers!!!
 

pine108kell

Senior Member
Messages
146
Just to address the title of this thread I think it is a clear consensus that CFS does not equal bacterial infrections. Many of us would have been cured or close to it. However, bacterial infections often play a role in CFS and many of us have those infections as part of our chronic illness.

Antibiotics do alter the immune system and can make you feel better--but if you have a chronic infection they will eventually make you feel much worse--herxheimer. I didn't just say anything profound, but just added for those who are new.
 

nanonug

Senior Member
Messages
1,709
Location
Virginia, USA
bacterial infections often play a role in CFS and many of us have those infections as part of our chronic illness

I am in disagreement. Chronic bacterial, viral or parasitic infections wreak havoc with the body. They may very well be the sole source of the symptoms known as chronic fatigue syndrome. I bolded syndrome because CFS is not a disease, it is a set of symptoms.
 

SaraM

Senior Member
Messages
526
I've been experimenting with antibiotics lately too. Not this one tho. Just clarithromycin and metronidazole. Both for h pylori. I'm now trialling keflex tho for recurrent utis.

Just curious, does anyone else have low good bacteria counts on a metametrix test ? I'm negative for bad bacteria on this test but I assume that's because they didn't find the ones they normally looked for. So I coud have some bad ones.

I just wonder if our guts won't allow us to populate them with healthy bacteria. And if so, why not ? Is something eating it or destroying it ? I've been on probiotics for years. I'll be taking Metagenics next so I'll know if I just wasn't taking the right kind.

I read recently that bismuth, a heavy metal, interferes with bacteria by blocking it's ability to use iron. This is why they use pepto bismal for h pylori. (It doesn't appear to kill it completely tho)
Does this mean heavy metals in our guts could be causing this ? I was positive for mercury a couple of years ago ...

tx ... x

Metagenics probiotic is not high quality. I once posted a link to a report by consumerlab . You may still want to try it though.
 

svetoslav80

Senior Member
Messages
700
Location
Bulgaria
Doxycycline is also an anti-inflammatory, as well as an NMDA receptor antagonist. So it might not be helping for the reasons you think (bacterial infections).

Exactly. And taking doxycycline in big doses for more than 2 months is crazy so I suggest that you stop it.
 

Adster

Senior Member
Messages
600
Location
Australia
Isn't there a theory that inappropriate use of antibiotics can be a cause of dysbiosis? I have no doubt that for some people fixing the gut could be curative, but I would weigh up the risks before taking antibiotics, it's not always a "free lunch", as they say.