Monday, November 23, 2009

Cystic forms and relapse

It happens all the time. A patient has finally done great. No symptoms. Remission at last.
Symptom free with a "maintenance" med or regimen-- Doxycycline alone or Amoxicillin and Biaxin. Meds are stopped. Lyme symptoms return almost instantly, within days or weeks.

Why?

I have given this some thought. Lyme spirochetes grow slowly. They replicate every 24 hours give or take. The Lyme "load" hasn't suddenly grown exponentially. Is it autoimmune? Antibiotics do have anti-inflammatory properties; have they been suppressing a smoldering autoimmune response lying in wait? No--autoimmune processes generally progress gradually.

This leaves only one possibility. What happens quickly? Cyst forms of Lyme quickly convert to spirochetes, within hours. Ah-ha--the ready source of spirochetes!

As a patient recently told me: "The other antibiotics just cause everything (spirochetes and L-forms) to convert to cysts. Do they?

Cysts are metabolically inactive and generally don't make us sick; the brain seems to be the exception.

In the brain, cyst forms are associated with inflammation. There is experimental evidence supporting this. Tindamax-- the magic drug - sharpens the brain - eliminates vestiges of brain fog.

With the relapse, cognitive functions frequently remain intact while other Lyme symptoms explode. If brain cysts cause more damage than spirochestes there-- I quess this makes sense.

Questions: few answers. Do cyst busters lower relapse rates? Early or late?

Are dreaded L-forms in fact more docile than cysts? Not in the brain.

Perhaps a regimen of a cell wall inhibitor-cyst buster might work better in (in patients lacking cognitive dysfunction), assuming the germs have not passed the blood brain barrier.

Just a thought.

9 comments:

  1. Hi Doc,

    Thank you for your insightful, valuable posts. I appreciate the effort, and thought that goes into these.

    I have a "fringe" question for you. I have chronic lyme, and after 14 months of orals (and earlier IV rocephin), show almost no improvement.

    I recently started Rife therapy. (please keep reading). I had mentally tagged Rife as whacko nonsense when I first heard of it. But after giving it a try, I find that I can essentially make myself herx on demand. Just like abx therapy, clinical observation, and use of herx as a measuring tool, it seems that whatever the method, if it herxes, it's "working". Well, by that measure Rife is certainly working for me. Will it lead to long-term remission, I don't know.

    But in thinking about this, I think Rife can only act on spirochetes, not cysts. So, I'm off abx for a while to give the little corkscrew bustards the impression all is well, and then WHAM once or twice a week.

    Do you have any thoughts on this technology? It seems to me that using a cyst-buster (mepron without zith; flagyl, ...) would be useful in conjunction with Rife.

    What I'm hoping is that Rife blindsides the bugs and doesn't make them go to cyst form as readily, so over time I chip away at the overall bacterial load.

    What do you think of all this?
    (Oh, just to say it, I do understand that a Rife machine is not an FDA approved medical device).

    Best,
    -joe

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  2. Which or what is a "cell wall inhibitor-cyst buster.."? flagyl?

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  3. dear Lymemd
    Some time agoyou wrote that the motile organisms seemed to be bartonella spp.Have you had succes with traditional treatment for these?
    The organisms in the WBCs?Any idea what they might be and also,did your before and after analysis give any information about what worked and what didnt?
    Gale

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  4. Relapse after stopping meds is somehow logical but what about relapse while on the same meds? For example I have early disseminated lyme, took doxy for 2 months but the pain was still there. Then I added Biaxin and plaquenil but after 2 weeks of the combo the pain got far worse. I decided to stop doxy and continue biaxin and plaq. Three or four days after stopping doxy all pain went away for a month or so. During this time I was still on biax+plaq. Then, just when I decided to stop all abx I got a nasty cold and the pain was back,and also expanded to my other joints like elbows, hips. I just can't understand a thing from all this. Did the Biaxin stop working?

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  5. Great post! I'm so glad you brought this up.Thanks for the info on cysts and L-forms in the brain. I have not read this before. Since brain inflammation is troubling for me, guess I need to do some cyst work!

    Moosie: I also Rife. It is very effective for me. Do you belong to any Rife support groups? There is a good one on Yahoo: Lyme_and_Rife. This particular group has a good "gathering" of very experienced rifers. I have learned a lot here. Many of the rifers I know have rifed until they no longer herx then stat taking either a cyst buster or teasel root to draw the spirochetes out of the cysts. Then rife more.

    I doubt the doc will comment on rife due to the fact that it is not FDA approved.

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  6. Hmm so are you saying l-forms are more damaging in the brain?
    And cysts forms are more damaging as well?

    Getting confused here - so is it good to use cysts inducing drug in lyme with good BBB penetration or bad?

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  7. I am so glad we have some Docs that are on board with this stuff (bio film) this on guy does cultures and actually watches the keets form clusters, it seems they like to do so even in Parkinson's they show the clusters of keets under a microscope.

    http://lymies.ning.com/group/biofilm

    http://lymies.ning.com/video/oral-spirochetes-and

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  8. 24 hour doubling is powerfully exponential. If there is no restriction on growth say youv'e knocked the disease down to 1% of its original density.

    in
    2 4 8 16 32 64 128
    so 7 days, its back.

    so the smallest conversion from the cysts to the active spirochete form will be a seed that exponentially grows.

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  9. the maintenance med should penetrate the blood brain barrier

    Amoxicillin and Biaxin don't satisfy this. doxycyclin is only useful at uncomfortable levels

    Guessing,3rd+ generation oral cephalosporins (Omnicef, Suprax) look right.(i hvnt tried them yet!)



    I like that they are bactericidal. And I like the idea that every time they work they are modifying the 'genome' in your body. Selecting the most inactive variant of the disease.

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