Thoughts on pulsing abx?

[BeeRae22]

We have tried unsuccessfully to take dd10 off of Bactrim a few times and I'm considering pulsing abx. Any thoughts? Advantages? Disadvantages? Anyone recommend tapering off slowly vs. pulsing?

 

Her doc has always been opposed to low doses of abx and I am inclined to follow his recommendations regarding that, but we have discussed pulsing. Any experiences?

[LNN]

I personally believe pulsing is great for certain infections and a bad idea for others. I think it depends on the life cycle of what you're treating. In something like Lyme, which has a life cycle of 3-4 weeks and has behaviors associated with hiding in biofilms and re-emerging to replicate, then pulsing can be ideal. But if you're treating a virus or something like strep or mycoplasma that reproduces rapidly, then I think pulsing makes no sense because you're just beating the colony down, then leaving, letting it build back up and beating it down again, which could encourage resistance to that antibiotic. If you're using something like zith, which has a long half-life, you could pulse every other day and not really change blood concentration levels, but I think bactrim only has a half life of a few hours. So I wouldn't think it's a good pulsing candidate?

 

If you're wanting to pulse for gut health, or if you have an infection that doesn't seem to be responding to pharmaceuticals, I've had great success with herbal antibiotics. Stephen Buhner's books are really helpful on this. DD had a chronic sinus infection (Marcons) and a year of abx wasn't getting the job done, She took alchornea (herbal abx) for 3 months and it's completely gone, and much kinder to the gut. Red Sage (aka Dan Shen) is another great herb for Pandas kids but should only be used for a month before taking a break, as it can raise estrogen levels over longer term use.

 

Also, when symptoms don't seem to be linked to active infection but you relapse when you take away an abx, consider environmental triggers (eg mold) or look at the properties of the abx to see what body systems it could be effecting. Bactrim is a high sulfur drug. So that's impacting the transsulfuration system (part of the methylation system) that supports detox. Removing bactrim could be impacting detox rather than impacting an infection.

 

I'm not a doctor, and not trying to gie medical advice. Just trying to toss ideas out there for you to consider. My DD has been in a bad place this past year (thankfully my DS is doing awesome, so his success has given me hope during dark days). And now that we've cleared her staph infection, it seems to be coming back to methylation issues for her.

 

Hope you find answers....