failure with antibiotic therapy?

[ejovan]

hi i am starting antibiotic therapy with ruth in va. i am doing better but i make a diet mistake a get a flare, more mild than before but these days i am quicker to take an antacid or some antihistamine or something before i try to rough my way through it. basically, aside from giving in to eating whatever and paying the price for it, i am doing well, it seems. like my bladder is acting normally unless i slip food wise. who has had success with the antibiotic therapy? i would like to here from other people failures they have had and what some of the trouble i could get into with this long term use of antibio could be. i already see i am dehydrated (?, maybe that is something else), and my stomach bothers me from taking so many meds all the time. of course i am afraid of developing resistance, who wouldn't be. are there those among you who have been successful and who has failed in this therapy with ruth and why. what is happening out there.

[Rose Fish]

Hi: I just spoke with Ruth today re antibiotic treatment. I never ever had a urinary tract infection from a nornal culture. It is only when I did a broth culture that a bacteria came up. I am thinking of starting this treatmnet. Do you have a lot of urinary tract infections.

[ejovan]

hello rose fish, i did not have very many uti's in the past. maybe one or two that i can recall just off. i am already in treatment with ruth and looking for other people with experience with this and want to know who has been sucessful and who has not.


Hi: I just spoke with Ruth today re antibiotic treatment. I never ever had a urinary tract infection from a nornal culture. It is only when I did a broth culture that a bacteria came up. I am thinking of starting this treatmnet. Do you have a lot of urinary tract infections.

[MarthaF]

I have had success with antibiotics but it is important that you know what is causing the infection so you are on the right drug. It is also important to stay on the diet since the bladder takes time to heal and you want to keep it from being irritated. Depending on the individual it can take several months on antibiotics and so it is important to be on an antifungal like Nystatin or Diflucan, do not eat sugary foods and use a probiotic to replace good bacteria in the intestines. FemDohphilus is a good urogenital probiotic to be on, too.

There are others who have posted here about success, but many move on after their treatment

Martha F

[Vampireness]

I'm one of Ruth's patients. I've been consulting with her for over a year and I get multiple infections. I did have multiple infections before broth cultures and antibiotics made me feel better, but as soon as I got off them, I'm back to feeling extremly horrible. I take probiotics, for the yeast, because it does worsen the symptoms with all this intake of antibiotics. My condition started with one UTI.

I would say, that I'm doing alot better than I was before, but I'm still doing bad. I get too many repeated infections and I'm going to be trying out this protocol and the Nautropath wants me to wean off antibiotics, I can't seem to get a hold of Ruth to ask her, what she thinks. I need quite abit of money for the protocol products, though.

Vampireness

[ejovan]

hello marthaf, i have heard about you from holly, who is a strong advocate of antibio therapy. do you have your story written down somewhere around here so i can read it. i am with ruth, a np in va. she is doing the nystatin and i am taking probiotics. i will try the femdohph on your suggesting. so tell me about your success. does it mean it is all over this thing. can you eat what you like at this point. what is a girl like you doing here if it is all over. thank you so much for you time and for responding to my questions. vibe

I have had success with antibiotics but it is important that you know what is causing the infection so you are on the right drug. It is also important to stay on the diet since the bladder takes time to heal and you want to keep it from being irritated. Depending on the individual it can take several months on antibiotics and so it is important to be on an antifungal like Nystatin or Diflucan, do not eat sugary foods and use a probiotic to replace good bacteria in the intestines. FemDohphilus is a good urogenital probiotic to be on, too.

There are others who have posted here about success, but many move on after their treatment

Martha F

[MarthaF]

Yes, I can eat anything now. But I have had many ups and downs since I have had several different kinds of bacteria. For some it is only one type and their original treatment ends their problem. For others there are other complications. Meg has posted about her journey which revealed a Lyme infection as well as the bladder bacteria.

I worked with Dr. Fugazzotto, who made the original finding of bacteria in most symptomatic patients. He worked tirelessly to try to communicate his findings and helped many of us through his culturing and advice. We owe him gratitude for pursuing his work until he could no longer work. Luckily some of us are still able to communicate what he found. He was very perceptive in figuring this out. There is still more work to be done but he started the ball rolling.

In my case I am suspicious that I had a biofilm or an intracellular type of infection. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that is possible with E. coli when they found "pods" of intracellular communities of bugs that hide the bacteria from treatment and that it could re-emerge later to cause another infection. They referred to this problem as recurrent UTIs. In my case I had Enterococcus first, and then Staph, and Klebsiella. There is research that shows that the biofilm can be polymicrobial so other species can be sequestered within.

But not everyone has this type of infection and so they respond to treatment for the original type of bacteria. I am only saying the above to explain the length of my treatment, on and off. There is much more research to be done but we are handicapped since the mainstream does not accept a bacterial cause and so there are no researchers, that we know of, studying this association with bacteria in the case of an IC diagnosis. I'd like to repeat what I posted earlier: The EPIC study sponsored by the NIH has already shown that over 50% say their symptoms started with a UTI.

I stick with this since I believe unequivocably in a bacterial component and want others to know that they can pursue this approach on their own since we have a lab to do broth culturing and a nurse practitioner to treat an infection. Some are now using Quest labs to do better culturing. Doctors should be willing to treat based on their findings.

For those who haven't read an explanation of this approach I have posted it at: http://www.moonstar.com/~icickay/treatment.html
There are some success stories here.

Hope this explains why I am here.

Martha

[Anthrop42]

Ejovan,

I had a broth culture in Feb 07 that showed Strep D. I've been on antibiotics for 8 months now. I took amoxicillin & augmentin for 4 months. I had some yeast problems which then progressed to vulvodynia (even though I was taking nystatin & femdophilus). As my bladder symptoms got better, I switched to nitrofurantoin to save my sex life with my husband.

My bladder has continued to improve, but I still have an infection. I had another broth culture done in Oct & still have Strep D. My symptoms are very few though. I am developing more side effects from the antibiotics, which is making things more difficult, but all in all, the therapy saved my life. I believe my bladder will heal, but it is a long process. You just have to have faith & realize that what works for one person may not work for you. You might have to take different antibiotics, different dosages, etc.

Good luck!
Aline

[MarthaF]

I think that since we are all different we require different treatments and not all respond at the same rate. But usually there is at least a bacterial component to the symptoms and it takes time to work out how to treat whatever is found. The bladder wall takes time to heal so it takes patience, moreso than when one is dealing with the common E. coli infection that clears up in a week or so.

I've posted about FemDohphilus often here and just found that this month's Prevention Magazine has named it one of the top medical breakthroughs of 2007 for women's health! They mention its use for treating/preventing BV and yeast but we have also found it is helpful for UTI treatment. It keeps the bad bacteria from adhering to the vaginal wall and populates the vagina with good lactobacilli that we need. A good natural treatment.

Martha