Opinions On The "Antibiotic Honeymoon" Phenomena

I am wondering if any of the wonderful people here - or their doctors - have experience with, or have discussed the "antibiotic honeymoon" ..

This is when an antibiotic is started, and initially, it feels like it is working right off the bat ...

For example, in my case - I was feeling god-awful, and I took doxy and tindamax together for the first time ... Within 4 or 5 hours, I felt so much better

This has happened with Bactrim also

I am CERTAIN it is not a placebo effect - other antibiotics have not done this ...

In the case with Bactrim, after 2 weeks, it was utter hell taking it

My question is:

Is this simply the anti-inflammatory properties of the antibiotic, or, it is the antibiotic basically shutting down the immune system - or - it is hitting the infection and catching it off-guard ........

I just wish it would go as smooth as some of the first doses, as the pain becomes unbearable soon after this honeymoon period ..

( Yes, I know - detox detox - it doesn't always help, and believe me, I try )

What you describe is when the proper abx are prescribed - at the proper doses - and the bacteria numbers are starting to lower, but not enough bacteria are being killed to create an overload of toxins yet to make you herx.

As the bacteria die, they put off toxins. These toxins must be processed through the body to get rid of them, or they will just accumulate in the body, making the person more and more ill, with ever growing severity in their symptoms. This is exactly what happened to me with I first started with pharma abx back in 2007. My doc (no one really) knew how important detoxing really was. I was on abx for 12 months and it took me 2 yrs to detox enough (I had to start off really, really slow) to get back to the baseline I was at before I had started treatments.

A herx occurs when the blood is overwhelmed with toxins and the body simply can't process them fast enough - which is why we push detoxing here - it absolutely will lessen the severity of the herxing - but it won't necessarily stop it. Some have such severely compromised detoxing pathways that their body simply can't keep up, even with tons of detoxing. Those people usually find out that they have a genetic mutation (MTHFR) that makes it harder for the body to detox.

No doubt that the anti-inflammatory effect of the abx has an effect, but there's so much more that is happening.

Traveler said...
What you describe is when the proper abx are prescribed - at the proper doses - and the bacteria numbers are starting to lower, but not enough bacteria are being killed to create an overload of toxins yet to make you herx.

As the bacteria die, they put off toxins. These toxins must be processed through the body to get rid of them, or they will just accumulate in the body, making the person more and more ill, with ever growing severity in their symptoms. This is exactly what happened to me with I first started with pharma abx back in 2007. My doc (no one really) knew how important detoxing really was. I was on abx for 12 months and it took me 2 yrs to detox enough (I had to start off really, really slow) to get back to the baseline I was at before I had started treatments.

A herx occurs when the blood is overwhelmed with toxins and the body simply can't process them fast enough - which is why we push detoxing here - it absolutely will lessen the severity of the herxing - but it won't necessarily stop it. Some have such severely compromised detoxing pathways that their body simply can't keep up, even with tons of detoxing. Those people usually find out that they have a genetic mutation (MTHFR) that makes it harder for the body to detox.

No doubt that the anti-inflammatory effect of the abx has an effect, but there's so much more that is happening.

Thanks Traveler !

In your case, in those 2 years of detoxing, was it more detoxing of the bacteria die-off or the antibiotics ?