Warrant - when I first read the title to this thread, I thought you had spelled Rifampin incorrectly.


I would want to try to treat my gut issues without an antibiotic first since the stool analysis showed only MILD dysbiosis.

Do you have diarrhea..or other indications that you would need an antibiotic to 'fix' it?

I would feel the same as you.

I think you should just focus on natural gut healers...

Herbalwhiz- how long had you been in antibiotics before c diff appeared? Was it long term?

Hello,

I appreciate your question - "Has anyone had experience using rifaximin (Xifaxan) for Lyme?"

I am an integrative/functional family medicine physician and my daughters have struggled with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and Lyme for several years.

Because we had such DRASTIC improvement within 2 days using rifaximin for SIBO when my daughter was 8 yrs old, I assumed most of her (their) issues (abdominal pain,insomnia, feeling sick) were from the SIBO. As is common with SIBO, she gets recurrences, and each time it is more difficult to treat, and doesn't respond to previous treatments that worked in the past (rifaximin first, then Neem Plus and Allimax).

Then we discovered they had Lyme, and it was suggested that the abdominal pain was a Lyme neuropathy, similar to Bell's Palsy or Trigeminal neuralgia from Lyme. We are working on treating that, with success in one child, and ongoing struggles for the other.

I keep thinking back to how QUICKLY she responded with the treatments for SIBO, but now I wonder, were those treatments really treating the Lyme, and now the Lyme has become resistant to the treatments, as it so often does given that it is a "stealth pathogen"? (or the treatments hit both the SIBO and the Lyme?)

So my question is this: does Xifaxan (rifaximin) kill Lyme?
If indeed it does, perhaps one should stay on Xifaxan much longer, in combo with other treatments to target this stealth pathogen.
I will do a more in depth literature search, but as of this posting, I am not finding anything.

In Health,
A Doctor on a Journey . . .
I