herxing like crazy on Fenben and Doxy

Has anyone else herxed intensely even on low dose fenben?

I started with 150mg and herxed, backed down to 70mg and still herxed along with my 100mg doxy.

I have been on doxy for a year and have basically stalled, I dont herx on it anymore, so this herx is very noticeable

But adding in fenben has really hit me hard. People often say you dont herx from fenben, well thats not true for me.

Is it killing the lyme directly?

Is it busting up biofilms,

or is it instead killing something else like parasites?

I currently take fenbendazole three days a week (3 on 4 off, with other abx) at 250mg.

I have taken it continuously and at high dosages. It does cause herx reactions.

My reading indicates it treats blood borne parasites as well as the intestinal parasites. Is probably a good biofilm buster, and has anti fungal and anti microbial properties, heals myelin sheath damage and cures some cancers.

I believe it has been the primary supportive to healing my damaged vision

I use the liquid form for dosing ease and take with a fat and vitamins.

You may benefit in a change from doxycycline to minocycline.

Post Edited (carlnpa) : 3/4/2021 1:17:59 PM (GMT-7)

Girlie said...
Hi Fred - Welcome!

For chronic lyme disease....a LLMD should know to prescribe at least two abx at a time..

Yes, I am also taking zithromax on and off, but am not currently taking it, so it is only doxy with the fenben.

Fenbendazole and many of the other azoles have activity against Bartonella also - so it may be an indication you are dealing with Bart.

i have read that bartonella forms resistance to single antibiotics relatively easily - so perhaps it got used to the doxy

i also took doxy alone for 3 months because that's all i could get my doctor to prescribe and had some benefit - but this leveled off after a while

You still herx after 15 months of use!!? I'm sorry to hear that.

Heck, people are curing their cancer in 3 months using it.

Thank you.

Have you ever tried ivermectin or other anti-parastics?

Fenbendazole is another of the very broad spectrum anthelmintic like Ivermectin.

It may kill off everything from virus, fungal, nematodes and stuff we haven't identified yet.

I hope you find it a useful treatment addition as I do.

Fenbendazole dose response time can apparently be very short, hours.

Fenben by itself caused a huge herx for me because of intestinal parasites. It helped me a ton though. I got a huge increase in energy after a few months.

Fred,

I'm still using it 250mg for 3 days 4 off, paired with a lot but also 12mg ivermectin daily now for 97 days daily.

I don't want to jinx this but I believe it to be working positively, my eye discomfort has largely resolved after 27 months. No improvement with floaters though.

Fenbendazole is very useful.

Fluconazole has been very very good also. I was cautious in using this but no herx, I'm just feeling better. I am at day 14 of 25 planned, 200mg daily single dose. The 25 day protocol was trialed as a cure years ago, remission by itself for 80% for Lyme.

I have tried both fenben and ivermectin now. The ivermectin is very well tolerated, no herx or fatigue or anything. The fenben though has a delayed reaction, after day 2-3 fatigue starts to build and so I cycle off of it and it clears up and I feel well afterwards, so I think I made some progress herxing on it.
Since fenben can kill so many different things, I do wonder if this is lyme die off, parasite die off, candida die off, or even the possiblity that I have some unknown cancer and it is killing that off ?
Does anyone recognize this kind of herx that is pretty much fatigue only after a couple of days, no traditional achiness like I usually get. Just fatigue.

that interesting Fred - i have also been trailing Ivermectin 1x per week - and finding what i think are mild benefits.

i note that some LLMD's use it continuously for a few days to a week or so for lyme patients and believe it helps normalise the immune system - but specifics are very hard to find -

not much research on its actions in lyme group bacteria - i guess because its an old off patent drug - there is little financial justification for people to do so - but it may be that it has broader than anti-parasitic action. we know it has some antiviral activity.

Carl

glad to hear you are moving forward

i have not come across the flucanozole lyme trial you mention - please do post a link it you have it - but i do see from Zhang's studies the azole antifungals have been shown to have v strong activity for Bart stationary phase cultures ( more representative of chronic human infections) where conventional bart antibiotics fail.

it seems likely that a great many people with treatment resistant lyme actually have bartonella s a co-infection - and ticks carrying borrelia are most often infected with bartonella - and yet testing for bartonella is way worse than testing for lyme - so that is at least all consistent with what we would expect to find.
it could then be that treating one of the other might be enough for them to turn the corner

Dr SP favours it pulsed together with doxy or tetracycline for bart and finds it effective for a similar % of patients

thanks for the link !

that's interesting as even the authors point out that there is in vitro evidence that fluconazole does not kill borrelia in the test tube - and hence the authors speculate the mechanism might be die to some disturbance of the CYP450 enzyme system - though they don't make a powerful argument for why or how exactly.

i did some digging into QT interval prolongation and TDP risk in macrolides and other drugs and documented some of that in a post here - as this has been my concern over trying clarithromycin high dose oral ( that seemed to help my partner a lot after only 10days )

the conclusions there were that most risk in the individual is driven by inherent genetic factors - and then complicating factors are overlaid - such as multiple QT effecting drugs concurrently, old age, pre-exiting conditions etc
so its mainly a lottery - but then most actual deaths occurred only in intravenous macrolide administration leading to 10x blood concentrations and even then only when combined with multiple other risk factors - like other QT drugs old age and pre-existing conditions

so that gave me some confidence

i did still wonder if i could rig some kind of home ekg and monitor QT before and after - but it seems that long QT is not a very good indicator of risk of TDP - and the risk of death is really from sudden TDP that does not reliably relate degree of QT elongation

it is perhaps another reason to try pulsing also - 2 weeks on 2 weeks off - as it should in some way reduce risk also

yep - the potassium lowering effect of these agents seems to be in the mix - i also supplement with both - as find they seem to help a little with symptom control ( BTW - i get potassium from around 2.5g of potassium carbonate for its immune balancing vagus nerve stimulating effects )

not sure i would mix clarithro with fluconazole for the above reason - maybe with a tetracycline would be safer - i tried azithro for many months - only a mild impact for me - but clarithro is known to be more effective for lyme and also often clarithro works better for bart - acc to LLMD's

it seems Bart can be resistant to azithro - but if so clarithro typically still works
i think azithro is used in large quantities in animal agriculture and since most of what we get infected with is zoonotic - likely resistance is built via this path

will do a little reading on teh relative risk of Fluconazole - as i have that in my armoury