Artemisia help?

I'm working on parasites with my practitioner - after having bad reactions to TUDCA, PARA 1 and Parastonil, she recommended Para Chord by Energetix which I can't get in the UK so she has now recommended Artemisia by Supreme Nutrition instead. This contains Artemisia annua leaf.

Can anyone explain to me the difference between the different types or artemisia's and the whole plant versus the leaf?

She has recommend to take it 3 times per week maximum. Can anyone explain why it's necessary to pulse artemisia?

Anything else important to know about taking this? thank you!

Buhner wrote quite a bit about artemisia the plant and artemisinin the semi-synthetic drug made from it

he found that the plant was originally used in TCM in a remote region of china for malaria by macerating it in warm milk.
this is because the active compounds in the artemisia annua plant are not very water soluble - but is soluble in non-ionic lipids (fats)

the compounds in the plant are also easily damaged and potency easily lost via heat, oxygen, drying etc

it came to prominence after the Vietnam war - when Chinese troops used it to protect them from malaria - while western troops suffered

but the difficulty in getting sufficient dose from the plant is essentially why artemisinin (the drug) was made - to produce a more water soluble and therefore more easily absorbed form of the drug

it was very effective - malaria strains that are naïve to the drug are extremely sensitive to it - and as a result it revolutionised malaria treatment. still it was usually used in combination with 1 or 2 other antimalarial drugs in an attempt to slow down the appearance of resistant strains - something malaria is very prone to do - and thereby prolong the useful life of the drug. despite this partial or full resistance is quite common in malaria in several parts of the world.

in the lyme community - it has been "grandfathered over" for use on babesia infections - because of its effectiveness against malaria - and because babesia is a known to be a related organism to malaria. however there is significant difference between the two and more recent studies tend to show limited action against most Babesia species.
the reason appears to be due to artemisinin's mechanism of action is related to malaria's heme metabolism - (although to my knowledge the exact mechanism of action has not been fully elucidated) but this heme metabolism is not something thought to be shared with Babesia - which may explain the mixed results

it was one of the few refined plant based drugs buhner was in favour of - for the same reasons of issues with solubility and abortion of the whole herb

it has however been found to be significantly active against lyme and in particular lyme persister cells - when combined with other antibiotics - a potentially useful feature

i have not found any reliable references for its activity against bartonella - and would be v interested to hear if anyone else has

artemisinin's activity against other pathogens ( or parasites) seems rather unknown - mainly because the vast majority of the research has been done on malaria

other plants in the genus artemisia do however have a long history of traditional use for intestinal parasites -
for example - Artemisia vulgaris - common wormwood and Artemisia absinthium - giant wormwood - as thier name suggests. i suspect there will be references to these species in the western herbal medicines Materia Medica

there are both similarities and significant differences in bioactive constituents of the various species - notably much lower levels of artemisinin in the other species vs A. Annua
but i am not sure how much research exist on which of these other compounds is active for which parasites

i think the use for intestinal parasites is mainly based on traditional use - the plant has typically been used as part of a cocktail of herbs targeting Helminths (Nematodes (roundworms), cestodes (tapeworms), and trematodes (flatworms) ) in the human digestive tract. There may be studies that shed some light on this but its not something i have looked into

so that's the basic history

there is little or no difference between "whole herb" and "leaves"
whole herb usually refers to the ariel parts of the plant - ie leaves and stems - as distinguished from the root or the bark or the seeds
leaves only and leaves and stems typically have very much the same compounds - whereas roots, barks and seeds typically differ.

one notable and unusual feature of the plant and the drug is that artemisinin causes the human body to dramatically upregulate certain liver enzymes causing it to ramp up its metabolism and therefore increase its rate of excretion many fold over the period of around 1 week - Buhner wrote about this in his healing lyme book. he noted that blood levels on day 8 of constant dosing were around 1/8th of those on the first day - this means that after 7 or 8 days the blood concentrations were too low to be useful against malaria - even though the organism is extremely sensitive to it - and as a result he only advised taking it on a pulsed basis - 7 days at a time - or i think 2 weeks maximum continuously.

Buhner did advocate using both the semisynthetic drug Arteminsin together with the whole herb - as he found some studies indicating the components in the whole herb may slow down the excretion of artemisinin - compared to taking only artemisinin on its own.

when used for Babesia - its often pulsed 3 days on 11 days off in 14 day cycles - partly for this reason and partly because the lifecycle of malaria ( from which is use in Babesia is extrapolated) causes new organisms to exit the liver after around 2 weeks.

typical pharma treatments for helminths are also often pulsed - again due to the lifecycle of the organism - eggs are typically extremely resistant to antiparasitics ( herbal or pharma )- and so once the adults are killed - there is no more point in continuously dosing until the remaining eggs are hatched - and the young are susceptible.

i imagine the 3x per week dosing is some variant of this for similar reasons - but its not one i have come across - and its not dangerous to dose continuously as far as i know

the only other thing to be aware of is that things that upregulate liver enzymes have a tendency to cause blood levels of other drugs a person may be using top go up or down - so this can effect the outcomes of certain medications. this's typically only a major issue with drugs that are very finely balanced - eg blood pressure medication, blood clotting medications like warfarin etc but its worth checking if yo are taking any medications

you should be able to find info on possible interactions between artemisinin and other prescription medications on drug interaction checkers like drugs.com

sorry for the rather long and rambling post - its a somewhat complex topic

i hope its of some help