Botanical medicines and nutraceutical agents

Dear friends,

I have recently found this interesting paper and study:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/11/7/1759

In this regard, I thought is there is really somebody who has managed to come to complete remission for bartonella and borrelia with herbs only.

Due to certain reason I had to stop abx for some time and have to go on now also with herbs only, and only low dose Methyle blue, which I hope and assume does no produce Candida albicans overgrowth neither is that much disruptive for microbiome. I guess shor term interruption of abx is ok and also evolvement of symptoms will show which of infections are still active etc.

Best regards, B

the other thing to beare in mind with such studies is - that while they are encouraging and a start of the process to understand what might be helpful to treat lyme and co

there are in fact many differences between what happens in a test tube in teh lab and what happens when a person consumes a herb

in the lab they typically make a herbal extract ( similar to a tincture ) and in the majority of those studies listed in that paper - simply add that to a container of cultured bacteria - directly

whereas when a human consumes a herb or its extract orally it has to pass through a number of barriers or membranes which each limits its absorption or changes its makeup significantly - such that the bacteria in our tissues may not experience concentrations at anything like the same levels as the lab experiments - or may not receive the active components at all.
these barriers / processes include
- incomplete extraction via digestion
- incomplete absorption via the gut membrane
- only partial pass through the first pass liver metabolism ( all digestive blood goes to the liver first)
- only partial pass through of the cellular membranes ( many pathogenic organisms live inside cells)
- only partial pass through of body compartment membranes like the blood brain barrier

so we can see that while activity in a test tube is a useful starting point - to be active in a human patient the active compounds also need to overcome many further hurdles in sufficient concentrations to be effective in the real world. note - most pharma drugs also fail at this stage in trials

in addition the bacteria in those lab experiments may be in either fast growing state or stationary phase / biofilm state - and antimicrobials really need to be active for both fast growth and stationary phase states to be very useful for lyme and co - sometimes only log growth cultures are tested - which are much easier to kill ( 1000x easier in many cases)

for these reasons its important to be aware that such papers represent only the first step in a chain of necessary trials to know if a herb or compound is really likely to be helpful

Dear Garzie and Sara,
thanks for your answers. I appreciate your opinions and m grateful for our communication.
Garzie: I very much agree with your viewpoint and arguments. You have provided some useful informations. I had to suspend abx due to unspecified pain in liver that has turned out to be only momentrary, lasting for one-days only, and now is gone, I will nevertheless try to be off abx for say 10-14 days and observe symptoms.
Regarding herbs, sofar I have had the same experience as you. Any time I have tried to stop abx, my symptoms slowly resumed after 2-4 weeks. I will see this time how it will go. I have a tendency of going to extrems, so also now I m taking extensive Buhner with "Hammer on Gu" from TCM (Su He Tang) and MB, and will see if the symptoms will get worse, after what time and in which way, which will also give sort of indication of something. Apart from that hopefully microbiome and IS will have a chance to rest for abx...
In this regard I m ready to re-sume abx, while waiting for tests of CBC, liver etc to be done, including WB on lyme.
Sara: thanks, yes, I m having all 3 books of Buhner. I assume one can get into remission with what you have mentioned is the infection is not severe, or many systems are not strongly affected, like in my case - I was so tired, had many neurological issues, low vitality and life force, and felt like I m not able to live and function normally, so many of common lyme and bart neuro symtoms... I was help a lot with abx,thats my experience, but for sure others can get healed with herbs or lifestyle + diet changes or milder approach too, I believe it is possible...

Best wishes, all good luck, B