# Tetracycline and Diarrhea still GONE



## Hester (Jul 5, 2009)

Well, It has been seven days on Tetracycline. I am now constipated - an issue that is frankly quite welcomed at this point. My weight is up 5 pounds and I can actually shower and go for a little walk without becoming breathless and exhausted and sweaty. The night sweats have ceased as well as the clamy skin and coating on my tongue and teeth. Both my GI and IM believe my condition is severe SIBO. The question is why? Both also feel there must be a stricture or disease in motility or the mucus membrane to have brought this on. Like many people here, my condition started with what appeared to be an infection or virus of the GI tract. My appetite is now back in full force and I have no pain except for a very unhappy hemorrioid. Thursday I go for a barrium scan of the small bowel because my CT did not image it. I also follow up tomorrow with my Naturopath to fill her in on these new findings and the bacterial overgrowth. I also read the thread regarding increased gut permeability which might account for the crud seen on my live blood analysis. I continue to take my supplements, GI enzymes, probotics (doc said OK), vitamins and oils as well as the Glutamine and have added frozen peppermint caps to help with digestion. So far I have my fingers crossed.


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## McGruber (Feb 18, 2009)

That's really great to hear Hester, hope it continues to work. Keep us updated.


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## crstar (Jun 29, 2009)

i have read some things lately that peppermint is not such a good thing, i can’t remember why...........when i took it for a while, back months ago, i did not feel good with it & i kept having that taste in the back of my throat............& i hate the taste of peppermint.........i’m still taking the iron & it seems to b working........i just took 11.25mg of iron, which is 1/4th of the caplet it comes in.........the time before that dose was 4-1/2days before, 15mg.........so i am waiting & seeing.........i have reduced the calcium carbonate to less than a 1/4th of what i had to take to stop the D..........it did not make me feel very good.........it stopped the D, but otherwise not so good.........& i had to take it 3x a day & if i missed a dose, the D & pain would hit me like a mack truck......it was pretty awful.........with the iron, i don't get that when i need to take more...........i'm taking a little as i can to find out how much i need...........when a dr says he/she wants to take some tests or scope me or run scans, i go ahead & let them, knowledge is a good thing, but there will not b any surgery or drugs for me.........when i think of all the antibiotics i’ve taken over the yrs past, i realize that it might b one of the main causes of why i ended up here, now...........over the yrs, i have dealt with many drs & the majority of them usually try to make me feel like i’m an idiot & they know better what’s wrong with me, cause after all, i didn’t go to med school......dr’ do alot of “Practicing” of medicine & they practice on us unsuspecting patients........we think they r so knowledgeable, but the fact remains, they always say, we’ll try this & if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else & they send us home to experience whatever horror they have prescribed...........we come back & say well the original problem is better, but now i think the drug is causing XYZ & they give us another drug to counteract the side effects of the first drug they put us on..........and on it goes..........from now on i’m using natural things to take care of infections........ever sice i started taking hydrochloric acid (HCl), i have on occasion felt like i was getting something, i even started getting some of those staff infections that r called boils (which i’ve had many times before, but the HCl has cleared them up........i have diluted the stuff i take for my insides & use it as a disinfectant.........it works great.......everytime in the past that i got some boils, i always ended up at the dr getting them lanced & taking strong antibiotics..........now, everything heals........truly amazing stuff.........i once had a very wise OB.......i had come in for my prenatal appt at about the 13th week.......i told him i had felt life at 12wks......he looked at me & i insisted i’d felt life....... he told me that when a woman tells him about something to do with her body, he never argues.......after all, it’s her body, she would know best.........i have 4 children & i felt life with all of them at about the 12-13wk mark.........he was a wise dr........but wise drs r rare these days..........i believe in emergency drs, they treat emergencies & save lives, but the rest of them just “Practice” on us..........i hope u r ok & everything goes well............


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## Hester (Jul 5, 2009)

Hi CR - My peppermint pills are frozen so I am not tasting a thing. Don't know if they calm things down or not. I also see an ND tonight and am taking my 40 bottles of herbs to see what 5 or 6 would be the best to take to build my body backup. Unfortunately, I can tell that I NEED those antibiotics and the overgrowth of bacteria was severe. I had tried the Grapefruit seed extract, echinacea and a number of other herbals to "kill" bacteria. None of them worked. It is hard to argue with being able to get up in the morning and not feel exhausted and covered in sweat with a cloudy useless brain. The SIBO ususally only happens from a stricture, blockage or severe damage to the mucus membranes. My IM thinks this could have happened from the SJS burning off my GI tract and just took a year to finally coat everything enough to cause extreme malabsorption. To me, this makes perfect sense but we still need to rule out a blockage or stricture and I may need to still swallow the camera.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

The OLD theory was you need some major damage or surgery that does odd things to the small intestine (or certain serious diseases) to get SIBO.Pimentel's work seems to show for some people there are functional problems (which may be what some of the serious illnesses seem to do which is not alter the anatomy but still screw up the motility) that can lead to SIBO which is why his work was considered a breakthrough. He found SIBO in a place you don't expect to see it based on the OLD theory of why people have SIBO.GI infections cause lots of damage to the control of the gut. You can have "psuedo obstruction" which is functional in some conditions where there is NO complete blockage of the intestine, yet the body acts as IF you have a complete blockage. If you can "fake" a complete blockage just with how the intestine is misbehaving certainly something that mucks up the motility to the same extent anatomical damage would can cause SIBO just as easily.I suspect the inflammation and damage from the SJS could certainly do as much damage to the "remote control" for the gut as inflammation from ulcerative colitis or a bad bout of food poisoning. It is hard to imagine it would do much less damage than other things.Usually if they really think you have a stricture they will not do the pill camera as that could prevent it from getting through and they'd have to remove it surgically. I'd do a barium test where you swallow the barium and they track it with X-rays if there is a good chance you have an anatomical narrowing of the intestine.


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## Hester (Jul 5, 2009)

Kathleen that is exactly why my GI does not want me to swallow the pill for that very reason. My barium series is Thursday but it will only show stricture or blockage and not actually damage to nerve or membrane. I can look back and this did seem to start about 6 months after the SJS. Keep in mind for the first three months with SJS all I "ate" was liquids and soft foods because of the severe burns. I think it does stand to reason something happened because of the burns. One can hope the damage is done and the SIBO will go away and not come back once my motility returns - if I am lucky enough to have had my body truly heal. Thanks, Kathleen!


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

The camera pill won't show damage to the nerves, either, but can get a look at the lining. I do think they need to make sure you could pass the thing before doing that test and the barium should show that.


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## Borrellifan (May 5, 2009)

Kathleen M. said:


> The camera pill won't show damage to the nerves, either, but can get a look at the lining. I do think they need to make sure you could pass the thing before doing that test and the barium should show that.


Yep, they did the barium first on me then the pill cam.


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## Hester (Jul 5, 2009)

Yeah, it is a BIG, BIG pill. I would not want that thing getting stuck when I'm so weak.


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## Borrellifan (May 5, 2009)

I think i mentioned it but Antibiotics were the only thing that helped me as well. Unfortunetly subsequent treatments have not worked as well.... to the point they don't really work at all anymore. My GI thought i had SIBO and gave me the breath test but it came back negative. I may have him prescribe me a different type of antibiotic once i get health insurance again. For now im trying Oregano Oil, grapfruit seed extract, and Garden of Life's fungal defense. So far i haven't felt any better but i also have a thing of Oxy Powder on the way which is supposed to blast/cleanse out any bad bacteria as well. Im going to try this stuff for a couple of weeks and then go heavy on probiotics and see what happens.Keep us updated on wheather it comes back or not? Mine unfortunetly did.


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## Hester (Jul 5, 2009)

Did you also suffer extreme weight loss, sweating, muscle wasting and weakness to the point where you could not get out of bed?


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## crstar (Jun 29, 2009)

when my bacterial overgrowth was at it's worst, i had serious problems with every major organ in my body.......then i really felt like i was very slowly dying & wished it would get over with..........my dr put me on nystatin & fluconazole.......i didn't take them at thesame time.....most of my life, when i took some sort of med or such, if i took them all the time for what was recurring, they didn't seem to work 2x in a row, so things were alternated......for me this worked, so when i took those antifungals, alternating them seemed to work better.......i took one or the other for 16mos.........at which point it felt like it was always just being controlled, but not killed to the point that other bacteria could grow enough to keep the candida under control..........i'd get a rash here, my ears would drive me crazy itching, my D would get better & then get worse, never go away, i had very few hrs w/o it, the dr' tests would say it was still a problem..........then the infections would come, the worst being staff (boils), that would get huge, spread & get filled with pus.......then i'd have to have them lanced.......it felt like me life was this horrible vicious circle..........then the end of march, my husband is driving truck in iraq, came home for 3wks........u do know that candida can b passed back & forth between spouses or mates?.....anyway, he'd been being treated for about 9mos, his toe nail & scalp were the worst........anyway, i ended up with the worst vaginal yeast infection of my intire life, & i've had alot over the yrs........nothing would stop it, for a month, i went out of my mind, & the itching was not the worst part, it was the way it made me raw.......anyway, after trying the normal stuff & everything else i've learned about in the past 7yrs, i decided to increase the fluconazole to double.......i was so desperate.......it made me sick, it made the D worse, but it did get the vile thing gone.........during the last few month's, i'd been taking oregano oil & bitters & other things that i've learned about, but at one point the dr told me, none of the things like oregano oil r suppose to b used on a study basis.........u take things & change to something else.........it seems that candida can adjust, so u have to keep it off kilter, i guess........anyway, i wanted to tell anyone that is interested, that u need to find a number of things to use against it.......fiber can ferment & create an environment that helps it to grow........i was told to stay away from any carbs that come from grains.......i do know that by my increasing the acid in my stomach stops u from getting anything from the foods u eat..........many things we eat can cause us trouble w/o our knowledge........candida has been found in the center of tumors, it's very important to get it under control........u can't get rid of it, it's one of the bacteria that maintain ur body, it's also what takes over ur body when u die, it's what breaks down tissue.......have too much of it & u get inflammation, tumors, foggy brain, intestinal trouble & so many others.........it seems to b one of the things that colonize areas of low oxygen.........they've found it in arthritic joints & when it's over-populated, u end up with infection........staff being one of the really bad ones.........i read somewhere that candida surrounds the staff & protects it from being killed, it's one of the reasons staff is so hard to kill........to help my intestines, i felt like after the yrs of D & the other things i've had, that my intestines had to b sore, irritated & inflamed, so i took the things that help to heal it, slippery elm is one..........after getting rid of the vag yeast infection, i stopped all the antifungals, i'd had enough............& concentrated on pre-biotics & probiotics & the things that help it grow.........on thing i ran across, was that inulin is added to alot of foods & it can cause D, it's a laxative, so watch out for that........magnesium can do it, too.........i got really careful about what i put in my body.......i did a lot of research.......anything that might cause trouble with the intestines, went.........but the candida was so awful & so hard to get rid of...........betaine hydrochloride might help increase the acid in ur stomach........the reason for this is, that when u don't completely digest ur food, u get undigested food into the intestines & this ends up causing leaky gut, the food gets into ur body & feeds the candida even more, plus ur body precieves this as an invasion & starts to attack itself, autoimmune diseases.........when u get systemic candida, which is what i had, it's so very hard to get rid of & it caused damage to my kidneys, liver, thyroid & adrenals...........it's a really bad thing......so work hard, if u have to take the Rx stuff for awhile, do so, ur body will thank u later.......when it started to go, i felt like a roto-rooter was going thru my head, i'd had sinus problems most my life.........so just work at it, don't play around.........it's worse than trying to get rid of cockroaches in an old house..........


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## Borrellifan (May 5, 2009)

Hester said:


> Did you also suffer extreme weight loss, sweating, muscle wasting and weakness to the point where you could not get out of bed?


Some weight loss but none of the others. Those symptoms you mention are usually a red flag that its not IBS and is something more serious like Crohns, etc.


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## Hester (Jul 5, 2009)

Great - well, I guess it is a good thing my doc decided to NOT have me swallow the camera. I will let you guys know what they find on Friday.


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