Anyone here under Dr. Kaufman's care tried his Abx +Statins combo?

Folk

Well-Known Member
So I took 30 days abx (Vancomycin and Rifaximin) and it went amazing. Constipation completely gone, gut probably (i don't even know anymore) back to normal. But soon after I stopped it stopped working...
So now Dr. Kaufman said I should take it again with some kind of statin (he mentioned which but I forgot) cause it would get rid of the bacterial biofilm which would make the abx better at killing all the bacteria...


I just can trust it... I mean I found a clear problem and a temporary solution, I don't think I should just start trying things that can end up not working anymore (like creating stronger bacterias that resist the abx). I would like to proceed with caution but te problem is no one really knows what else to do... So...
 

dejurgen

Well-Known Member
Would you happen to have food intolerances?

I'm in the small group of persons that have an oscilating constipation / short time normal / diarhea / small time normal / constipation response to eating food I am intolerant too.

That puzzled me long time. The diarhea part looks logical: dumping the food as fast as possible, but what with the constipation part? Now I tend to believe that constipation is another way to deal with the bacterial problem.

Many anaerobic bacteria seem to do very well in a wet environment, both growing and spreading. Making the environment very dry slows that growth (and spreading) a lot. In addition, if you would have some sort of leaky gut, I imagine that bacteria in a wet sort of brew (normal to diarhea stool) that sticks to the gut wall can be pushed way easier through the gut wall (with probably added presure inside the gut from gas) then bacteria that are contained in those "dry and hard pellet sized or bigger rocks" from constipation.

Copied from what I wrote in https://www.healthrising.org/forums...ehyde-blood-levels-discovered-something.6126/:
"The first improvement was diet: find out more precise what I am intolerant too and avoid it. The second part: take daily twice an small amount of Psyllium caps. It's sort of undigestable fiber in powder form, but encapsulated. I achieve best results if I take it twice a day no matter if I have loose or hard stool. I think it works by providing very large amounts of surface area allowing the gut bacteria to stick to this surface and thus binding these bacteria and some of their side products to the fiber rather then to the gut wall. As such, the gut wall *might* "see" both less bacteria and toxic chemicals and hence have less of an immune response to it and absorb less toxins. If you haven't tried it yet, it might work for you too as your gut problems seem related too mine. Start with small amounts (my current daily dose is 750 mg) and look out for products "enriched" with prebiotics. My gut reacts very poor to those prebiotics."

I used to think until less then a year ago that I was intolerant to no single food. Whenever I avoided some sort of food for a period I saw not a bit of improvement. Proved I was very wrong. I am intolerant to about half of what I ate. That's why a single change made no difference: I still ate plenty of stuff I am intolerant to during these days.

As to Psyllium: it's typically used for diarhea but it seems to help me if I take it in the constipation phases too. I believe it is because it might "bind" the bad bacteria and reduce the causing problem. With constipation, be double careful if and when trying this. Go minimal dose at least.
 

dejurgen

Well-Known Member
My bad. I have been digging into an idea last night and that was demanding and cut into my sleep. So I mixed things up in the last part:

I meant to say: increasing fiber intake is more associated with regulating stool then with tackling a bacterial problem that would require antibiotics. Antibiotics often is more associated with diarrhea. But in my experience a food intolerance may be based on an underlying bacterial infection and could cause either diarrhea, constipation or an alternation of both. And in my intolerance case Psyllium works more regulating towards normal then anything else. I experienced not all fiber are good at all when it comes to a very likely bacterial based food intolerance neither.
 

Folk

Well-Known Member
I have a lot of food intolerances... But I don't even know all of them... I mean I know I have fructose malabsorption, that's for sure, even on paper. I get very bad stomach pain with coffee. But that's just the most obvious 2. I have somehow problems with mushrooms, and other things that doesn't seem to correlate.

Fiber in my case seems to make everything worse. I tried an all meat diet for a while and start to have perfect bowel movements for some time but then after a month started having horrible stomach aches, to the point I couldn't eat anything.

What I know for sure is: the abx I took, made my constipation go completely away while I was taking. So there must be something there for sure.


Ps: oh and btw I take a really heavy probiotic that doesn't seem to help much... I even think it increase some food intolerances
 

dejurgen

Well-Known Member
Hi Folk,

I have a lot of food intolerances... But I don't even know all of them... I mean I know I have fructose malabsorption, that's for sure, even on paper.

I'm not surprised you have many food intolerances. Hence the question I asked. I start to see a strong link between the many food intolerances I have and a strong bacterial component to it.

My main food intolerance is fructose too, and it seems an awful lot like that is based on fructose malabsorption. I didn't have it tested as I'm fed up with begging doctors to take me serious and do some testing and end up in the best case with "wright, it seems to be so but we can't help you any further...".

Fiber in my case seems to make everything worse.
I learned there is a lot of difference in the sort of fiber in my supposed "fructose malabsorption heavy case".

The idea is the following: due to my supposed fructose intolerance and me not knowing about it for decades plenty of fructose ended up in my large bowel. Fructose is kind of rocket fuel to bacteria, just like glucose is. You can grow bacteria way faster on those than on starch, fiber...
But it ain't supposed to arrive in large quantities at the large bowel. It should be taken up almost completely in the small bowel, where there normally are very few bacteria. So there they can't grow on it. And if it's "gone" (into the blood stream) before it arrives in the big bowel, it won't be rocket fuel for bacteria.

Now if you have got fructose malabsorption then with a modern diet you will get daily large loads of fructose reaching the big bowel. Then those bacteria that grow fastest on fructose will know an explosive growth compared to those more specialized in digesting fiber. The gut microbiome will become very disrupted / unbalanced and pathogenic species may well seize control of the large bowel.

Modern diet is extremely heavy on fructose compared to what it was only two centuries or even generations ago. Especially in the US fructose is the sugar of choice to add to virtually everything including prepared meat. It's sweater and cheaper then sucrose. Luckily in Europa it's a tad less bad as sugar beets do better over here compared to corn as a base of sugar. And sugar beets give sucrose which is only 50% fructose. Fructose intolerance gets a lot worse if the ratio fructose to glucose grows over 1 as glucose helps fructose absorption up till a 1:1 ratio. Still, we are here in the historical conditions that supposedly healthy fruit is year round available, where it used to be very season depending. If fruit would have created an unbalance in gut microbiome in old times the fructose loving bacteria would have been wiped out during late winter and spring due to lack of fresh fruit. Now they can selectively grow worse and worse year round and even be passed from mother to child. That allows for specialized nasties.

Once those "quick fuel" loving bacteria get settled in in the gut, they can eat other carbs too although less efficient then the specialized gut bacteria. But those ain't around much anymore. So even if you eat "slow" fiber, the quick fuel loving bacteria are in such large amounts that they still have a competitive advantage for a very long time. A specialized diet can very slowly improve odds for the good slow bacteria, but one mistake and the nasties seize control again.

Now most patients get a "flush all that food" reaction aka diarrhea. I get an alternation between diarrhea and constipation and that is where I learned constipation can be surprisingly bacterial based too. As I said in previous comment: making the gut environment dry makes bacterial grow slow a lot and decreases the speed at which bacteria can enter the blood stream through a leaky gut. Just like diarrhea, it ain't an ideal solution to a bacterial problem.

Adding probiotics increases bacterial growth too. As the immune system in the gut has to be fairly indiscriminate as long as there is a serious problem going on, it still will fire a lot if bacterial count goes up. One can say "but those are good bacteria", but I feel the immune system in the gut hasn't got the luxury to recognize if individual bacteria are good or bad. It seems to react to "we have a serious problem in the gut or we have plenty of bacteria entering the bloodstream through a leaky gut". Then it must react to it no matter what type of bacteria it are.

So here is where undigestible fiber makes the difference: if it is truly undigestible it won't feed any gut bacteria at all. I dare to say you are very likely tolerating lettuce well. That has very few digestible fiber. Same holds for green or white celery but mind you: it is a known strong allergen so that can be problematic.

Psyllium has IMO mainly undigestible fiber so I looked it up for you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyllium:
"Psyllium is mainly used as a dietary fiber to relieve symptoms of both constipation and mild diarrhea
I didn't read it yet but it seems in line with my experience.
"The soluble fiber in psyllium is polysaccharide arabinoxylan, a hemicellulose."
Ahh, cellulose is very hard to digest. That may better explain why it's good for both constipation and moderate diarrhea then the given "The milled seed mucilage is a white fibrous material that is hydrophilic, meaning that its molecular structure causes it to attract and bind to water. Upon absorbing water, the clear, colorless, mucilaginous gel that forms increases in volume by tenfold or more. " I don't see why that would help diarrhea...

I believe you need a product which is very fine dust like, as that provides a better surface area to weight ratio (for if my supposed working mechanism of providing bacteria surface area to bind would be correct). You can break open a cap to see what's in it. And as said: read if the formula adds any digestible fiber. Avoid those.

As to coffee, coffee contains acetaldehyde. You may be in the same boat as the author of following post https://www.healthrising.org/forums...s-discovered-something.6126/page-2#post-35003. He seems to have near the same food intolerances as I do.

I think the acetaldehyde is from the burning of the coffee. See if lightly roasted coffee is better tolerated. Green tea should be tolerated a lot more despite containing some caffeine too. I'd be interested to hear your experiences here.

As you seem to have likewise problems as I have, I'll give a short overview of what I am intolerant to:
  • Fructose, the worst one! Stay away from dried fruits as they are fructose bombs. Fruit aint healthy for fructose intolerant people. Read labels as it's added to virtually any food product.
  • Too large quantities of carbs so that undigested carbs enter the large bowel (mashed potatoes are a lot worse then cooked potatoes for me as you tend too eat a lot more carbs in the form of mashed potatoes as the same weight contains a lot less water then cooked potatoes)
  • All sorts of digestible fiber and that includes: wheat and rye (I think inulin is the bad part) (oat, quinoa, rice are well tolerated by me) (old spelt wheat sourdough bread is tolerated fairly well too; spelt wheat is less aggressive and the sourdough method seems to remove some digestible fiber), legumes, celery root, black salsify, beetroot, cooked carrots to some extend and many sorts of cabbage.
  • My intolerance improved so that I can eat again small amounts of cabbage. Raw seems to go better. I start to tolerate beet root better too.
  • edit: beer with and without alcohol is liquid wheat: avoid! probably avoid any liquid high in calories including some high caloric vegetable juices (haven't tested those yet).
  • edit: they are FODMAPs too, but onions and garlic are really bad for me too.
Basically, it's fructose plus the entire FODMAP series and added celery root, black salsify and plenty sorts of cabbage. Note that green or white celery is not on that list as it has very few calories to offer to bacteria.

Note that much of the above is more personal experience and thoughts then science, but it works for me.

You might try my papaya method too. Despite containing fructose, in my case eating small amounts with each meal has low enough of fructose and it improves my digestion a lot. See for the topic I created in the gut section of the forum.

Meat heavy diets tend to give constipation too due to the lack of fiber. That may be another source of constipation. If psyllium works with a regular diet then it should improve stool with a meat heavy diet too. A meat heavy diet will have other challenges as well...

Please feel free to share any experiences as I feel we might learn from each others experiences.
 
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voner

Active Member
So I took 30 days abx (Vancomycin and Rifaximin) and it went amazing. Constipation completely gone, gut probably (i don't even know anymore) back to normal. But soon after I stopped it stopped working...
So now Dr. Kaufman said I should take it again with some kind of statin (he mentioned which but I forgot) cause it would get rid of the bacterial biofilm which would make the abx better at killing all the bacteria...


I just can trust it... I mean I found a clear problem and a temporary solution, I don't think I should just start trying things that can end up not working anymore (like creating stronger bacterias that resist the abx). I would like to proceed with caution but te problem is no one really knows what else to do... So...

@Folk,

if you’re not comfortable with the statins, then just tell your doctor so. My experience with him is that he will respect your decision. Then, you could go back to just taking the antibiotics. If that doesn't work, you can consider adding statins or other options.
 

Folk

Well-Known Member
@Folk,

if you’re not comfortable with the statins, then just tell your doctor so. My experience with him is that he will respect your decision. Then, you could go back to just taking the antibiotics. If that doesn't work, you can consider adding statins or other options.
No, actually my problem isn't the statins nor exactly the abx.
The problem is I already took the abx 30 days course 2 times. The last time worked like a charm. I feel like I found something that fix my constipation for good. So now I just have to be careful not to waste it... Like if I overuse it, then I might lose it's efficacy. And then god knows how'll I solve my problem.
So my main issue is trying new protocols everytime he discover something new you understand? Like, I think it's amazing he's researching and finding new stuff, but I don't want to be a guinea pig (not right now at least)

I want to hit bulls eye right now, or at least prepare to hit it the best way possible (like taking probiotics first or doing some diet, or fasting or wathever...)
 

Not dead yet!

Well-Known Member
So I took 30 days abx (Vancomycin and Rifaximin) and it went amazing. Constipation completely gone, gut probably (i don't even know anymore) back to normal. But soon after I stopped it stopped working...
So now Dr. Kaufman said I should take it again with some kind of statin (he mentioned which but I forgot) cause it would get rid of the bacterial biofilm which would make the abx better at killing all the bacteria...


I just can trust it... I mean I found a clear problem and a temporary solution, I don't think I should just start trying things that can end up not working anymore (like creating stronger bacterias that resist the abx). I would like to proceed with caution but te problem is no one really knows what else to do... So...

There are several good ways to reduce biofilm formation. Serrapeptase and activated garlic come to mind.

For garlic all you need to do is soak chopped garlic in water and wait 10 min, then don't cook it before eating as a topping to your meal. Apparently the activated component is different if you soak it in oil, and since the Greeks had some good ideas, I do both... I have a jar with chopped garlic floating in olive oil in my fridge, and I do the water version just before cooking. It has definitely helped with the length of time I am sick with infections.

But Vitamin C has helped me even more. I won't argue the point because it's controversial, but I happen to believe that Dr. Linus Pauling was right and 6000 mg per day is the required amount in health, and much more when sick.
 

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