Long-Term Antibiotic Use For Lyme Disease Doesn't Work, Study Finds

[Trellie]

Hi guys, I found an article that might be of interest for many of you! I know it was for me:

Luckily for most of us, a brief course of antibiotics usually cures people completely of Lyme disease. For some people, though, symptoms including fatigue and joint pain can linger for up to six months. The cause of these longer-term symptoms remains a mystery, and is an active area of current research. One possible explanation from the CDC is that:

the lingering symptoms are the result of residual damage to tissues and the immune system that occurred during the infection.

Unfortunately, the lack of a scientific explanation has opened the door to wildly speculative treatments, based on little or no evidence, by doctors who think they know the answer. These doctors, some of whom have adopted the label “Lyme literate,” insist that their patients suffer from what they call Chronic Lyme Disease. Among other things, they’ve formed an association called ILADS that claims that:

“Most cases of chronic Lyme disease require an extended course of antibiotic therapy to achieve symptomatic relief” and “many patients with chronic Lyme disease require prolonged treatment until the patient is symptom-free.”

If you want to read the rest of the article, then Google ''Long-term antibiotics ''Forbes''. You should be able to find it

 

[oportosanto]

Thanks for sharing this Trellie. Actually I was under the impression that if we used antibiotics for a long time that would not be good for our health, live and learn I suppose?

 

[rz3300]

I always get a little depressed and bummed out when I read about all these doctors who are claiming things that are not true, or when there are teams of people who seem in opposition to each other. It should all be about treating the patient, but yet we have money and business getting in the way and the doctors are not even immune...no pun intended. Oh well, what can you do about it.

 

[Trellie]

It's more common than we think. It seems every doctor has a different opinion, everyone says something different. That has been my main issue trying to find a decent neurologist So if the opinion varies a lot from a doctor from another... is not a surprise to see the medical community can't quite agree on certain things.

 

[Trellie]

Thanks for sharing this Trellie. Actually I was under the impression that if we used antibiotics for a long time that would not be good for our health, live and learn I suppose?

If you have Lyme you have no choice but undergo the long-term antibiotic treatment, is not something someone would do willingly just because. Actually I saw this happen with a relative of mind, she went for a second opinion... but she got the same answer. She had so much trouble deciding what to do, since well... a long-term antibiotic treatment comes with a lot side effects.

I had to undergo an antibiotic treatment for 15 days and ever since I suffer from bloating Antibiotics really mess withe the balance of the gut... I've yet to recover from that.

 

[Azrile]

Thanks for sharing this Trellie. Actually I was under the impression that if we used antibiotics for a long time that would not be good for our health, live and learn I suppose?

This is true, even using antibiotics for a short time can cause problems with digestion and nutrition absorption because the antibiotics kill the good bacteria we have in our intestines. It is always advisable to make sure to include things like yogurt (probiotics) in your diet after you finish any treatment of antibiotics, it will help get those beneficial bacteria back in your intestines,

Any longterm use of antibiotics is very risky and has so many side effects that it should never be an ´experimental´ solution to any health issue... it is more of a last resort.

 

[lymegreen]

If you have Lyme you have no choice but undergo the long-term antibiotic treatment, is not something someone would do willingly just because. Actually I saw this happen with a relative of mind, she went for a second opinion... but she got the same answer. She had so much trouble deciding what to do, since well... a long-term antibiotic treatment comes with a lot side effects.

I had to undergo an antibiotic treatment for 15 days and ever since I suffer from bloating Antibiotics really mess withe the balance of the gut... I've yet to recover from that.

Yes, it's definitely a bit of a catch 22 situation. You will fix some problems with antibiotics, but then some others might be created in the process of using them. I think a lot of doctors use antibiotics only as a last resort too, since they don't want people to end up getting a level of resistance to them.

 

[John Snort]

Some of these studies aren't conclusive. But as with using any medication for a long time, there'll come a time it will stop working as well as it did initially. So there could be some truth to what the studies says. However since the disease doesn't surrender to treatment easily, I don't think those who have it should stop taking their medication because of the study's findings.

 

[Azrile]

since they don't want people to end up getting a level of resistance to them.

People do not build a resistance to antibiotics, it is the bacteria that builds a resistance to them. There was just a big article about this on the CNN website where antibiotics that were just created 5 years ago are already ineffective against some bacteria. These are the so called superbugs, they are bacteria that are resistant to everything, and there is nothing you can give to patients to kill the bacteria.