severe c. difficile colitis

[happydays]

hi all,
to cut a long story short, I became very ill after taking Amoxicillin for a tooth infection. severe diarrhea, pain in my abdominal wall, and high fever. now, I also have severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (I've been in a wheelchair most of my life), so I have a history of very odd complications and high fever is very dangerous for me. anyway, the dr gave me Metronidazole for c. difficile, which improved the diarrhea and the fever, but it was making me violently sick. I was throwing it up consistently, until the vomiting became just really, really awful. so the dr told me to stop all medication and see what happens. yesterday was good, although today I have some pain in my abdomen again.

anyway, of course I'm on a bland, dairy-free diet and am taking a dairy-free probiotic. anything else I should be taking? any antibacterial & antifungal supplements that you recommend? any experience with severe c. difficile? needless to say, I'm also extremely weak after losing so much nutrients and fluids.

(nb. I can't afford any medical care except for emergencies)

 

[Ted_Hutchinson]

Vitamin D Healthcare costs of Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile infections in veterans: role of vitamin D deficiency
If you haven't already been taking vitamin D3 I'd suggest 50,000iu BIOTECH cholecalciferol One every 5 days to provide 10,000iu/daily.

Xylitol may help

Curcumin may be useful

I'd also suggest that improving probiotic status will help immune function all these have be linked to inhibiting C difficile.
Lactobacillus casei Lactobacillus bulgaricus Bifidobacterium bifidum

 

[happydays]

Vitamin D Healthcare costs of Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile infections in veterans: role of vitamin D deficiency
If you haven't already been taking vitamin D3 I'd suggest 50,000iu BIOTECH cholecalciferol One every 5 days to provide 10,000iu/daily.

I weigh less than 60lb due to osteoporosis, etc. should I take a smaller dose?

 

[Arrowwind09]

I have been doing a lot of research on c-diff the past few weeks...
You need to get past this and you should consider it an emergency until it is gone.
You can also ask your doctor if he can determine which kind of c-diff toxin you have. Most labs cannot test for the different types but there are some new strains out that are very very dangerous.

my question is why did your doctor not start you on vancomycin? this is the other drug of choice for c-diff and it probably will not cause any nausea for you. Flagyl, what you were on, is a very rough drug. ask him about this. it can be taken orally, vanco, Many people think it is just an IV drug, but not so.

I dont know if MMS will help with c-diff. the c-diff spores are fairly resiliant and few medications can get though them, This is why it keeps reoccuring in some people. One can also re-contaminate themselves or others because the spores live on surfaces for a long time. chlorine dioxide is the only type of cleanser that I know of that can kill them on surfaces,,, I had forgotten that, so maybe MMS is the treatment to consider. read about it here www.jimhumble.biz

Other things I would try are grapefruit seed extract. you can purchase it in pills which is more expensive or in liquid and put drops into empty capsules. 6 week treatment at least. you might want to check out this page https://www.herbal-medicine-depot.com/c-diff-virus.html

be sure to take a good probiotic like VSL#3 at least twice a day when diarrhea is happening.

 

[Ted_Hutchinson]

I weigh less than 60lb due to osteoporosis, etc. should I take a smaller dose?

The sooner you raise 25(OH)D to 50ng/ml the better. It's generally the case that 1000iu for each 25lbs is sufficient as a maintenance amount but to raise status you need a higher amount initially.

Regular full body NONBURNING sun exposure between 10am ~ 3pm (when UVB levels highest) would speed up Vitamin D acquisition.

 

[u&iraok]

I had c. difficile and here's what my naturopath told me to take:

50 drops Grapefruit Seed Extract, 5 drops oregano oil, 5 drops Betaine HCL in water 3 times a day.

After a month of taking this 3x a day every day I was 90% cured, after two months, 100% cured.

It's a very bitter drink but it's nothing compared to symptoms and and danger of the c. diff. Bitter is good! Bitter means killing pathogens.

 

[Ted_Hutchinson]

Another strategy that might be worth considering is getting a healthy gut flora from a healthy friend/relative and doing a fecal transplant. I appreciate it may not be an appealing idea for treatment but it requires only a small volume of stool, and may require only one treatment.

More on Fecal Transplants

I think that whatever treatment is given we also have to replenish normal gut flora, hopefully with less pathogenic form, reduce the C. difficile and other pathogenic gut flora toxin load in the bowel and bolster the bolster the patient's own immune response.

I don't think a single approach to this problem is going to be successful in the long run. I think we need to use a whole battery of approaches at the same time to avoid the problems of resistant strains perpetuating the problem.
Hence the reminder to use Curcumin along with your Vitamin D3 and probiotics.
Curcumin or spice inhibit the growth of Clostridium difficile

 

[u&iraok]

Based on the protocol my naturopath uses for intestinal infections and has a lot of success in doing so, the most important thing is to kill the infection. That's number one, everything else is sidelined. Once it's killed then you can build up the friendly bacteria and work on the immune system. He said one of the biggest reasons for failure is that healing must take place in stages in the correct order. Trying to do a bunch of things hoping something will stick is not the best way and often will fail. You don't want to kill an infection partially and have it come back, often stronger with resistant strains.

Friendly bacteria should be at optimal levels to prevent an infection but once you have an infection is is often useless to supplement with probiotics because a raging infection will just overcome the friendly bacteria. Once the infection is mostly killed then you can supplement. Then you work on the immune system, nutrition and other factors which may have led to your being susceptible to an infection.

 

[Ted_Hutchinson]

Based on the protocol my naturopath uses for intestinal infections and has a lot of success in doing so, the most important thing is to kill the infection. That's number one, everything else is sidelined. Once it's killed then you can build up the friendly bacteria and work on the immune system. He said one of the biggest reasons for failure is that healing must take place in stages in the correct order. Trying to do a bunch of things hoping something will stick is not the best way and often will fail. You don't want to kill an infection partially and have it come back, often stronger with resistant strains.

Friendly bacteria should be at optimal levels to prevent an infection but once you have an infection is is often useless to supplement with probiotics because a raging infection will just overcome the friendly bacteria. Once the infection is mostly killed then you can supplement. Then you work on the immune system, nutrition and other factors which may have led to your being susceptible to an infection.

I think your naturopath is misguided. I doubt you are going to totally kill C difficile or any other pathogen. I think you will only succeed in limiting their numbers. It for that reason I believe my strategy to build up host immune status and gut flora are an essential element to re-establishing a healthy gut flora. You have to appreciate the enormity of the problem with 500 to 1000 species of bacteria living in the human gut and a roughly similar number on the skin.
Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, and there are at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body.
The idea that you can eliminate every single pathogenic bacterial cell and start afresh with a totally sterile gut is simply not tenable.

 

[u&iraok]

But we're not talking about ridding the gut of every pathological bacterial cell or even limiting their numbers, we're talking about curing an infection.

Maybe you'd have to have a clostridium difficile infection to appreciate the before-and-after, but there's the infection, which is totally miserable, and the infection cured which is totally wonderful.

My infection was cured with 50 drops Grapefruit Seed Extract, 5 drops oregano oil, 5 drops Betaine HCL in water 3 times a day.

 

[Arrowwind09]

I had c. difficile and here's what my naturopath told me to take:

50 drops Grapefruit Seed Extract, 5 drops oregano oil, 5 drops Betaine HCL in water 3 times a day.

After a month of taking this 3x a day every day I was 90% cured, after two months, 100% cured.

It's a very bitter drink but it's nothing compared to symptoms and and danger of the c. diff. Bitter is good! Bitter means killing pathogens.

Yes, as I mentioned GSE is very powerful. You can put those drops in a capsule and take with water to loose the bad taste effect. Betaine can be taken in a pill form.

Fecal transplant, Ted? sounds disgusting.. why would one want to contaminate oneself with another's stool? God only knows whats in it and labs have sufficiently proven that they are incapable of diagnosis of all the organisms in there.

Take VSL#3 probiotic, eat lots of veggies, take NOW brand Inulin with it to establish a colony. Make your own yogurt and put a cap of vsl#3 in the culture at 110 degrees.

 

[Arrowwind09]

It is my understanding that c-diff can never be fully erradicated. Few microbes can be fully erradicated. Its just a matter of boosting the immune system and bringing the bacterial load down so the immune system can control it. About 3% of the population naturally has this according to the CDC. Although I think many cases are developed out of the use of antibiotics it suggests that more than 3% of the population carries it. The antibiotics make for it to overgrow. Many cases are now brought about through contagin.. people are being exposed to microbes that they do not have defense against... like ca-mrsa (community acquired), c-diff had ca-c-diff.

I suspect no matter how severe the c-diff toxin is, and there are several c-diff toxins, GSE will take care of it.

 

[Ted_Hutchinson]

Fecal transplant, Ted? sounds disgusting.. why would one want to contaminate oneself with another's stool?

We are 10 percent human, 90 percent poo." Same poop, different gut
For physicians and researchers alike, fecal transplants present an opportunity to gain insight into disease

 

[Arrowwind09]

It is not all the same poo in different guts..
are you really going to believe this?

if it were all the same we would all have the same bowel complaints, or not

there are many microbes they do not know how to test for

there are many microbes that come in from foreign nations that are foreign to us

many microbes mutate under the use of drugs...

many microbes adapt to very specific environments... how they gonna match things up?

What about cancer causing microbes.. are they screening for that... of course not... they don't even believe they exist... but most of us here know better.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Dear lady, I do hope you find a good naturopath to consult with.. In any case I would be on the GSE as soon as possible if it were me.

 

[u&iraok]

Yes, as I mentioned GSE is very powerful. You can put those drops in a capsule and take with water to loose the bad taste effect. Betaine can be taken in a pill form.

I believe the reason you take the GSE, oregano oil and Betaine HCL in water is so that it kills everything from the mouth on down since c. diff, if not caused by antibiotics causing overgrowth, is 'caught' orally (I got mine from a salad bar) and the spores can survive outside the intestines for a long time.

 

[happydays]

update:
I was doing better after I stopped metronidazol (Monday). by Thursday I felt hunger and ate my bland diet with pleasure.
Friday: knew something was wrong. felt cold inside throughout the day, the temp being low. my left eye hurt like I was getting a migraine.
Saturday: fever up to 101F, very bad shivers. migraine.
Sunday: fever, migraine, diarrhea, and vomiting. I was vomiting by the clock, even pure water. of course I threw up any fever-reducing meds. I suspect the vomiting had a lot to do with the migraine because my mom had the same spasm-like vomiting after her head trauma.

I took anti-nausea suppositories left from when my mom was ill. those helped the nausea. the tylenol suppositories did not help with the fever at all. norco is the only thing that really reduces the fever.

today: diarrhea. my abdomen is very bloated and it always hurts, like there's too much pressure in it. I feel the fever going up as I type.

any ideas at all? could it candida or still c diff?

 

[Arrowwind09]

Candida does not do this. You better get on some protocol gal. Or you could end up in big trouble. This is nothing to play with.

 

[happydays]

Candida does not do this. You better get on some protocol gal. Or you could end up in big trouble. This is nothing to play with.

what do you mean by protocol?

 

[happydays]

what about GSE in capsules, you seem to be saying it's ok? after throwing up so much, I doubt I can handle the bitterness.

I'm seeing a diff dr tomorrow, hoping to get in a stool sample. is there anything else I should ask him? I'll be asking for more anti-nausea suppositories. what if he wants to start me on vancomycin?

 

[happydays]

what does generic vancomycin cost???

 

[u&iraok]

what about GSE in capsules, you seem to be saying it's ok? after throwing up so much, I doubt I can handle the bitterness.

I'm seeing a diff dr tomorrow, hoping to get in a stool sample. is there anything else I should ask him? I'll be asking for more anti-nausea suppositories. what if he wants to start me on vancomycin?

Even though it would be better to swallow it--c diff can be in the entire alimentary canal, better to at least get it to your intestines so if you really can't handle the bitterness, I would take capsules. You could even put the drops of GSE and oregano oil into an empty capsule--I do this sometimes for other uses. The Betaine HCL you could just get in tablet form. My protocol (a protocol is just a name for your plan or procedure that you have in place and follow as opposed to just trying things higglety-pigglety or not following your plan carefully) was the grapefruit seed extract, oregano oil and betaine HCL.

I keep reiterating it because it cured me and it's easy (other than the bitterness and making sure you follow it 3x a day every day) and relatively cheap. It would be best to see a naturopath but since you said you can't afford it, this is what my naturopath told me to take and it worked so I'm passing it on. I was able to catch my c.diff early and everyone's different but I think this is a straightforward remedy that would probably work for most people. It would certainly help kill some if not all of the c.diff if you follow it and stay on it. Like Arrowind said, this is serious and antibiotics will just weaken you more.

I was on a c.diff board and I was heart-rending to see all the sick people, most of them on the antibiotic rollercoaster, their doctors would give them one antibiotic after another hoping one would somehow work. Several people were having diarrhea 20 or 30 or even 50 times a day and were so sick and miserable and hopeless. I posted this on the board but unfortunately no one posted that they tried it or if it worked for them. There were less posts after that but that could have been for any reason.

 

[happydays]

I've been taking GSE drops and doing much better. I am pretty much back to normal--just a bit weak.

I also got VSL#3 as suggested in another thread.

 

[u&iraok]

Great to hear! Just don't make the mistake of stopping because you feel better. Make sure it's COMPLETELY gone. You don't want to be left with a harder to get rid of strain which is what could happen if you stop treatment too early.

 

[happydays]

The sooner you raise 25(OH)D to 50ng/ml the better. It's generally the case that 1000iu for each 25lbs is sufficient as a maintenance amount but to raise status you need a higher amount initially.

Regular full body NONBURNING sun exposure between 10am ~ 3pm (when UVB levels highest) would speed up Vitamin D acquisition.

sorry, I'm still afraid of overdosing... should I buy this and take one every day for a week and then once a week? https://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-D3-50-Biotech-Pharmacal-Capsules/dp/B000A0F2B2

 

[Arrowwind09]

you can take 50,000 IU daily for a week then reduce to 5,000 IU daily.. Some people take 50,000 IU every 10 days which is OK probably. I just find that I do better on a daily 5,000 IU, and if I should get sick then I take 50,000 IU 3 x day for 3 days. Dont worry about over dosing .... all those ideas have been blown. ... granted you would not want to take 50,000 IU daily forever though.

Glad you are doing better. I suggest that you take that GSE for at least 2 months... three wont hurt.