Cpnhelp.org

And thankyou also Norman. When I first started treatment I spent over a month just on doxycycline, whilst waiting for the roxithromycin to arrive from France. I was never sure why he wanted me to use roxithromycin as the macrolide when I could have easily used the readily available azithromycin. I'm glad that he made this choice though, because it worked so well for me.

When it came, three months later, to starting metronidazole, I was able to do the five day pulse straight off.  I can't say that this was due to my choice of macrolide though, but rather my tough metabolism.  Boadicea for instance, spent months on building up  her third antibiotic yet Michael, after two years of treatment, seems to be thinking that he will never be cured.

When I  say two years of treatment, I am going on what his signature says. I didn't realise how out of date it was.

Sarah

It's normal for killing an intracellular pathogen to result in the death of the cell that it's been living in: whatever it's been doing to hide itself from the immune system stops with its death, and the cell wakes up and commits apoptosis, as in this movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR80Huxp4y8

That's programmed cell death; it's much less inflammatory than necrosis (uncontrolled cell death), though of course it's still inflammatory and still deprives you of the services of that cell.  And it still releases porphyrins that had been accumulating in that cell.

But I can't see why taurine/caffeine would be any gentler in this respect than nitroimidazoles, other than just being less effective.

Exactly Norman; taurine and caffeine are less effective and Michael wants to spend 25 years more getting better.

I stayed on antibiotics for five or six years, I think. I stopped, hesitantly, when I felt 'better'. What I can tell you is, during all those years, I still felt I wasn't 'done' yet. I had some nice recovery in the first few months (all new symptoms that had developed shortly before I started abx). Then, the improvements came gradually, but a lot of them certainly telegraphed themselves... anywhere the abx were working on a localized deposit of cpn, boy did I feel it. An ankle I'd repeatedly sprained, whew, boy, did it hurt again for many weeks. Then, the pain was gone. My right shoulder 'hitch', which wouldn't allow me to raise my arm to a horizontal position, felt so bad I thought I might need rotator cuff surgery. After a few weeks of pain and inflammation, it left, too, never to return.
I have to admit, whenever I get a bit clumsy or feel inexplicably fatigued, I do a short run of the protocol again, as a preventive measure.

Oh Michael, really! You know what, it sounds as though your satisfactory recovery has started already.

I think that calling it a 'satisfactory' recovery is a good way of saying it because I'm still not very good at running.

Sarah