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Comment by larusso | Hacker News Reader

It’s somewhat scary that it still can take years to find the route cause for these kinds of infections. Two years back I had a month stretch in stomach pains. The worst I ever had. I had this on and off for 2-4 years. Happened once a year and was gone. I went to multiple doctors and did bloodtests etc. I then had a Colonoscopy and Gastroscopy. They want some scared tissue in my duodenum. Reason was some bacteria or fungi which they where then able to test for. Wich is funny because they did all kinds of bloodtests before … Long story short, I received a special antibiotic and everything was fine. My theory was that I eat something problematic while being in Egypt around 2018.

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Sometimes it's "just" helicobacter pylori.

I had a particularly widespread infection a while ago, so my GP prescribed Amoxicillin.

Suddenly the stomach pains, which used to be a regular thing for me whenever I ate something hard to digest, disappeared altogether.

Turns out this antibiotic is part of the concoction they have you take to deal with stomach ulcers, as it deals with the bacteria responsible for them.

I have no confirmation that was indeed the case here aside from a previously diagnosed chronic doudendum inflammation, but the difference was night and day, so this is my working theory.

You also need a proton pump inhibitor taken one hour before the antibiotic and before food for a more effective treatment.

The chronic duodenum inflamation could also be linked to gut microbiota depletion. I had mild lactose intolerance for years until I took probiotics for a few months and started eating whole milk youghurt (as unfermented milk the question) as part of my regular diet. It needs to be real yoghurt, not the phony sweeter one with corn starch, sugar or fruit added to it. Also UHT milk might screw up your gut microbiota. Make sure you take probiotics during and after the antibiotic treatment.

Seconding this.

I'm unsure of interactions between antibiotics and detrimental gut flora such as Candida albicans, but Western medicine pretends that doesn’t exist anyway

I've heard of Candida infections before. I also know what preem probiotics are and antibiotics, but what's a detrimental gut flora and how do you get rid of it?

Gut flora are just the bacteria that live in your gut.

Some are good (e.g. what you take probiotics to get more of), others are detrimental (e.g. h. Pylori, candida)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candida_albicans

Candida is not microbial. Candida is a genus of fungus [yeast].

Gut fungus is in an entirely different class of treatment; antibiotics will not eradicate fungi, and fungus tends to grow tendrils and spores and generally work into every moist/dark crevice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori#Treatment

Bacteria can be vanquished by digesting antimicrobials, but viruses are simpler/smaller, and fungus ain’t even in the same kingdom.

I understand all of this; what i meant to ask, i think, is: How do these detrimental gut flora get in to our systems, and how do we prevent that, or get rid of them? Is taking more bacteria helpful, in that it can out-compete the fungus? My experience with lacto and yeast is that both of those are well-equipped to outcompete nearly everything, especially if you give them lots of pure sugar.

> but Western medicine pretends that doesn’t exist anyway

What do mean by that? The leaflet for my tablets against throat infections specifically mentions candida strains taking over as a risk when overdoing the drug.

That's why you take fluconazole with your first dose of antibiotic.

Man, I ran a plan of some mental anagrams on that drug word, and all that’s missing is an “i”

https://xkcd.com/2422/

https://xkcd.com/2425/

I read about a guy getting iraquibacter from desert dust in Egypt and getting treated with phage therapy by his wife. Needless to say I'll avoid Egypt.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/health/phage-superbug-killer-...

That’s an amazing story. The wife really gathered together all the right people to create a phage treatment to save her husband’s life. Great job on all the doctors and scientists that figured out how to make it so quickly.

To my intense interest recently, I learned that the word sarcophagus literally means “eater of flesh” and indeed has Eucharistic connotation, but of course most commonly applied to Pharaonic caskets.

There’s a book too: https://theperfectpredator.com/

Which antibiotic did they give you?

Uff sorry would need to check. It’s been a few years already since I got the treatment.

It could have been Rifaximin (brand name Xifaxan), which is a somewhat standard "special" antibiotic for gut issues.

After having a seemingly "random" bout of cdiff after receiving a highly potent antibiotic for a "random" salivary gland infection - colonoscopies and antibiotics really scare me.

I believe the salivary gland infection was a result of some non-covid illness I had that may have been linked to some odd vaccine side effect or my tanked immune system.

Gut stuff is so important.

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