Antibiotics After Fluoroquinolone Toxicity

People often ask about what they should do to treat infections post-flox.  Here are my tips.

First, please INSIST on getting your infection cultured and confirmed before you take any antibiotics.  As anyone who has had an adverse reaction to an antibiotic can tell you, antibiotics are not benign drugs.  They have side-effects (HERE is the 43 PAGE warning label for Cipro/Ciprofloxacin).  Some of those side-effects are life-altering and/or life-threatening.  You don’t want to put any drugs into your body unless you absolutely need them.  A culture should be done to confirm that an infection is present before you take an antibiotic – no matter what.

Because antibiotics have been shown to wreak havoc on the microbiome and bactericidal antibiotics damage mitochondria – and because both microbiome disruptions and mitochondrial dysfunctions are linked with every chronic disease there is – I highly recommend looking into some non-pharmaceutical options first.  Garlic has been shown to have antibiotic qualities and to be more effective against biofilms than many antibiotics.  For urinary tract infections, D-mannose has effectively helped thousands of people get rid of their infection.  Some other non-pharmaceutical remedies for urinary tract infections can be found HERE.  Coconut oil has been shown to have anti-bacterial qualities and it may be good for treating skin and GI infections.  Colloidal silver not only has anti-bacterial qualities on its own, it also has been shown to increase the effectiveness of pharmaceutical antibiotics when used in conjunction with them.  Andrographis is an herb that has antibiotic qualities.

If non-pharmaceutical options aren’t working and you need an antibiotic to get rid of your confirmed infection, here are the antibiotics that I recommend along with reasons as to why I recommend them (or not).

1. Most Floxies seem to do well with doxycycline and other tetracyclines. Tetracyclines are bacteriostatic antibiotics that, “stops bacteria from multiplying but does not kill them.” (source)
2. Several Floxies have taken Z-pack’s without incident
3. Amoxicillin seems to be about as benign as antibiotics get. So, it’s not harmless, but it’s well tolerated generally.
4. Penicillin seems to be well tolerated – unless you’re allergic to it.
5. Cephalosporins seem to be well tolerated

There are probably some other antibiotics that are fine for Floxies, I just haven’t heard about them.  Please feel free to leave a comment below if there is an effective and relatively safe one that I’m missing.

Here are the antibiotics that I recommend avoiding because they have side-effects that are similar to those of fluoroquinolones, and because many Floxies react badly to them –

1. Macrobid / Nitrofurantoin
2. Flagyl / Metronidazole
3. Bactrim / Trimethoprim / Sulfamethoxazole
4. Augmentin

Fluoroquinolones – Cipro/Ciprofloxacin, Levaquin/Levofloxacin, Avelox/Moxifloxacin, Floxin/Ofloxacin and a few others – should be avoided entirely unless you are dying and make the decision that getting “floxed” is preferred to death.  Every warning label for every fluoroquinolone says that people who have an existing hypersensitivity to a fluoroquinolone should not take them again.  “Ciprofloxacin is contraindicated in persons with a history of hypersensitivity to ciprofloxacin, any member of the quinolone class of antimicrobial agents, or any of the product components.” (Warning Label)

Before you take an antibiotic, or any pharmaceutical for that matter, I highly recommend that you look up the review for that drug on http://www.askapatient.com/ and look it up on http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/.  Also, look up the drug’s warning label.  Be informed.  Make an informed decision.

Here is a list of antibiotics – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antibiotics  I didn’t get close to going through all of them.  But I hope that this post gives you some guidance when/if you are faced with an infection.

I’m not a doctor, so please take this advice for what it’s worth.  Doctors should be consulted when you have an infection.  The internet should be consulted too though, because doctors aren’t capable of knowing everything and informed consent is really important.