Pulse Dosing Regimen

Guest · Postby **Guest** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 7:27 am

Brought over from old board: For those who've tried a few rounds of "cures" for c-diff and are hitting the outer limits of frustration, and who also have doctors who are willing to be creative and work with them, here's what finally worked for me: Take Vancocin HCL 250 mg. three times daily for at least one month (90 pills). This should leave your bottom half feeling relatively normal for a while. The normal dosage would be 125 mg. four times daily, but then you have to get up in the middle of the night to take one of them and I don't think that helps. With 250/3 you get 8 hours sleep. Then taper down to vanco 4 days taking it, 2 days off for three cycles of this routine (about 2 1/2 weeks - 36 pills). After that, go 3 days on, 2 days off for another two weeks (27 pills). Then to 3 days off 2 days on for another couple of weeks (18 pills). Then 4 days off, 1 on for another couple weeks (9 pills). Finally, have about 30 pills left over so you can take 250 mg X 3 for one day a week if necessary (your body will tell you if the lower half is getting iffy - you may be able to zap the problem with one days' worth of the drug). The whole time you're doing this, take 1 Culturelle (lactobacillus GG) per day (order from ConAgra.Com). Keep the Culturelle in the frig. Others on this web site might recommend an additional probiotic or two - they can't hurt. My doctor let me "play" like this - and it seems to have worked. I have been drug free now since May and feel terrific, even though I had to take doxycycline for Lyme disease this past month. Before this, I suffered with c-diff for almost two years. I still take Culturelle as "insurance". The logic of the dosing is in the behavior of the bug itself. Since c-diff is spore forming, it may form spores and go dormant when under attack by an antibiotic. So what you do is kill off as many as you can, then stop the drug and let a few spores hatch. Then you kill off some of those, stop the drug again and let more spores hatch. Kill 'em off again, etc., etc. Tracy's case history is what gave me the idea, and has an even better description of this rationale. This regimen may also work just as well with Flagyl. I personally prefer vanco as it is not systemic, it's less likely to have side effects, and doesn't limit your life apart from having to swallow it periodically. You can still have a glass of wine and if, like I was, you are a breastfeeding mother you don't need to give it up. Good luck to all! [Guest Posted by: 'Lauren']

Guest · Postby **Guest** » Mon May 20, 2002 4:47 pm

Pulse dosing is not a "proven" method where doctors have access to medical studies which show that it works. So far as I know, a study has not ever been done. That said, pulsing did work for me and I definitely feel that it is worth a shot. What my own doctor did, understandably, was have me try everything he'd ever read about in the mainstream medical publications before he got to the point where he let me just call for prescriptions whenever I needed them. It took me a while after that even to figure out pulsing myself. I got the idea from Nina, a long term sufferer who occasionally posts on this site. After I'd done it and it worked, I wrote my doctor a thank you letter for sticking with me for so long and also sent him the recipe. I figured it was one more thing he could add to his considerable arsenal of ideas. If your doctor wants to try calling mine, his name and contact info are here under "Doctors" - he is in Mount Kisco, New York. All this said, treating recurrent c-diff almost becomes more of an art than a science as so little is definitively known. Your doctor might be more open to the pulsing idea if you try all his/her ideas first. [Guest Posted by: 'Lauren']

Pulse Dosing Regimen

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