I’m sorry to hear about your problems with Candida, fibromyalgia, and other symptoms. However, the MP uses antibiotics in a way that will not make you Candida worse. In fact, the opposite is true. Since the MP works to activate the immune response, Candida actually gets better or resolves when patients are on the treatment. The medication Benicar that MP patients take four times a day is the driving factor allowing the immune system to keep the pathogenic yeast under control.

As hopefully you’ve read in other pieces on this site, Benicar activates the Vitamin D Receptor - a fundamental receptor of the body that controls the activity of the innate immune system (the branch of the immune system that rapidly targets pathogens such as Candida).

So by strengthening the immune response against Candida, the yeast forms have a much more difficult time surviving and are generally killed as people continue taking Benicar (of course they must be taking the standard MP dose of 4 pills a day). A die-off reaction can often be expected when Candida die, as the immune system mounts a temporary inflammatory response to their death.

Because the MP antibiotics are taken in a pulsed, low dose fashion they do not promote Candida growth in the way that a standard regular antibiotic might. Most patients on the MP report that their Candida is improving or gone. I had terrible Candida when I started the MP and haven’t felt symptoms for two years.

If you have Candida it is almost certain that you harbor disease causing bacteria, as these bacteria are what slow your immune system to the point where Candida are able to proliferate. Fibromyalgia is also a result of infection with these same bacteria.

So your best option to target both your Candida, fibromyalgia (and related symptoms) is to do the MP.

You can ask for a list of MP doctors in your area by posting at the following website:

http://www.curemyth1.org (Th1 refers to diseases caused by bacteria. The patient advocates on the site will also answer other questions you might have about the MP free of charge.

Hope this helps!

Amy

It seems as if all you can do is continue searching for a new doctor. CFS is not a mitochondrial disease. It is caused by chronic intraphagocytic metagenomic bacteria. So mitochondrial therapy will do nothing to make you better……which is probably why it hasn’t worked for you.

Not surprisingly the bacteria that cause CFS spread easily among family members which explains why so many people in your family suffer from the disease.

The Marshall Protocol is the only treatment to date that will effectively kill the bacteria making you sick so you need to find a doctor who is open-minded enough to prescribe you the necessary MP medications - a doctor who is willing to let go of their own pet theory about what causes CFS and embrace the research put forth by Autoimmunity Foundation.

I’m not sure how health care works in the UK, but if you can spare any money towards seeing a private doctor who will put you on the MP I feel it’s worth it.

I wish I could offer you more help but all I can encourage you to do is to keep searching for a doctor who is willing to listen to you and to let you do the MP.

Best,

Amy

I’m so sorry I have not responded to you sooner. I’ve been away at a medical conference. Benicar goes a long way in lowering the inflammation that is generated by immunopathology or the bacterial die-off response. However, your daughter with Linea Morphea is still going to experience immunopathology in order to recover. So, her symptoms of the disease are going to flare as she recovers, during the period of time when her bacteria in her face are being killed. What this means is that as your daughter’s Linaer Morphea responds to the antibiotics her symptoms will likely get temporarily worse.

Of course, the key word in that last sentence is temporarily. All symptoms on the MP get “worse” (in the sense that they flare due to die-off) before they get better. So I would expect your daughter’s face to possibly become worse at certain times during the first stages of the the MP. However, once she has killed off many of the bacteria that are causing the condition, her symptoms should stabilize, and then eventually resolve. So I can say with confidence that her Linear Morphea will definitely not deteriorate once she is on the MP (since once on the MP any signs of getting “worse are only a sign of bacterial death), but for a while the disease symptoms will be exacerbated in the way all symptoms are when the MP is initiated.

I am, however, very glad that you are looking into the MP in such detail. You may want to start the treatment on yourself or your children first. It sounds like your husband could benefit from the MP as well. Then, when you get more familiar with the immunopathological response, you can move on to treat your daughter with Linear Morphea.

Don’t forget that if you have any more questions on this issue you should post them on http://www.curemy1.org where they can also be addressed by our patient advocates.

Best,

Amy

Thanks for writing. I’m so sorry to hear that you and all your children are suffering from such a variety of Th1 diseases. Yet, it’s exciting that the MP has the potential to allow all of you to regain a state of health.

I’m very, very, glad to hear that you and your oldest daughter are planning to start the MP. I hope you find a doctor soon…

As for your questions:

1. I am quite confident that Linear Morphea is a Th1 illness and would respond to the MP. We are finding that essentially any ailment/symptom/disease that has no “known cause” is Th1 related. But the fact that the condition is responding to steroids is the give-away. Any condition that improves with the use of steroids is Th1. The steroids slow the activity of the innate immune system. Less bacteria are killed and the patient temporarily feels better (as in your daughter’s case). Plus, your youngest daughter has certainly picked up bacteria from you and your siblings. So the MP is needed for her in any case. When she starts the MP, you will soon be able to tell if her symptoms related to Linear Morphea respond to the antibiotics (if that area starts to herx) and you will have final confirmation if they do.

2) I don’t know anything about Samento/Cumanda. The fact that they elicit herx at least suggests that they arn’t totallyimmunosuppressive (any person with a Th1 illness wants to avoid immunosuppressants at all costs). So perhaps the herbs have killed off some of your daughter’s bacteria. But I guarantee they have not come close to targeting all the bacterial species making her ill. Also, herbs are risky because there is simply no data showing how they might affect the immune system or VDR. But in the time before you daughter does the MP, they don’t sound like the worst option.

3) I would say that you mother probably did not consume as many fortified products (with vitamin D) as you and your kids. Also, she probably wasn’t treated with as many immunosuppressive drugs. But even if the above is not the case, you probably picked up a lot of your mother’s bacteria right at birth. Even though the two of you got sick around the same age later in life, you bacterial load was probably much higher at that point.

When it comes to your kids, they were able to acquire not just your bacteria, but bacteria from your husband in the womb and after birth. Does your husband show any signs of Th1? If so, the extra bacteria from his side of the family could also have contributed to their illnesses.

4) I don’t know how the herbs work. But I wouldn’t worry too much about cardiac herx on the MP. Benicar goes a long, long way, in reducing the inflammation generated by herxing in the heart. So as you mention, extra Benicar can be used if necessary. Also, there is a specific path of treatment for people with cardiac symptoms called “modified phase II” People who take that route of treatment use the MP antibiotics in slightly a different order so that they more gradually wear away at bacteria in the heart. Thirdly, it should comfort you to know that up to this point, no patient, even those with cardiovascular disease on the MP, has suffered from a major cardiac event because of herx.

Hope this information helps! I assume you are also getting advice from the patient advocates at http://www.curemyth1.org? If not, that website is another excellent resource.

Best,

Amy

Dr. Marshall’s model of chronic inflammatory disease does take viruses and other infectious agents besides bacteria into account.

First off, it’s important to understand that L-form bacteria are not the only bacterial forms causing inflammatory disease. Biofilm bacteria form a huge part of the microbiota as well, and also different forms of persistent pathogens. We refer to all these forms collectively as the Th1 pathogens.

When it comes to viruses, a person with a healthy immune system is generally able to fight them off or keep them under control. What happens in people with inflammatory disease is that they first acquire the Th1 pathogens. Many of the Th1 pathogens are able to create substances that bind and block the Vitamin D Receptor, thus slowing the activity of the innate immune system.

When the innate immune system isn’t working up to par, it’s easy for the patient to acquire viral infections, but they are co-infections is the sense that you can kill off the virus, but the patient will still remain ill. The patient will also continue to suffer from immune system dysregulation until the Th1 pathogens which are causing the dysfunction are killed.

So what the Marshall Protocol does is effectively kill the Th1 pathogens. Once they are gone, the immune system naturally regains the strength to keep viral infections under control. Thus, we find in our patients that viral titers lower and disappear altogether as patients kill the Th1 pathogens at the heart of their illnesses.

So those researchers who are identifying viruses in people with chronic inflammatory disease are not necessarily on the wrong track. It’s just unless they target the Th1 pathogens first, the patient will never have an immune system capable of keeping their viral infections under control.

The following two short articles give a good picture of how viruses fit into the Marshall Pathogenesis:

http://bacteriality.com/about-the-mp/

http://bacteriality.com/2008/02/23/misconceptions/#12

Best,

Amy

For what it’s worth, there are some chronic infections which are not caused by cell wall deficient bacteria, but rather by viruses. Though I imagine that getting rid of CWD pathogens in the body would certainly help the immune system focus on remaining viral pathogens.

The site of persistence of [Epstein Barr Virus] may be bone marrow. EBV-positive patients who have had their own bone marrow replaced with bone marrow from an EBV-negative donor are found to be EBV-negative after transplantation.link

There’s a lot of debate now as to whether or not EBV and similar herpatic viruses plays a role in autoimmune diseases.