Antibiotics

[mganstin]

I have no way to back up this suspicion and this may not be true for every case but I just have this feeling that antibiotics may be the culprit.

I have had several doctors tell me that antibiotics can do so much damage to our bodies that both they and us may not even know about yet in medicine. As a child I was on a whole host of antibiotics for various different things such as chronic ear infections, respiratory infections, yeast and bacterial infections, as well as many others.

In my case I have been told that antibiotics has most likely burned the lining of my intestines as well as other sensitive areas and has made my body sensitive to acidic foods and gluten ...and I truly believe this is why I got IC. Those "damaged" areas may affect the bladder area and cause a chronic discomfort.

This is just a hunch but I feel that antibiotics can certainly play a role in IC. If anyone has any other feelings on this or has reasons to believe that antibiotics are not related please feel free to post.

Meghan, IN

[humpieumpumkin]

Macrodantin makes me flare. I know call me crazy, I have heard it once from my old uro. It causes burning in me for some reason. Antibiotocis are strong drugs!

Erika

[Nancypt]

Hi,
I have heard its good to take probiotics either in yogurt or pill form when you have to take antibiotics. Not sure how this affects IC though.
Nancy

[mganstin]

I definately get a flare when I take antibiotics....it feels like an inferno in there.

The majority of the antibiotics I've taken was in pill form.

I mostly had amoxacillin, bactrim, flagyl, and macrobid.

[verdicries]

omg i'm on macrobid (one of the few, i hope, drugs i can take) rite now for a MONTH...i've only taken 1 PILL but have been flaring like crazy. HELP! i can't take ANYTHING (see sig for allergies...yikes) so i'm afraid to stop taking the macro, but geez.

[jen74]

I agree that antibiotics can cause a ton of damage to the body. I believe that is what caused my stomach motility issues as they started after I was on the anti-B augmentin.
It may be what caused my IC or it may not be, who knows really. It is funny because everyone is so different. I have a friend who has IC and she takes macrodantin daily and it is a god send for her. It keeps her IC in check along with other meds she is on. So I guess it just really depends.
Jen

[skrix]

Thrilled to hear about antibiotics

I read about the antibiotics causing flares last night and it finally explained to me that I wasn't crazy.

Three months ago I had a pap and the results came back that I had a bacterial infection and they prescribed flagyl. I was down for a week with buring pain in my bladder. I kept telling my family that I thought that it was the infection and once the antibiotic kicked in I would feel better. I did feel better once I completed the 7 days of antibiotics.

Last Tuesday I had a pelvic exam and diagnosed with yet another bacterial infection and again prescribed flagyl and I have been down again for another week. When I read the stories last night, I realized it wasn't so much the infection that was causing so much pain as it was the medication.

Thanks so much for sharing those stories. At least now I know and can ask for something else to try should another infection occur.

[NicoleB]

i've had tons of UTIs and the ONE time i took cipro, i got IC. i'll never know if there was a connection, but i hated that drug. it made me so nauseous (and i have a strong stomach) and after that UTI treated with Cipro, I've had pain ever since. Also, a few months before that, i had a terrible tonsil infection that too SIX bottles of antibiotics to clear up! AND i had broken up with my boyfriend of 7 years and was under tons of stress. 2006 was a bad year!

[katiemae13]

cipro

I have always suspected that my IC started after taking cipro for 2 UTIs. In the past, I had always taken macrobid for UTIs with no problems. When I took cipro for the (confirmed by culture) UTIs my symptoms did not get better in the first day like they normally do. In fact, they got worse over the course of antibiotics. When I went back to the doctor to tell them I still felt bad, they said my infection was gone and didn't seem to know what to tell me about me feeling worse. Ever since taking the cipro, I have had bladder/urethra pain on and off with no infection, and was finally diagnosed with IC. Whenever I have a UTI now, I ask for macrobid and my symptoms go away as expected in the first day.

My theory is that the cipro killed some good bacteria that were somehow preventing bladder problems.

[Gingerlily1]

I'm just the opposite. I feel much better after I've been on antibiotics (Levaquin) and my IC symptoms will usually go into remission for a while. I think, though, that my IC is caused by a chronic low-grade infection.

I suspect there are multiple causes of IC and antibiotics might be the cause for some people and not others.

I had a HORRIBLE flare when I took probiotics and did not realize what was causing the flare. A fellow ICer suggested it was the probiotics, and she was right--I felt so much better when I stopped them.

It's all very puzzling, isn't it?!

[IheartNursing]

Although Antibiotics kill the friendly flora in our bodies, they do not inflame or damage tissue or lining, so antibiotics can't really be the culprit of IC. However:

I have noticed bladder burning when taking antibiotics, and this is because of bladder yeast infections. I can't understand how a probiotic would flare you. That's strange. What type of probiotic were you taking?

I have extremely, extremely mild IC, so much that I only have flares every couple months or so and last no longer than 2-3 hours. But because I have IC and inflammation is a precursor to that I take a low-dose of Bactrim every night before bed, along with a regime of 15 billion probiotics daily to prevent any UTIs. I think a lot of your issues aren't necessarily the antibiotics but yeast in the bladder. What I thought were recurrent UTIs were actually a systemic yeast infection that I didn't even know I had! It was from taking tons and tons of antibiotics for these supposed UTI's but I was just harvesting more and more yeast. Lol.

If you have an issue with probiotics try taking garlic pills or other things that limit your yeast. I know a lot of people who have had REALLY bad IC and have been able to clear it up on a regime of low-dose antibiotics and acidphilus pills.

[Gingerlily1]

Although Antibiotics kill the friendly flora in our bodies, they do not inflame or damage tissue or lining, so antibiotics can't really be the culprit of IC. However:

I have noticed bladder burning when taking antibiotics, and this is because of bladder yeast infections. I can't understand how a probiotic would flare you. That's strange. What type of probiotic were you taking?

I have extremely, extremely mild IC, so much that I only have flares every couple months or so and last no longer than 2-3 hours. But because I have IC and inflammation is a precursor to that I take a low-dose of Bactrim every night before bed, along with a regime of 15 billion probiotics daily to prevent any UTIs. I think a lot of your issues aren't necessarily the antibiotics but yeast in the bladder. What I thought were recurrent UTIs were actually a systemic yeast infection that I didn't even know I had! It was from taking tons and tons of antibiotics for these supposed UTI's but I was just harvesting more and more yeast. Lol.

If you have an issue with probiotics try taking garlic pills or other things that limit your yeast. I know a lot of people who have had REALLY bad IC and have been able to clear it up on a regime of low-dose antibiotics and acidphilus pills.

Antibiotics have many side effects--for instance, Cipro CAN cause tissue damage. I had all-over musculoskeletal pain as a side effect to Cipro (and it is known that quinolones, expecially Cipro, can cause tendon rupture). Obviously tendon tissue is not the same as bladder tissue, but you can't assume that antibiotics don't cause damage or inflammation.

And remember, many drug side effects are NOT discovered during clinical trials and are instead discovered after thousands of people have taken the meds over a period of years. So the blanket statement that antibiotics " do not inflame or damage tissue or lining, so antibiotics can't really be the culprit of IC" may not be accurate.

I was taking acidophilus, and my acquaintance with IC pointed out that it is acidic, which just hadn't occured to me! Many people with IC find that acidic foods/drink cause bladder irritation, so it's not that surprising that the acidophilus caused a flare, it just didn't occur to me that it might be a problem.

[IheartNursing]

Let me rephrase that: Antibiotics do not normally cause inflammation. Cipro itself is a BAD drug for side effects, probably more so than any other antibiotic. They had used it to treat anthrax patients, who later had worse symptoms than anthrax poisoning due to cipro. I remember being perscribed Cipro for a UTI and refused to take it.

I didn't mean to come off as a know-it-all, I just wanted to relay that antibiotics shouldn't be damaging tissues unless something else is going on there. It could be a correlation between the antibiotics and something else.

[jen74]

Unfortunately, ALL antibitoics can cause serious health issues, and they ALL destroy good bacteria as well. That is why it is so important to take acidophilis when having to take anti-B's of any kind.
Also, never take anti-B's unless you have a documented infection. The more anti-B's you take, the more chance you will become immune to them as well as possibly develop an allergy to them and not be able to take them again ( this happened to me),my allergist told me that many people develop allergies to antibitoics after taking them a few times only. Your body ends up developing antibodies against the drug and when you take it again, you may have a allergic reaction.
Anti-B's are good and have helped alot of people when they needed them, but I really think doctors now are to quick to hand them out. That is what is messing people up. I took amoxicillin 5 years ago for a severe throat infection and also augmentin, well after that my stomach has never worked right since and I have awful digestive motility issues. I even know people who are on a feeding tube now because of what antibitoics did to them and their digestive tract. It is pretty scary, and the doctors dont tell you these things could happen.
Jen

[Gingerlily1]

[QUOTE=jen74;350726]Unfortunately,
Also, never take anti-B's unless you have a documented infection.

Just wanted to comment. One of the reasons I developed IC (I believe) is because I had repeated and ongoing UTIs that NEVER, EVER cultured out anything. I would have blood in my urine, but no bacteria or white blood cells. My ignorant primary care doctor treated me like a hypochondriac until I ended up with kidney stones and was sent to a urologist, who told me I CLEARLY had signs of chronic infections in my bladder.

There are many doctors who think that ONE possible cause of IC/prostatitis is chronic, subclinical infections. I certainly agree that this was true in my case (although I would not call my infections "subclinical" because some clinical signs were there--low grade fever, bladder & urethral spasms, blood in urine--just no results with urine culture).