I'm sick all the time! 10 courses of antibiotics in the last 15 months. Please help!

I think I would prefer to follow Nature’s - path.

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Yah, I basically think my sleep apnea is gone.

In my brain here’s what I think I have going on:

  1. Some root issue that is causing low immune system (IgG3)
  2. I get lots of sinus infections because of #1, I then take antibotics and that causes more issues.
  3. I then most likely have a messed up gut bacteria (although I have no GI issues).
  4. If I’m not super fragile with myself (10 hours of sleep, super healthy eating, low stress, etc) I’m more likely to insert at #2 again.

I feel like if I could just figure out what #1 is I could work on solving everything else. If I never took antibiotics again I could build up my gut GI and I could still live a healthy life style without a common cold bringing me down for 3 weeks.

Wow.
That’s a lot of antibiotics.
I would avoid antibiotics and get on some probiotics to build up your biome. A healthy biome is invaluable.

In addition Bromelain (the proteolytic enzyme from pineapple) has been shown to be quite effective in treating sinusitis. Most sinusitis by the way is not bacterial. Look at buying a cheap potent form of bromelain on Amazon. Read some of the reviews on amazon and google up studies on its efficacy.

Continue the Flonase.

These are a couple of things that I have incorporated for myself.

Full disclosure: I am an Emergency medicine MD

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I am willing to bet that the root cause of majority of your issues is years of stress, @Nate_Pearson.

When people who’d been through this tell you to look after yourself, they mean exactly that.

Remember that unlimited holidays policy you’ve implemented in your company ? I think it is about time you’ve used it to get your health back on track.

Rest. Rebuild your foundation. Only then you can start thinking about doing any structured training.

Tim.
:facepunch:

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Nate- you guys are so great, putting it all out there, because so many of us are dealing with some or all of it as well. Thanks for doing that. Two things I didn’t see on the thread: Local honey, and TSS tracking. First, if I’m getting pounded with pollen allergies (evergreen trees shed twice a year), I put some local honey in my coffee or tea, and it definitely helps.

On the TSS front- do you see a correlation between hard weeks, or easy weeks, and sickness? For me, moderate loads build immunity, but too much TSS or too little TSS will get me sick- especially the latter. I’ll bet my sleep quality tracks with that as well. If I combine travel with zero workouts, or too-hard workouts, that’s pretty much a guaranteed cold, or worse. If I can get my HR up to tempo for maybe 30 min/day while travelling- but not much more- I feel stronger to fight off the bugs.

Best of luck to you.

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If my kids get sick, I get sick. I usually get over the cold part quickly but then it develops into a sinus infection over a week or so. It doesn’t matter if I’m training or not.

I’ve also done lots of training where my kids aren’t sick and I don’t get sick :slight_smile:.

So maybe your kids should do all this stuff? (j/k- I’ve got four kids- totally understand.) FWIW I forgot to mention honey also has anti-inflamatory properties.

I used to get “allergy sick” a lot, and the grass/tree/cat allergies made every spring an adventure. This may sound bizarre, however ever since getting a garage cat over 10 years ago my allergies aren’t as bad. And three years ago we picked up another cat, and this one is inside/outside. And now I actually enjoy spring. Weird.

Unlikely to help you, but I can relate as up until recently every spring made me sick.

Hope you find a solution, good luck!!!

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Antibiotics can really wreck your immune system. Been there myself. If you have to take them in such quantities, then probably they are not that effective to start with. Your gut biome may be damaged in ways not fully recognizable or studied, and impacts your immune system. This has been my experience.

My friend suffered from severe allergies all his life, had testicular cancer, eczema. Recently he went on a raw diet lifestyle. Only thermally processed foods he allows himself are teas and porridge. Everything else is raw fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, honey, berries, and variations of such: juices, smoothies etc. He frequently fasts, recently as long as three weeks. Since then no colds, allergies , rides his bike and generally enjoys life. Not a very pleasant conversation partner at times )) as his favorite topic is his morning enema. But something is definitely working.

Hope you will find your cure.

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+1 on the bromelain, and then from what I’ve read, I would also suggest doing some research on usage of things like garlic & turmeric. All things I’ve found in my research on treating my allergies, trouble breathing & nasal polyp over the last year. I truly don’t know if these have helped me at all, but I’ve read enough to think that they could be worth a shot!

As a note, from what I’ve read, pairing turmeric with black pepper helps increase how much your body can use. Sounds gross, but tart cherry juice with turmeric and black pepper in there makes it manageable if you opt not to add it to food.

I suffer from allergies and have significant trouble breathing sometimes as a result, although from the sound of it nothing near as bad as you deal with Nate. Sorry to hear all that you’ve had to go through but hopefully a fix is right around the corner! Thanks for sharing all of your information.

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This may seem too obvious, but it may be useful to be more mindful of general hygiene, especially when the kids are sick and during travel. Simple things such as washing hands after touching infected surfaces and not rubbing your hands on eyes/mouth/nose may could help and at the least won’t hurt. Also I’m not sure entirely sure what a CPAP machine looks like, but it may help also to ensure it is sterile when in-use.

If you’re convinced that anything airborne will get to you and stick, you could also try wearing a filtered mask especially when kids are sick or in crowded spaces (planes, buses, etc).

If you want probiotics, Kefir may be a better bet than Kombucha, and is mostly lactose-free as it gets eaten up by the bacteria.

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  • Mask when travelling.

  • Cloves.

One of the highest ORAC foods, probably the highest of readily supermarket available foods – more than twice that of turmeric and more than eight times that of black pepper and 200-300 times more than any raw fruit or veggie. Do cloves + cinnamon for a 1-2 punch.

  • PRE and PRO biotics.

High powered supplement form to get you colonized; food sources will not provide anywhere near the count you require. In a recent podcast @chad mentioned gut health having far reaching effects, as has been mentioned, you might have zero after 1+ years of antibiotics.

  • Specialists.

Cuz really, what does the internet know?

Good luck, but also damn!
You’re this sick and you’re still smashing it! I wouldn’t want to race a healthy Nate!

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Just to clarify one of my previous posts, @Nate_Pearson

I stopped taking “good” bacteria (like Lactobacillus X or Bifidobacterium Y) a while ago, except for cases like diarrhea. The flora of the intestines is a very individual thing. Do you know your right mix?

Instead, I only take (weakish) “bad” bacteria (like Streptococcus Pneumoniae or Haemophilus Influenzae) in 3 sessions of 10 days over 3 months (10d on, 20d off, 10d on &c) to stimulate/train the immune system. If you already have an infection you can take it right away.

To give you an analogy: Instead of eating extra carbs all the time in order to have the most energy available when you need it (someday), you could train now using the energy you naturally have.

This and a B6-B9-B12 combo helped me.

Am I making sense?

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Apologies if I’ve missed it, but for those eight courses of antibiotics, what was the diagnosis? Were the symptoms similar?

I had sinusitis once when I was a teenager from swimming all thre time, it was absolutely awful to endure without treatment. You have my sympathy!

And it’s the same person prescribing these right? I mean, they know how many antibiotics you’re taking?

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Lots of great posts here, and I hope you get some progress from all the info posted!

On a lighter note (hopefully a smile will help a bit…) Come to Zambia dude, here they will sort you out quick quick…we also have some killer MTB Riding here!!

image

:grin:

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We’re also in a very dry climate. We are moving to a brand new house in the next 3 months so that should eliminate the air quality variable.

Maybe this is part of the answer here, instead of just pure “air quality”? I’m plagued by 3-5 sinus infections a year myself, so I feel your pain.

We live in Munich/germany, in a somewhat continental climate. The weather condition is often dominated by dry air coming in over the mountains. I’ve never been to Reno, but it sounds somewhat similar, just even dryer than munich. My symptoms improve a lot or even go away completely pretty much immediately when going to a different climate - especially to the seaside. My ENT even mentioned something like I should live by the sea. Just some food for thought.

edit: Just saw @RONDAL mention this as well - matches my experience exactly :slight_smile:

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@Nate_Pearson Not that it will solve all your problems but it might help. Me and some of my direct family members are bad sleepers. We sleep light, wake up early and get woken up from noise easily. Once we are awake it is very difficult for us to fall back asleep again.

We do not want to use sleeping medication so for a long time we just had to deal with it. Untill my brother made cannabis oil for his girlfriend (who had rheumatism). A side effect of the oil (which he discovered from research) is that it will help you sleep. So he started taking a single drop of oil each night. And voila! No more broken nights. His quality of sleep improved greatly. So my mom and me started as well. Both of us improved our quality of sleep and duration. No more waking up many times a night and feel much better when waking up.

The first days you can feel a bit sluggish but that will pass. And you won’t get high because the THC has been removed from the oil in the destilation process.

And it could be a cheap solution.

Hope it helps.

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Hello Nate,

I’ve had the same problems here.
In 2016/17 I’ve had 15-20 nasal Infections in a row and a steady Headache/Toothache for about half a year:
1 week Training - antibiotics - 2 Weeks pause. Depressing.

Went to several Doctors and magnetic resonance tomography finally showed severe nasal polypes / adenoids.

Considering operations and medical treatment I tried simple things first and applied nasal showers / irrigations wich solved the Headache problem and reduced my infections significantly.

Nowadays I take those nasal showers and a cortisone spray sporadically when I feel that my nose starts to get clogged up; Its not perfect, but ok so far.

Greetings from Berlin,
arne

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An eGFR blood test and a simple urine dipstick to test for the presence of protein are fairly routine over here in the UK and would highlight any renal impairment. I would be surprised if they hadn’t happened before you getting to this point.

@Chad mentioned on the podcast that he had some dipsticks so you could possibly check that yourself but beware a higher protein diet can also show up.

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