metronidazole toxicity

Metronidazole Toxicity and Doctor Denial

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Harsh Revelations

“It’s time for you to get past this and move on with your life.” As I sat on a cobalt blue exam table, my primary care physician’s words ping-ponged throughout my mind. Even then, I knew it was a pivotal moment, one that would steer my life into a new and terrifying direction no patient wished to venture.

It was the moment I lost all faith in conventional medicine.

August 12th, 2015.  In front of me, my doctor (we’ll call her Dr. Perry) stared quietly, waiting for a response. There was no anger in her eyes, more like desperation. She was desperate to “reach me,” to get me to understand—what I had was depression and an anxiety disorder. These symptoms I’d described repeatedly, a page-long manifesto of misery, weren’t real—they couldn’t be. It had been two months since I took the antibiotic, metronidazole (Flagyl), and there was no way the medication could be affecting me now.

What she didn’t realize was…I wasn’t the one in denial.

She was.

“I have come across many instances of this kind of reaction by physicians,” explained Derrick Lonsdale, MD, and author of Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition. “The many symptoms expressed by the patient are interpreted as ‘psychological’ because they appear to be bizarre and conventional lab studies are often normal. The diagnosis is little more than an accusation of malingering. Furthermore, the absolute denial of any sort of vitamin deficiency causing disease in America has become a virtual mantra throughout the medical profession. Any suggestion of this by the patient reinforces the physician’s diagnosis of neurosis.”

“It is very bizarre,” he continued, “to see repeated stories where a drug reaction is denied by physicians. Worse yet is the doctor’s accusation of a patient’s imagination as the cause of symptoms. The Physicians Desk Reference often has one or even two pages listing the toxic effects of a given drug.”

The Beginning of my Metronidazole Nightmare

In June of 2015, I had a gut infection called c diff.  Dr. Perry had diagnosed it and prescribed metronidazole, but five days into treatment, I found myself in the ER, unable to walk or speak.  Included with those symptoms was a list of other issues so random, it was as if someone was picking them out of a big Bingo ball cage: dizziness, difficulty concentrating, shortness of breath, hand tremors, fatigue, brain fog, weakness.

At the time, I wasn’t afraid, because I believed this problem had an simple solution: just stop taking the drug and—poof!—all symptoms would disappear like a quarter in a magic trick.  Another antibiotic was available for c diff, vancomycin, and the problem-solver in me thought this was a no-brainer.

In the ER, they did a CT scan, an EKG, took a urine sample and multiple tubes of blood, only to conclude that the issue was low potassium, even though not all my symptoms matched that diagnosis. Trusting the doctors, I allowed them to discharge me. I got a prescription strength potassium supplement, and then took another dose of metronidazole before heading to bed and then more the following day.

Less than 36 hours later, my mother rushed me to Dr. Perry’s office, as I once again lost the ability to walk and speak.

From the clinic’s lobby, my mother had to half-drag me into the exam room. When she spoke the words “metronidazole” and “side effects” to Dr. Perry, they were met with a face full of skepticism.

“I’ve never seen Flagyl do that before,” Dr. Perry insisted.

After arguing with my mother, the doctor did admit me to the hospital for observation. Maybe Dr. Perry and the ER doctors weren’t well-versed in adverse drug reactions, but hospital physicians were certainly in-the-know.  Right?

Naïve Patient + Ignorant Doctors = Poor Prognosis

“I just can’t imagine it’s the metronidazole,” the pharmacist explained.

Six hours into my hospital stay, two doctors stood by my bed, the pharmacist sandwiched between them. My symptoms had once again improved, and my mother and I had explained what had happened like a song set on repeat. The doctors had tried—and failed—to convince us that metronidazole wasn’t the problem.  So now they had brought in the big guns: the hospital pharmacist. We argued with her—every symptom I had was listed as a side effect of the drug.

“But that type of reaction…it would be really rare,” she had explained.

Game over. Not one doctor believed metronidazole was the problem. They had no other explanation, as my potassium levels had returned to normal now. How could having this drug reaction be so painfully obvious to me and my family, but so confusing to every medical expert I saw?

If left untreated, my infection could be fatal. Unsure what to do, I said softly, “I have to take something to treat the c diff.”

Half an hour later, the nurse brought me more metronidazole. I took it. Later that evening, I took another dose. Then the all-consuming panic set in.

The “Hysterical” Patient

That night in the hospital, my heart pounded so hard, I was afraid it would burst out of my chest “Alien” style. My face felt searing hot while my body shivered.  The anxiety was set to PANIC and stuck there. Adrenaline rushed through my veins like it was fixed to a 30-second timer.

Nothing felt right.

I didn’t fall asleep until 4:00 a.m., and less than two hours later, I woke with a startle although there was nothing there to surprise me. Again, my physical symptoms—the difficulty walking and talking—had come roaring back, along with brain fog, hand tremors, dizziness—the works.

I had an orderly help me to the bathroom and there, I burst into tears. I cursed through slurred words and short breaths, and cried from sheer terror. C diff was a gun to my head, metronidazole a poisoned apple in my hand. And I was being forced to choose between the two.  Another antibiotic was available to treat my infection, but the doctors refused to give it to me.

They were so certain my symptoms were just in my head, they were willing to bet my life on it.

Late morning, my symptoms partially subsided again, and my father visited; he argued with the doctor, my father’s voice much deeper and menacing than Mom’s and mine. “I don’t understand what the big problem is here. She wants to change her meds—so why can’t you do that?”

The doctor in charge of my case finally agreed to give me a prescription for vancomycin, but only after I left the hospital and only if my symptoms were still “bothering” me, as he explained.  Later, after my father left, the same doctor entered my room unattended. He approached my bedside, shoulders squared. “I’m wondering—do you have trouble sleeping at night?” he asked.

Unsure how to answer, I replied sometimes, yes, when there were a lot of things going on.

He bobbed his head up and down, this all-knowing look on his face. “I think you need to see a psychiatrist.”

The bottom fell out of my stomach. I sat there, slack-jawed.

“It’s just…” the doctor stepped forward, and his professional demeanor caved. Those eyebrows knitted together. Impatience, irritation shone like searchlights from both eyes. “What are you so anxious for?

I didn’t respond—didn’t know how to respond. What was I so anxious for? How could this be a question?

Despite the encounter, the hospital doctors later decided to just go ahead and give me vancomycin, with the off-handed disclaimer, “We still don’t think it’s the metronidazole, but…”

I left the hospital the next day, vancomycin in hand.  Despite this nightmare experience, I was relieved in the fact that things would turn back to normal now. I could catalogue all of this into past-tense.

I was wrong.

“Although in many instances of drug use,” explained Dr. Lonsdale, “the side effects disappear when the drug is discontinued; metronidazole is an exception. Through its destruction of thiamine, it leaves in its wake a severe loss of efficiency in cellular energy metabolism. Unless thiamine is restored, the so-called side effects will continue indefinitely. The disaster comes about because the physician’s failure to take the patient’s symptoms seriously does not lead to effective treatment.”

But You Should be Fine Now…

Things barely improved after stopping the metronidazole. Although a few symptoms resolved, like slurred speech, others cropped up from nowhere—some starting days to weeks after stopping the drug:

  • Difficulty swallowing
  • Frequent urination
  • Constipation
  • Asthma-like respiratory issues
  • Complete loss of appetite (twenty pound weight loss)
  • Inability to stand up straight
  • Difficulty walking
  • Shortness of breath when talking
  • Chest pressure
  • Heart palpitations
  • Face flushing
  • Dry mouth
  • Cough
  • Headache
  • Pressure at the back of the head
  • Neck pain and stiffness
  • Constant adrenaline rushes
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Crying spells
  • Insomnia
  • Extreme fatigue

The list was so long, even I failed to fully understand how all these symptoms were possible in one body.  No medical professional had an explanation for why this was happening and why it didn’t stop after discontinuation of metronidazole.

For two months, I couldn’t care for myself. I stayed with my parents; I lost twenty pounds, and no matter how hard I tried, working full-time was impossible. Before metronidazole, I had three jobs—one as a full-time assistant, another part-time job doing data entry, and one writing freelance articles for local magazines. I had to quit my part-time job, stopped writing, and ended up missing over 130 hours of work at my full-time job over that two-month time span. Despite my symptoms being listed as side effects of metronidazole, no diagnosis was given from any physician.  With no doctor to back me up, at one point I worried I’d lose my full-time job.

In total, I saw eight general practitioners, including my primary care physician, and then a hefty bag of specialists: a cardiologist, an immunologist, an ENT doctor, a psychiatrist, and a therapist (to his credit, the therapist believed I had suffered an adverse drug reaction, but just like me, didn’t know why I still had symptoms). There were tests, from multiple CT scans to X-rays, EKGs, an upper GI, an echocardiogram, a heart monitor, a laryngoscopy, several lung function tests, and about 30 vials of blood taken.

One of the general practitioners tested me for illegal drugs. The doctors had more belief I was a drug addict than the idea that metronidazole could be affecting me six weeks after taking it.

When I was ingesting metronidazole, the physicians either insisted it was incapable of causing my symptoms or a reaction like that was “so rare,” it couldn’t happen to me. Now that I was off the drug, the rhetoric had shifted to: “Well, even if you had a reaction, you should be fine now.”

This not only left me feeling defeated and helpless…but ashamed.  I felt so guilty for being so sick.  It was around this time the suicidal thoughts kicked in.

Out of Body, Out of Mind

Six weeks after taking metronidazole, the insomnia worsened. I went eight days with barely any sleep. I tried every medication a doctor offered to mask symptoms, a conveyer belt of meds: Prozac, Paxil, hydroxyzine, Zofran, Ambien, and then mirtazapine. The mirtazapine allowed me to sleep, and with the rest, my body started to improve and the suicidal thoughts calmed. (It was also at this point I started to supplement magnesium and a general multi-vitamin.)

Now August, two weeks into the mirtazapine treatment, I met with Dr. Perry and that’s when she handed down the diagnosis of depression and an anxiety disorder.  “It’s time for you to get past this and move on with your life,” she told me.

I did something else. I stopped trusting doctors, and began researching metronidazole on my own.

When a Google Search is Better than a Medical Degree

During the first two months after my initial reaction, I had looked into metronidazole but assumed (naïvely) that my doctors were too. They were not. If any answers were out there, it was up to me to find them. So I Googled—a lot. It became an obsession; I learned the history of the drug, where it was created (France), when the FDA approved it (the early 1960s). Whatever clinical trials they did at that time has kept the drug on the market for almost 60 years, despite those trials not being acceptable by today’s standards. The medication was considered “broad-spectrum”—a fancy way of saying it went everywhere in the body. The digestive tract, the bloodstream, saliva, genitals, all vital organs including the heart and lungs. Cerebrospinal fluid.  The brain.

In addition to the trivia-facts, I read countless patient reviews on websites like drugs.com, webmd.com and—most of all—askapatient.com. People were complaining about the same symptoms, the same motor control issues, heart and breathing problems, and especially the neuropsychiatric issues.  When anyone mentioned visiting their doctor, it was almost always about how the doctor dismissed the patient’s claim that metronidazole was the cause.

Then in late September 2015, I discovered a new term to plug into Google—metronidazole toxicity.  When I did, I found out that what I had, it had a name:

Metronidazole-induced Central Nervous System Toxicity

It was the title of a systematic review, one that collected numerous case studies about metronidazole and its toxic effects on the central nervous system to form statistic data. The example they used in the review was that of an elderly woman. Two days on the drug, she began to have trouble speaking and then difficulty walking, which progressed to her losing the ability to walk altogether. Metronidazole was discontinued and she made a slow but steady recovery.

In total, the symptoms listed on the systematic review were:

  • Dysarthria (slurred speech/difficulty speaking) 66% of cases
  • Ataxia (loss of motor control skills, such as walking) 56%
  • Dysmetria (lack of coordination of movement) 33%
  • Altered mental state (neuropsychiatric issues) 33%
  • Seizures 15%
  • Nystagmus (involuntary eye movement) 8%

And the cause? If you have issues like losing the ability to walk and speak while taking metronidazole, there is about a 93% chance lesions have formed on the back of your brain, specifically the cerebellum. This causes a disorder called “cerebellar dysfunction,” leading to motor control issues, cognitive issues, and a possible altered mental state.

After drug cessation, the lesions disappear 83% of the time over the course of three months.  There is poor correlation between resolution of those lesions and a resolution of symptoms.

Only 65% of patients fully recover from metronidazole toxicity. Another 29% have improvement, but not a full recovery, another 3% have unknown outcomes, and the remaining 3% have permanent cognitive impairment.

Medical Literature isn’t Enough…Really?

Three weeks after finding this review, I showed it to Dr. Perry. I reminded her of my symptoms, especially my difficulty walking and speaking, my slurred speech and gasping to speak.

“I have no documentation of slurred speech,” she replied.

Her words hit me bullet-hard, and I sat there, dumbfounded. She fished through my chart, reviewing my visit to the ER to the hospital—nothing. Not one doctor had written anything down about my difficulty speaking, despite it being one of my most prominent and concerning symptoms.

In fact, none of the symptoms I complained about during my ER and hospital visit were in my records. The only record they had of any significant symptom was from Dr. Perry herself, noting that I couldn’t walk due to “weakness.” I addressed this with her, and she insisted my difficulty walking in June wasn’t neurological in nature.

I sat in the exam room, staring up at the ceiling, allowing the fluorescent lights to sting my eyes.  Could this really be happening?

Despite this new information, Dr. Perry did agree to order an MRI, the only test that could detect those white matter lesions the systematic review talked about. The MRI was performed two weeks later—now it had been over four months since my initial reaction and, sure enough, nothing showed, as the medical literature said was typical by that point.

Any chance of detecting an abnormality was gone.

During this time, I requested a copy of my own medical records and a little over a month later, they arrived. I read them all; the ER visit—the hospital visit. There was nothing, no mention of difficulty walking or speaking, just as Dr. Perry had explained.  But there was one symptom mentioned several times—anxiety. From the ER, my shortness of breath when talking was excused away as anxiety. And from the hospital, my doctors had written it down thirteen times over the course of my forty-eight hour hospital stay.

Then, at the end of the paperwork, was the last appointment with Dr. Perry, and as I saw what she wrote, my hands tightened around the edges of the papers:

“Patient brought an article to clinic today and she thinks she has “metronidazole-induced CNS toxicity” and she wants an MRI.  Of note, the article states patients that have this have cerebellar dysfunction, altered mental status and seizures. Patient has not had any of these symptoms.”

I’ll never know what was going on in Dr. Perry’s head when she wrote that statement. Could she be this much in denial about the drug’s toxicity to permanently mark my medical records like a scarlet letter?  Or was this now her vain attempt to cover her own mistakes? Either way, it boiled down to one truth:

“Keeping accurate records is the sacred duty of any physician,” explained Dr. Lonsdale, “if not solely for consecutive management of the patient, it is surely for the protection of the physician. To leave out major symptoms described by the patient because it does not fit the doctor’s diagnosis amounts to malpractice.”

I Was a Textbook Case of Metronidazole Toxicity

Over the course of several months, my symptoms slowly improved on their own, where I was able to work full-time and live on my own. But flare up’s were common, some bad enough to land me back in bed. I also discovered that the metronidazole’s neurotoxicity is actually listed in the WARNINGS section of its FDA label, noting the key symptoms being dysarthria (difficulty speaking), ataxia (difficulty walking and/or arm control), and dizziness.

I was a textbook case of this drug’s neurotoxicity and none of my doctor’s had made the connection.  Instead, they chalked it up to hysteria.

Excommunicated: MD Edition

Upon all of these new discoveries, I decided to set up another appointment with Dr. Perry to ask her about my medical records, but a week before the appointment, she called me and, as I sat with the phone hot on my face, I listened to her speech:

“Erin, I want you to know that I care greatly for you. I just want what’s best for you. But I don’t think we have the right ‘doctor/patient’ relationship. So I think it is best if, moving forward, I was no longer your primary care physician.”

Later, I found out she not only dismissed me as a patient but had me banned from the large clinic she worked, including another doctor’s office that I’d never visited that happened to be in the same building.

That would not do, not after all that. I got on the phone with her supervisor, who—at first—flat-out refused to meet with me. It took several minutes and a strong declaration, “I am going to have a meeting,” to get her to agree. A month later, I went to the meeting with Dr. Perry’s supervisor and the clinic’s lawyers (Dr. Perry was not present).  Along with me was my mother and a doctor I worked with who also happened to be friends with the supervisor—a lucky break few patients have.

I brought in emails I sent in June of 2015 discussing my symptoms with doctors, colleagues and friends, including losing the ability to walk and slurred speech—that contradicted what was written on my medical records. Along with the emails, I also had a stack of medical literature including case studies, multiple systematic reviews and the FDA label that confirmed metronidazole’s toxicity. My doctor-friend validated my story, my symptoms and research, and I got the more appropriate diagnoses of “cerebellar dysfunction” and “altered mental state.”

Even after getting the diagnosis, no doctor would acknowledge that metronidazole was the cause.

My ban from the clinics was never lifted.

Metronidazole Toxicity: A Not-So “Rare” Problem

Over the course of a year, my body healed enough for me to enjoy social activities again.  Nonetheless, flare up’s would still arise and they could last for days to months with no explanation.

Researching metronidazole more, I discovered the cerebellum wasn’t the only part of the brain affected. The brain stem was the second most-hit region, and the brain stem controls the autonomic nervous system. This includes: breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, temperature regulation, sleep-and-wake cycle, and your fight-or-flight response, among many others. Metronidazole could also damage nerves throughout the body, including the eyes and ears, a problem many other patients complained about in their reviews.

Branching out online, I connected with other victims of metronidazole toxicity.  I shared the medical literature and created a blog. In addition, I started a Facebook support group; only people suffering from metronidazole toxicity are allowed to join. When the support group began, there were three of us. Now, three years later, there’s over 600 members.

Despite physicians insisting metronidazole toxicity is rare, patients were screaming about adverse effects across the internet. Metronidazole is the most-reviewed antibiotic on drugs.com, the second-most reviewed on webmd.com and, on askapatient.com website, metronidazole has the highest number of reviews when compared to all drugs, with the oral version of metronidazole having the 5th highest number of 1-star reviews (when all versions of metronidazole are included—IV, oral and gel—the drug has the highest number of 1-star reviews on the site). In addition, on Askapatient, it had the highest complaints about:

  • Headaches
  • Dizziness
  • Anxiety
  • Panic Attacks
  • Depression
  • Disorientation
  • Fatigue

It also had the second-highest number of complaints about confusion and paranoia.  Patients are clearly being outspoken about metronidazole and its serious adverse effects.  But from the medical community…barely a whisper.

How could this be?

Mechanisms of Toxicity and the Thiamine Connection

In November 2017, I suffered one of the worst flare up’s since my drug reaction in 2015.  It just so happened, during that time, I ran across Dr. Lonsdale’s textbook, “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition.” It caught my eye because I recalled the word “thiamine” mentioned in a couple of the articles for metronidazole.

I read the book and every symptom I’d had was listed. Going back to research, I discovered that metronidazole is similar to a ring of thiamine (vitamin B1) and, when it comes into contact with the vitamin, it binds to it, destroying it. This plummets the victim into a sudden, severe thiamine deficiency.

The symptoms of metronidazole toxicity and thiamine deficiency disease are identical.

That was why the drug’s toxicity kept “flaring up.” I had been skating on the edge of this drug-induced thiamine deficiency and any time my body endured stress, it depleted the limited thiamine I had gained and plummeted me back into deficiency.

Within two months of supplementing magnesium and high doses of Allithiamine (a fat soluble version of thiamine), my lingering metronidazole toxicity symptoms either resolved or became so mild, they could no longer debilitate me no matter what physical or mental stress my body endured.

A few months ago, I finished painting a house.

Nonetheless, I didn’t get off Scot-free. It has been almost two years since starting the thiamine regimen and, through trial-and-error, it has become apparent that the damage metronidazole has done is most likely permanent. Enzymes that are vitally important in energy metabolism require thiamine and if the symptoms arising from its deficiency are not corrected early in its manifestations—the enzymes deteriorate due to lack of use. To resuscitate the enzymes, megadoses of thiamine are required, usually for a long time. Symptomatic recovery can be expected unless permanent cellular damage has developed.

In other words, if caught early, thiamine deficiency is almost always reversible. Due to medical neglect, I went two and a half years without appropriate treatment.

Only the accidental finding of a book has been responsible for my “almost” recovery. So every day, I have to swallow eight pills to over-saturate my body with high doses of thiamine and also magnesium in order for my cells to function properly. Toxicity symptoms—although no longer crippling—still present themselves on a regular basis. I’ve learned to push through, to manage, to rest more if I’m having an “off day.”

Overall, I felt like I got off easy compared to so many other people suffering from adverse drug reactions, but it still hits me sometimes—the “what if’s.”  What if my doctors hadn’t forced me to continue taking metronidazole?  What if they had recognized the toxicity symptoms early on?  What if they—medical professionals—had researched the drug (surely better and faster than I could have given their medical degrees) and discovered the connection between metronidazole and thiamine long ago?

What if they had simply believed me?

And that’s the scariest part. For two and a half years, I suffered from a chronic illness that was not only very real, but also very treatable. However, because of the ignorance (and sometimes arrogance) of conventional medicine, patients like myself are forced to suffer. We are sick in a way that is inconvenient to doctors and their beliefs in their own medical dogma.

There are some scars that will never heal. My faith in medicine has been shaken to its core, and now that I’ve finally been able to see the medical structure from a different angle, it is obvious that medicine is more like a house of cards than a mighty castle. Doctors scare me now, not because I think they are bad people, but because of one simple truth:

Doctors are in denial.

They are in denial of the drugs they give to us every single day.  My story isn’t an isolated incident.  When it comes to drug reactions and how the medical community responds, my story is—unfortunately—the norm.

“There are four conflicts for a patient who has suffered side effects from Flagyl,” explained Dr. Lonsdale.  “The first is finding that the doctor simply denies that the complex symptoms are the result of a prescription drug and accuses the patient of imagining them. The second hurdle is the difficulty of comprehending that their body has been deprived of thiamine by the action of the drug. The third difficulty is understanding that the toxicity will last as long as the thiamine deficiency exists and that it is not a matter of taking a few vitamin tablets. The fourth problem to be experienced is that, if and when the patient starts the megadose thiamine, the symptoms may get worse for an unpredictable time before they get better. There is no doubt in my mind that Flagyl is dangerous enough to be discontinued. This form of toxicity needs understanding by a physician who can take responsibility for its treatment.”

If you’ve suffered an adverse reaction to metronidazole, you’re not alone.  Learn more on my blog.  For victims of metronidazole toxicity or family members trying to find ways to help loved ones with the toxicity, join the Metronidazole Toxicity Support Group on Facebook (you need to answer a question to join).

If you have suffered from the side effects of this or others drugs and would like to share your story on Hormones Matter, contact us.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

This article was first published on September 9, 2019.

 

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Exploring Metronidazole Toxicity: A Video Series

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In 2015, I suffered an adverse reaction to the antibiotic, metronidazole (also called Flagyl), which triggered a whirlwind of dysfunction across my body – everything from muscle twitches and head pressure to losing the ability to walk and speak. In total, I had roughly forty random symptoms and most of them did not resolve after discontinuation of the medication. My condition would start to improve slightly, only to flare up shortly after – two steps forward, two steps back. There were no doctors with an explanation as to how or why this was happening. I was on my own.

Over the course of several months, I became an expert Google doctor and learned that there was, in fact, a good explanation for my newly acquired illness. According to medical literature, metronidazole is neurotoxic and neuropathic. It can cause dysfunction and/or damage to the brain, with the cerebellum and brainstem hit the worst. It has the ability to damage nerves throughout the body: from peripheral neuropathy to optic neuropathy, to small fiber neuropathy, and even autonomic neuropathy.

It seemed as though metronidazole’s toxicity was potentially boundless, but it begged the question as to why? What was occurring on a cellular level that could trigger so much dysfunction across the body? Furthermore, why were the symptoms frequently flaring up, where a patient would begin to feel better for days, weeks, or even months only for issues to return, sometimes resulting in a full relapse?

The explanation is that metronidazole is a thiazole, an imposter of thiamine (vitamin B1) and has the ability to destroy the vitamin throughout the body, plummeting the victim into a sudden thiamine deficiency disease. Thiamine deficiency is not like other vitamin deficiencies. Thiamine regulates energy metabolism and so its absence throws every cell in the body into an energy crisis. That is why the symptoms of metronidazole-induced thiamine deficiency are so broad and bizarre and that is why they may wax and wane as thiamine increases or decreases relative to other stressors.

In order to help myself recover and find others who were similarly harmed by this antibiotic, I began writing, first on Hormones Matter (here, here) and then on my own blog. I also began a Facebook group for individuals suffering from metronidazole toxicity. When we started the group, there were three of us. Now, as of 2022, there are approximately 2,000 members.

Over the years, I have learned a tremendous amount about metronidazole toxicity. To help other sufferers understand their symptoms, what the drug is doing to their bodies, and potential treatment options for metronidazole toxicity, I put together the three-part video series posted below.

The first video is for anyone new to metronidazole toxicity. It is a “beginner’s course” about the telltale symptoms of the drug’s adverse effects. The second video discusses metronidazole toxicity reported in the medical literature and the third video delves into the mechanisms of the toxicity itself e.g. what is happening at a cellular level that is causing dysfunction. This is where I talk about the drug’s connection to thiamine.

Since suffering from my reaction, I have learned that metronidazole toxicity is not only far more common than conventional medicine realizes but it also has possible treatment options. There is one disclaimer, however, I am not a doctor. I am simply a patient attempting to help other patients better understand their condition, and hopefully, find their road to recovery. Whatever information you take from this video series, you will need to decide what is best for you.

I do apologize that, on video 3, I had an equipment malfunction and there are a couple of minutes where the audio is a bit subpar near the end. Also, these videos took some time to create, so there are references to 2020 and 2021, as I started working on the first video way back in 2020.

If you believe you have metronidazole toxicity, please feel free to join our Facebook support group here. General information about metronidazole toxicity can be found on my blog.

Stay safe, stay healthy.

Metronidazole Toxicity Part I: Breakdown of Symptoms

Metronidazole Toxicity Part II: Damage

Metronidazole Toxicity Part III: Mechanisms

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

This article was published originally on April 11, 2022. 

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An Over Medicated and Chronically Ill Millennial

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Frequent Infections, Antibiotics, and Asthma

As I’ve reflected on my current health challenges, I’ve come to the realization that I need to head back in time to my earliest years. Like many kids born in the early 90s, I was the first to receive a slew of vaccinations that were previously never given to children. I suffered from frequent “earaches” that led to multiple courses of antibiotics before kindergarten, and by the time I reached middle school, I was taking yearly courses of antibiotics for all sorts of things: colds, sinus infections, acne. It was around this time that I was also diagnosed with exercise induced asthma. I remember almost passing out in a lacrosse practice in 7th grade, and before I knew it, I was put on Advair (daily inhaled steroid) and was hitting the albuterol 2 or 3 times before a workout. My allergies also raged during this time.

Anxiety and Doctor Prescribed Benzodiazepine

I started getting increasingly anxious in early high school. I remember getting what I now know are symptoms of a panic attack in late middle school. Though part of this was due to the fact that I was hiding my sexuality (and hiding it well), I also realize that I had been slamming my adolescent body with drugs, vaccinations and the standard high sugar American diet for 14 years at that point.

My anxiety caused sleeping issues and I was placed on Ambien when I was 16. When I was withdrawn from that, the anxiety got worse (I know now it was Ambien withdrawal), and I was finally sent over to a psychiatrist. After listening to my description of panic attacks, she placed me on Klonopin, one of the most potent benzodiazepines on the market that should never be used for more than a few weeks. She told me to take up to four a day (an insane dose) and that like a diabetic, I needed GABA enhancement, and I would have to take these for the rest of my life.

At 17, I was buzzing on a benzodiazepine every day. I remember that it actually felt quite good and erased all worry. But then I began to experience one of the most terrifying side effects of long-term benzodiazepine dependence: I was getting dementia! I couldn’t remember things for tests or quizzes no matter how hard I studied. When I brought this up to the psychiatrist, she assured me that a little amnesia was a common benzodiazepine side effect, but that the benefits outweighed this. Essentially, giving a teenager dementia outweighed him having anxiety.

Benzodiazepine Withdrawal and Repeat Concussions

When I decided I needed to come off the benzodiazepine after taking it for a year, her instructions were to taper over one week and then jump. Now, this was 2010, and the internet was alive and well at that point. Upon doing just a little bit of research, I knew this woman was insane. All recommendations were that benzodiazepines needed to be tapered over the course of many weeks if not many months. I found a benzo support group online that became my lifeline for the next 4 months as I gradually weaned myself off the drug with the support of my parents and a new primary care doctor. Throughout this time, the one drug that I actually credit with saving me is marijuana. Without it, I’m not sure I would have done as well as I did getting off the drugs and then staying off of them.

I went right off to college that fall, which in retrospect was a miracle. I struggled a lot that first year. I was experiencing post acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) from the benzodiazepine and almost flunked out. I gradually improved but was still dependent on nightly marijuana to go to bed. In 2014, I finally stopped smoking weed and was 100% drug free.

That summer, I ended up getting my first concussion, though I suspect I had many others growing up as I played soccer and lacrosse. As if one wasn’t bad enough, I somehow ended up getting another the next summer in 2015 when I was at the beach and hit my head on a car door. I was later told by a neurologist that once you have a concussion, it becomes significantly easier to get a second, and then a third, and so on.

I had long suffered minor symptoms from benzodiazepine withdrawal that never went away, like tinnitus in my ears, an inability to take GABA drugs without reactivating withdrawal symptoms, and other neurologic symptoms that always made me feel “different.” The concussions added to this complex situation and I would have what I can only describe as seizures during times of stress or intense workout. It felt like my brain had electric current running through it.

Around this time, I also received the first injection for the Gardasil vaccine. I never followed up with the rest of them because of how off I felt that the first few days after getting it. Only recently have I learned about the severe damage that Gardasil can cause.

By 2016, I had been doing a paleo/plant-based diet and felt generally well, but the symptoms from both benzo withdrawal and my concussions persisted. In 2017, I started using CBD oil, and I found that it relieved a lot of the symptoms. It calmed my brain down significantly. I also began using Truvada (HIV medication) during this time as PreP. The one issue that never went away throughout all of this was my anxiety and panic. I was prone to situational panic attacks that felt like my fight/flight system was in total chaos.

A Complete Crash with Tinidazole

Despite feeling okay in 2018 and most of 2019, my whole world was turned upside down again in the fall of 2019. I contracted some sort of stomach bug that wasn’t going away, and my doctor placed me on a drug called Tinidazole, the sister drug of Metronidazole (Flagyl). I haven’t felt the same since that day.

The symptoms came on almost immediately. Dizziness, depression, increased anxiety, neuropathy in my hands and arms. I became convinced that I had ALS because my hands weren’t working right. It was also unlike me to ever assume something as terrible as a fatal diagnosis, but my brain was in total disarray.

Two weeks after taking the Tinidazole, I had to go back on antibiotics for wisdom teeth removal. Immediately after the surgery, I went into one of the most horrendous panic attacks of my life, in part because I had been injected with novocaine about 20 times. I had to be wheeled out of the doctor’s office because the panic had been so bad. Looking back now, there is a similar case study in Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition.

Things only got worse. By the end of the penicillin, my body was in a total spiral. I began having daily panic attacks that I can’t even describe. My body temperature was low, my fight/flight system was in disarray, I was depressed, I couldn’t think clearly. There were nights when I wouldn’t sleep at all and be in total fight or flight mode. I now know that I was going through Tinidazole toxicity that had gradually gotten worse over a few weeks. Combined with the penicillin, it was a recipe for disaster.

The strangest symptom that has come out of this experience is hypoglycemia. My blood sugar is tanking to dangerously low levels during the day unless I am extremely diligent about eating. There have been a few times that I have almost blacked out. This isn’t a common symptom of Metronidazole/Tinidazole toxicity, but I don’t know where else it could have come from.

Where I Am Now

I’ve improved a bit, but I’m still having symptoms like dizziness, hypoglycemia, altered mental state, neuropathy and a total dysfunction of my fight/flight system.

Looking back at my long and complicated history, I’ve discovered a few things in my research:

  • Early and frequent antibiotic use is linked to anxiety and depression
  • I ate A LOT of sugar throughout my life and my thiamine stores were probably always being hit hard and my mitochondria have probably been fighting this battle my life
  • The benzodiazepine and Ambien have caused deep alterations to my nervous system/GABA receptors that became less noticeable with time but will never fully heal
  • Concussions cause a cascade of effects that damage mitochondria function and lead to other semi-permanent neurological issues
  • Truvada (PreP) also harms mitochondria
  • Tinidazole plummets your thiamine

Thiamine Deficiency and Problems With Paradox

I’d like to start Dr. Lonsdale’s protocol for high-dose thiamine, but I encounter painfully difficult paradox symptoms. I have tried to start with a low dose (less than 10 mg) twice now, and always end up having to stop because it gets so bad. The “heart attack” and “seizure” symptoms are simply too frightening and I’m not sure what’s actually going on in both my brain and heart. I’d like to find a functional doctor that could possibly work with me to measure what’s going on when I take thiamine.

I’m also in the process of working with doctors to run tests on my hypoglycemia issues.

The only other thing I’ve considered is a fecal transplant. Since I’ve been on so many antibiotics, I’m convinced that some of my issues may stem from altered gut microbiota.

Lots of people see improvement from Metronidazole/Tinidazole toxicity over the course of 6-12 months. But unless I can take action, I suspect my thiamine issue will remain.

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Metronidazole: The New Mitochondrial Nightmare

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When “Rare” Happens to You

On June 13, 2015, I lost the ability to walk and speak. These symptoms came on suddenly, and were accompanied by hand tremors, shortness of breath, weakness, difficulty concentrating, and dizziness. My mother drove me to the ER, but despite my deteriorating condition, I was confident the problem had a simple solution.

I’d been taking the antibiotic, metronidazole (Flagyl), for c diff (a gut infection). When my symptoms abruptly manifested, I looked the drug up online and, sure enough, all of my symptoms were listed as side effects of the medication. So my mother and I thought this would be easy, that the trip to the ER was a mere “technicality” for me to be put on an alternative antibiotic.

When it comes to having an adverse drug reaction, I would learn the hard way that things are never easy. What followed were six weeks where I could not care for myself. While a few symptoms diminished after discontinuing the medication, others randomly popped up to take the stage, this jumble of problems that didn’t seem to connect to one another:

  • Difficulty swallowing
  • Frequent urination
  • Constipation
  • Asthma-like respiratory issues
  • Complete loss of appetite (twenty pound weight loss)
  • Inability to stand up straight
  • Difficulty walking
  • Shortness of breath when talking
  • Chest pressure
  • Heart palpitations
  • Face flushing
  • Dry mouth
  • Cough
  • Headache
  • Pressure at the back of the head
  • Neck pain and stiffness
  • Constant adrenaline rushes
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Crying spells
  • Insomnia
  • Extreme fatigue

I was the medical version of a Picasso painting. Nonetheless, there was one connection between these symptoms; they’re listed as side effects of metronidazole.

The Google Patient

During those first two months, I went from the patient who sees her doctor once or twice a year, to the compulsive consumer, calling several times a week, setting up appointments, and being put through the ringer of medical exams.

In total, I saw eight general practitioners, including my primary care physician, and almost every specialist known to medicine: a cardiologist, an immunologist, a pulmonologist, an ENT doctor, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist. There were tests, from multiple CT scans to X-rays, EKGs, an upper GI, an echocardiogram, a heart monitor, a laryngoscopy, several lung function tests, and about 30 vials of blood taken.

I insisted the cause of my symptoms was the metronidazole, but no one listened. After two months and no answers, my primary care physician handed down the diagnosis of depression and an anxiety disorder. That was the moment I lost faith in the medical community.

So I did the thing that doctors hate—I Googled. A lot. Medical literature is a language all its own—a new version of Pig Latin, MD edition—and I didn’t know what to search for, what the magical keywords were to unlock the “prize.”

Eventually, I ran across another group of people suffering from an adverse drug reaction—the floxies.  This group of patients had suffered an adverse reaction to another type of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones and, as I read their stories, I was horrified how their experiences mirrored my own, including their doctors usually dismissing their claims about the drugs. There were numerous blogs, YouTube videos, local media coverage, books and medical literature about their condition.  Fluoroquinolone antibiotics can directly damage mitochondrial DNA (the energy source of our cells), and people who suffer from this can become permanently disabled or even die. The effects are systemic, with certain regions of the body like the tendons, the heart, and the brain especially affected.

They called it “getting floxed,” and said they suffered from “fluoroquinolone toxicity.”  Reading this phrase, I plugged the words “metronidazole toxicity” into Google.  The answer I’d been searching for flashed on the screen.  What I had, it had a name:

Metronidazole-induced Central Nervous System Toxicity

If you lose the ability to walk and speak while taking metronidazole, there’s a 93% chance lesions have formed on the back of your brain, specifically the cerebellum, followed closely by the brain stem and then the basal ganglia. The effects cause motor control issues, seizures and an “altered mental state.”

From Patient to Blogger

Upon finding numerous pieces of medical literature to back up my claim about metronidazole toxicity, I presented the information to my primary care physician. When I tried to set up another appointment a short time later, she banned me from her clinic. It took a meeting with her supervisor and the clinic’s Risk Management to receive the proper diagnoses on my records—cerebellar dysfunction and altered mental state.

My ban from the clinic was never retracted.

At this point, it became clear that, not only did the medical community not have a way to treat an adverse drug reaction like metronidazole toxicity, they refused to even acknowledge it existed.

Nonetheless, the diagnoses didn’t fully explain my symptoms. There were others, like heart palpitations (including irregular blood pressure), constipation, dry mouth, loss of appetite, difficulty swallowing, and breathing issues that just didn’t match with cerebellar dysfunction.

Over nine months, my condition had greatly improved. I was able to work and enjoy social activities again, but some lingering symptoms would still randomly “flare up,” either due to over-exerting myself, an illness, allergies, or for no reason at all. I used to be an avid biker and that was no longer possible.  There were times, when a flare up would be too great, that I’d end up back in bed.

I decided to take the medical literature on metronidazole and create an online blog for others who might need answers. In addition, I started a support group on Facebook for metronidazole victims; when it began, there were three of us.  A year and a half later, there’s over a hundred, and counting.

Each of us have different issues, but almost all of them fall into four categories:

  • Cerebellar dysfunction (dysfunction of the cerebellum)
  • Autonomic dysfunction (dysfunction of the brain stem)
  • Altered Mental State (neuropsychiatric issues)
  • Polyneuropathy (damage to the nerves throughout the body)

Despite metronidazole’s ability to damage the brain stem, there’s little medical literature connecting metronidazole to autonomic dysfunction. The autonomic nervous system controls all the “automatic” operations of the body, like heart rate, breathing and digestion. As I listened to various stories from other patients that matched my own about uncontrollable heart palpitations, irregular blood pressure, dry mouth (dysfunction of the salivary glands), digestive issues, asthma-like respiratory issues, irregular sleep patterns, swallowing issues and the like…it became clear that this was the final puzzle piece to the metronidazole mystery.

Some patients have recovered as well as I have or better; others are disabled and housebound.  Almost everyone has flare up’s, months or years after taking the drug. Some people have full relapses and worsening symptoms long after they took metronidazole.

So the question keeps being asked—why? Why are these symptoms still here so far out from taking this drug?

Metronidazole and Thiamine

It was November of 2017 that I had the biggest flare up in two years. I had begun a second job on the weekends to get some extra cash for the holidays. My symptoms had remained steady for well over a year at that point, with only mild flare up’s. By the second weekend of work, my condition worsened, with symptoms that I thought were long-gone returning in full force. Heart palpitations, weakness in my legs, difficulty breathing, dizziness, brain fog, chest pressure, and even the anxiety came roaring back. On top of these, two new symptoms developed—pain in my hands and feet, and ringing in my ears. I had to quit the seasonable job, and, with the exception of going to my full-time work, I stayed mostly in bed for weeks.

At this time, I happened upon Dr. Lonsdale and Dr. Marrs’ new medical textbook, “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition.”  The title caught my eye because I vaguely recalled, through my metronidazole research, the word “thiamine” had popped up multiple times. So I bought the book.

Everything I had experienced was listed within its pages. Thiamine (aka vitamin B1) is essential for oxidative metabolism. It is the gatekeeper of our mitochondria and, without it, the cells cannot properly convert food into fuel. In addition to this, without thiamine, oxygen cannot be properly utilized, causing our cells to—for lack of a better word—suffocate.

This suffocation (called “pseudohypoxia”) leads to our autonomic nervous system to activate its “fight-or-flight” response, which causes extreme anxiety, insomnia, emotional instability, a heightened sensitivity to stimuli, and an overall lowering of our stress threshold. In addition to these symptoms, there is a paradoxical one; the body is not designed to run on its fight-or-flight response for days or weeks on end. This over-use of the body’s energy reserves results in extreme fatigue.

Thiamine is found all over the body, but there are places where its use is concentrated, the brain being the most crucial, followed by the heart and our nerves. When there’s a deficiency, dysfunction typically hits the back of the brain the hardest—specifically the cerebellum and brain stem. Lack of thiamine causes:

  • Cerebellar Dysfunction
  • Autonomic Dysfunction
  • Altered Mental State
  • Polyneuropathy

After reading Dr. Lonsdale and Dr. Marrs’ textbook, I went back to all the medical literature I had pulled about metronidazole toxicity (and then some). It turns out, metronidazole and thiamine are antagonists; the drug inhibits thiamine from being absorbed into the body, which can plummet the victim into deficiency. The chemical structure of metronidazole is similar to that of the third ring within thiamine’s chemical structure; when the body mistakes metronidazole as this third ring, it turns thiamine into “thiaminase”—an inhibitor of thiamine.  This is called “thiaminase poisoning,” and it plummets the body into deficiency.

The symptoms of thiamine deficiency and metronidazole toxicity are identical.

Theoretically, the reason patients cannot recover from metronidazole toxicity adequately is because they never restore their thiamine after discontinuing the drug. The deficiency is too great to recover from by simply eating thiamine-rich foods; it requires high-dose supplementation over months to resolve the underlying problem. Therefore, victims of this toxicity are, at best, skating on the edge of this deficiency, and when a stressor enters our lives—illness, work, exercise—we exhaust the limited thiamine we have.  We plunge back into deficiency and the neurological symptoms manifest once again.

To conventional medicine, thiamine deficiency is considered a relic of the past—something that belongs in history books like scurvy—and rarely happens in the industrialized world. But there is one modern-day condition that is still being recognized by the medical community—Wernicke’s encephalopathy. This is an alcohol-induced thiamine deficiency that causes lesions to form on the back of the brain, specifically the cerebellum and brain stem.

In medical literature, metronidazole toxicity and Wernicke’s encephalopathy are constantly being compared because their symptoms and presentation of brain lesions are almost exactly the same.

Metronidazole and the Floxies

It all comes down to the mitochondria. For two years, I’ve read various stories and spoken directly with dozens of victims of metronidazole toxicity. Many times, they have commented about their symptoms being similar to that of the floxies, with several of them even stating that they’ve been “floxed.”  I’ve corrected them, explaining that metronidazole is in a different class of antibiotics and, while it causes damage to the brain, there’s no significant medical literature proving that it causes mitochondrial damage.

Nonetheless, as I’ve read numerous accounts from the fluoroquinolone community, I couldn’t help but note the similarities in our neurological symptoms.  Metronidazole victims don’t have the ruptured tendons…but the polyneuropathy and central nervous system effects (including psychiatric effects) are indistinguishable.

One website I focused on during my metronidazole toxicity research was askapatient.com. It houses one of the largest collections of customer reviews on the internet for medications, and metronidazole/Flagyl is the most reviewed drug on the site.  It also has the 5th highest number of 1-star reviews (Cipro and Levaquin are 1st and 2nd).

I compared metronidazole and its central nervous system side effects to that of those two popular fluoroquinolone medications from reviews between 2000 and 2015, totaling the number of reviews complaining about CNS symptoms:

Reviews Metronidazole Cipro Levaquin
Total # of Reviews 3312 1828 2032
Total # 1-star Reviews 1246 1352 1432
Dizziness 733 200 246
Fatigue 471 206 144
Anxiety 556 281 229
Panic Attack 180 95 65
Depression 641 185 152
Confusion 155 53 69
Disorientation 96 20 19
Paranoia 76 26 38
Headaches/Migraines 837 263 209
Suicidal Ideation 33 47 36
Numbness 157 121 119
Burning Sensation 51 151 133
Tingling Sensation 225 130 120

If metronidazole toxicity is caused by thiamine deficiency, then this deficiency is causing mitochondrial dysfunction and possible damage. And since thiamine concentrations are highest in the brain—specifically ,the cerebellum and brain stem, which is also the highest in mitochondria—this means that metronidazole is ultimately causing the same CNS issues as the fluoroquinolones.

Essentially, people with metronidazole toxicity are getting brain-floxed.

Can Something Be Done for Victims of Metronidazole? What I Have Learned

Unlike those who suffer from fluoroquinolone toxicity, those with metronidazole toxicity might have one advantage—our mitochondria haven’t been damaged directly by the antibiotic. Because it is a thiamine deficiency that is, in theory, the true culprit in this crime, it might be possible for victims of metronidazole toxicity to have a relatively clean-cut treatment plan.

Dr. Lonsdale and Dr. Marrs explain in detail about thiamine deficiency in their textbook, including the condition’s history, its symptoms and how they’ve implemented this information into action for various patients with documented case studies. If you believe you’re suffering from thiamine deficiency, reading this text would be the first big step in your treatment plan.

Depending on your level of deficiency, you will need to decide what works best for you. To sum up, there are several versions of thiamine to pick from; thiamine mononitrate and thiamine HCL are readily available at pharmacies and health food stores. Because they are water-soluble versions of thiamine, it is difficult to overdose on them; however, if you have severe or chronic thiamine deficiency, their benefits might be limited due to their short time span in the body and their inability to penetrate the cell without a protein transporter (making the absorption a little more complex).

Other versions may only be available for purchase online, but they cut out that “middle man.”  Allithiamine is naturally derived from garlic and is a fat-soluble version of thiamine. Because it is fat-soluble, the body stores it longer and it works better on the central nervous system and nerves.  Benfotiamine is another fat-soluble version, synthetically made, and works well on nerves but not the brain.  Lipothiamine has similar effects as Allithiamine, but is synthetically made.

You must supplement magnesium with thiamine. These two nutrients go hand-in-hand; thiamine supplementation will not work without magnesium. One option is Natural Calm Magnesium Powder that dissolves in water; you can control your dose of magnesium easily. If you notice loose stools, cut back. It’s available at several health food stores like The Vitamin Shoppe and online.

As the book details, patients who are severely and/or chronically deficient might need to “megadose” on thiamine before they notice improvements. If you feel you need to megadose, it would be a good idea to be monitored by a physician. Integrative physicians are more likely to support nutritional therapy than conventional doctors. Because this is new medical knowledge, you will probably have a lot of “trial and error” before finding the right type of thiamine and dosage that helps your condition and it could take months before treatment starts to work if you have a severe or chronic case. Do not begin by megadosing, however—start small and work your way up.

Thiamine has limited side effects, but they can happen, as can allergic reactions at high doses. If you are severely deficient in thiamine, there’s a good chance you’re deficient in other nutrients and taking thiamine might make those deficiencies more apparent. You could also have a “paradoxical” effect at first, as your cells have adapted to not having adequate thiamine (this is actually a good sign, as it confirms your body is no longer well-adapted to thiamine due to deficiency).  The paradoxical effect is temporary, but if you feel uncomfortable, scale back to a smaller dose and then work up from there.

One issue that could arise with high doses of thiamine over time is an imbalance of the other B-vitamins. However, this works both ways. If you are deficient in thiamine, then taking high doses of other B-vitamins right now could further imbalance your thiamine. After speaking with patients suffering from metronidazole toxicity, one misdirection is to take high doses of vitamin B12 (some even get injections).  This seems to result in worsening of the toxicity symptoms. Eventually, you’ll want to supplement other B-vitamins to keep everything in balance, especially if you wish to megadose on thiamine for a longer duration.

Unfortunately, there is no clinical trial for me to point when it comes to metronidazole toxicity and thiamine. It is taking medical literature from one side of the spectrum and connecting it to the other side.

I started taking thiamine mononitrate about two weeks after my major flare up began, 100 mg’s.  It did nothing, so I doubled it to 200mg. After two days, I started to feel better. I switched to thiamine HCL, 300mg, after another week and, again, noticed improvement. After reaching 600mg, I switched to Allithiamine at 50mg. I had a slight “paradoxical reaction” the first day, with anxiety and shortness of breath that dissipated quickly. Now, I’m at 200mg of Allithiamine, and my flare up has gone from debilitating to mild.

I still have a long way to go, but for the first time in two and a half years, it finally feels like my health is curving in the right direction.  There is a light at the end of this very long tunnel. Just like me, if you feel you suffer from metronidazole toxicity, then there might be something you can do about it.  There might be hope in treating your symptoms. Please be advised, however, I am not a physician and this post does not constitute medical advice. It is simply what I have learned over the course of my illness. To treat your illness, you will need to educate yourself, learn everything you can, and work with a physician.

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Image credit: Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman under creative commons license.

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