On Tagamet, Niacin and Fluconazole-- not altogether!

[Guest guest]

Penny-

Thanks much for your post on Tagamet. This may be of

great help to my daughter whose CFS comes in constant

viral attack... and also has constant stomach problems

(nausea, discomfort, etc) which makes both nutrition

and medication difficult. This may kill two birds with

one stone if it modulates viral load, and settles her

stomach! I've sent the info on to her doc.

Barb-

Niacin is interesting stuff. It turns out, according

to Stratton's very sophisticated work on Chlam P, that

the niacin compounds also kill Chlamydia in " ... the

replicating and cryptic stationary phases... "

especially when they infect monocytes, macrophages,

" ...and in the chalmydial infection of endothelial and

smooth muscle cells in human blood vessels. " (all

quotes from and Stratton's patent 6,756,369)

I've found that, for some reason, the " no flush "

niacin (inositol hexanicotinate) seems to have more

effect in this way than regular niacin or niacinamide.

I react to it like I react to a dose of Flagyl in the

pecular quality of herx. I put this forward because it

may be that your reactions are not just to the blood

flow effects of the niacin, but that it may be

antimicrobial to organisms in a cryptic/nonreplicating

phase like Chalmydia. As far as I know, only

and Stratton have found these agents as having this

effect (they also are the only ones who appear to have

found that nitrofurantoin, an old and not very

effective urinary tract abx, acts similarly to flagyl

in killing cryptic/nonreplicating phase of Chlamydia).

-

When my candida was at it's worse I had terrible

migraine-like headaches. When I take a big dose of

something antifungal, no matter what it is, I always

get headaches. This is consistant for me with the

condition rather than the agent. You might try a good

dose of something like grapefruit-seed extract and see

if you get the same kind of headache.

Jim