I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your work. This MD uses Cipro and its first cousin Levaquin only on very rare occasions because of exactly what you are saying. Usually with severe infections of the urine with multi-drug resistant organisms and this is the only choice. However, the patients are very carefully talked to about all the problems. I see it being handed out like Halloween Candy by the NPs and the PAs in our urgent care system around here, however.
It is important to alert your readers to the circus that has become modern medicine.
I am old enough to remember when all of these flouroquinolones were introduced.
One that is hardly mentioned today was the Pfizer product known as Trovan. It came out in the late 90s or so. Such was the push among the housestaff to get them to prescribe this that a weekly celebration of pizza party became known as "Trovan Tuesday". Thousands and thousands of dollars at a time were spent on this indoctrination. Interestingly, the tendon and orthopedic toxicity of this agent, as well as the kidney problems, were so intense they were not able to be hidden - and this drug was not black-boxed, it was pulled off the market in short order.
Levaquin also had a very similar Pharma push - just all kinds of drug reps, parties, cool restaurant invitations and such. It is hard to describe that 10 years - levaquin was THE antibiotic of choice for that 10 years. It was incredible. The entire profession had been trained not to abuse wide-spectrum antibiotics in this way - but it was the frontline drug of that entire era. Shame on us all.
I have given up long ago trying to make any difference in these issues. There is an animal spirit in medicine, and I am not sure what it will take to put it down.
I had antibiotics only twice in my growing up years and four times after, I am 60. My husband had the constantly and more times later as he is more inclined to take drugs he is prescribed. He gets sick in Latin America, once with amoebic dysentery for which he was hospitalized. I was fine and fought everything off naturally. Everything he ate as a child was scrubbed and boiled. I ate carrots out of the garden only wiping them off my on my jeans first. I believe my unsanitary childhood made me sturdier and my mother's innate distrust of medicines.
My neurological and musculoskeletal health have been *severely* compromised by fluoroquinolones. Being gaslit by numerous doctors pre-COVID was a valuable lesson on how compromised medical training had become, and this adverse drug reaction was the strongest impetus to start paying attention to the perils of pharmaceuticals. That and your DarkHorse content made me ultimately decide to avoid the magic holy injections when released.
An interesting intersection of these topics comes in the form of the following anecdote.
In the height of the COVID hysteria, our friends sent us an invitation to a party where it was made explicit that the expectation was that all attendees be vaccinated. Not willing at that time to make “the painful upgrade,” and wanting to open the minds of my friends to alternative perspectives, I authored a letter to all attendees about how pharmaceuticals compromised my health, how precarious my health situation had become, and how little risk tolerance I had for future such gambles. The key was that I wrote this letter as a narrative, taking my friends on the journey of my health struggle to get them to arrive at an understanding of my decision (whether or not they would have made the same one in my place). Central to the narrative was delay in onset of symptoms, and the expression of specific symptoms before the recognition of the FDA that these were possible. I included a timeline of the drug approval followed by the various warnings that were attributed to it spanning decades. My hope was that it planted the seeds of the fact that future health issues may be associated with past pharmaceutical intake, and long-term adverse events are not understood or acknowledged sometimes for decades, if ever.
This was the only way I felt I could give information to those who were the most propagandized. I wonder if it had any effect, but I know it will have had more effect than a data based conversation about the risks of novel pharmaceutical products where they would have shut down their rational faculties in favour of the emotional systems that drive challenges to articles of faith.
Interestingly, despite being among the more successfully propagandized people I know, they all accepted my decision and I remain friendly with them all to this day, though have limited exposure to those who would turn me over to the secret police if it came down to it.
I guess all to say that the medical response to COVID on behalf of the frontline medical workers was not novel and did not arise in a vacuum. The gaslighting has always been real. To test it, just insinuate that a given symptomology either has specific causes that are not presently acknowledged by the medical establishment, or insinuate that they are iatrogenic. Talk about adverse reactions of a different sort!
I've been on SRIs since I was a teen. Turns out that not only was I just an autistic girl but that I have prediabetes and probably have my entire life. I only found out through a series of happy accidents. Running out of my Effexor and the doctor failing to fill it for...reasons- leading to hardcore withdrawal. Then finding out I was diabetic and fixing my diet and now for the first time in my whole life being completely stable in my mood.
Turns out 80's moms feeding their kids koolaid and sweet cereals caused a lifetime of pain and suffering. Who knew...probably the sugar lobby.
"The next time you are told that you need to take X in order to treat Y (especially if you are told that you should also take Z to treat the side-effects of X), ask every question that you can think of. And know that the answers that come back may not be accurate."
I so wish my mom had questioned the SSRIs her doctor prescribed her to take decades ago (she's still on them to this day). She's been on handfuls of med Zs over the years to treat the side effects of her antidepressants, and she will not even slightly consider that she should not have started taking them in the first place.
When I was younger I had a much more casual attitude to taking antibiotics. Then one of my longtime cycling buddies succumbed to and quickly died from MRSA ( methycillin resistant staffolococcus aureius, pardon my spelling). He was in his early 50's, fit and active. I became an antibiotic skeptic at that point unwilling to use them except for targeted pathogens and even somewhat unwilling to use them on my dogs. It's hard to argue that antibiotics have been overused and misused but when even the prescribing doctors have such a cavalier attitude towards prescribing them I start to wonder if we can dig ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in.
Thanks for sharing your hard lesson. Many years ago as a teenager, various antibiotics were prescribed for me as a solution to persistent acne. At the time I welcomed anything that professed to fight this anxiety-ridden affliction. I never fully outgrew acne and, by the time I was nearly done will college, had come to doubt the usefulness of the treatment. At about the same time I began to read of the downside, personally and environmentally, of antibiotics. I have since avoided them except in case of prophylactic use for a couple of surgeries. Antibiotics have a time and a place, but not casually and not regularly.
I sympathize, and had a similar achilles tendon issue from snowshoeing on Hurricane Ridge in Washington State – I suspect something pharmacological during childhood weakened my tendon(s), either antibiotics, vaccines, or the oft-regretted prescription I got unnecessarily talked into for "Acutane" as a teenager.
After taking that anti-acne drug (which is thankfully the only major drug I've ever had) my tendons got so loose and joints so sore I had to take two-weeks off from the high school varsity soccer team; thankfully everything snapped back into place after concluding the Acutane course but I've always wondered and kind of feared that it might come back to haunt me.
Have you found that dry-fasting has reduced any chronic pain associated with your tendon rupture, if not facilitated the reduction of scar tissue and tendon rejuvenation as well due to stimulating adult stem cells during autophagy?
Make sure you use cut resistant gloves if you open oysters. My girlfriend managed to stab the webbing of her hand while opening an oyster a few years ago. We went to the hospital to get her stitched up and the doctor told us he was putting her on Cipro. Now I had heard about Cipro and tendon damage on the Dark Horse podcast, so I objected. The doctor told us that apparently there is a some bug that can be in oysters that can be life threatening if you don't take Cipro, and there are no alternatives. She has not had any issues that we know of, but just to be safe I got her a pair or stab-resistant gloves for Christmas. And I got myself a par too!
I heard you read this article in the recent Darkhorse Podcast epsiode 635, wherein you and Dr. Weinstein discussed your concerns with the dangerous (and "accepted" if not "common") side-effects of Cipro, and I was hoping that your experiences and research might lead you further, because, in my experience, Cipro is but one of many compounds that have been proven to cause harm (some of which have been removed from the marketplace), and I have yet to hear anyone in healthcare or media discuss it but in macro, inspite of the fact that they all have a common ingredient.
Fenfluramine (Pondimin) was removed from the market in 1997 due (1) to the damage it caused to the heart valves in some patients
Cisapride (Propulsid), a treatment for gastric reflux, was withdrawn from the market in July 2000, due to its association with arrhythmia and 80 reports of death.
because, apparently, they are even more dangerous than Ciprofloxacin, which remains on the market, I suppose, because the WHO labels is "essential".
Anyway, all of these medications contain fluorine. And there are others, among them, "statins (Lipitor, Crestor, Vytorin, Zetia/Ezetimibe), anti-inflammatories (fluticasone propionate, Celebrex), antacids (Prevacid), antidepressants (Lexapro), neuroleptics (Risperdal) and antibiotics (Levaquin)."
My own experience with these compounds started when my wife, who had been prescribed fluoxetine (Prozac) for depression, was, about six months later, also prescribed Cipro for a UTI. During her second course of Cipro, she began to develop tingling and minor pain in her extremities, which escalated to swelling and excruciating pain in her feet. Soon, she was unable to walk to the bathroom without help and without weeping. Four months later, a rheumatologist diagnosed her with fibromyalgia. The details are not relevant, except to illustrate my own perspective and the situation we were in, wherein pain doctors were skeptical of the diagnosis of a "psychosomatic:" condition - the gaslighting described by previous commentor JBG - and were unwilling to help. For the sake of brevity, I will abridge the details except to say that my research led us to a non-pharma treatment that has been effective for fifteen years (that I will not publish here due to myriad legalities but will gladly explain if you are interested to know), and only ONE doctor has ever listened to the truth, who just so happened to have also experieinced peripheral neuropathy and myalgia.
There is more to this story, of course. For example, according to Military Times, updated FDA warnings (in 2013) reveal a potential link between Cipro and Gulf War Syndrome:
YET the modern healthcare system in the United States (and, to lesser degree, the entirety of the West) intentionally exposes its patients to all three via pharmaceuticals. Is it any wonder that we are sick?
Dr. Heying,
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your work. This MD uses Cipro and its first cousin Levaquin only on very rare occasions because of exactly what you are saying. Usually with severe infections of the urine with multi-drug resistant organisms and this is the only choice. However, the patients are very carefully talked to about all the problems. I see it being handed out like Halloween Candy by the NPs and the PAs in our urgent care system around here, however.
It is important to alert your readers to the circus that has become modern medicine.
I am old enough to remember when all of these flouroquinolones were introduced.
One that is hardly mentioned today was the Pfizer product known as Trovan. It came out in the late 90s or so. Such was the push among the housestaff to get them to prescribe this that a weekly celebration of pizza party became known as "Trovan Tuesday". Thousands and thousands of dollars at a time were spent on this indoctrination. Interestingly, the tendon and orthopedic toxicity of this agent, as well as the kidney problems, were so intense they were not able to be hidden - and this drug was not black-boxed, it was pulled off the market in short order.
Levaquin also had a very similar Pharma push - just all kinds of drug reps, parties, cool restaurant invitations and such. It is hard to describe that 10 years - levaquin was THE antibiotic of choice for that 10 years. It was incredible. The entire profession had been trained not to abuse wide-spectrum antibiotics in this way - but it was the frontline drug of that entire era. Shame on us all.
I have given up long ago trying to make any difference in these issues. There is an animal spirit in medicine, and I am not sure what it will take to put it down.
I had antibiotics only twice in my growing up years and four times after, I am 60. My husband had the constantly and more times later as he is more inclined to take drugs he is prescribed. He gets sick in Latin America, once with amoebic dysentery for which he was hospitalized. I was fine and fought everything off naturally. Everything he ate as a child was scrubbed and boiled. I ate carrots out of the garden only wiping them off my on my jeans first. I believe my unsanitary childhood made me sturdier and my mother's innate distrust of medicines.
My neurological and musculoskeletal health have been *severely* compromised by fluoroquinolones. Being gaslit by numerous doctors pre-COVID was a valuable lesson on how compromised medical training had become, and this adverse drug reaction was the strongest impetus to start paying attention to the perils of pharmaceuticals. That and your DarkHorse content made me ultimately decide to avoid the magic holy injections when released.
An interesting intersection of these topics comes in the form of the following anecdote.
In the height of the COVID hysteria, our friends sent us an invitation to a party where it was made explicit that the expectation was that all attendees be vaccinated. Not willing at that time to make “the painful upgrade,” and wanting to open the minds of my friends to alternative perspectives, I authored a letter to all attendees about how pharmaceuticals compromised my health, how precarious my health situation had become, and how little risk tolerance I had for future such gambles. The key was that I wrote this letter as a narrative, taking my friends on the journey of my health struggle to get them to arrive at an understanding of my decision (whether or not they would have made the same one in my place). Central to the narrative was delay in onset of symptoms, and the expression of specific symptoms before the recognition of the FDA that these were possible. I included a timeline of the drug approval followed by the various warnings that were attributed to it spanning decades. My hope was that it planted the seeds of the fact that future health issues may be associated with past pharmaceutical intake, and long-term adverse events are not understood or acknowledged sometimes for decades, if ever.
This was the only way I felt I could give information to those who were the most propagandized. I wonder if it had any effect, but I know it will have had more effect than a data based conversation about the risks of novel pharmaceutical products where they would have shut down their rational faculties in favour of the emotional systems that drive challenges to articles of faith.
Interestingly, despite being among the more successfully propagandized people I know, they all accepted my decision and I remain friendly with them all to this day, though have limited exposure to those who would turn me over to the secret police if it came down to it.
I guess all to say that the medical response to COVID on behalf of the frontline medical workers was not novel and did not arise in a vacuum. The gaslighting has always been real. To test it, just insinuate that a given symptomology either has specific causes that are not presently acknowledged by the medical establishment, or insinuate that they are iatrogenic. Talk about adverse reactions of a different sort!
I've been on SRIs since I was a teen. Turns out that not only was I just an autistic girl but that I have prediabetes and probably have my entire life. I only found out through a series of happy accidents. Running out of my Effexor and the doctor failing to fill it for...reasons- leading to hardcore withdrawal. Then finding out I was diabetic and fixing my diet and now for the first time in my whole life being completely stable in my mood.
Turns out 80's moms feeding their kids koolaid and sweet cereals caused a lifetime of pain and suffering. Who knew...probably the sugar lobby.
"The next time you are told that you need to take X in order to treat Y (especially if you are told that you should also take Z to treat the side-effects of X), ask every question that you can think of. And know that the answers that come back may not be accurate."
I so wish my mom had questioned the SSRIs her doctor prescribed her to take decades ago (she's still on them to this day). She's been on handfuls of med Zs over the years to treat the side effects of her antidepressants, and she will not even slightly consider that she should not have started taking them in the first place.
When I was younger I had a much more casual attitude to taking antibiotics. Then one of my longtime cycling buddies succumbed to and quickly died from MRSA ( methycillin resistant staffolococcus aureius, pardon my spelling). He was in his early 50's, fit and active. I became an antibiotic skeptic at that point unwilling to use them except for targeted pathogens and even somewhat unwilling to use them on my dogs. It's hard to argue that antibiotics have been overused and misused but when even the prescribing doctors have such a cavalier attitude towards prescribing them I start to wonder if we can dig ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in.
Thanks for sharing your hard lesson. Many years ago as a teenager, various antibiotics were prescribed for me as a solution to persistent acne. At the time I welcomed anything that professed to fight this anxiety-ridden affliction. I never fully outgrew acne and, by the time I was nearly done will college, had come to doubt the usefulness of the treatment. At about the same time I began to read of the downside, personally and environmentally, of antibiotics. I have since avoided them except in case of prophylactic use for a couple of surgeries. Antibiotics have a time and a place, but not casually and not regularly.
I sympathize, and had a similar achilles tendon issue from snowshoeing on Hurricane Ridge in Washington State – I suspect something pharmacological during childhood weakened my tendon(s), either antibiotics, vaccines, or the oft-regretted prescription I got unnecessarily talked into for "Acutane" as a teenager.
After taking that anti-acne drug (which is thankfully the only major drug I've ever had) my tendons got so loose and joints so sore I had to take two-weeks off from the high school varsity soccer team; thankfully everything snapped back into place after concluding the Acutane course but I've always wondered and kind of feared that it might come back to haunt me.
Have you found that dry-fasting has reduced any chronic pain associated with your tendon rupture, if not facilitated the reduction of scar tissue and tendon rejuvenation as well due to stimulating adult stem cells during autophagy?
Make sure you use cut resistant gloves if you open oysters. My girlfriend managed to stab the webbing of her hand while opening an oyster a few years ago. We went to the hospital to get her stitched up and the doctor told us he was putting her on Cipro. Now I had heard about Cipro and tendon damage on the Dark Horse podcast, so I objected. The doctor told us that apparently there is a some bug that can be in oysters that can be life threatening if you don't take Cipro, and there are no alternatives. She has not had any issues that we know of, but just to be safe I got her a pair or stab-resistant gloves for Christmas. And I got myself a par too!
Dr Heying -
I heard you read this article in the recent Darkhorse Podcast epsiode 635, wherein you and Dr. Weinstein discussed your concerns with the dangerous (and "accepted" if not "common") side-effects of Cipro, and I was hoping that your experiences and research might lead you further, because, in my experience, Cipro is but one of many compounds that have been proven to cause harm (some of which have been removed from the marketplace), and I have yet to hear anyone in healthcare or media discuss it but in macro, inspite of the fact that they all have a common ingredient.
Fenfluramine (Pondimin) was removed from the market in 1997 due (1) to the damage it caused to the heart valves in some patients
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-sep-16-mn-32755-story.html
and (2) its apparent contributions to the development, in others, of pulmonary hypertension.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/07/19/2022-15335/schedules-of-controlled-substances-removal-of-fenfluramine-from-control
Cisapride (Propulsid), a treatment for gastric reflux, was withdrawn from the market in July 2000, due to its association with arrhythmia and 80 reports of death.
https://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/medicalpubs/pharmacy/mayjune2000/cisapride.htm
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-122001propulsid-story.html
Cerivastatin (Baycol), a statin drug, was withdrawn from market in 2001 due to its association with 52 deaths, caused by kidney failure.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC59524/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168851004000648
Also the list of withdrawn fluoroquinolones is quite extensive,
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Examples-of-FQs-withdrawn-from-therapy-due-to-severe-AEs-AEs-adverse-effects_tbl3_368932543
https://floxiehope.com/fluoroquinolones-removed-from-the-market/
because, apparently, they are even more dangerous than Ciprofloxacin, which remains on the market, I suppose, because the WHO labels is "essential".
Anyway, all of these medications contain fluorine. And there are others, among them, "statins (Lipitor, Crestor, Vytorin, Zetia/Ezetimibe), anti-inflammatories (fluticasone propionate, Celebrex), antacids (Prevacid), antidepressants (Lexapro), neuroleptics (Risperdal) and antibiotics (Levaquin)."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022113910000722
My own experience with these compounds started when my wife, who had been prescribed fluoxetine (Prozac) for depression, was, about six months later, also prescribed Cipro for a UTI. During her second course of Cipro, she began to develop tingling and minor pain in her extremities, which escalated to swelling and excruciating pain in her feet. Soon, she was unable to walk to the bathroom without help and without weeping. Four months later, a rheumatologist diagnosed her with fibromyalgia. The details are not relevant, except to illustrate my own perspective and the situation we were in, wherein pain doctors were skeptical of the diagnosis of a "psychosomatic:" condition - the gaslighting described by previous commentor JBG - and were unwilling to help. For the sake of brevity, I will abridge the details except to say that my research led us to a non-pharma treatment that has been effective for fifteen years (that I will not publish here due to myriad legalities but will gladly explain if you are interested to know), and only ONE doctor has ever listened to the truth, who just so happened to have also experieinced peripheral neuropathy and myalgia.
There is more to this story, of course. For example, according to Military Times, updated FDA warnings (in 2013) reveal a potential link between Cipro and Gulf War Syndrome:
https://www.militarytimes.com/2013/11/01/new-fda-warnings-on-cipro-may-tie-into-gulf-war-illness/
And there are class-action lawsuits that allege the same:
https://www.hillandponton.com/cipro-gulf-war-syndrome/
https://www.thomaslawoffices.com/blog/dangerous-drugs/cipro-might-be-linked-to-injuries-gulf-war-veterans/
And, are the organofluorines that contaminate our drinking water the result of pharmaceuticals?
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250107/US-wastewater-treatment-fails-to-address-rising-organofluorine-contamination.aspx
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004222002905
My point is . . . there are three chemicals that are so toxic and/or reactive that they seldom occur in nature: aluminum, mercury, and flourine.
"Because of its chemical activity, aluminum never occurs in the metallic form in nature...."
https://www.britannica.com/science/aluminum
Mercury is found in cinnabar ore (and analogs),
https://enviroliteracy.org/where-is-mercury-found-on-earth/
and fluorine was not dsicovered in nature until 2012.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/fluorine-finally-found-in-nature/5206.article
YET the modern healthcare system in the United States (and, to lesser degree, the entirety of the West) intentionally exposes its patients to all three via pharmaceuticals. Is it any wonder that we are sick?
Thank you so much for your work.