its always a balance between the positive effects they give and the negative effects antibiotics cause. I dont think if a medicine is natural it is necessarily better for you, a lot of these things carry their own side effects, we often dont know what they are because these products are untested. the tetracyclines are relatively safe and well tested antibiotics, like minocycline, deoxy. i dont know if they would help. i have a friend who claims flagyl really helps his reactive arthritis, so this is what i mean with the balance thing.

Yes, sure, natural doesn't necessarily mean good. Regarding herbal antibiotics, the few good quality studies out there all show greater benefits and almost zero side effects. Studies in vitro and animal models all show excellent results too. I'd say that's pretty good. If you're interested, I can post some links to some studies, some of which I've posted before. More studies are always good, I agree, but there's no money in it, so...

I think they will usually be poorly conducted studies because there isn't money in it like you say. Anything that kills bacteria in the gut will have side effects, visible or not. I've read people advertising antibiotics that only kill the bad bacteria like natural cures e.g. Allicin, I think this is almost definitely misleading Internet propaganda. Antibiotics do not discriminate between good and bad, they aren't that clever. That's my two cents anyway.

Minocycline actually has a wide variety of beneficial properties like anti inflammatory activity and neuroprotective effects. I'm not saying we shud all go out and take it, but there are pretty safe conventional antibiotics that are well tested.

My son had giardiasis as a very young child. It was extremely common in my area at that time because of serious drought and the water levels in the dam that supplied the city were extremely low so I figure more than one person in the family could get it.

It seems the protozoa thrives in those conditions. Flagyl (metronidazole) was the medication used too and I always worried about that as he already had some gut issues as on Autism spectrum.

I wasn't aware until reading this thread and more information about it, that it can be present in the body without any symptoms. I always thought, due to the yukky symptoms my son had, that it would be obvious but not so apparently.

No gums or processed foods here
It isn't constant diarrhea as it is only once or twice a day and then fluctuates with constipation. The stomach symptoms are not bad, but there has to be link that we all have malabsorption type yellowy stools. Again sorry about the yucky stuff.

Not the studies I've read, so it's neither fair, nor accurate to describe them as such. Are there poor studies? I imagine, sure. But those are not the ones I was referring to or the ones I draw on when I make decisions. For example, here's one done at JHU very recently: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4030608/. Here is another one: http://www.ghrnet.org/index.php/joghr/article/view/1299. There are many others.

Allicin is a very powerful antimicrobial, antibiotic and antifungal, and this has been shown in a number of in vitro and in vivo studies. The claim that it only attacks gram positive or negative bacteria is false. However, studies of natural substances has shown that they tend toward having their greatest impact on pathogens and out of control bacterial and yeast overgrowth. For example, it has been shown to be highly effective when it comes to Candida Albicans. But this is not exclusive to so called 'bad' bacteria, and all the studies I've read don't indicate this. So if this is the claim on the web somewhere, then that's false, but that's not a study.

Do herbal antibiotics kill 'good' bacteria too? Yes, sure, but that's not the same as causing PN or serious gut dysbiosis, which hasn't been shown in a single study when it comes to natural substances, quite the contrary, but has been shown when it comes to pharmaceutical antibiotics. There are reasons go this and the research addresses why natural compounds are more effective and less harmful than isolated chemical compounds.

To each their own, but to the extent that I can avoid it, I would rather use natural herbs and substances used for thousands of years rather than chemicals manufactured in a lab for the profit of pharmaceutical companies. However, it goes without saying that herbs can be powerful and just because something is natural, it doesn't mean it's safe and has no potential side effects. Even probiotics can have side effects.

And yes, some pharmaceuticals can and are obviously necessary and helpful in certain situations. But there is no doubt that we overuse antibiotics in our time and that this has led to some dangerous developments.

This article describes the specific drugs used to treat giardia:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC88965/

the first study has quite a lot of people in it, over 100, there are a number of companies listed on the paper which sell herbal products so we can assume they sponsered the study, similar to what pharmas do. the study was done in a relatively short amount of time so we dont know these products are really safe apart from hear say knowledge. the second study is with 15 subjects which doesnt give them any credibility at all, especially as far as side effects are concerned which could effect 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000.

i used to try herbal medicines from india or china but had some very bad side effects which the drs told me would never happen with natural products. if you are desperate you can be talked into almost anything.

Some abx are indiscriminate, like the potent ones carbepenum, but those are for extreme cases of infections. abx may affect one type of bacteria more than others, which is why so many are developed. its also not safe to take abx, when there is no bacterial infection present, which leads to abx resistance

Well if you are suffering from rhuematoid arthritis and minocycline puts the disease into remission, then you can accept the degree of 'risk' involved. However for healthy people or those with unrelated diseases, yes, why take antibiotics - that doesn't make sense.