I believe that iron is the key to eliminating protomyxzoa infection. And I think its likely critical for other chronic infectious diseases (except Lyme/borrelia burgdorferi infection. see below).

I have found a number of remarkable papers on the importance of iron in infectious diseases. This important information has been overlooked by medical researchers and practitioners working on chronic infectious diseases. Iron status is hugely important.

Iron is the critical, growth-limiting nutrient for almost all infectious pathogens. That includes protozoans, fungi, and bacteria. Pathogens can readily access all other needed nutrients from human hosts: amino acids, sugars, minerals (calcium, magnesium, zinc etc). All these nutrients are readily available in human tissues. Iron is the one nutrient that is lacking, and iron scarcity therefore inhibits the growth of pathogens. Iron is the growth-limiting nutrient.

There is a biochemical tug-of-war for iron between host and pathogens. It doesnt matter if the host is human, another mammal, reptile or whatever. Host and pathogen battle for iron. Even horseshoe crabs have biochemical mechanisms for sequestering iron and keeping it away from pathogens.

High iron content renders a host much more susceptible to systemic infection. The science is very clear about this. See the attached papers. Anemic people are resistant to infection. Iron supplementation causes infection. This fact suggests a novel approach to treating protomyxzoa: reducing body iron load. If increasing iron status causes infection, will reducing iron status help cure it?

Fortunately, removing iron from the body is easy. Its done by bloodletting. Most iron in the body is present in the form of hemoglobin. 500mL of blood contains about 250mg of elemental iron. Simply bleed and throw away the blood, and you reduce your iron levels.

Dr Fry states that protomyxzoa is closely related to malaria and babesia, pathogens with a particularly high affinities and high requirements for iron. Both live in the blood and for at least part of their life cycles they consume red blood cells or live inside red blood cells where iron is concentrated. Protomyxzoa is a “blood-loving” parasite, he says.

Dr Fry states: “…at first I thought it was babesiosis, and over the years, and a lot of money, and a lot of time, turns out it was actually a malaria-like organism with an extremely complex lifecycle that forms biofilm communities in the blood, it is a blood-loving parasite. And after mapping the genome of it, and we didn’t really name it until we had done that — it’s probably a new genus, in the phylum [???]. You know, similar to malaria, similar to babesiosis, even more complex genetically, sort of in between a helminth [parasitic worm] and a protozoan. ”

The literature on iron, and the affinity of protomyxzoa for blood (and therefore iron) demands that iron reduction be considered a possible treatment.

The fastest and most effective way to reduce iron levels is by phlebotomy, or bloodletting. I have done two blood draws on myself so far: one 550mL draw and one 700mL draw (2 weeks apart). Both produced excellent results: my symptoms were immediately reduced and I experienced increased energy, better sleep and higher exercise tolerance. Before the bloodletting, my iron numbers were (all these numbers are in normal ranges):

ferritin 87 ng/mL,

serum iron 90 mcg/dL,

total iron binding capacity (TIBC) 285 mcg/dL and

hemoglobin 13.8 gm/dL

After the 550mL and 700mL draws (test done 1 week after second draw), my iron numbers were:

ferritin: 27

serun iron: 36

TIBC: 340

Hemoglobin: 12.7

A useful measure of iron availability is serum iron/TIBC. This went from 90/285=0.315 to 36/340=0.105, a 2/3 drop! Iron is now much less available in my blood. There is less of it, and more iron-binding substances are binding up the iron that remains.

Another thing that happened after the second blood draw was the familiar dried blood mark appeared under my most affected fingernail. This happened despite the fact that I was not taking any antibiotics at the time. This is remarkable. In the past, such black marks appear ONLY when taking high doses of the most effective antibiotics. And the appearance of these black marks always correlates with a reduction in symptoms, and healing of the fingernail. It is always a good sign.

And all this correlates with me feeling much better. And I stopped taking antibiotics a few days after the first blood draw.

I’m not sure how much lower I should go. Reducing iron too much will impair immune function and therefore will be counter-productive. I dont know what the optimum level is, but i expect its at a level that is as low as possible without substantially affecting immune function. And thats probably at the “borderline anemic” level. But I am definitely NOT anemic yet. I still have “normal” iron status. I think I will do one 400mL blood draw later this week. That should make me borderline or slightly anemic. I expect it will reduce ferritin to about the 5-10 range. At that point, I will restart the AAD antibiotic combination.

I am now of the opinion that the ancient, maligned, ridiculed and disparaged practice of bloodletting is actually an effective medicine! Bloodletting was widely used by many ancient cultures, and in ayurvedic and chinese medicine. They got the reasons wrong, but the therapy right. Science shows that its almost certainly effective for chronic infectious diseases. My personal experience with bloodletting is that its definitely effective. Its the most effective non-antibiotic treatment I have tried.

Consuming phytate (IP6 or inositol hexaphosphate) will also reduce iron levels, but this method is very slow. It takes months, and I doubt that anemic levels can be achieved with IP6 alone unless its taken for many months or maybe years. My ferritin was almost certainly higher than 87 when i started taking IP6. Unfortunately, I do not know what my ferritin number was before i started taking IP6. Bloodletting is dramatically more effective than IP6.

Note: No conventional doctor will prescribe bloodletting/phlebotomy for the reasons outlined above. Even the alternative ones will be hesitant. Phlebotomy is only used by conventional doctors for specific conditions such as hemachromatosis. And in this case, they generally will not reduce ferritin below 300 or 200 or so. Asking to get phlebotomies to bring ferritin down to 5 or 10 will be a non-starter. No doctor will do it. They will think you are crazy for asking.

One could have blood drawn at a blood donation center. But this is unethical if you have a blood-born infectious disease. This is especially true in the case of PR, because this pathogen is not tested for in blood. Donating blood with PR will infect other people. One could donate a unit of blood, and then inform the blood donation place that the blood is contaminated, but you can only get away with this once.

In view of these considerations, I decided to perform the phlebotomies at home with my own equipment. PM me if you need instructions on how to do it.

• This topic was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by Dan S.
• This topic was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by Dan S.