Chris Kresser: Well, you may not like this, but a fecal transplant would definitely be my suggestion. That’s the only condition that fecal transplants are approved for in the US, antibiotic-resistant C. diff, and this is exactly why, because C. diff is a very, very recalcitrant, nasty bug that’s difficult to kill even with our most potent broad-spectrum antibiotics. One of the biggest ironies with antibiotic treatment is that C. diff is a commensal organism, which means that it’s something that can exist in a gut and won’t necessarily be a problem unless the beneficial bacteria that protect us from C. diff proliferating become depleted, in which case C. diff does proliferate and then can be extremely problematic and even life threatening. People are still dying here in 2016. I forget the number, but it’s quite high. Fecal transplant has over a 90 percent cure rate for antibiotic-resistant C. diff. I realize that might not be a viable or practical solution if your hospital doesn’t offer it, but maybe you could become an advocate that makes that happen because I do believe that it’s by far the most efficacious and safest treatment for antibiotic-resistant C. diff.
Paula just sent in a comment. She says, “I had a severe case of C. diff and did not treat with Flagyl but used Chinese herbs successfully.” She’s sharing her experience there. That’s another great point. I have used herbal botanicals for C. diff in some cases and have had success. In my case, I tend to use Western herbs. Stephen Buhner is one of my favorite herbalists. He writes a lot about using botanicals to treat infections that are antibiotic resistant, and he actually even has a book called Herbal Antibiotics, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in this topic. We’ve had great success using some of those herbal antibiotics in conditions that didn’t respond to pharmaceutical antibiotics.