Philomath
Member
I responded to your PM so please feel free to post here. It was a combination of what I had available and what I thought would give equivalent antibiotic power.
There is a very old antibiotic equivalence study I saw years ago that said 100mg doxycycline is roughly equivalent to about 1.5g penicillin. So, I wanted to replicate the back pain study but wanted to do it with a Peat-friendly antibiotic and all I had at the time was doxycycline, so I used that. The mainstream approach was to prescribe Levaquin and I definitely did not want to take that one. I think the only issues with the tetracyclines is a possible depletion of iron, not calcium. There are studies showing iron depletion and these antibiotics are officially known to chelate iron (see the Wiki page on doxy). Somebody on the forum posted recently saying 100mg doxycycline for 2 weeks dropped their ferritin by 40 points. Given that Peat is anti-iron and most people probably have too much stored anyways, it may be a good "side" effect but I would do iron blood tests before/after anyways. -Haidut
Thanks!