Has Anyone Had Listeria?

[fitnesskelly]

Wondering if anyone has had listeria and if you have long term effects from having it? Not much is available online regarding long-term effects of having listeria, other than it can cause neurological problems.

By accident, I found out that I had listeria in February of this year. I participated in the American Gut Project and took my sample in February. This occurred a few weeks after having what I thought was the flu (flu didn't make sense because I had GI problems, but urgent care told me it was just the flu). I was so sick for weeks and afterwards, severely fatigued for months. I developed some new symptoms in that time frame (trigger finger, constant GI problems, complete intolerance of alcohol) - it makes sense to me that having this illness could have caused these new symptoms. Ironically, I thought I had Lyme and went to the doc in March for antibiotics, so I must have killed off the Listeria...indeed I started feeling much better after months on the antibiotic (but the new symptoms still linger). According to the American Gut results, 10% of my gut bacteria (at the time) was Listeria.

[TheKnowing]

I sent a sample in to them in February as well, and just now found out that I had Listeria as 31% of my microbes! But I have been healthy then and since (six months later). Apparently, there are at least ten species in the genus Listeria, only one of which (L. monocytogenes) is routinely pathogenic. Maybe your issues were due to Listeria monocytogenes, or maybe you had a relatively harmless species like I did, and your issues were due to something else.

I am super curious as to how long it takes for such a massive amount of Listeria in the gut to get displaced so that it is no longer a threat.

[fitnesskelly]

Wow! That's a ton! Has it been a long time since you've been on any of the broad spectrum antibiotics? Maybe that's why you have so much in your gut.

You have me wondering if I had a different strain, since they aren't specific about the exact strain.