you can surely herx from cat's claw but it's a bad idea to take it alone. There's a reason why these protocols are so complex. Take a look at Buhner or Cowden, there are lots of tinctures/herbs. The reason for this is when you have a systemic infection you need to worry about
other things besides killing the bugs...
- detox - your body is full of bacteria, not only lyme but other bacteria that have taken the opportunity that your immune system is weak and have multiplied too much. When all this menagerie starts to die, it will create loads of toxic debris which will make you very sick and you will want to stop treatment
- lower oxidative stress - antioxidants like resveratrol in the Knotweed, or glutathione, come really handy. When u have a huge inflammation in your body your immune system gets confused, because inflammation is what it generally uses to recruit troops, so if it's too much is like having 10000 generals giving conflicting orders to the same army
- tackle opportunistic (co-) infections that have grown in the shadow of Borrelia infection. These infections if left untreated will give your immune system enough work so it continues to fail to overcome the initial lyme infection. So the number of these pathogens needs to be lowered, and they often do not respond to same herbs/antibiotics as lyme because they are different bacteria with other vulnerabilities and different tissue tropism (bartonella likes to reproduce in the endothelial tissue, babesia reproduces directly inside blood cells, borrelia loves joints, brain, etc...)
- protect some organs that are vulnerable in this process: spleen is where pieces of dead bacteria get collected and filtered, liver filters toxins, lymph helps gather dead bacteria, pieces of biofilms from the body, protect red blood cells (if u have bartonella and/or babesia), heart.
- overcome the immune suppression induced by the infection
- kill pathogens - for this you usually have your immune system, so if it starts working fine and u have addressed all the rest of the bullets above, u dont really need to take any antibiotic. But if you want to, you can.
First thing that one should do when running low on funds and not affording an LLMD is buy a lyme book start following a protocol, at least partially.
Post Edited (mpost) : 2/6/2016 12:21:35 PM (GMT-7)