Krimpet --
I agree with all of these posts. Thanks to all of these very smart and GENEROUS women & men on this forum, I'm not dead. And I mean that.
But more to your point...think of the alternative that most of us are used to and therefore provide our only context for our herbal experiences...
The pharmaceutical industry developed drugs primarily based on the available profit margins (how much $ there is to be made) and developed the drugs and dosing guidelines MAINLY on male subjects (there are many exceptions). How many of us, much less the women and children are physiologically similar to "the average male". And even the stats reported by the pharma tests show enough of a positive impact on the human population to a) satisfy regulation and b) maintain their profit margins.
Like the advil example used - it's impossible to quantify how many people have varied reactions to 1 dose of advil, but we do. I can have varied reactions from one day to the next. When I was having my GI attacks, I finally gave in and took the oxycodone I was given. One night they put me right to sleep. The next time I tried them, I had absolutely no effect. I could never figure it out.
Herbs are exactly the same and the "dosing" on the bottles 10 drops, 30 drops -- only provides context. The 10 drops are usually a group of herbs and communicate a bit of a warning to me, indicating that the potion is powerful and I definitely start at 1 drop.
I've had varied reactions to Byron White herbs, too. I started with the AL-Complex, A-Bart and A-Babs all at once (shame on my LLMD...) and based on herxing, I suspected the AL-complex wasn't doing anything for me. For various reasons I had to stop all my treatment and slowly rebuild (the right way, this time) with one component at a time. This is when I learned that the AL-complex was doing nothing for me at 30 drops/day. But the A-Bart and the A-babs were. In fact, the A-Bart was inducing the horrible GI attacks I was having and every time I stopped taking it, the attacks stopped.
The A-babs would give me some herxing but I continued with it and managed to get up to 30 drops/day without much change in the sx. After about
a year, I decided maybe babesia was no longer a dominant infection (as LLMD and I suspected it was in the beginning of my tx) and moved on.
Also, I am doing better on some herbs now that were really hard for me at first. I think this is part of the "peeling back the onion layers" and ratcheting down all of the burdens on our immune system and everything else that is going wrong. You make a little progress, a door
opens up... you make a little more progress, you find a window into something else.
I doubt anyone can tell any of us 100% exactly what is going on with us and our treatment all the time. I suspect that most of us (even if we don't know it yet) are aiming for a mostly symptom-free life and whether or not the infections are, in fact, eradicated, is irrelevant. If we're felling better, that's primarily what counts.
The tricky part is the tx is bound to make us feel bad. So, what is the threshold between not herxing enough, herxing too much, and having dominated the infection so the symptoms are dissipating... only time with your sx and tx will tell you that. I could NOT have written this post even a year into my treatment. Hopefully others don't have the complications that I have had and can have a less complicated "go" at it. ;)
But you asked some great questions.
-p
Post Edited (Pirouette) : 6/19/2016 1:50:11 PM (GMT-6)