Wednesday Wondering----What do you think about symptoms?

It IS really confusing - and this is where "knowing your body" or "reading your body" is the most helpful. (Unfortunately) I've had plenty of time to learn how to read my body, so let's see if I can be of help.

When I add in something new, and it's effective, I know that it may make me feel worse before I feel better, so I have to be watching for an increase in symptoms and determine if it's a herx reaction, or something else.

First, I give it time. Sometimes just starting a new supplement can make me feel worse for the first few days, so adding in something that has the potential to treat these infections (or help my immune function raise), I know that I will likely herx some, at least. So I look for my known herxing symptoms - which are usually increased nerve issues (pain, mixed up signals getting to muscles), brain fog, increased joint pain, increased fatigue. Those are my first signals that I'm herxing. So at that point, I increase my detoxing to see if that helps.

Knowing that increasing my detox may take up to a week or so to make a difference, here is where I have to have not only patience, but persistence with my detoxing. If in a week or so, there is no difference, I lower the dose down (or stop, if I never made it very far) and at that point, I try to determine what happened.

When I added in the biofilm buster and things all went haywire, I followed this, then lowered my dose, then eventually (about 2 weeks into herxing), stopped the biofilm buster all together. My herxing was NOT severe, but I could tell that I wasn't getting it under control, so I stopped it - and seriously increased my detoxing - but it wasn't enough. So, after a few weeks of trying to stop the herxing by lowering my treatment herbs to get the herxing under control (and it wasn't working), I stopped the treatment herbs as well, and only worked on detoxing to get my herxing under control.

While I herxed way too much with the biofilm buster, I will be adding it back in at a (much - LOL!) later date, when my body is better prepared to deal with all that I "unleash". I now know to be very, very careful and only "inch" my way up to the full dose of the biofilm buster, while having other protocols in place to deal with whatever is hiding out in those biofilms in me.

So, since I know that the biofilm buster that I chose works well for me, I will be adding it back in at some point.

LOL! After reading back over this, I hope you can get a bit of help from it? I'm not sure I was helpful. Sorry.

Traveler said...
It IS really confusing - and this is where "knowing your body" or "reading your body" is the most helpful. (Unfortunately) I've had plenty of time to learn how to read my body, so let's see if I can be of help.

When I add in something new, and it's effective, I know that it may make me feel worse before I feel better, so I have to be watching for an increase in symptoms and determine if it's a herx reaction, or something else.

First, I give it time. Sometimes just starting a new supplement can make me feel worse for the first few days, so adding in something that has the potential to treat these infections (or help my immune function raise), I know that I will likely herx some, at least. So I look for my known herxing symptoms - which are usually increased nerve issues (pain, mixed up signals getting to muscles), brain fog, increased joint pain, increased fatigue. Those are my first signals that I'm herxing. So at that point, I increase my detoxing to see if that helps.

Knowing that increasing my detox may take up to a week or so to make a difference, here is where I have to have not only patience, but persistence with my detoxing. If in a week or so, there is no difference, I lower the dose down (or stop, if I never made it very far) and at that point, I try to determine what happened.

When I added in the biofilm buster and things all went haywire, I followed this, then lowered my dose, then eventually (about 2 weeks into herxing), stopped the biofilm buster all together. My herxing was NOT severe, but I could tell that I wasn't getting it under control, so I stopped it - and seriously increased my detoxing - but it wasn't enough. So, after a few weeks of trying to stop the herxing by lowering my treatment herbs to get the herxing under control (and it wasn't working), I stopped the treatment herbs as well, and only worked on detoxing to get my herxing under control.

While I herxed way too much with the biofilm buster, I will be adding it back in at a (much - LOL!) later date, when my body is better prepared to deal with all that I "unleash". I now know to be very, very careful and only "inch" my way up to the full dose of the biofilm buster, while having other protocols in place to deal with whatever is hiding out in those biofilms in me.

So, since I know that the biofilm buster that I chose works well for me, I will be adding it back in at some point.

LOL! After reading back over this, I hope you can get a bit of help from it? I'm not sure I was helpful. Sorry.

No, this is EXTREMELY helpful. So much so that I'm going to print it for reference.

Personally I do it like this:

1)I continue with new herb, because I suppose I am having a herx. However if that lasts for quite a long time, I stop the herb.
2)stirring more things and herxing
3)Do you mean generally ok or ok with taking certain herb?
If I thinnk it works for me, I won't change it.
4) I listen my LLMD, but I add things I read here on the forum are beneficial for the problems I have. For example, my LLMD never mentioned Sida acuta. I added it and 5 days I coudn't sleep at all. I think it was definitely doing something when it provoked insomnia. Now I don't have insomnia anymore, but I needed to go through it in order to get used to Sida.
5) yes of course. If I feel the herb is bad for me, I won't take it. I will find something else.

For abx, if I think it is harmful I stop it immediately. I don't want to make the same mistake as I have made with Tinidazole and let it damage my nerves.

However, these are just my personal views and how I address this issue. As multi stated, it is very important to listen to the body and intuition.

Krimpet 🍔 said...
So I am looking at my protocol and was wondering. For the sake of reducing complexity, I'm going to only use 2 examples. Let's say you are on a herb or abx protocol and you are feeling ok. Then you add an herb or abx, and start to feel worse (like you're going backwards).
Here are my questions:

1) Do you go back to what you were previously doing and just stay there or do you continue with new herb/abx only to feel worse?
2) Is the feeling worse because you are stirring more things up OR that herb/abx really doesn't agree with you?
3) How do you really know when you should change your protocol, especially if you are feeling ok?
4) Do you stir up the hornets nest because "they" say, it's the next herb or abx in the proctocol?
5) Do you think you can get better without that add-on on the protocol?


These are just some things that I'm really wondering. This path can really get confusing and then you begin to question everything. What I'm finding is that some of these herbs/abx just don't agree with everyone and perhaps some of those "worse" symptoms are because these things are not helping but perhaps making things worse.

If I add something and I feel worse, I back off until the "worse" feeling goes away and then try again at the most minimal dose. Sometimes with abx that's impossible. In my case I didn't know better, and bulldozed through it and I don't think I did myself any favors that way. So, if I couldn't back down on the abx as it was for me with Flagyl, I put it aside permanently.

I think it is really hard to tell what the answer is to two, unless you keep at it following the titter down, titter up method and see more positive results.

I'm a firm believer of giving something 4 weeks of no change, or plateauing before trying something else, unless of course question one and two prohibit continuation of it.

I have to trust the protocol, whomever I've chosen to follow, but understand nothing is written in stone and we should remain flexible.

I think once we no longer see changes, it's time to move on. See previous answer about the 4 week thing.