Slow and steady?

I have now been on JK and Houttuynia for several months (at least 5) and am steadily improving. I still have moderate flares of symptoms after each dose and periods of heavier herxing but my baseline is much better and I have had a few windows of feeling almost normal.

However, I've been on a pretty low dose of Houttuynia (15 drops total daily, divided 3x daily 4/4/7 drops each), and am realizing that I'm probably nowhere even near halfway done treating. It seems there is a pattern in my body where I feel benign pressure in an area that is "saturated" with pathogens, and as I make progress that area erupts in fire, before finally healing and moving on to the next area. This whole process seems to take many months. There are too many areas left where I still just feel the benign pressure, which makes me think there is a lot of untouched ground left to cover.

I tried adding a few extra "booster" drops to my daily dosages but within days I had much more brainfog and severe rage erupted again, which had not been as much of an issue for a month or two now. Has anyone been in this situation where even a small increase in dose causes a big change in herxing? Is it better to continue at the "safe" slow and steady dose or is it worth pushing through the herx to see if I can get acclimated on a higher dose? It's been so long since I settled on my current dose that I forget how much I pushed through in order to plateau.

Also, I don't really know what I'm treating at this point. Many of the areas where I have the most pressure/burning left are areas where I either know I have had fungal infections (nose) or are susceptible to them (sinuses). My more "classic" Bartonella symptoms (twitching, foot pain, shin pain) have been less prominent. I have no idea what to attribute the brainfog and irritability/rage to. Does anyone know how to tell apart Bartonella symptoms from invasive fungal infections? I'm afraid that Houtty may aggravate fungus more than actually cure it, so I could go on like this for years when my main priority was getting rid of Bart. But I don't want to stop taking it if it means Bart will start getting worse again (I've already made that mistake once)...

Sorry for the long post but any/all thoughts appreciated.

Gosh, you sound like me!!!!

Do you have mold or a positive mycotoxin test? I can’t remember.

Never mind. I just looked back at some other posts and saw we already talked about this. We seem very similar. Houtty initially helped with my finger stiffness, but at some point it came back. I later confirmed that the relative’s house I was living in had gotten super moldy and moved into my car. You have had gut stuff, and so have I. I have no confirmation that mine is Candida, although my last doctor report listed Candida. My antibody tests are always normal, and the stuff I have expelled was greenish yellow instead of spongy white.

Post Edited (WalkingbyFaith) : 8/1/2020 11:18:24 AM (GMT-6)

Thanks for the responses.

Saraeli - I have not looked into the Neil Nathan book before, that sounds interesting. I'll try and look that up. Also thanks for the suggestion for the gradual increase. I tend to be an "all or nothing" person when it comes to ramping up but maybe phasing in a higher dose will work...

WBF - Yes, we do sound very similar! I don't know what kind of fungal issues (yeast, mold, or other) I could be dealing with since I've never been tested. I had a mild positive IgeneX for Bartonella when I tried seeing an LLMD two years ago. (I stopped going for various reasons so I haven't had any further testing). I have wondered about possible synergistic effects between Bartonella and yeast/fungus as well. I always had y/f symptoms but they went on steroids after I was infected with Lyme. Or possibly I had a pre-existing Bartonella infection as well.

Interestingly about the rage, my first real bout of it was 3 months after I was first infected with Lyme and before I had any treatment. A primary care doctor prescribed me a week of fluconazole for a pre-existing skin infection. That was the worst week of my life, I basically felt like I was dying, extreme fatigue, had Parkinson's-like tremors, etc. in addition to the irritability/rage. At first I was thinking it was clear-cut that y/f die-off caused it, but then I saw somewhere that fluconazole was effective against Bartonella as well. So who knows.

“ Has anyone been in this situation where even a small increase in dose causes a big change in herxing?”

- Yes.

“ Is it better to continue at the "safe" slow and steady dose or is it worth pushing through the herx to see if I can get acclimated on a higher dose? It's been so long since I settled on my current dose that I forget how much I pushed through in order to plateau.”

- I’m not sure. I stayed “safe” for a long time. Didn’t get me much of anywhere. Brenda of real food rebel said she saw many on the forums fail to get well because they feared herxing and never took large enough doses of herbs or didn’t take them for long enough. I’m sure there’s some truth to that.

At the same time, when I kept trying to slowwwly increase doses, I ended up in a perpetual herx for months, which only caused painful inflammation. Those with mold toxicity and/or MCAS could potentially end up in a dangerous place if they try to push through herxing or they might end up with severe MCAS that doesn’t resolve later on.

It’s impossible to know what will happen without pushing through, but I have never been brave enough to try. When I get increased inflammation, I get horrible burning, extreme irritability, awful mold and chemical sensitivities which cause even more burning and rage. It can get pretty painful, scary, and dangerous.

I have been out of houtty for a couple of weeks now and am only on sida and knotweed. I have been increasing Sida since I didn’t have houtty. When I get some more houtt, I am tempted to take a whole dropper full to see what would happen, if anything. When I first started, I would get electrical zaps in the head when I added another drop.

I think I was taking 15 or 16 drops of houtt when I ran out. I stayed at 10 drops for a really long time. Then went to 12 and finally 15.

I feel like I am having more numbness and heaviness in limbs. Not sure if it’s from the absence of houtty or the increase of sida.

When I first started Buhner’s in 2017, houtty and sida affected me differently. It’s been so long ago that the memory is sketchy. I believed at the time that houtty and maybe knotweed helped the stiffness in my fingers, as that gradually went down to barely noticeable levels. It was really bad when I first atarted.

I don’t recall ever feeling like sida helped any symptoms. I seem to remember it hitting me in the head in a different way - more head pressure I think. One of them gave me brief electrical zaps in the head and jerks in my legs. I think that was houtty. I think sida acuta gave me burning scalp pain and very mild hair loss when I first started.

Post Edited (WalkingbyFaith) : 8/1/2020 10:40:51 PM (GMT-6)

15-16 drops per dose. Two doses per day.

Houttuynia is one of Buhner’s top antiviral herbs. Not sure about antifungal. In his books, many of the herbs have action against certain species of yeast and mold.

Thanks for clarifying WBF. I'd consider 15 drops at a time to be a pretty healthy dose! That's fully half of what Dr. MR suggests and more than twice the 7 drops that is enough to knock me out for a couple of hours in the evening, haha.

Garzie - Thanks for the input. I've often wondered what it would be like to go "whole hog" and just try to push through 30 days at relatively high doses like Buhner suggests. But it sounds like that approach can certainly backfire.

In other news, I just read the beginning of Neil Nathan's book "Toxic" (thanks Saraeli for the suggestion) and the mold chapter hit wayyy too close to home. I've been resistant to adding that to the list of conditions to consider/treat but I now see that it can contribute to overall inflammation that makes it difficult to tolerate treatment. I may experiment with some binders over the next few weeks. At least from this book, with mold/binders, it sounds like you're encouraged to stay on a dose that doesn't increase symptoms, which is certainly a refreshing change from all the treatments that require lots of herxing.