Herx So Good?

Let's talk herxing. Herxing happens when a bunch of nasties die off in your system and you go into temporary toxic overload. Not everyone seems to herx, but it is a very common occurrence on the road to recovery.

The best way to deal with a herx once you are in it, is by detoxing. The link I've provided above has a nice list of ways to detox, as does this website. Here's a quick detox 101.

Detoxing basically means doing something that removes toxins from your system. Sweating is one of the body's ways of detoxing-- a lot comes out of our pores. And the liver and kidneys both have roles in detox in our bodies. 

Lyme produces a lot of neurotoxins (which give us a lot of our symptoms). We all also have some load of toxins--from non-organic foods, pollutants in the water, air and soil, skin care products and make up, gas fumes when we fill our cars, etc. Modern life is a kind of toxic soup that we all swim in to a greater or lesser degree. All of these contribute to our toxin load. So regular detox is helpful for everyone-- but it is essential for us because we have this extra load form lyme.

When we kill off a bunch of bugs, the die off produces another whole batch of toxins in our system--the more effective the pathogen killers, the bigger the load. So as we start killing off the bugs, if our cleansing channels aren't functional, we are going to get MUCH sicker... you can have horrifiherxes that last for weeks. 

Think of your body's cleansing channels like a pipe-- you can only have so much gunk moving through the pipe at once before it backs up into your system and really makes you feel awful. Nice cleaned out pipes means the stuff can flow through and out easily-- less herxing, and probably faster healing as our bodies can focus on healing rather than herxing.

My sense is that people who knew about detoxing and were doing it prior to getting sick tend to have an easier time with the healing process. (This is purely anecdotal on my part; next time I'll actually survey about this and see if I am indeed right. But for now, take that statement in the same light as "a friend who has talked to a bunch of people thinks...") 

That is, if your pipes are relatively clean at the start, you are likely to herx less and less severely. (Mama's don't let your babies grow up without regular cleansing. I'm serious.)

One of the big questions that arose for me in looking at today's data was whether or not those who believe herxing is not necessary are more likely to be in the category of folks who were already cleansing regularly... for them (us, actually; I'm in the super minority category of "not necessary but you get well faster" category) maybe it doesn't feel so necessary.

So here's what we think about this herxing thing:

Most people are in the probably and yes category. As this is the dominant attitude I see expressed on the support groups list, there's no surprise there. In fact, I was a little surprised that there weren't more people in those two first categories. Fully 1/3 of us aren't sure what to think. And a minority, 13.5% aren't sold on the "must herx to get well" thing.

So I wondered about influences on our opinions, and there was one potential influence that I had survey information about, so I'll share that here. That influence is our choice of medical practitioners.

 

It isn't surprising to me that the folks without lyme literate support are the least sure how they feel about this topic. They are also the most likely to say herxing is a sign of pushing too hard.

So that makes me wonder if philosophy on herxing might be part of what moves people away from working with doctors at all... or if the folks in this category who have a doctor who isn't lyme literate might be getting the message to back down on treatment if it makes them seem more sick, not realizing that it means things are starting to move.

As we noted in an earlier blog, this category clearly needs to be broken out into "have doctor who isn't LL" and "patients flying solo".  I'll be very curious to see how those two groups differ on this question in the future.

It is also interesting to note that patients with the most conventionally trained doctors believe most strongly in herxing being necessary. In my mind (biased though it is) this fits my sense of western medicine being more harsh than natural medicine. From a school of thought that brings us chemo, radiation and elective surgery, I'm not particularly surprised to see herxing being more thoroughly embraced.

Finally, I found it interesting that patients of the more holistically trained doctors (please note that I get it I'm shamelessly generalizing here, and I know training isn't everything) are the least likely to be "not sure". And I'm not sure what this means. Do these docs explain things more thoroughly? Have stronger opinions themselves? Do people who have thought things through more thoroughly gravitate toward them and come ready to make opinions of their own? 

Again, more questions than answers...

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One more chart for the day. Remembering that the sample sizes for some of these bars are going to be quite small, and so this should be considered all preliminary conclusions, here's the info matching attitudes about herxing up with progress patients are making.

It appears that beliefs about herxing are another one of those categories where there isn't a "right answer" in order to get well. The numbers are a bit higher in the "you heal faster" and "no" categories, but there is also a strong showing of the "necessary evil" folks. With a larger survey and some better questions, I hope we can get more clarity on this one.

One more question that arises for me. I wonder about there only being "yes" and "probably" folks in the "not treating" category. We need to know a lot more about why someone would be identifying as having chronic lyme, but not treating. This makes me wonder if fear of herxing might be one of those factors. 

If it does turn out to be a factor, we ought to be careful about how much we play up the hardships of herxing with folks newer on this journey... or how much we cling to the idea of herxing being necessary. Because surely not getting treated at all is the worst possible thing folks could be doing for themselves.

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So what's the point of today's blog? I guess I'd like to encourage folks to recognize that "herx needed" is not the only way to view this. Discuss on your lists and among your support groups, consider why we think it is necessary or not, and try to learn more from each other about the underlying beliefs we are generating and perpetuating as a community, and how they might be affecting us all in our treatment journeys.