posted
I've been confused about something - I thought I had read that the herx reaction only occurred with treating lyme and syphillus, yet it sounds like people get that with a lot of other things? Or am I just reading things incorrectly? Just wanting to know what to expect with various treatments, thanks.
-------------------- Wendy Posts: 253 | From Near Albany, NY | Registered: Jan 2009
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posted
Bumping up... I want to know if things get worse when starting treatment, does that confirm its lyme?
-------------------- Wendy Posts: 253 | From Near Albany, NY | Registered: Jan 2009
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TF
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 14183
posted
Well, it may be that you just herx with lyme and syphilis meds, but I think a lot of what you hear on the board is actually "flares" of the various illnesses.
For example, lyme has a 28 day cycle (it flares every 28 days) and babs has a 7-day cycle. So, when I treated babs, every 7 days I got a horrible "flare" (my doctor's word). This just happened once I started treating babs.
I got horribly sick every Friday evening and it lasted 48 hours. This is not a herx according it my doc. Rather, it is the disease flaring.
So, that could account for a lot of what people think are herxes.
Here are some quotes from Burrascano that refer to the cycles of these diseases:
"Another very important factor is response to treatment- presence or absence of Jarisch Herxheimer-like reactions, the classic four-week cycle of waxing and waning of symptoms, and improvement with therapy." (p. 7)
"It has been observed that symptoms will flare in cycles every four weeks. It is thought that this reflects the organism�s cell cycle, with the growth phase occurring once per month (intermittent growth is common in Borrelia species)." (p. 17)
"4-week cycles- Bb activity, and thus symptoms, wax and wane in a cycle that repeats roughly every four weeks. This cycle, if clear, can guide your treatments." (page 26)
Regarding babesiosis:
"Symptoms cycle rapidly, with flares every four to six days." (p. 26)
See the first quote on page 7. If you get very sick on about day 2-3 of lyme treatment, that is likely a herx reaction and indicates lyme disease. So does the 28 day flare cycle of symptoms. So do numerous lyme symptoms. All of these things point to lyme. So, put it all together and you can figure out the chances that it is really lyme.
Posts: 9931 | From Maryland | Registered: Dec 2007
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