Herxing is specific to very few diseases, including syphilis and Lyme disease, which are both spirochetal infections. As I mentioned in my previous post, spirochetes are a type of microscopic organism that look like little spirals.
They are smart buggers, adapting to antibiotics and changes in your body.
It's hard to kill them, but it's pretty much the only way you can get better.
So a herx is what happens when you actually do start to kill them off with antibiotics. I'll explain how it works, but for a more detailed, scientific explanation, please either check it out here or here. So:
1. The antibiotics (if you're taking the right type or types, in the right dose, at the right times of day) start killing the spirochetes. This is good. But if the antibiotics are working particularly well, the spirochetes start to die off very quickly.
2. As they die, their cell walls burst, and the contents spill out into your body. Remember, spirochetes are living organisms--though I can't say I feel bad for killing them.
3. A herx happens if enough dying or dead spirochete material floods into your system, leading to an inflammatory immune response.
4. While you may have an acute, life-threatening allergic response, or a fever that rises quickly (I almost died this way, in 2003), it is more likely that you will just feel awful for a day or a few days.
Herxes come on quickly or take a while to appear, but either way, you will probably feel a worsening of the Lyme symptoms you already have. According to Pam Dodd's Lyme Disease Blog, symptoms could include:
- fever
- sweating and chills
- rapid heart rate or palpitations
- shortness of breath
- muscle and joint aches and pains
- headache
- brain fog
- insomnia
- swollen glands
- ringing in the ears
- sinusitis
- itching
- digestive issues
- unstable emotions
- general feeling of sluggishness
For me, when I'm not feverish, I'm experiencing unbelievable pain. That's how I know the antibiotics are working.
What can you do? You can eat well, drink a ton of water, take your vitamins, and get sleep. Take baths and drink tea. And call your doctor--he or she may want to reduce your dose or have you take a "drug holiday" until the herx has passed.
But remember--it will get better. And if you don't have a herx, the antibiotics are still probably doing their job. It's just one more weird, hardly-understood thing about Lyme disease.
