Hi Doors!
Aww! Thank you for your ever so kind words! They made me smile!!
So, since I'm not going to be available tomorrow morning, I thought I'd try to answer as best as I can tonight, but please understand I'm tired, so if I seem to leave something out, please ask!!! LOL!
I'm so very sorry!!!! It does sound like you have been through a really rough herx!
First of all, please understand that the stress and anxiety is adding to this - there may not be much you can do about
it though, but do what you can to lower your stress, and treat your anxiety if it's still a bit much. It will just make this easier to get through is all.
I really need to go back and edit my post about
using houttuynia - if I could find everyone where I implied where I did, or even said I did, I would edit them as well, but I can at least edit the one on houttuynia as I used it.
I have come to understand things a bit differently now. I didn't really use it as a stand alone treatment, I was using the chronic tonic with it. The chronic tonic (as I used it) had these herbs in it:
Cat's Claw, Echinacea Angustfolia, Teasel, Eleuthero, Red Root, Japanese Knotweed, St. Johns wort,
Artemisia Annua, Neem leaf, Oregano, and Thyme.
Next, can I ask if you went from one drop up to 10 suddenly or gradually? Either way, even at 7 drops you are herxing, and don't forget that herxing is really quite hard on the body as it's a crisis situation as far as it's concerned. There's too many toxins in the blood stream for things to continue to function well. So, please do lower your dose further.
Was there a previous dose that you were on that you didn't herx on? If you went from one to ten drops, you won't know, so we know that 7 is too much for now, so drop back down to at least 4 drops for now until the herxing comes under control. Then, slowly, one drop a day, raise your dose until you start to herx. Once you start to herx, drop back one drop, and increase your detoxing for a couple of days or more, until the herx comes under control.
If you are okay going forward with that amount of detoxing, then you can begin to raise your dose again. If you don't want to keep that same level of detoxing going, then drop back to a more comfortable level of detoxing, and once your herxing is under control, then start raising your dose again.
No doubt this is the long way to do this, but it's what I've had to do with much of my treatments - and I still seem to move forward faster than many that push much harder to move forward with their treatments. Patience and paying close attention to the body for clues as to what/how much it can handle are what help me the most.
about
you waking at 3 am and not being able to sleep, I'm a bit concerned that your adrenals may be suffering at this point. Would you ask your doctor to test your cortisol levels with a 4 point saliva test for cortisol? This is the best test there is out there, as it measures your saliva for cortisol usually upon rising, noon, 3 pm and at bed time. This way you get a good picture of what your cortisol levels are throughout the day. Cortisol should be highest when we first wake up, and then gradually lower until it's at it's lowest point just before bed. You may be suffering from an inverted cortisol schedule, or you may be low throughout the day. I don't know if you knew, I ended up sliding down into Addison's, so adrenal health is of great importance in my eyes now.
As far as how long it took for me to feel a difference, I believe it was about
one month when I started feeling better? But I'm soooo not sure of that answer!! I'm just too tired to be sure right now. I'll be back, of course, to see if you have re-read this and see if you have questions that I can be of help with later on tomorrow. I'm changing out kitchen faucets tomorrow morning! LOL! Or at least that's the plan.