You were diagnosed with cancer, you get your laptop and started googling treatment to your disease. Due to fear of the side effects brought by conventional medicine, you decided to seek alternative treatment. During consultation, the doctor told you to cut off intake of certain foods. You follow the advice of your doctor, but after few days you started to suffer from nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, headache and fever so you become upset and scared.

What you are experiencing is probably healing crisis, in allopathic medicine it is term as Jarish-Herxheimer reaction or simply Herxheimer Reaction. Dr.Max Gerson called these reactions “flare-ups”. Healing crisis occurs when the cell release toxins into circulation but the elimination organs such as skin, lungs, liver, kidney, bladder and GI tract are not able to eliminate them quickly. The toxins remain in the circulation and can affect the brain stem region leading to nausea, poor coordination, headache, fatigue, malaise and fever.

Healing crisis is common experience centered to the basis that you become worse before you feel better; this event is inevitable and is an essential part of the therapy. It means that the therapy is working and the immune system is being revived. Symptoms are temporary and will subside as the body gets healthier and able to eliminate toxins more effectively. It usually within 2-3 days but on rare occasion can last a few weeks. During healing the body goes through process of rebalancing, regenerating and cleansing thus create uncomfortable sensation and bodily response which lead us to ask ourselves how can this be good for me if I feel sick? Healing crisis is usually misinterpreted as deterioration in health, but as I said earlier this is common and just temporary.

When you’re experiencing a healing crisis, remember the homeopathic law of cure, also known as Hering’s Law of Cure: Healing occurs from:

1. Healing progresses from top to downward. By this he meant that body typically exerts healing energy to resolve ailments at the top of the body (near the head) before it will tend to ailments at the bottom of the body(near the feet).
2. Healing progress from within outwards. Healing will usually occur on the inside of the body before the outside and the curative process will work its way out of the body from there.
3. Healing progresses from more important organs to those if lesser importance. in Greek Medicine, the more important organs would be the principal and noble organs of the body’ various faculties organ systems, whereas the organ of lesser important would be the attendant vessels.

4. Disease symptoms are released and cured in the reverse chorological orders of their onset. The most recent health challenges will be resolved first and the old illness will be healed last. Hering’s Law of Cure remind us that the organisms has an inherent wisdom in healing itself, and that its processes if purification and regeneration don’t happen in a random haphazard fashion. Rather, there is an inherent order and consistency to the healing and purification process.

You might worry that a flare-up of symptoms is not healing but rather a disease. How can you be certain that you are experiencing healing event? Whatever the particular signs and symptoms of healing crisis may be, there are three crucial differences that distinguish the healing crisis from the onset of the disease symptoms:

1. Core energy and vitality levels are good and improving; with disease onset, there is oppression and devitalization.
2. . Signs and symptoms of true healing crisis are much more temporary and transient, lasting only days instead of weeks, months or even years.
3. The general progression and unfoldment of signs and symptoms in the healing crisis follows the patterns outlined in Hering’s Laws of Cure.

The end goal of healing crisis is improved health, below is list of the common symptoms experienced and how to deal with it.

1. Pain in the liver and gall bladder area. It has to do with the liver acupuncture meridian, which become stressed as the liver eliminates many toxins. This pain is not a cause for alarm. It will slowly subside as you stay with the treatment. Coffee enemas are helpful to speed healing in this area.
2. Nausea and vomiting is often due to alkaline bile backing up into the acidic stomach. Copious amount of peppermint tea stimulate hydrochloride production and mechanically flushes accumulated bile from the stomach. If you have gastritis or stomach ulcer, peppermint tea would be contraindicated, chamomile tea would be better.
3. Diarrhea is usually a defense mechanism of the intestinal tract against irritating factors such as toxic laden bile. Eat only oatmeal, apple sauce and mashed potato and mashed bananas. Add gruel to juices up to 50% by volume. Increase amount of apple in the juices as pectin soothes the intestinal tract.
4. Fever several possible causes: infection, tumoral or healing fever. The healing reaction fever is favorable immune system response. It generally comes on in the evening and breaks in the early morning, typically last 1-2 days and is self-limiting. Do not allow fevers to go above 104 f (40c). Allow fever to remain 3-5 hours as tolerated, and increase fluid intake. Tumoral fever may be constant or occur in the evenings. Do tepid sponge bath and increase fluids. Severe infection with fever requires antibiotics.
5. Swelling can occur due to inflammation of an old injury or history of severe infection. Elevate body part whenever possible.
6. Skin rash is very common way the body indicates it is releasing toxins. Use oatmeal baths, aloe Vera gel or cool baths.

Going through healing crisis is hard. If you have negative or become fearful with healing reaction, this make it more difficult to move trough. So, as much as possible, stop doubting, relax and be grateful for this healing action of the body. Being optimistic is extremely helpful for all healing.