Negative Regulation is when we feel worse on the way to getting better...

In medicine, the Herxheimer reaction is a well-known symptom of die off, when pathogens begin to release their endotoxins into our body.

Another related process is Cleansing Reactions, where the immune system is mobilizing toxins that have been stored in the tissues.

We feel old symptoms return temporarily when stored toxins start moving through our circulation on their way out of the body.

Healing Crisis is an age-old phenomenon, and this even includes thousands of cases of Spontaneous Remission, where cancer is gone in a few days with a fever and bacterial infection...

It is crucial to understand negative regulation, because when we are in it we feel very symptomatic...

Symptoms are an expression of the body's intelligent response to stressors and imbalances.

We can feel better either by stopping the body's purposeful responses, or by supporting them to achieve completion...

In many cases, it was stopping body symptoms with suppressive medications that led to the state of blockage in the first place, so it is very helpful to avoid as much pharmaceutical use as possible in order to help yourself break free of a blocked state...

When you finally break out of Blocked Regulaiton, your body's detoxification systems will probably be working overtime to eliminate whatever it was that had been blocking your physiological pathways...

This symptomatic response to having something irritating or toxic moving through your lymphatic and vascular system is sometimes called a Cleansing Reaction or a Healing Crisis. 

If it is in response to some kind of anti-biotic therapy, anti-parasitic treatment or anti-fungal program, it can be related to the die-off of the pathogens...

In that case it may be called a Herxheimer Reaction...

Pathogens tend to accumulate toxins like heavy metals, and sometimes even produce their own endotoxins...

When these organisms die off rapidly, the release of toxins into your body environment can overwhelm the immune system and elimination pathways enough to produce a temporary increase of symptoms.

The symptoms can be almost anything, depending on the type of toxins and their location in the body, but flu-like reactions are common...

In general, Negative Regulation is indicated when a well selected remedy or healing therapy produces an initial flare up in one or more symptoms.

It can be an increase in a symptom that is already present, or it can be a different symptom pattern.

It is always helpful to consider if it is a symptom that you have experienced at some point in your past history...

This can be an indication of Retracing, which means your body is revisiting an old issue that was never completely healed...

Your progress through an old symptom like this that has been reactivated will typically be much quicker that it was in the past, because your body now has the healing support it always needed to complete the process.