Bacterial Allergy???

[Eileen]

Hello,

I’m almost done with Henry Scammell’s book but am having difficulty understanding what “bacterial allergy ” is. I’ve read it and
re-read it and it’s just not clicking in my head. I’m not understanding it.

Can anyone explain this to me? Thanks.
Eileen

[Maz]

@Eileen wrote:

I’m almost done with Henry Scammell’s book but am having difficulty understanding what “bacterial allergy ” is. I’ve read it and re-read it and it’s just not clicking in my head. I’m not understanding it.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Hi Eileen,

A “bacterial allergy” is a known phenomenon in infectious disease and isn’t a term that Brown coined, himself, but he did use it to describe how rheumatics become sensitive to the toxic substances (antigens) released by mycoplasma. Here is a link to a medical dictionary defining this term:

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/bacterial+allergy

“bacterial allergy: specific hypersensitivity to a particular bacterial antigen.”

In a nutshell, probably everyone on the planet has been exposed to mycoplasma (and many other infections) during their lifetime and will be carrying some strain of it around in their pathogen load, but in the case of the rheumatic, something shifts in the way the immune system recognizes these organisms and the toxic substances they shed, causing an inflammatory response. In other words, it’s not the organism, but the antigens the bug releases that causes the hypersensitivity reaction…hence, the term “bacterial allergy.”

For example, in the case of mycoplasma pneumoniae, an acute, overwhelming infection would look like walking pneumonia. However, in a latent or low grade form, the mycoplasma isn’t the problem, it’s the substances it sheds that cause a type of allergy that results in inflammation in collagen-rich tissues, like joints and skin. In this sort of instance, it wouldn’t take an overt mycoplasma infection to cause this kind of reaction, just as it wouldn’t take much more than touching shell-fish or peanuts, for example, in someone who is allergic to these foods, to experience anaphylactic shock.

This is likely why it’s quite difficult to discern the difference between a herx and flare, because to all intents and purposes, they look and feel the same or similar. Whenever the immune system is alerted or switched on and ramped up (e.g. stress or post-partum), the bugs are under threat and start releasing toxins (causing a flare). When antibiotics hit their target and the bugs are again under stress the same thing occurs (causing a herxheimer flare). Regular flares and herxes are both fairly similar, because in both instances the bugs are under threat and start shedding their toxins…it’s just that with a herxheimer, it’s a controlled attempt to kill bugs. Brown’s goal was to do this in a way (low and slow) that could be tolerated by the patient and to gradually re-train immune function not to over-react to these bacterial toxins.

Healthy folk who do not have a bacterial allergy to the bugs, as rheumatics do, can live symbiotically with their pathogen load…but, not for the unfortunate rheumatic whose tissues are hypersensitive to bacterial antigens. 🙁

This is just my fellow patient understanding of the term and hope I haven’t confused the issue for you, Eileen. 😉

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