A way to tell if immune system kicked in?

The only way I know of knowing, physically, whether your immune system is active, and this is only in chronic Lyme arthritis patients as well as those who have acquired 1st and 2nd stage joint pain, is if you have pain in joints with little to no swelling.

Better outcomes from chronic Lyme = joint pain, the smaller the joints the better; and this can be due to several factors. The first is that your immune system is strong enough to keep them in joints and sometimes in small joints like fingers. They are not a blood disease, they prefer the joints and tissues anyway.

Tissue and joint proliferation in extremities usually means you have a stronger immune response against the spirochete, and researchers usually find reservoirs in such locations, and they remain relatively low in blood, and spinal fluid; perhaps the brain as well.

You'll also get tissue damage from the inflammation caused by your own immune system.

Poor outcomes which lead to neuroborreliosis, and this has been my case until I got things under raps, usually equals little chronic joint pain in chronic central nervous system cases. And researchers noticed that in rats when their immunity is lowered with QUINOLINIC acid (usually high in neuroborreliosis patients and all patients with neurodegenerative diseases), joint damage/inflammation was relatively low, and reservoirs were instead found in brain and blood but not joints.

For me, steroids and lowering my inflammation, such as lowering Tumor necrosis factor works well. But whats the point of lowering immune system to feel better in the short run, if you're just permitting them to proliferate and travel into areas that your immune system might have guarded.

I got rid of my severe neuroborreliosis after I took Iv antibiotics and then I bumped up my immune system with reishi, turkey tale, maitake and chaga mushroom extract powders. The only problem is now I have major non-swelling Lyme arthritis.

I've done IGG and immunity tests over the years to prove to myself that when I have lyme arthritis symptoms my immunity is strong, and when I don't, testing shows my immunity is low in many areas.

If only you could kill all of these ****ers. Sometimes I just want to inject antibiotics into my finger joints to see what happens.

for me the symptoms from gradually ramping up on LDN were slightly different than my general symptoms

i started somewhere around 0.25mg / day as i know i am moderately sensitive to all treatments - and the LDN research trust advise going particularly slowly with Lyme and auto-immune diseases

i think i had the strongest reactions going on as i went from around 1mg / day to 2mg / day over the course of a few months - and after that slowed my ramp up rate further and things were more manageable

the reactions i noticed were - i went through patches of extra fatigue - but also patches of a bit more energy than usual - and the main one i remember because it was so weird - was pains that migrated all over my body and seemed to move from place to place every few seconds - it might start in my angle - 10 seconds later my ankle wouldn't hurt so much anymore but my hip would - 20 seconds later my shoulder developed a sharp ache but my hip eased off - and round and round it went - i remember doing my daily walk and feeling like my body was doing really strange things - but i did detect that fatigue was reducing very gradually - so i just pressed on with the LDN as the fatigue was more life limiting than pain.


i agree with loski - most of the symptoms in chronic lyme are caused by the immune systems reaction to the bacteria - and the dysregulation of the immune system it causes - which is the same in the case of the herx like reactions.

if you are on the right track - you may feel more symptoms initially - but your function should gradually go up over time - by which i mean objective measures of healthy functioning - like how many things you can do in a day - how much exercise you can do etc
i track these as my most reliable measure of progress over the long term - as these are objective repeatable and reliable measures - rather than subjective measures like " how do i feel today?" or thinks like perceived mood, energy levels or pain etc

if you have known low markers on blood tests for things like total white blood cells, CD57* cells, you should also start to see these normalise over time - but remember that each test is a snapshot in time and these measures might also be variable from day to day / month to month - and not necessarily a fully linear response.

the immune system has a dozen or so ways to identify and fight lyme bacteria ( and other stealth pathogens ) - not just one - and the pathogens have around the same number of ways to try and evade the immune system - so its an ongoing continuous process not a complete win/lose fight
its more that the immune system is constantly reacting to but failing to completely clear the infection and a kind of stalemate evolves
this is why everything we can do that helps support general health and the immune system can help move the needle in favour of the host and help drive improvement.
the simple stuff that is easy to say but hard to do is foundational for this reason
-good sleep
-good diet
-exercise
-well managed stress

i hope its of some help