Posted 7/30/2017 12:49 PM (GMT -5)
Hi MAF249 -
This might not be of much help but the Lyme microbe - Borrelia burgdorferi can disable normal immune function. There are over 200 studies demonstrating this and over 700 supporting articles about it. What this means is that the immune response is probably fairly unreliable. There are typical immune testing functions that simply don't produce reliable results where Lyme is concerned.
This isn't to suggest that the th1 vs th2 rebalancing approach is ineffective--but I think it's more complicated. All we can really do is test the waters.
Regarding probiotics - there are MILLIONS of bacteria and microbes that make up a normal, healthy microbiome that helps our bodies do nearly everything it's supposed to do, rooted in the GI function. And when the biome is disrupted w/ abx, toxins, or other impacts, the resulting chaos is impossible to trace to a known missing component. All we really know is we have imbalance.
Most probiotic products contain only a handful of bacteria or healthy microbes---when we're trying to rebalance millions. For some people, i think this creates even more imbalance ---for others it seems to work. For some, the probiotics can create die off like yeast/fungal overgrowth, which can trick people into thinking the probiotics are making them worse, not better. And for some, they are making them worse. It's pretty complicated and requires that you take things step by step.
It might be healthier to try rebalancing with probiotic foods, which could be more beneficial, offer more coverage.
-p