Closing out 2016

I'll do a more complete personal update after January 1st when I calculate my daily health averages for 2016 and compare it to past years.

In the meantime, after taking most of 2016 off, I'm back on Equilibrant and ImmunoStim (both are over the counter immune modulators) and I continue to believe they are helpful.  Now, unlike before however, I am pulsing the doses with 5 days on, 2 days off.  Dr. C once suggested that some patients have better success when pulsing so that the body doesn't become too accustomed to immune modulators.
                                                                    _________

I have a firm belief that Th1/Th2 imbalance is a key part of my immune dysfunction; specifically I'm Th2 dominant.  It's beyond the scope of this post to explain exactly why I've come to this conclusion - it would take a 5,000 word essay - but suffice it to say, I am confident of this.  I do understand that many believe the Th1/Th2 model of the immune system is oversimplified, but at the same time, it can still be specific and valid enough to provide treatment guidance.  (If it's good enough for Dr. C and other well respected ME researchers, it's good enough for me.)

For a long time, I have wondered what would happen if I concentrated on an entire protocol of Th1 shifting diet and supplements.  But I was unaware of any existing protocol and didn't have the time to research and invent one myself.  Then I found this protocol from Self Hacked.

Some of Self Hacked's advice on Th1/Th2 seems to be contradictory, so each step of implementing this will require my own confirmatory internet research.  Often times, a single study can be worthless.  I'd like to focus on diet and supplements that have a well-supported history of being found to be Th1 stimulants or Th2 suppressors; not just a single study.

Astralagus is already in Equilibrant, so for now I'm also introducing licourice and gynostemma, as well as new probiotics that focus on certain strains.  Its too early to tell if this will help.  I will update later...

                                                                 _________

I also received an interesting comment from an anonymous reader to my last post from late November.  The gist of it was that the commenter had success by focusing on treating autonomic dysfunction and suggested I do the same. Others have suggested that to me, but what I found particularly interesting was the statement that  Dr. Nancy Klimas has apparently stated that she believes autonomic dysfucntion is the key to ME (or words to that effect).  I was unaware of that, as I've been a little out of the loop lately.  I'll be looking more into Klimas' comments about autonomic dysfunction.  I'd love to hear others' take on this.