Disclaimer: I am not a professional immunologist. I have never even played one on a television soap opera. Nothing here is intended as medical advice. Use this information at your own risk. I am just a guy who once had a weak and misguided immune system and somehow managed to improve it considerably. What worked for me may not work for anyone else. I do not believe I have any right to pretend to have any expertise in this area.
How to affect a reboot of the immune system? If the immune systems have been at war for a long time, causing systemic inflammation, attacking parts of the body that it arguably should not be attacking, what can one do?
For me, I started with elimination diets based on allergy testing (IgE, IgA, IgG, MRT). This helped but only seemed to treat the symptoms rather than the root causes. The second step of progress for me was to get parasite testing, and, upon detecting blastocystis sp. (parasite) ominis, candida/yeast overgrowth (SIFO), and dysbiosis (bad bacteria outweighing the good bacteria, SIBO), attacking them one by one. A triple-cocktail of antiprotozoal antibiotics evicted the blastocytes. Herbal remedies against candida, probiotics (including three-lac and five-lac, multi-strain probiotics, fermented cabbage, and more), and low-glycemic index food diet all probably helped weaken the candida overgrowth but did not tame it. Fasting with a water-and-salt-only, zero-calorie diet for fourteen days tamed the candida. Continuing with high-cfu, multi-strain probiotics and a paleo/primal diet helped. Very soon after the antibiotics and fasting, I got a new lease on life. I went from barely surviving and dying to thriving. In less than a year, my immune system was totally calm according to all the immune system related tests the Mayo clinic could give me.
Years later, if I could go back in time and advise my former self, I would have recommended:
1) Do the parasite testing sooner rather than later. Try multiple tests–blood tests, stool tests. If you have a parasite, get rid of it ASAP. Don’t think that people in North America cannot have intestinal parasites. Maybe 14 days of ivermectin followed by 10 days of binder. Or 10 days of ivermectin on, ten days off, and then 10 days of ivermectin again. If blasto, do the triple cocktail of antiprotozan antibiotics for 14 days, take ten days off, and do 14 days more of the antibiotics. (Have to purge not just the adults but the blastocytes and the larvae. Consider the full lifecycle of the parasites and remove two generations.) If chronic lyme disease, perhaps taking antibiotics for several years might help? Removing the parasites can allow your immune system to calm down.
2) don’t settle for good diets. sometimes good is the worst enemy of the best. don’t settle for the nourishing traditions diet, the gaps diet, the paleo/primal diet, a ketogenic diet, or a relatively low-glycemic diet. Those are good. Maybe good enough for some. But you need to be more radical with your elimination diet to properly heal. You need to remove that which feeds candida and parasites. You need to remove that which directly or indirectly causes inflammation. You need to reduce your inflammation to near zero. You need to give your body exactly what it needs (in macro and micro) and not give it anything that causes it more stress. So do a carnivore diet or ketovore diet that revolves mainly around red ruminant meat and fat (from beef, lamb, bison, goat), eggs, butter, sardines, and perhaps some fermented dairy (aged cheeses, kefir, preferably sheep, goat, or, if bovine, raw A2 milk). If you need to go even more hard core than the carnivore diet, consider the “lion diet,” a more extreme version of the carnivore diet that consists of water, salt, fresh beef or lamb, and ghee). Tap into the magic of ketosis and autophagy. this diet will mitigate candida/yeast/SIFO and SIBO.
3) be ruthless with candida/yeast. Ingest at least three drops of iodine tincture every morning to help combat SIBO and SIFO. If you have a cheat meal that contains carbohydrates once in a while, follow it up with garlic and oil of oregano and probiotics. If weird symptoms start to get bad again, be quick to do a course of CandiSmart, for example. (CandiSmart capsules contain uva ursi, garlic, neem, caprylic acid, grapefruit seed, pau d’Arco, barberry, olive leaf, berberine. CandiSmart drops contain pau d’Arco, oregano, Oregon grape, cinnamon, orange peel, clove, peppermint. These all harass candida and intestinal parasites.) Look into wormwood too. Nicotine can help too supposedly. you dont want to live on these herbs. they are poisonous in a way. just use them to harass the yeasts and parasites as needed. Maybe do a course of anti-parasitics once or twice a year whether you know you need them or not.
4) As for zero-calorie fasting, there is a lot of power here with extreme ketosis and autophagy. fasting for twenty or even thirty days may give the immune system a reboot. it can starve the candida and parasites and even cancer cells like nothing else can. however, there may be alternatives that may work as well while nourishing rather than depleting. for example, doing a “sardine fast” where one only eats sardines packed in olive oil or water with salt could have the same powers of ketosis and autophagy as zero-calorie fasting while preventing loss of muscle tissue. the sardines could nourish the brain and body while not losing any of the advantages of pure fasting (no food, just water and salt). The same may be said of the lion diet where one eats only beef/lamb and salt.
5) Continue with probiotics. Maybe eat some aged cheeses or fermented cabbage. Maybe drink some kefir if it doesn’t have much sugar in it. Look into supplementation with l. reuteri. Some people make their own yogurt but focus on l. reuteri in it. As for me, the supplemental probiotic that seems to have helped me the most is Garden of Life Raw Probiotic (33 strains, 88 million CFU). It contains these strains: Bifidobacterium lactis (multiple SD strains: SD‑5219, SD‑5220, BL818, Bi‑07, Bl‑04), Bifidobacterium longum, Lactobacillus acidophilus (SD‑5221, NCFM), Lactobacillus brevis, Lactobacillus bulgaricus (L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus), Lactobacillus casei, Lactobacillus fermentum, Lactobacillus helveticus, Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, Lactobacillus kefirgranum, Lactobacillus kefir, Lactobacillus paracasei (SD‑5218, Lcp‑37), Lactobacillus parakefir, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis, Lactococcus species, Lactococcus lactis, Lactococcus cremoris, Lactococcus lactis biovar diacetylactis, Leuconostoc lactis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Leuconostoc cremoris, Leuconostoc dextranicum, Streptococcus thermophilus, Yeasts (from kefir cultures), Kluyveromyces marxianus, Brettanomyces anomalus, Debaryomyces hansenii, Saccharomyces unisporus, Saccharomyces turicensis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Saccharomyces exiguus, Torulaspora delbrueckii. I dont know which of these strains is helping me the most but something in there is helping immensely.
I have heard rumors and anecdotes about other actions that supposedly give the immune system a reboot. I do not have an informed opinion about them.
Supposedly someone once accidentally became infected with the Marburg virus while visiting a cave full of bats in Africa. She survived the ordeal. That ordeal definitely exercised her immune system. And whatever her immune system was struggling with before the ordeal was no longer an ordeal afterwards. Her immune system was very strong after the ordeal. Of course I am not here recommending contracting the Marburg virus. That sounds like a really bad idea. I am just suggesting that maybe a jarring immune event can reboot the immune systems. It could be tested and researched further.
Supposedly someone who suffered from chronic immune system issues walked around barefoot in some village somewhere to get infected with hookworms. He succeeded in getting hookworms. And his immune system rebooted and refocused on dealing with those worms rather than attacking some of his cells and organs. He then started harvesting the hookworms he passed and selling them to others so they could get immune system reboots too. So while there is value in removing some parasites from the body, occasionally there may be opportunity to rescue a body from a hyperactive immune system (that seems to be at war for no good and obvious reason) that attacks the body by distracting it with a minor parasite. Maybe the immune systems need something to fight. And if it has nothing to fight it might just attack the body it should be protecting? Surely there are better answers than this.
Some with gut issues have been helped by fecal transplants. Maybe taking the good bacteria from one healthy person and putting it into the large intestine of an unhealthy person has some magic to it.
Some say ingesting baking soda every day may help over time. That might be worth researching.
