Interesting presentation on the Microbiome in Chronic Lyme

this was on the Project Lyme Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwtx6iizieo

the lady concerned is quite well known, if a little controversial in the gut microbiome world. Dr. Sabine Hazan.
she now has her own research company and is runny several clinical trials on the influence of the gut microbes on chronic disease conditions

her main theory discussed in this video is that she feels that the long term symptoms of chronic lyme disease may be the result of the loss of certain genus of gut bacteria from the patients microbiome - in particular bifido-bacteria - rather than due to ongoing infection

i find that a little hard to credit, given my own direct experience of being able to see bartonella in my blood despite many months of antibiotics - but the presentation was still interesting overall - and she did seem to show that there was at least an association between the loss of bifido species and chronic conditions like lyme, long covid, autism etc
so, we know they are often reduced in lyme - but we don't know if its a cause of lyme symptoms or just a downstream effect of lyme.

i did come away feeling that her perspective was - like is often seen with subject matter experts - somewhat biased towards believing that everything is caused by whatever it is they are expert in - and underestimates or ignores the role of factors outside their specialist area.

still worth a watch for background and another perspective

I tried a bifido based blend a couple years back as a stool test showed that being really low. Those made me feel horrible.

I’ve read some data more recently suggesting bifido naturally looses prevalence with age - and that supplementation may not be beneficial due to that. Forget where I read that though…

I learned that when my son had a poor reaction to probiotics, it was due to the biogenic amines that were contained as a residue of the manufacturing process. He didn't have a poor reaction to VisBiome. This is higher dose than all the others he reacted poorly to. It is manufactured using an expensive process that leaves a very low residue of biogenic amines.

Biogenic amines can irritate mast cells in the gut. They can add to the body's load of histamines. Whether one has MCAS or not, mast cells are usually at minimum one of many factors that are involved in flares and herxes.

He couldn't continue to take VisBiome because it became too immune stimulating for his system after a few weeks. For him that shows up as a repetitive movement disorder coming back. But at first he did well on VisBiome. He had none of his characteristic histamine intolerance type reactions to it, like he did with even tiny doses of every other probiotic I tried, with the sole exception of soil based organisms. He lost his tolerance for the soil based organisms when they became too immune stimulating. (Watch out because they are very immune stimulating for some people. I usually don't have joint and muscle pain, but I had crazy joint and muscle pain suddenly upon trialing soil based organisms on myself.)

Bifidobacteria counts can be increased by consuming the foods that the Bifidobacteria like to eat. That would mean whatever prebiotics you can tolerate. Inulin, alas, is not tolerated by my son at even a tiny sprinkle. But if you are one of those people who can tolerate prebiotics, studies show many different prebiotics reliably increasing bifidobacteria counts. You can do a search of bifidobacteria and prebiotics and find many papers of various kinds including inulin, FOS, XOS, GOS, golden kiwi, various kinds of fiber and more.