For Rainy Cloud - re "Immune reconstitution"

This happened to me. I found a combination of antibiotics that 100% killed the bartonella, and a few months after doing this, I got a lot worse. I was just major sick all the time and would herx even from very small doses of antibiotics. It wasn't arthralgias specifically, just typical Lyme symptoms.

After eliminating the bartonella, my immune system went completely nuts on the borrelia infection. This led to 6+ months of constant herxing, which is only now starting to lessen. I don't think I had mycoplasma or chlamydia either, just borrelia.

hi Rainy

i see the above by Dr J as a competing theory vs that of Dr M -

overall i view them all as good smart guys each with a hand on a bit of an elephant in a dark room
one has the belly and says an elephant is a huge round thing - the other has a trunk and says its a long bendy thing...

both may be right in a way - or neither - we just don't know for sure
but its still interesting to keep in mind and try to mull over both views while we try to move forward and see if more things line up as we experiment.

sounds like you are already running enough experiments to me - have some possible encouraging signs - but at the same time have quite a bit to deal with in terms of symptoms at the moment
as a result i am not sure i would do anything to rock the boat just now based on what are in the end just somewhat speculative theories.

if its what these guys are talking about - it generally seems to resolve in 2-3 months either way

there are several species of chlamydia - both small sophisticated intracellular bacteria with unusual multistage lifecycles

Chlamydia trachomatis, is a common STD - associated with various inflammatory conditions of the genitourinary tract and sexual organs - but also in some cases systemic disease
Chlamydia pneumoniae is a type of bacteria that causes respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia (lung infection). but has also been associated with systemic illness and even MS
antibiotic resistance is increasingly showing up in both of them.

mycoplasma is another intracellular group of bacteria pathogens - but from a different part of the tree of life - again some species associated with lung infections and some with genitourinary issues - and probably a bunch more we know little about. mycoplasma pneumoniae is a community acquired infection and is increasingly getting attention as a co-infection in people with chronic lyme disease.

all of these things are pretty common in terms of exposure - and so again it makes it hard to understand who is "infected" vs past infection via serology - which is still the main form of diagnostic tests used.
its likely that most people have some of these organisms in them or have been exposed at some point.

this links to Dr J's statements - i think his meaning is he sees these organisms as things the human immune system would normally take care of - but when suppressed by Lyme or other infections can become more of a problem and add to the overall symptom picture. so that's why he describes them as opportunistic infections.

in general the antibiotics ( and herbs ) used for lyme and bart have pretty good coverage for these organisms (though cell wall drugs have little effect on mycoplasma - as they have no cell wall) - and some think that if the main offenders ( lyme bart, babs) are treated these organisms may not even need to be treated directly - i think this is quite likely - but i would say the jury is still out on that - as the research into what is really going in the pathogenicity of multiply infected persons is still a long way from complete. Probably just depends on how well we can get our immune systems working.

my own feeling is that it still makes sense to focus on the big three - and just keep one eye on coverage of others like myco and chlamydia - perhaps returning to those if you get stuck after thoroughly addressing the first group.

finally, since these things are considered more opportunistic a logical extension is that the condition of the immune system is likely a big factor governing whether the body can rid itself of them once the main damage being done by Lyme, babs, bart is under control - so this is another argument for being focussed on sleep, diet, exercise, stress management etc - i.e. everything we can do to help the immune system do its job, rather than considering antimicrobials as the only tool in the box for any infection.

hope the above is of some help

all the best!