I've been treating mine as chronic viral infection as it started with a bad long lasting virus that I never recovered from, so have been taking th2 to th1 modulating herbs. But I've been thinking, if this disease is autoimmune like how I've heard some people say, then are asking for trouble if we take things that ramp up our immune response?
There's a difference between immune modulators and immune stimulators. The theory is that modulators do just that - modulate the immune system - e.g., if it's overactive, then immune modulators will tamp it down and vice versa, whereas an immune stimulator (e.g., Echinacea) will only stimulate the immune system. To my mind, this would indicate a possible role for immune modulators in autoimmune illnesses. The first study I link below talks about andrographis, described as an immune modulator, helping alleviate symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune illness.
I'm not going to get into the discussion about whether there even is such a thing as ramping up or tamping down the immune system. I don't know enough. But - I have had good results with andrographis, which is described as an immune modulator. I had been chronically sick for years with a sinus infection of some sort - it would flare up every time I crashed, and I was crashing generally once a week (from doing too much, e.g., doing the dishes and laundry on the same day, or grocery shopping,. not really things I can stop doing). Anyways, the end result was I was sick 90% of the time, and only very slowly would recover, only to crash again.
I started taking andrographis after my sister (who does not have ME/CFS) recovered from a very nasty sinus infection. She'd already been on 2 courses of ABX and then a week or 2 later relapsed quite badly. She had literally been sick for weeks, and after starting the andrograpis complex, was amazingly better in 2 days.
So I gave it a try, starting a few months ago and within days was feeling better, and only once have gotten as sick as I was before (after a major crash), but even then I recovered from that much quicker then before.
Another effect I attribute to andrographis is that my thyroid seems to be working better. I noticed an increase in energy after starting the andrographis, and my eyelids got less puffy (are hardly puffy at all any more) and puffy eyes can be one symptom of hypothyroidism. Anyways, I've been able to cut my thyroid med by 25%.
Here are a couple of articles on andrographis and plant-based immune modulators in general.
@Jonathan Edwards, I'd be interested to know what you think about the study showing that andrographis may be helpful with rheumatoid arthritis (the first one linked below) - I know the research is scanty, but that's part for the course with herbs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19408036
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3619690/