I suspect like all things, it's about getting the balance. Too little or too much of anything can cause problems.
I do think we all tend to hear or read about things that are supposed to be helpful for certain health issues and perhaps go for big doses from the outset in the hope it will help more quickly, when in fact it's good to start small and give things time. It's like starting HRT - it's good to start on a low dose first and only build up if really needed. I was given too high a dose of HRT early on in the peri stage and it gave me too many side effects.
It is interesting about the research into the gut and the link with ME that is now being done - I do think that food absorption may have a lot to do with how our gut works. It would make sense that if we weren't absorbing nutrients for some reason, despite having a very healthy diet, then this would have an effect on our health and wellbeing.
I know there is a school of thought that we live in too sterile an environment these days so our guts are less able to cope and our immune system turns in on us and causes many auto immune issues.
I also don't think we should loose sight of the fact that, in the past, so many people died from bacterial infections due to poor hygiene, life expectancy was far shorter than it is today and frankly we need to accept that our bodies simply won't function so well as we age. One thing is for certain, we really need to avoid antibiotics as much as possible as they kill the good bacteria in our guts and we need ABs to do their job when we really, really need them.
I have been given 3 lots of ABs in the last 2 years and each time I wasn't happy about taking them but the doctors insisted - it's tough to know what is the right thing to do. DG xxx