Possible Herpes and HIV Connection

Check this out.

Herpes drug may help control AIDS virus
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080911/hl_nm/aids_herpes_dc_1

Excerpt from the article:
'"If you suppress herpes, HIV also goes down," Margolis said in a telephone interview.'

My notes:
Herpes virus can be suppressed by the drug mentioned in the article, but also by reducing consumption of the protein arginine and counterbalancing it with more lysine (a protein). So, to do this without drugs, one can eliminate or drastically reduce these foods high in arginine from the diet:
- red meat
- gelatin (found in Jello products, capsules (used to hold nutritional supplements or drugs), marshmallows, some candy)
- all nuts (sunflower and pumpkin seeds OK)
- chocolate
- protein bars or powders
- watermelon

Combined with taking 1000 to 1500 mg of lysine each day, this really works to suppress herpes, so maybe it would also work to reduce HIV.

I discovered the concept of suppressing herpes by maintaining a certain balance between lysine and arginine by reading Jean Carper's book, "Food - Your Miracle Medicine", the first edition paperback. I bought her second edition but that section of her book had been eliminated in that edition. I thought it a shame that it was eliminated because it has worked for me for several years now to eliminate herpes outbreaks.

If I start introducing foods high in arginine back into my diet, an outbreak occurs. Sometimes I can get away with a very small amount, but only if this happens maybe once a month. The nuts and chocolate seem to have the most effect, but everything adds up. I take 1000mg (sometimes 1500mg) of lysine each day to help counterbalance the arginine.

If you take a lot of supplements in gelatin capsules (like I do) then you have to give up more of the other foods high in arginine. I even eat red meat a couple of times a week (which I should stop doing) but that makes it so that adding a couple of nuts puts me over the top of my arginine limit. A couple of times I tried taking protein supplements that showed on the label that they contained more lysine than arginine, so I thought I would be OK. However, those protein supplements put me over the arginine limit and I had an outbreak. So, it seems like there is a limit for the consumption of arginine and if you go over that limit, your risk for a herpes outbreak goes way up. You end up having to do a juggling act with your diet to avoid reaching that limit.

And surprisingly watermelon increases arginine levels. Check out this article.

Watermelon serves up medically important amino acid
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2007/070321.htm

And the above watermelon article brings up the point that arginine plays an important role in the body. We can't do without it. Wikipedia has an article that includes a list of benefits of arginine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arginine

So, apparently, the herpes and HIV viruses can't do without arginine either. If we have an overabundance of it do the viruses multiply out of control?

Another something to ponder.

Sunny

Soy, To Eat or Not To Eat

There are people on both sides of this issue of whether or not it is good for a person to eat soy. My opinion is that it's all right if you eat small amounts and not every day of the week, month or year. Here are some reasons I don't like it.

Soy can be genetically modified (GMO) and we don't yet know what that will do to a person to eat GMO foods.

Soy can give you gas. I've read that soy protein is really not digestible and thus gives you flatulence. It certainly did that to me. The protein is much more edible if the soy has been fermented as in miso and tempeh. So, if you want to eat soy, probably eating miso and tempeh are much better for you. Recently, I've eaten a dish containing tempeh and soup with miso and did not experience the flatulence I get from drinking soy milk or eating a protein bar made with soy.

If you have any trouble with estrogen levels that are too high already or if the soy makes them too high, you probably don't want to eat soy. I had uterine fibroids and soy was one of the foods that caused my belly to bloat and the pain from the fibroids to worsen. Eating soy increased my menstrual blood flow. I know a woman who was 57 and still had periods. She loved soy foods and ate them in just about every form soy comes in and ate them several times a day. She was searching for a reason why she still had her period and decided to see if soy had something to do with it. When she stopped eating soy, her periods stopped. Was it the soy or coincidence? Some argue that the phytoestrogens in soy actually mediate a woman's estrogen levels, but that's not true from my own experience. I wanted to change my diet to vegan, all plant based food, but did not have much luck due to soy being the predominant food for vegans.

You do what you think is best for you. If I eat soy, it will be in the form of miso or tempeh. And I will be eating it only now and then, not regularly. If I still had my female organs, I probably would not eat it at all.