Short guide on dealing with latent infection

And some information on Long Covid diagnosis

This piece ties in, directly, to the one below. What spurred me to write this on short notice was a friend, the same one who helped me on learning and writing about peptides. Credit where credit is due.

A short summary of a highly complex, somewhat comprehensive piece is as follows.

• Reactivation of many dormant viruses is prevalent in all stages of SARS-Cov-2 infection, and other respiratory infections such as influenza as well

• Reactivation and presence of active infection (chronic) play an overlooked but significant role in the damage of SARS-CoV-2 and its mRNA vaccines

• It ties in with endotoxin damage, with the many forms of immune dysfunction, dysbiosis

• It plays a disproportional role in Long Covid

• It accelerates neurodegeneration, clotting, toxic amyloid formation, and more

• Some of the latent pathogens induce cancer, and others just accelerate it, both being highly problematic

Given this overlooked but extremely significant effect when you look from a long-term perspective, and how it applies to many other areas of live and conditions in life, not solely SARS-CoV-2, I will write a short and simpler guide. Forewarned as you may, this is my perspective, there are many other ways to deal with latent pathogens, this is just how I am more comfortable and knowledgeable about.

First to “prove” a point that is beyond debatable, here is a 2015 trial with patients with end-stage kidney disease measuring the effects of nutritional supplementation on Fatigue, and Autonomic and Immune Dysfunction. Patients not in the placebo group received a drink containing vitamin B1, vitamin B2, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, folic acid, vitamin C, carnitine, coenzyme Q10, naïve galactooligosaccharides, and zinc.

“Nutritional drink for 12 weeks significantly suppressed HHV7 DNA copy numbers. Similarly, HHV6 DNA copy numbers tended to be decreased by treatment but without reaching statistical significance.”

The nutritional drink was 50 ml of liquid containing 10 mg vitamin B1, 1.8 mg vitamin B2, 15 mg niacin, 10 mg vitamin B6, 30 μg vitamin B12, 0.5 mg folic acid, 60 mg vitamin C, 500 mg carnitine, 30 mg coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), 5 g naïve galacto-oligosaccharide, and 8 mg zinc

Obviously, it widely varies from case to case, but it gives us a good understanding of how supplementation can directly affect many of the common symptoms in certain conditions and directly affect the active phase of viral reactivation, and it gives us a few… hints.

While I still need to dedicate an entire piece to certain amino acids, creatine has been proposed for decades to prevent herpes recurrences, creatine has many uses but one of the most pertinent effects is its effects on CD8 (basically the cells that keep latent viruses, well, latent, in a simplistic manner), these cells also are the first to go into a dysfunctional state during reactivation.

The second is Glutamine, which has a myriad of highly beneficial effects, from treating gastrointestinal conditions to, once again, modulating your immune system. It can suppress herpes simplex virus reactivation. Both amino acids together with taurine, glycine bataine, and NAD+ are depleted upon infection or reactivation of these viruses.

High-dose vitamin C can also deal with said viruses, such as Epstein Barr, the caveat is most trials or tests are done with intravenous Vitamin C, which is very hard to get for the majority of people, here you have 2 choices. First is liposomal Vitamin C, which will hit a cap within 3 hours, because your body can’t absorb it all, secondly is C-Salts, a form of Vitamin C with a change in its chemical structure that “bypasses” the body absorption limit and you can get really really high dosages this way. Introduced to me by one of the smartest women I have met no less.

Niacin will have indirect effects, often related to “fixing” any blood pressure issues, or ameliorating common fatigue, Niacin must be the flush type, the non-flush just damages your liver. The second is of higher interest and from the same family.

Niacinamide, something that shouldn’t exactly be “news”, for further context.

Antimicrobial peptide LL37, Niacinamide and SARS-CoV-2

Vitamin D enhances Type I Interferon signaling

LL-37 per the title of the first piece, is an potent antimicrobial peptide that can be used to fight infections, viruses, and a myriad of things, that is the nature of many peptides, powerful modulating agents. And thus it can help disrupt Herpesvirus processes and infection. In this regards both supplements, Niacinamide and Vitamin D can modulate the immune system in many ways, and especially help the body produce more LL-37. Niacinamide, such as Niacin both belong to the NAD pathway, thus ameliorating fatigue and brain fog besides directly helping your body fight the virus. LL-37 is also a peptide you can commercially buy, but I would let this be your last option unless any other intervention didn’t give you the results you hoped for.

Herpesviruses, but especially Vitamin D are known to be able to directly block Vitamin D receptors (therefore your body can’t use it) or create a “shunt”, a metabolic trap draining your body of Vitamin D, creating rather an ugly cycle of latency>reactivation which gets people symptoms, and damages your cells over time. There are many published cases of treating these viruses, especially active EBV with really high doses of Vitamin D.

Next on the list, the majority’s favorite. Flavonoids.

Interesting news article

Quercetin can prevent EBV infection, can prevent EBV gastric carcinoma-inducing effect, and Baicalen can inhibit CMV replication, for last Fisetin, a major player in some of my more aggressive Covid protocols and Quercetin's stronger cousin has a myriad of effects, it deserves a piece on its own, it has potential anti-cancer effects, especially in regards to EBV. A list of many natural products against Human Herpesviruses can be found in this extensive paper.

Reishi mushroom has many potent effects, and among these, it can directly inhibit the effects of EBV activation. Thymoquinone, commonly known as black seed (oil) is one of the most potent inhibitors of herpesviruses, especially at higher dosages when the infection is active, or otherwise, any other intervention ain’t putting the bug back in its place. (it also inhibits the replication of intracellular tuberculosis, another latent nasty bug).

As you can clearly see, at this point, there is a massive correlation between natural compounds and vitamins that tackle latent viruses and SARS-CoV-2, and it is because 1) they share many, many upstream pathways, 2) SARS-CoV-2 will reactivate many of these at subclinical levels, and create a loop with number one. It wouldn’t be any different from a metabolic perspective. Herpesviruses could be described as sugar hungry, not at the same level as SARS-CoV-2, or influenza, but very sugar-loving.

Berberine in Human Oncogenic Herpesvirus Infections and Their Linked Cancers

The paper above is a comprehensive piece worth your time

Also effective against CMV. Metformin controls Herpes Simplex and reduces immunoinflammatory lesions by shifting the metabolism and its inflammatory signaling, it can also hinder its propagation in neuroblastoma cells.

There are many other supplements that are very effective to deal with the infections themselves, recurrences, and the diseases induced by them, with Vitamin C and Melatonin being among the best. Doris Loh is one of the world’s leading experts on Melatonin and Vitamin C, and I highly recommend you check out her work.

If you are interested in EBV and its associated diseases, this is a fairly comprehensive paper with a lot of potential biomarkers.

Strategy

So with all this information, how do you approach treating a latent infection with the information here ? You have two approaches.

• Minimal dosing - For either maintenance, or keeping a recurring latent infection dormant you use lower dosages of everything, the minimal dosage changes from person to person, but twice the daily minimum requirement of each vitamin is decent

• “All-out war” - This is the more radical approach when all else fails, symptoms persist, and you take high dosages of everything. And high dosage is personal.
  
  Given how these types of infections create nutrient feedback loops where they “starve” your cells from certain nutrients, you can go really high sometimes. It is common to find success in treating EBV at 50.000 IU of Vitamin D for a few weeks. An example of “high dosage”.
  
  Thiamine - 150 mg
  B2 - 10 mg
  Niacin - 250 mg
  Niacinamide - 500 mg
  Pyridoxine - 150 mg
  B12 - 1 mg
  Folate - 1 mg

Glutamine - 3 to 5 grams once or twice a day
Creatine - 3 to 5 grams once or twice a day
Quercetin - 500 mg up to twice a day
Fisetin (fairly “stronger” than its cousin) - 300 mg once a day
Black seed oil - High dosages diverge from sources but 4 spoons per day are relatively up (20 ml per day)

Glycine + Nac will help many people in many, many ways but in the case of latent infections, it will only deal with the symptoms, not necessarily treat the causative agent, but it is worth information to share.

The powerful effects of GlyNAC

If you have Long Covid or know someone suffering from it (regardless of source, virus, or vaccine) and no matter what the person does, their symptoms never improve they have two avenues. There is the avenue of inflammatory markers, but I found this one too much “hit or miss” for people who are 1, 2, or even 3 years battling Long Covid, so I will skip this step today.

• Testing for latent viruses such as the Herpes family (HHV, EBV, CMV), Coxsackievirus

• Microbiome testing and this one needs to be comprehensive because it can go, quite literally, everywhere. Things like E. Coli and Amoeba in the gut among other things can also influence Long Covid symptoms and add to these latent infections

• Last resort, autoantibodies. And this is symptom-based, but often adrenergic, muscarinic, and cholinergic are present when “nothing else works”.
  
  Hopefully, this helps or starts someone on the path of help.
  
  
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