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by Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D.
Stopping HIV-1 and AIDS
Through Total Health Management
Had an HIV test recently? If you do have HIV, finding out early is your best chance to survive. With HIV infection, as with any other disease, early intervention and total health management are the keys to a long and healthy life.
AIDS is now the worst epidemic in history, worse than Europe’s black plague of the Middle Ages and worse than the great influenza epidemic of 1918–1920. So far AIDS has killed more than 16 million people and about 34 million people are carrying HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. In the United States, HIV-1 now infects at least 40,000 new victims each year, most of them heterosexual.
From this epidemic’s beginning people with HIV-1 (PHIV) found they could stay more healthy and delay progression into AIDS by taking dietary supplements, cutting out drinking and smoking or “recreational drugs,” and doing regular physical exercise. Some of the people who embraced this early total health management strategy are still around. They and their doctors were the true AIDS pioneers. Now after almost two decades of intensive research, this strategy is still the only way to stay alive with HIV-1.
There isn’t a cure for AIDS yet, no magic bullet. The vaccines aren’t working out and the drugs have severe side effects while failing to block resistant virus strains. The use of three drugs in combination sometimes brings the patient’s virus load way down, at least until resistant strains emerge. Then the combination has to be changed, which lasts for awhile until it has to be changed again, and always there are bad side effects. It is best not to have the virus at all, otherwise it’s better to stop HIV infection from progressing into AIDS, and this can be done.
Progression from the asymptomatic “HIV-1 disease” to the life-threatening disease called AIDS typically takes seven to 10 years and multiple factors speed or slow the process. Many factors are under the control of the PHIV. For example, back in 1990, as I was doing my book on AIDS, I found that smoking speeds progression by about two times, as does drug abuse. Making the commitment to a healthy way of living gives the PHIV a chance to go for decades without developing into AIDS.
One negative factor not totally under the PHIV’s control is having to share the planet’s heavy burden of environmental toxins. The immune system organs—thymus, spleen, bone marrow, lymph nodes—are vulnerable to toxins because they’re continually making new cells and the dividing cells are more easily damaged. Also, individual immune cells circulate with the blood and these “warrior” cells are exceptionally vulnerable to blood-borne toxins. These include thousands of chemicals from cigarette smoke, chlorinated hydrocarbons from pesticides and herbicides, solvents coming from industrial activity and the toxic metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, asbestos and aluminum. All these contribute to throwing the immune functions out of healthy balance. It is very hard for the individual PHIV to avoid toxins when literally billions of pounds are being released into the air, water and soils each year.
High toxic body burden can cripple immunity, allowing the virus to build up and thereby speed the progression to AIDS. We are being forced by polluters to carry a higher toxic burden than ever before in history. All 100 percent of Americans carry at least five organic toxins in our fatty tissues and three out of every four of us carry at least 20 of them. Perhaps the most immunotoxic are the organochlorine compounds (OCCs). Like the OCCs, the toxic metals have no safe lower threshold for exposure and their toxicity is amplified in the presence of other toxins. Reducing the toxic metal burden by chelation therapy can significantly improve immunity and antiviral resistance.
Modern foods also are a major source of toxins. Fried fatty foods carry high levels of lipid peroxides, which are toxic to immunity. Sugar (sucrose) digested from high-carbohydrate foods competes with vitamin C for absorption from the intestine. And the OCC toxins are widespread in common foods: 100 percent of raisin samples tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture had OCCs, as did spinach (fresh and frozen), chili con carne and beef. Also frequently contaminated were strawberries, bell peppers, cherries, cantaloupes, grapes, celery, apples, apricots, peaches, and cucumbers.
Foods carrying toxins are nutritionally inferior and the body’s immune system is so busy that it uses a lot of nutrients and needs lots of good food to help replace them. This system is the body’s defense against viruses, other infectious agents, foreign chemicals (“xenobiotics”), invaders of all kinds. Immune cells make free radicals to attack enemies so they need extra antioxidant defenses. Their free radical activity burns away vitamins C and E and requires selenium, zinc, copper and manganese to keep the antioxidant enzymes active. As HIV-1 itself attacks immune cells, this often triggers an inflammatory “fight back” that also burns away antioxidants along with other nutrients. The viral load from HIV-1 infection also diverts vital energy from normal, healthy functions into serving the needs of the virus, namely to make more virus. Supplementation with energy-cofactor nutrients such as the B vitamins, CoQ10 and carnitine are also strongly indicated.
Around 67 percent of all PHIV and 87 percent of patients with AIDS have clearly defined nutritional deficiencies. Deficiencies in vitamins A and B12 are related to a decline in “CD4” or T-helper cell counts, beta-carotene deficiency, to increased risk for diarrhea. Magnesium deficiency is common and selenium declines consistently as HIV disease progresses. Unless corrected, nutritional deficiencies will speed progression to AIDS. For example, a group of HIV+ men followed for six years were found less likely to progress to AIDS when their vitamin E intake was doubled over the (puny) RDA level.
The anti-retroviral drugs are artificial substances which block either of two viral enzymes that the virus uses to make new virus particles. The enzymes involved are reverse transcriptase (RT) and protease. The anti-retroviral drugs are currently of three kinds: (1) Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI, or “nukes”); (2) Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI or “non-nukes”); (3) Protease Inhibitors, or PI. These drugs do a pretty good job of blocking virus reproduction but they also block the similar enzymes carried within our own body cells and used for our own essential life functions. Therefore these drugs have severe negative side effects in persons who take them.
The adverse side effects of the anti-HIV drugs range from severe skin rashes to death within hours from hypersensitivity responses. The “nukes” often cause nerve damage (“peripheral neuropathy”) and can cause throat swelling, nausea and diarrhea, along with inflammation of the pancreas and life-threatening liver damage. The “non-nukes” alter enzymes in the liver that usually help dispose of drugs, pollutants and excess body hormones. As a consequence the non-nukes have major negative interactions with commonly used drugs like alcohol, acetaminophen (Tylenol®) and phenobarbital. One non-nuke (efavirenz, SustivaTM) caused monkey infants to develop abnormally (teratogenesis) and the other non-Nukes haven’t been tested for these effects. Efavirenz also causes central nervous system symptoms in more than half of all patients: dizziness, sleepiness, insomnia, abnormal dreams, confusion, abnormal thinking, impaired concentration, amnesia, agitation, depersonalization, hallucinations and euphoria.
The PIs aren’t any better for side effects. They drive blood cholesterol and triglycerides abnormally high and increase risk of heart disease. They drive up blood sugar, probably by damaging the pancreas. They cause intestinal discomfort, often with nausea and diarrhea, can cause kidney stones and liver damage and like the nukes and non-nukes, also feature major negative drug interactions. All this makes it extremely challenging for the PHIV to take these drugs on an ongoing daily basis, yet when they come off the drugs they soon experience an increase in viral load and likely further loss of CD4 cells. The drugs do extend life in almost 80 percent of patients who take them but only if taken every single day at the right times and only if the side effects don’t kill the patient.
We don’t often get much about these killer side effects in the mass media articles and pharmaceutical industry propaganda that trumpet “the new generation of life-extending AIDS drugs.” In many AIDS doctors’ practices, most of the precious time available for seeing the patient is now spent dealing with the side effects of the anti-retroviral drugs. And ironically, many PHIVs probably could get by without using the drugs, by practicing total health management.
As the PHIV person considers whether to go onto a drug combination, several facts are worth considering. First, the drugs can be useful but are not a cure. Second, not everyone needs to take the drugs unless they are unable to control their viral load within reasonable limits. Third, if they do decide to take the drugs, they also can take nutrients which will help to better tolerate the drugs, while not interfering with their benefits. There are two crucial keys to surviving with HIV: one is to lower the viral load, the other to keep the immune system functional. What then if there were a nontoxic alternative that would achieve these two goals?
There is such an alternative: a mixture of plant nutrients called phytosterols—mainly beta-sitosterol (BSS) and beta-sitosterol glucoside (BSSG). In a long-term clinical trial conducted in South Africa a unique combination of the BSS and BSSG phytosterols (ModucareTM SterinolTM Complex) increased CD4 numbers and in some subjects also reduced viral load. The trial was carried out at a university, where 123 HIV+ subjects were studied in comparison with 23 healthy control subjects.
As the HIV+ subjects were followed over a period of more than two years, their CD4 counts stabilized. Subjects who began the study with CD4 counts higher than 500 (CD4+, healthy) experienced increases; those with 200–500 (progressing HIV-positives) hardly lost any numbers and remained within this range; and those with less than 200 (diagnosis AIDS) experienced only very slight decline. Viral load in those with CD4 less than 500 remained stable and did not increase; in those with more than 500, viral load actually went down. Of this latter group, 15 percent had undetectable viral load after 12 months.
The ModucareTM SterinolTM phytosterols are chemically related to cholesterol but compete against animal-source cholesterol in the body, working naturally to have a positive rebalancing effect on the immune system. They are potent immune modulators, since they enhance immunity across the board by improving immune cell efficiency and rebalancing cell-to-cell coordination. They have just about zero adverse effects and are economically affordable. No wonder, then, that some 12 African countries have officially approved their use.
The ModucareTM SterinolTM phytosterols are not magic bullets for PHIV but their benefit-risk characteristics are far superior over the available drugs. PHIV could use them to support the immune system’s capacity to hold the virus down, prior to jumping into the murky and dangerous world of the nukes and other anti-retroviral drugs. These anti-retroviral drugs are now so complicated and dangerous to manage that only specialized AIDS physicians can effectively manage patients taking them.
Total health management of AIDS should involve every possible approach to maintaining health and restoring damaged body functions to normal. This includes cleaning up the diet, eliminating nutritional deficiencies, reducing the body burden of metals and organics, correcting intestinal bacterial imbalances (“dysbiosis”), exercising daily, using immune modulators like ModucareTM SterinolTM early in the disease and going with the drugs only as a last resort. Toxic medication should be the final option, after other safer approaches have been thoroughly explored. It’s better not to have the virus at all but for the individual with HIV, a truly total approach to health management offers the best chances for a long and happy life.
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