New Vitamin Regimen - And A Less Fuzzy Brain

So one of the upshots of the medical research that I've been doing recently is that I'm slowly figuring out how a lot of things work - especially for myself.

Normally, I'll wake up feeling like I have a hangover. Dry eyes, slight headache, very groggy. This tiredness doesn't stop during the day - and it doesn't go away no matter how much I sleep.

I think I've figured out how to fix that though. And the results are surprising. I've been borderline for type II diabetes for a while, with high cholesterol. And I do get coldsores. Those symptoms (high blood sugar, high cholesterol) are something that can be caused by a subclinical herpesviridae infection (if the papers I'm reading are correct). Add in the fact that I get some scintillating scotoma, and it looks like I've had a subclinical migraine for quite a while that was getting ready to rear its ugly head.

So a little research online, and I arrived at this solution (I take this morning and night):

• Curcumin (Turmeric extract)
• Resveratrol (Red Wine phenols)
• A good MultiVitamin
• Omega 3 fatty acids
• Lecithin
• L-Lysine
• Vitamin C

... and hey presto, I wake up feeling absolutely fantastic. Which is a nice change for me.

Still in the "is this a placebo or is it real?" phase, but the results are promising.

How does it work?

Well, assuming that herpesviridae are the cause of my symptoms (by the way, we can add migraines and cluster headaches to the list of potential herpesviridae-caused symptoms now after spying a few papers on this), it works something like this:

Curcumin - interferes with herpesviridae reproduction, also tones down TNF inflammatory response (kind of like a natural Enbrel/Etanercept).

Resveratrol - interferes with herpesviridae reproduction, turns down TNF inflammatory response, and inhibits reactivation (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10551373)

Multivitamin - to replenish Vitamin B stores (I use one high in the cyanocobalamin form of B12). Mainly to help repair nerves, but also to act synergistically with interferon in the body to increase its efficacy (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6908611.html); adding high doses of B12 massively reduces the amount of interferon-beta necessary to hold an infection in check by about half.

Omega 3 fatty acids - modulates the structure of cell lipid rafts, making it harder for the herpesviridae (and rhinoviruses, adenoviruses) to enter or exit the cell membranes.

L-Lysine - interferes with herpesviridae replication by masquerading as L-Arginine (the virus can't tell the difference, and L-Lysine substitution produces faulty viruses).

Vitamin C - for healing (used by the body with Lysine to create collagen). This is really a buffer for the high levels of Lysine, allowing it to be effectively used, and to ensure that Vitamin C stores don't run low as a result.

Theoretically, this mix could also act as a good weight-loss treatment too; if you think about it, if this can shift the balance away from type-II diabetes and high cholesterol (which Omega 3, resveratrol and curcumin are shown to help with in some studies), weight loss should come as a natural consequence.

Anyway, it's all theory at this point. But the papers I'm using to do this research are pretty promising.