Nutritionally Speaking: Herpes and Nutrition, Part 3 of 3

During the last two weeks these articles have been concerned with the treatment of Herpes Simplex I infections–the so-called cold sores, fever blisters, mouth ulcers. Although viruses are involved, the actual causative factors are a most interesting nutrition story.

My nutritional interest in this subject was spurred on by the answers patients gave as to what they had to eat or drink the meal before the mouth ulcers occurred.

Several thousand patients that I treated.for Herpes Simplex infections had consumed fruit or fruit juices several hours before the break-out. This finding seemed to substantiate a probable inability to digest the organic acids of fruit exists in a large number of people. Those who had not consumed fruit usually had eaten nuts or chocolate.

About 10 years ago some interesting research uncovered the fact that foods high in the amino acid arginine could cause these ulcers to appear, especially if the foods eaten were low in another amino acid called lysine. Not only were nuts and chocolate involved, as I had found, but numbers of other foods high in arginine such as peanut butter, cocoa powder, sesame seeds, cereals, infant teething biscuits, rye crackers, rye bread, oranges, tangerines, grapes, and blueberries could also be contributors to these painful lesions.

Just how this was discovered is one of those fascinating nutrition detective stories.

Dr. Chris Kagan, working in the viral lab at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, noticed that the amino acid L-arginine was always added to the solution used to grow tissue cells being infected with the herpes virus, but when they were only growing tissue cells but not infecting them, the L-arginine was not added to the solution.

Then the University of Richmond’s Dr. R.W. Tankersley showed that L-arginine was the most active way to stimulate the rate of growth of viruses. He also found that adding L-lysine to the growth media stopped the virus formation.

These results led Dr. Kagan to wonder if lysine wouldn’t help control herpes in people. It is now known that the herpes virus requires L-arginine as an essential amino acid. It is not essential to humans, but L-lysine is essential.

Before such research ideas become known and adopted, a number of unrelated incidents usually take place. In this case, Dr. Richard S. Griffith, professor of medicine at the Indiana School of Medicine, while listening to a lecture by Dr. Kagan, remarked that he had noticed that cases of herpes became more severe and increased in number after Easter and Christmas. He immediately saw the connection between these holidays and the increased use of chocolate, which contains 4 percent L-arginine.

This resulted in Kagan, Griffith and Dr. Arthur Norins publishing a research paper on the subject reporting in Dermatologia on the healing effects of lysine on 45 patients with oral, facial and genital herpes.

During the next seven to eight years, there was slow acceptance to the hypothesis, but the real breakthrough came when Dr. Cory Servaas wrote in the July/August 1982 Saturday Evening Post a leading story, about the use of L-lysine and its ability to stop herpes. Since then the word has spread like wildfire.

(Incidentally, the Saturday Evening Post has become a great information source for many new and improved nutritional approaches to health care.)

TO REVIEW: Treatment and prevention of these lesions suggests the reduction of fruit and foods containing arginine and increasing foods containing lysine: fish, poultry, meat, milk, mung beans, cheese, beans, brewers yeast, crustaceans, eggs and yogurt. In addition, tablets of L-lysine (not plain lysine) are available in pharmacies and health food stores.

Physicians and dentists recommend two 500 mg. tablets, three times a day. Many have relief in one day, especially if taking the tablets is started promptly after noticing the appearance of the ulcers.

Should these suggestions not be helpful in preventing herpes infections, examinations to rule out hypothyroidism and too little stomach digestive acid (achlorhydria) are called for.

Effective home treatment can be accomplished by applying vitamin E ointment or the oil from a vitamin E capsule. Some report that vitamin C powder on the sore also helps. Lactobacillus acidophilus, yogurt and buttermilk are also effective in improving body chemistry to alleviate the problem, providing consuming dairy products is not a problem.

All of this information should make Herpes Simplex I a thing of the past. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see some research on the possible relationship of these various factors on other virus infections?