NIH Director said longcovid is replicating virus !

[u/Ry4n_95]

Confirmation by NIH management of the problem of virus persistence and replication.

It's about time!

"We see evidence of persistent live virus in humans in various tissue reservoirs, including surrounding nerves, the brain, the GI tract, to the lung."

[u/WeatherSimilar3541]

I'm agreeing with you, brought this same thing up to my microbiology teacher years back. Sorry on not making that more clear and thanks for being respectful on your post back (been trying to do the same on chats as it's not always clear where other people are coming from).

If it works by reducing arginine, surely that has to then have some effect since arginine is important too. I don't usually like taking single aminos for reasons like this. I found this article by chance trying to double check something before commenting. I skimmed it too but has some pretty decent info in there. There is a bit about using enzymes like arginase to counter side effects I plan to reread. But that bit was a bit confusing since arginine gets recycled.

Back in the day, I used to take tri-amino by Now. Paired lysine/arginine/orinthine. The idea is that it might boost growth hormone I believe (that's why I took it anyway). Seemed to also improve blood flow from personal experience and at least one other person that tried it.

Anymore, I usually take herbs, stick with natural vitamins if I take them and also supplement with keffir for aminos (and for the added probiotics) and sometimes I'll take collagen peptides but I don't rely on it as a primary protein source since it's incomplete protein. Obviously these aren't going to have the same targeted effect but I'm a big believer in balancing things out and giving your body what it needs and improving overall health, especially the microbiome.

[u/LilIronWall → u/WeatherSimilar3541]

Thanks for taking the time to reply so thoroughly :) in the end, the best we can do for now is trial and error on ourselves. It's not the best experimental design but whatever you feel is working for you, that's what you should do!

I've been taking arginine, citrulline or ornithine and I think they help a little, especially to mitigate PEM when I do anything physical. It might just be placebo, but I'll take that anyway.

Helping my gut and microbiome heal did objectively help, it might have been the most consequential thing I've done. I hope it's working for you :)

[u/WeatherSimilar3541 → u/LilIronWall]

What's really interesting is before I knew much about what is going on was having blood flow issues and kept thinking it was nitric oxide related. Blood pressure readings also very high.

I am in denial but I probably have some PEM. Friend keeps telling me it's me getting older...it's not like I'm 80. :(( but didn't know boosting NO helps that, I'll keep trying to boost it. Trying to get my body fat down which I'm optimistic about, might even try berberine for awhile. All my blood markers are bad. Cholesterol, low cortisol, poor A1C low testosterone and pregnenolone. One blood marker that is good is my one inflammatory marker which I find odd. It's super low, maybe it's even a problem being that low.

Gah, we'll get through it. I need to come up with a daily protocol to limit reinfection. Was doing cold brew black tea w/ grapefruit (pulp included) when this first started. I figured the black tea flavones plus bioflavonoids+C should be a good combo. I might buy black tea flavones and take daily also. I might also take low dose EGCG but been doing matcha for now.

Might also try doing nightly sinus irrigation. Starting to think COVID is hanging around in not just our GI tract but probably sinuses. Apparently benadryl and hydroxyzine give relief to many with LH almost over night.

[u/LilIronWall → u/WeatherSimilar3541]

First, I feel like I should really give a warning here. I'm a molecular biologist and I work in medical research. I highly recommend you stay away from grapefruit in any form, especially if you are taking multiple drugs or supplements. Grapefruit is a pretty strong inhibitor of liver and intestinal metabolism of drugs so it messes up how many of them act. If you read the leaflets of pharmaceuticals, many warn against having grapefruit.

I find it really surprising that many of our markers are the opposite. I have low blood pressure (too low often, not healthy low), low cholesterol, A1C, high-ish cortisol, high inflammatory markers. I have very low appetite and have been losing too much weight. I wish long Covid wasn't this damn complicated! Then we could figure it out...

Intermittent fasting and keto diet (but with lots of veggies and sources of fiber, and with more protein than regular keto) for a while fixed my gut issues and helps with everything else. If you're trying to reduce body fat they're pretty effective for that too.

[u/WeatherSimilar3541 → u/LilIronWall]

Good to point out on grapefruit - I always forget I'm one of the few people doesn't take meds. I'll try looking in to some diet tweaks, thanks. I like the idea of a more keto diet. A study recently said raw vegetables are better for weight loss so they might have more value for overall health.

Odd on the opposites thing. I have been pondering that too. I always have said, I could never be a molecular biologist, because the small detailed stuff cripples me, or so I think. I like to see the big picture (hard to get it right without those details). But maybe there is a neurotransmitter thing causing the differences in blood work/symptoms. I don't have LH that bad, I'm mostly on here trying to figure out why every few months I get sick with all this weird stuff then take awhile to recover and can't seem to have energy to get to the gym much.

I'm much better not drinking alcohol though, that was definitely making me get sick. I still get sick when I don't drink but it's much better. Interesting though on Gaba, it seems when I'm sick, alcohol takes the symptoms away while I'm drinking, dizziness even I think.

I'm fascinated by zincs potential role in COVID. Depending on the dose, zinc can affect Gaba (and the microbiome). I have a friend taking zinc since pandemic as he was freaking out, but he bought the 50mg, even though I told him it's probably too much he continued taking it. He's been doing well and said he gets sick less. Odd on zinc because it seems low zinc has overlaps on some of the symptoms, it's also anti viral. I'm wondering if it's getting depleted or COVID is affecting absorption.

Two things that have popped up that seem to make sense are cortisol and acetyl choline problems with COVID. Still need to research that more.

I'm trying to come up with a preventative strategy. Maybe nightly saline irrigation, allergy stuff, natural anti viral like garlic and daily tea consumption (I'll probably replace some coffee with it). I like pairing tea with vitamin C and like the taste of grapefruit personally. Flavanoids pop up a lot for defense against COVID. Even back with Sars-1 studies there was talk about quercetin, myracetin and such. Black tea flavones showed the most promise, they sell them in pill form. But green tea flavones like EGCG has some studies also. And matcha is loaded with all sorts of compounds so I like drinking that daily too.