High/low protein? Lysine, arginine & viruses

borderlyme

Veteran Member

Joined : Jul 2011

Posts : 1486

Posted 5/18/2012 3:45 PM (GMT -5)

Like a lot of you, I've been following a pretty low carb/high protein diet for a while now, but now I'm hearing about how arginine, which is high in high-protein foods, may feed viruses (my EBV levels have not budged in the last year, and they've always been pretty high, plus I have HHV6 and parvovirus B19)...of course, I eat primarily turkey and nuts all day long!

A lot of stuff out there says to eat a higher lysine diet to counter the effects of arginine - still can't 100% understand the logistics of it, but supposedly if you're going to eat arginine, the food should have a higher I ratio of lysine to arginine? This gets tough for me because I can't tolerate any dairy, and of course the simple sugars aren't the best...

Has anyone ever tried a high lysine or low arginine diet? Any thoughts?

Lyme-ticked

New Member

Joined : May 2012

Posts : 5

Posted 5/18/2012 4:20 PM (GMT -5)

Dr. F in Scottsdale, AZ suggests that if you have biofilm organisms in your blood to avoid arginine as much as possible - also fats (15 gm per day), sugars (reducing fruits to 2 or 3 servings a day), caffeine (even chocolate - groan), and alcohol (zero).
Others in the ArizonaLyme Facebook blog have suggested that Dr F states increasing lysine will help protect us against the arginine activation of the biofilm.
Who is to know?
At any rate, arginine and lysine should be taken concurrently to provide our protein synthesis mechanism with the needed balance of these two amino acids. It seems increasing arginine without increasing lysine will slow down protein synthesis (including heart muscle, antibodies, and enzymes) and aid in microorganism reproduction.

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