John hope you can answer this for me and others. I know that you, like me, lost your hearing in one ear as a result of menieres which in my case I believe started through a virus. I had shingles about 10 years prior and the year I started to suffer with menieres was a particularly bad year of stress with low resistance. Do you remember when the virus was raging when your symptoms first began were there certain food and drinks that made your symptoms worse and as you gained control through your regimen were there again certain foods and drinks that you avoided to help the supplements work better for you. I ask this because when my episodes were at their height there were foods like soy sauce, cheese, msg and alcohol that definately increased my suffering. Now that my hearing has gone I can eat cheese, soy sauce and msg. Haven't tried alcohol again. The same question really to apply to antivirals and food and drink. It seems to me that certain foods and drinks can aid the virus and make symptoms worse or decrease the effectiveness of the likes of Llysine or antivirals. Is that true in your opinion.
No, when the disease first struck me, in 1995, and for the five years thereafter that it took me to devise my treatment regimen (http://www.zoominternet.net/~kcshop/JOH.pdf), I discerned no connection to the foods I was eating with the occurance or severity of my symptoms. That doesn't mean there weren't any; just that I could discover none. And I wasn't searching, either. At the time, Meniere's was regarded by everyone as enigmatically idopathic, that its cause(s) simply couldn't be known. So, I wasn't looking at any dietary factors. But now that a herpes virus infection of the inner ear or associated nerves is so clearly the cause of most Meniere's cases, the activity-promoting effects of dietary arginine (and perhaps other substances) in the diet can episodically increase symptoms. Arginine simply causes herpes viruses to replicate faster and stronger. Lysine, the amino acid in my regimen, is known to do the opposite, to bind to arginine sites on the virus molecules and inhibit or utterly stop replication. So, dietary arginine can be one complicating factor, clearly. It would seem that foods with high levels of arginine would complicate symptomatic relief. But I have done no investigation of which foods have arginine. A number of posters here have scrutinized what they eat and have been able to avoid the foods or drinks that, for them, prompt Meniere's symptoms. But I've not recorded or learned of any of these in any useful manner. In regard to lysine and arginine, it appears that if enough lysine is taken (which is one reason I revised the regimen to include 3000 mg/day, against the former 1500 mg), the arginine is locked out and doesn't promote herpes activity. That's conjecture, however. No doubt, the regimen has had greater numbers of symptomatic suppression at the 3000 mg dosages. --John of Ohio
Arginine, like lysine, is an amino acid. Amino acids, of which there are 23 related to proteins, are the "building blocks" of proteins. Proteins differ as to their amino acid sequences and arrangements. Protein-rich foods, such as meat, are loaded with amino acids. Carbohydrates, such as sugars, have none. The body digests proteins, breaking them down into their constituent amino acids. The amino acids are then absorbed into the blood stream and circulated throughout the body. The amino acids are then taken up by body cells and re-assembled into new human proteins. In the case of lysine and arginine and Meniere's, arginine is an essential amino acid required by herpes viruses to replicate (reproduce). Large concentrations of arginine in the blood promote herpes virus activity. But lysine is the opposite. Ample concentrations suppress herpes viruses. The lysine is taken up by the chemistry of the herpes virus, which prevents the virus from absorbing the required arginine. Without chemcially-bound arginine, the virus just sits there (often for decades or longer). And in my regimen, I require that the lysine be taken at least 20 min before a meal, or at least 2 hr after one. That's because when lysine is taken with food, it is absorbed into the blood stream with all the other amino acids in the food. With a broad spectrum of circulating amino acids, the body's cells then absorb them all, for normal protein synthesis. That's not what we want the lysine to do. We want the lysine to be absorbed by herpes viruses, not normal body cells. This happens only when lysine, alone, is the only amino acid circulating in the blood in high concentrations. That can happen only when the lysine is taken without food. --John of Ohio