Hi all, I have a question for those of you who have had luck with JOH -- did you make any dietary changes to avoid arginine? I see JOH recommends avoiding salt and gluten, but I don't see anything about foods with a high arginine-to-lysine ratio. A number of herpes sites say to avoid things like nuts and chocolate. I eat a fairly healthy, whole-foods diet, but just wondering if I have to take any extra steps in order for JOH to work. Thanks! Robert
i've never gotten the hang of the arginine/ lysine ratio i do avoid chocolate, nuts, caffeine, dairy to name a few and avoid high sodium foods except pizza i eat a slice or 2 2 or 3 times a month yesterday i ate about a dozen dark chocolate covered almonds i still have a headache and felt nausious this AM
Marie, interesting. I don't eat a ton of chocolate, but when I do I feel like it makes my tinnitus worse. Hope all that went away for you! June, I do have an script for acyclovir which tried for about a month with no real improvement. However, I think I might have been taking too little. I was on 400mg 3x/day, and from what I've read here it sounds like you need double that to see an effect. So I'm trying that now, 800mg 3x/day. What was the right dose for you?
400 mg 5 times a day, carefully spread out over the day as it does not persist in the system like other antivirals. When you say ‘no real’ improvement, what do you mean? Did you have some i provement or intermittant improvement? It takea a while, is gradual and for me was two steps forward and one back for a while. JOH is aimed at the same thing, an Antiviral approach but will take longer. P
This thread is over a year old at this time, but I figured that I'd reply anyway. I've been doing JOH for a month and was starting to see some positive results. But it came crashing down this week, hard. I couldn't figure out why, until I got a cold sore. I'm pretty sure that it's because I messed up my Lysine/Arginine ratio. I used to pay attention to my Lysine/Arginine in the wintertime when I was prone to get cold sores, but I'd let it slip once I discovered lysine supplements. This week, I started to eat oatmeal for breakfast. Within a few days my Ménière's was just as bad as it ever was, despite being on JOH. I couldn't understand why as I picked oatmeal because it has no salt, no gluten and I thought that the Lysine Arginine ratio was good. Turns out that it's pretty bad. I'm stopping the oatmeal - and I just bought a ton of it today.
How does oatmeal play into the return of Meniere’s symptoms?? I guess specifically, how do you know it was that that did it?
I like oatmeal too and cream of rice. Milk has a high ratio of lysine to arginine. If I add milk, I am ahead on lysine. I used to drink the nut milks. I have switched back to real dairy due to the positive lysine arginine ratio.
It wasn’t the only factor, but it helped put me over the top. For those that don’t know, Lysine suppresses herpes and Arginine fuels it. I usually stay away from food that has an imbalance in favor of Arginine. I also usually eat applesauce daily. Last week, I stopped eating several of my staples (one being the applesauce) and added two others (one being the oatmeal) and it seems to have tipped the scales a little too far. Oatmeal has twice as much Arginine as it does Lysine. Applesauce has twice as much Lysine as it does Arginine. Whoops! Anyway, I stopped the oatmeal, picked up some applesauce and things are improving. I’d have to say that watching your Lysine / Arginine intake is probably just as important as watching your sodium intake. It’s just weird that two of the most low sodium items your can eat for breakfast (mini-wheats and oatmeal) are the two most detrimental things (IMHO) for Ménière’s.
Blah I’m finding that there is too much to have to control...it’s causing anxiety! I’m taking supplements, watching sodium, staying away from gluten and dairy...that’s all my brain has room for these days. I admire you being able to keep track of all of that.
Tell me about it! I never thought I'd have to do algebra in order to eat breakfast. At this point, I just look at websites that give Lysine/Arginine for different foods and pick the ones that have a good ratio and are low sodium.
Thanks. I had switched to coconut milk because it has no sodium, but it's Ly/Ar ratio is horrible. In fact, it's worse than the oatmeal - and I started using it when I was diagnosed. I'll go back to skim milk.
After reading about this, that dietary thing is something I will not do. I already follow a low carb diet for other reasons. That isn't too bad and is easy to follow, but as far as something that restricts more foods and causes me more stress--no. Just no. I've dealt with this monster for more years than I care to think about and have never, ever noticed any correlation between severity of symptoms and anything I eat or drink.
I understand completely. I'm not thrilled myself. My theory was that a high arginine diet would negate any benefits of the lysine supplements in the JOH regimen. It's only been a week and I'm not feeling as well as I did before.