There doesn’t seem to be a factual answer to this, so I’m putting it in IMHO. However, I’d be more interested in educated guesses than WAGs.
Occasionally I get an outbreak of herpes simplex. When I do, if I take L-lysine (maybe 500 mg twice a day) it clears up within three days or so. If I don’t take it (recently I was in Japan when I had an outbreak and I couldn’t find anyplace to buy it) it goes on and on for days and just gets worse. So my anecdotal evidence supports what some alternative medicine folks say.
Might this mean that I don’t get enough L-lysine in my daily diet and that if I did, I wouldn’t get these outbreaks?
Or might the outbreaks happen anyway, and it’s the extra strengh of the L-lysine that does the trick?
And any ideas about what the mechanism of this interaction is?
Roddy
Because it counteracts L-Arginine, which is what the Herpes Virus finds very beneficial to survival/spreading/etc.
Excess of L-Arginine in absence of L-Lysine = ripe conditions for herpes virus.
Options: Eat more lysine-rich foods OR cut back on arginine-rich foods (nuts is an example). Cutting back on arginine puts the lysine:arginine balance on a more equal footing. Actually, you should look to cut arginine, since that is closer to the root cause of outbreaks.
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Better explained:
Once you have an outbreak, you can’t undo your intake of arginine, so you take lysine. However, as a preventative measure, watch your intake of arginine:lysine to prevent an outbreak.
We used to take arginine-lysine combos when weight training (to boost HGH levels), and discovered all this info by accident. Good luck.
Thank you, you were more informative than Wikipedia.
Roddy
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Hoo, boy, this is gonna be tough. Although I already eat a lot of the foods that your link recommends, such as fruit, dairy, eggs, fish and chicken, I also consume a lot of the bad stuff like chocolate, caffeine, seeds, and most especially, wheat flour and soybeans (in the form of tofu).
I can’t really eat more of the good stuff and it would be hardship to give up much of the bad stuff; I wonder if it would be a bad thing to add a low dosage of Lysine as a regular supplement - ooh, I see they recommend that.
Anyway, thank you so much for the link.
Roddy
We take L-Lysine in our household regularly, because the herpes virus plays a role in numerous infections of the eyes, sinuses, etc.
I had blurred vision from excess intake of nuts, soy and so on. Turns out the blurred vision was the herpes virus gumming up the eyes. I had too much arginine. So, L-Lysine is a regular supplement now. Couldn’t see reducing my favorite foodstuffs (no pun intended).
I am some years removed from all the research I did, but I believe even ‘pink eye’ is (or maybe just can be) a herpes infection.
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Yep. L-lysine is also a recommended supplement for cats for the feline herpes virus control. I don’t know what the recommended dose is for every day supplement for people, but in cats it’s also recommended to double the usual dose if there is an outbreak, until the outbreak subsides. Might be a good practice for people, too. I use puritan.com to buy supplements for the feline shelter where I work and for myself. (not just lysine but all supplements. Good stuff for manufacturer direct prices)
True… one of my cats always had big ‘eye boogers’ and tended to snuffle, but never so badly that I thought he was sick. When the vet heard him snuffle during a regular checkup, she suggested adding l-lysine to his food and it cleared right up. No more eye boogers!
The vet brands of l-lysine all seemed expensive, so I purchased a big one pound bottle of NOW brand l-lysine powder (for humans), and gave the 12-14 pound kitty about 1/8 tsp at each feeding.