Foods That Nourish Your Body with a Herpes Diagnosis

Food is way more important than we think. It has to ability to heal your body or make you sick. This was something that I didn’t really realize until I was diagnosed with herpes. I mean, I always tried to eat healthy and more or less I was healthy but it wasn’t until I got herpes that I completely turned myself around and started really caring what was going in my body. 

Before we go into foods that nourish your body with a herpes diagnosis I want to preface that I’m not a doctor, nor a nutritionist and if you have more questions you should do your own research. Also, we’ll talk about some foods that can help prevent outbreaks but if these are your favourite foods and they are going to cause you to be resentful and angry then you don’t have to follow it. I’m just here trying to ad guidance.

OK, so back to foods that nourish your body with a herpes diagnosis. I want to start with talking about lysine and arginine. These are the main characters in today’s blog post. Both lysine and arginine are essential amino acids. And amino acids are thought of as the building blocks of proteins and play a huge role in our bodies. In other words amino acids are the building blocks in our bodies. They play a role with building our proteins, hormones and neurotransmitters. They are super important. (source)

I think first we should talk about arginine. Arginine is known to help reduce high blood pressure, treat heart disease, it helps with erectile disease, helps heal wounds faster, alleviates anxiety and even helps enhance exercise performance. (source) As you can see it’s important that we have it in our diet. Meanwhile lysine helps the body absorb calcium, and it plays an important role in the formation of collagen, a substance important for bones and connective tissues including skin, tendons, and cartilage. (source)

I’m sure you’re wondering why were talking about lysine and arginine when we are supposed to talk about foods that help our herpes outbreaks. Well, here’s the key point, arginine actually fuels the herpes virus.  Studies also show that arginine  plays a role in the spread of the herpes virus. Arginine has viral growth properties, meaning it may increase the rate at which viruses like HSV-1 and HSV-2 multiply in the body. (source) Then on the flip side, lysine suffocates the virus and disrupts the body’s balance with lysine and arginine in the body. It inhibits the viral replication of the herpes virus. (source)

So with that being said we want to minimize foods with high arginine and maximize foods with high lysine. Remember, we need both because they are essential amino acids but we can definitely incorporated foods that are helpful. 

Foods high in lysine are: 

• Dairy products if not allergic to them (Cheese, Yogurt, Kefir, Cottage Cheese, Sour Cream., Milk)
• All Fish & Seafood (especially Tuna, Halibut, Salmon, & Sardines)
• Eggs
• Organ Meats
• Potatoes
• Brewers Yeast
• Carrot Juice
• Avocado 
• Sausage

Foods High In Arginine and you may want to avoid are:

• Chocolate
• Peanuts and Peanut Butter
• Sugar
• Cakes and Sweets
• Alcohol
• Caffeine
  
• Coffee & Tea
• Nuts (Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Cashews, Filberts, Pecans, Walnuts)
• Seed Meal (Tahini, Sesame Butter)
• Sunflower seeds
• Coconut Meat and Coconut Milk
• Bleached White Flour Foods

OK, like I mentioned in the beginning, take this how you want. If you love drinking coffee every morning then don’t give it up but rather look at how much you are drinking and see if it makes a difference for your prodrome sensation or your outbreak frequency. 

Lysine supplements can also be taken to help add them to your diet and or offset the amount of arginine you consume. I took lysine daily up until I was pregnant and found them really helpful. There’s not enough research on lysine while pregnant women, so I was advised not to take them. But it is helpful with suppressing the virus and or speeding up the recovery when you  have an outbreak. My favourite supplement is from Palmara Health, formerly known as Natural Cure Labs. You can order yours here.

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