The Cause and Cure of HIV

Way back in 2002 when I was just twenty-one years old I attempted suicide after a long struggle with crippling depression. Much of that depression as discussed in my book, F*ck Portion Control and my article, The Cure for Depression, originated from the stress of an abusive and demeaning childhood by the hateful and bigoted Mormon church and a hateful and bigoted Mormon family which caused unrelenting stress and loneliness due to frequent demonization of gay people and non-Mormons that literally drove me insane with desperation to be loved and included. Once when visiting my family my mother told me she had nearly stopped me from sharing a glass of water with my younger sister, fearing I might give her HIV even though she had no idea if I had it or not. It was a product of her ignorant and bigoted worldview since HIV can only be transmitted through sexual activity, but she didn’t know that since conservative bigots like her refuse to actually learn about things like disease which frighten them, and instead rely on hate and violence as means to protect themselves from those they fear.

Clair Howard was a young gay man with HIV. Instead of helping him the Mormon Church demanded he reveal his sex partners, and when he refused they excommunicated him and left him to die alone at the age of 26 in a bed at St. Benedict’s Hospital. The AIDS Memorial is a great social media account to follow and honor all those who died.

But I was also fearful of having HIV, as even the LGBTQI+ community leaders fearmongered, though doing so from a rightful attempt by education and awareness to help prevent its spread, many of them were (and sometimes still are) also disease-phobic and discuss health problems with the same irrational bias and prejudice as others outside of the LGBTQI+ community. Most humans are irrationally afraid of death, and thus we also fear illness since illness can and often does lead to death as what occurred in large numbers during the recent coronavirus pandemic, but every single organism that has ever lived on this wonderful Earth has died, and you will die as well, and there is nothing you can fucking do about it except come to terms with our shared mortality as is the theme and purpose of my book Under A Libra God (all of my ebooks are donation based without a paywall so you have no excuse to avoid reading them), and HIV is just one of the many, many, many, many ways that we might leave this world, though thanks to God and science and in spite of bigots like my family and their hateful religion that likelihood is most rare indeed due to effective treatments and even functional cures as can be achieved through PrEP prophylactic medications.

Although I have had lifelong heath problems, having been born with cystic fibrosis which affected my immune system, gait, and sexual development, and mild autism which affected my cognition, mental and emotional development, and gave me debilitating digestion issues, which resulted in developing cancer at the young age of 33 I never contracted HIV even in spite of having many sex partners over the last three decades. I know this because LGBTQ+ leaders like Morris Kight, Don Kilhefner, and Larry Kramer (who were also anti-war activists) helped establish clinics for LGBTQ people who lack healthcare (straight people can use them too though!) which provide testing and treatment, and for most of my adult life would get tested regularly for all STDs, including HIV. Yet many of my friends and associates have contracted HIV, and HIV in the heterosexual population worldwide is far greater since, like all diseases, HIV does not discriminate.

While HIV was discovered to be caused by a virus and named the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the science around many years of HIV research has not yet led to a cure. This is because most research and medicine does not correctly understand the fundamental principles of human biology, and there are many errors in medicine and biological science which leads researchers in the wrong direction. For instance there have been many failed trials for a vaccine against HIV, but the virus infects actual immune cells and, as I discussed during the coronavirus pandemic, not even virologists properly understand the immune system, and vaccines do nothing special on their own (not even advanced mRNA vaccines) but instead function entirely by simply activating the natural immune system, so how could a vaccine possibly treat HIV when immune cells themselves cannot even effectively eradicate it? Like, seriously, trying to create a vaccine for HIV is one of the dumbest things scientists have ever done.

The HIV virus is what’s called a retrovirus, and that clade of viruses are some of the most ancient on this planet and likely evolved during an era of Earth in which life was quite different than today (specifically from a time when there was no biological oxidative respiration because there was no atmospheric oxygen). We know this because nearly all retroviruses are actually quite easy for the immune system to eradicate, as they are especially vulnerable to oxidative stress which is the very thing that the immune system uses to attack and eradicate pathogens. This can even be seen in HIV infection in the fact that many people can live for years, even decades, untreated, and even before effective medical treatment it was quite common for those who were infected to live for quite a while before they eventually passed, which demonstrates the rather languid, non-virulent nature of the virus unlike coronaviruses, influenza, or even the hepatitis viruses which are far more virulent.

But because HIV colonizes our actual immune cells this also gives us insights into its nature, and this article must be brief so I will summarize a large portion of the chapter on immunity in my book F*ck Portion Control in that a major function of immune cells is the production of reactive oxygen species using peroxidase enzymes to oxidize invasive pathogens. These peroxidase enzymes are inhibited by some factors such as nitrites and nitrates, which are common nitrogen species that exist in the environment and biology, and nitrate and nitrite have been found specifically to have suppressive effects on the immune system. Industrial agriculture uses artificial fertilizer to purposefully amend soil with added nitrates, and nitrate is so toxic to human biology that before this practice was regulated by government many children died of methemoglobinemia due to toxic nitrate exposure in drinking water. To this day you can buy nitrate testing strips to detect water nitrate levels. Nitrates also feed opportunistic Streptomyces bacteria (which are beneficial to plants but not us directly) which respirate on nitrate to cause deficiencies of biotin and riboflavin through the production of avidin and roseoflavin, respectively, and colonization with Streptomyces is a common problem in gut health, digestion, and ammonia imbalance as discussed in F*ck Portion Control which underlies a great deal of metabolic disease. Nitrates do occur naturally in foods and plants but the application of artificial fertilizer causes significant elevation to more likely disturb the microbiome (although many other factors can as well, such as toxic herbicides, the use of antibiotics, or even chronic deficiency of sunlight).

But since nitrates and nitrites interfere with immune function their primary debility is the impairment of our immune system to resist disease in the first place. I first began to be suspicious of the catalysts for infection with the HIV virus through my sexual experiences because very often when I would hook up with another guy (to have sex) they would use a recreational inhalant drug colloquially referred to as “poppers.” I hated poppers, the smell was terrible and boys who used them most often lose their erections entirely due to its excessive vasodilating effects on the cardiovascular system (as adequate blood pressure is required to maintain an erection as discussed in my chapter on erections in FPC). Nitrates and nitrites so rapidly penetrate cellular membranes that they can even be passed from person to person through physical touch, so sometimes when having sex with someone that used poppers it would have that same effect on myself even though I didn’t use them and cause loss of erection due to its highly potent vasodilating properties.

Later in my work I read papers by Dr. Ray Peat in which he discussed disparities in HIV research, and in combination of having firsthand experience of the effects of nitrites on sexual function it made me realize there was likely something connected to nitrites and HIV. While poppers are now very popular among the gay community for the sensation of euphoria and relaxation they cause, poppers were for nearly a hundred years a drug most common among the general population, and the etymology of the word poppers came because the form in which inhalable nitrites (which is what poppers are and were also referred to as “snappers”) were manufactured beginning way back in 1867 in small glass spheres which were “popped” by crushing them in a rag or handkerchief and then inhaled (that the name has remained to this day is etymologically fascinating). Inhalable nitrites were first discovered to address cardiovascular problems such as angina, which is a painful condition in the chest which is caused by inadequate blood flow which can often feel like a heart attack. By dilating the cardiovascular system poppers helped relieve sufferers of painful symptoms. Then because drugs were not highly regulated until the mid and latter half of the twentieth century during the advent of the “Drug War,” poppers were as much a recreational drug of convenience before the drug war as was tobacco, cocaine, and even heroin which could be purchased at times even from convenience stores sold as common consumer products. But even in 1960 the FDA eliminated the requirement for prescription. Poppers then came into prevalence in the club scenes of the 70’s and 80’s because it was already in recreational use by those adults as high schoolers in the 60’s and 70’s who had unfettered access to inhalable nitrites. Eleven percent of high schoolers in 1979 reported use of poppers during high school. When access to inhalable nitrites was finally recognized as a health hazard and access began to be restricted it was then deceptively repurposed by commercial interests as supposedly household and cleaning instruments, which failed to inhibit access entirely until their specific chemicals were outright outlawed in 1988 and 1990, and use of nitrites among high schoolers dropped to 1.5% by 1992.

Nitrites are oxidized nitric oxide, and nitrates are oxidized nitrites, and our body naturally produces nitric oxide such as for arousal, because it facilitates sexual intercourse by increasing blood flow to the genitals (in women too), and prescriptions of erectile dysfunction drugs such as Cialis or Viagra work along very similar pathways to facilitate arousal, although those work by inhibiting the enzymes which degrade nitric oxide rather than providing substances which increase it. Nitric oxide can and is converted to products of nitrosative stress like nitrites and nitrates if normal antioxidant functions are not working, so taking nitric oxide precursors on purpose such as pre-workout products or other chemicals which promote or exaggerate nitric oxide production then results in nitrite and nitrate which also inhibit the immune reaction. Nitric oxide excess thus also accelerates aging and metabolic disease, which is why men who frequently use erectile dysfunction medications or preworkout products experience rapid aging effects. Actively promoting excess nitric oxide without also considering the factors which promote its regulation means actively accelerating the aging process and immune dysfunction, which is also why it is now so common for bodybuilders to begin losing their hair prematurely, develop thin and lifeless skin, a thickening and stiffening of connective tissues, and breakdown of internal organs leading to severe metabolic problems before they are yet very aged.

During the advent of the AIDS crisis, intelligent medical professionals and those who were also members of the gay community rightly recognized the potential for inhalable nitrite to be the cause of the problem. By this time nitrite and nitrates from artificial fertilizer had been recognized as toxic chemicals with the potential to cause poisoning, and regulation of environmental levels of nitrates were coded into law, and it just made sense that the potentially toxic nature of nitrites could impair the immune system when used recreationally, and a few studies began to explore its role in the etiology of the mysterious illness affecting gay men, finding for instance that it might alter human lymphocyte activity. But as soon as the HIV virus was discovered interest in Amyl nitrite as a causative factor evaporated. Renewed interest in the nitrite origination of HIV began in the late 1990’s and continues today, but because of very common mistaken beliefs about HIV, AIDS, and the nature of the immune system it has failed to gain much attention from institutions and organizations actually working to eradicate HIV. Nitrates are very toxic in excess, and can even kill animals (and humans) simply from excess in food sources. At the very least, using poppers while having HIV is like refusing to pull the parachute cord while skydiving, and drug use is a problem for you it is also required to read my work curing alcoholism and addiction to alleviate dependency on substances by healing the dorsal raphe nucleus and supporting a healthy microbiome to provide adequate nutrition which is required for a healthy and working mind and body.

Nitrates and nitrites inhibit the immune system, but they are not the primary catalyst for HIV infection. In the chapter on immunity in F*ck Portion Control I also discuss the importance of copper in the immune reaction, where the body uses copper to potentiate the immune reaction and expose pathogens to intense oxidative stress which ultimately kills them. Unlike many systems in the body the regulation of copper is not always dependent on enzymes but instead on pH, because when pathogens colonize our bodies they inherently change pH which then causes spontaneous release of copper to intoxicate those pathogens, and if this process was enzymatic then pathogens could evolve mechanisms to inhibit it. Because of this, many types of chronic disease, including HIV, present with high levels of circulating copper. But because copper is highly oxidizing and HIV persists for years and years this chronic, excessive, circulating copper stress also causes a great deal of oxidative stress to the body, promoting advanced aging and impaired hormone status as copper also strongly oxidizes cholesterol which is the precursor to hormones, so many people with HIV later require hormone replacement therapy and other treatments to address these problems.

But the chronic elevation of copper obviously does not result in the eradication of HIV as it should, and some other mechanism prevents the body from resolving this retrovirus which otherwise should be easily eradicated as are other retroviruses. During my research into vitamin C I discovered that it is the oxidized form of vitamin C, dehydroascorbate, which is the primary nutritive form of vitamin C which serves to help maintain the vitamin C, glutathione, NADPH cycle and detoxify hydrogen sulfide which is produced by opportunistic pathogens in part to protect themselves from the immune system because hydrogen sulfide is also a potent inhibitor of the peroxidase enzymes as are nitrates and nitrites. I was never fully convinced with explanations of antioxidants because antireduction is just as important as antioxidation, and the total redox homeostatic state is far more important than one or the other. For instance those of us with cystic fibrosis present with about 90% of our glutathione in the reduced state while healthy people only present with 50%, and if antioxidants were so paramount to health then we should be the healthy ones instead of everyone without it, but that is obviously not the case. One of things that copper does is oxidize vitamin E, and immune cells take up about 10 times more vitamin E than other cells and vitamin E is a proven, requisite factor in the immune reaction. About 82% of people with HIV present with low serum vitamin E, even when they have adequate quantities of vitamin E in their diets, and since vitamin E is required for immunocompetence and many other biological pathways it is this deficiency of vitamin E which is the primary cause of infection with HIV.

One problem with this discovery is that many people will try to go get vitamin E treatments for their vitamin E, but the approach of most medicine is to sell synthetic products and try to inject them into the human body. This is actually insane behavior and one major failure of modern medicine is to treat synthetic options for life as superior to the natural form. Vitamin E is not once substance and actually consists of 8 different vitamers, and the primary one circulating in the human body is called alpha-tocopherol and the single, synthetic ‘vitamin E’ that is produced and sold commercially is not chemically identical to alpha-tocopherol. Many studies which show negative effects of vitamin E use the synthetic form, sometimes without even identifying that fact, simply assuming that because everyone in the fucking pharmaceutical industry calls it ‘vitamin E’ that it is, which it is empirically not. The other problem with this mindset and behavior, however, is that the deficiency of vitamin E which causes this problem in the first place is rooted in failure to effectively integrate the human animal into our evolutionary niche, which includes not only specific foods on which we evolved but also behaviors, environmental factors like daily sun exposure, and also the vast, vast microbiome of bacteria, fungi, archaea, parasites, and viruses, some microbes on which we are dependent but many of which are pathogenic, and our physiology is designed to exist in a very specific niche within all those factors, none of which are synthetic fucking products and the intravenous administration of those synthetic fucking products.

Sometimes synthetic products can mimic the real thing and be useful, like some of the B vitamins, or some (but not all) sex hormones, but most of the time people use those products instead of fixing the underlying problem, so the disease persists and people whine and cry as if they are out of options instead recognizing they are a fucking ignoramus and have put their blind trust in predatory institutions like the pharmaceutical industry whose sole function is to syphon money from your dying husk. No, the reason you are deficient in vitamin E is because microbes (not even just pathogenic ones, by the way) produce proteins called lipocalins which bind to fat soluble molecules like vitamin E. Microbes generally do not use vitamin E (a few do, mostly fungi or parasites), nor vitamin C which keeps vitamin E in its reduced state, and they bind vitamin E because it is actually also a pro-oxidant and when vitamin E performs its reduction action (its antioxidant action) it becomes the toxic tocopherol radical which can and does produce oxidative damage, and to benefit from vitamin E an organism must also have vitamin C in order to keep it in its reduced state, and most microbes also do not and cannot use vitamin C as an antioxidant either. So they bind vitamin E using lipocalins to prevent its uptake which also prevents its uptake in human beings, which explains why those with HIV can have plenty of dietary or even supplemental vitamin E (which is also a problem in cystic fibrosis, which is why I knew about this) yet present with inadequate vitamin E status. Specifically vitamin E is likely required by immune cells to oxidize the lipid envelope of the HIV virus which then exposes it to the immune system (viruses use their fatty envelopes to evade detection), and the lack of adequate vitamin E status simply keeps this from happening.

Due to other research I will not discuss since this article is already so long, I previously knew that dietary compounds called anthocyanin are potent inhibitors of many microbial factors and thought that it might actually inhibit lipocalins to then promote absorption of vitamin E. Unfortunately there is not a single study yet which even investigates this, but I was able to find others which show indirect evidence and that the simultaneous administration of anthocyanins and vitamin E together resulted in the highest repletion with vitamin E and vitamin E activity. When the realization of this relationship came to me I understood in part because it is actually highly uncommon for those of us with modern, industrial diets to actively consume sources of anthocyanin and vitamin E together anymore. Before the industrialization of food systems this would have been far more common such as through the simple consumption of high anthocyanin berries and other fruits along with their seeds, and our evolutionary history was certainly dominated in harvesting of wild, high anthocyanin fruit along with sources of vitamin E (pemmican was such a food made by Indigenous Americans until colonization and genocide by white Europeans). But nowadays even grapes and watermelons which contain lots of anthocyanin are bred to be seedless, and unless a person has some behavior like consuming almonds and blueberries simultaneously most people likely never get anthocyanins and vitamin E together which then results in vitamin E deficiency, especially if colonized by unhelpful gut microbes or other cause of gut dysbiosis which also interferes with normal digestion. During my early recovery in 2015 I began making daily fruit smoothies which mostly consisted of frozen berry mixes and would often put my supplemental vitamin E in the smoothie or add almonds, which I love in a smoothie (but NOT brownies, don’t you even dare). Anecdotally, consuming blueberries and almonds together several times a day produces obvious benefits in energy and feelings of wellbeing which likely occurs due to the increased availability of vitamin E for immune cells to more effectively eradicate such opportunistic pathogens.

As has been discussed in this article, factors such as copper and the immune peroxidases are required for an effective immune response, and it is not likely that person with HIV recovers unless also addressing factors as nitrate exposure (especially the absolute cessation of poppers), and there is far more information required for a full recovery in F*ck Portion Controlthat will also be required, as the human animal is one integrated organism and not a simple collection of disparate systems. All my ebooks are donation based so there is no paywall for that information, but please abide by the donation request or make other donations at the various donation links on this site as it is how I earn my living and can afford to do this work. Take care of all your health, and add the practice of consuming dietary anthocyanin sources as berries, plums, purple grapes or their juice, purple cabbage, etc., with potent vitamin E sources as almonds, hazelnuts, and leafy greens (at least twice daily) and your body will finally be able to fight off the HIV virus, among other benefits. A supplement of naturally derived vitamin E such as from wheat germ or sunflower can augment recovery, but oddly I feel in my own experiments that nuts are more effective, owing probably to the more complete food matrix which assists in pathways such as the uptake of nutrients like vitamin E. Nuts can also be sprouted to increase their vitamin E content up to 600% which, being so high in vitamin E already, can be more than from a supplement anyway. For those who are allergic to nuts use sprouted, whole grains or seeds like spelt berries, brown rice, sunflower seeds, etc. Wheat germ (but not wheat products as common wheat gluten is very inflammatory) might also be a useful option if needed, and in places of the world where HIV is rampant due to insufficient availability of foods high in anthocyanin much effort should be made to plant high anthocyanin berries and fruit trees, seeded grapes, seeded watermelons, and high vitamin E nuts, seeds, and grains, with the primary emphasis on anthocyanin since vitamin E sources are not so difficult to come by.