Arginine REALLY seemed to help my brain fog, I felt motivated & focused while I was taking it in September. It was a big breakthrough for me... However, I have EBV and after taking it for 3-4 weeks, I crashed in October. Fatigue, very bad inflammation...bedridden. I think the Arginine - Lysine balance was out of whack, and the EBV virus was re-activated.
Is there a way to take Arginine without this happening? ie, if i take a multi-amino, or additional Lysine, can I avoid this problem?j
Is there another way to raise Nitric Oxide to get the same effect? I take Citrulline, but it doesn't have the same effect.
thanks.
This is just one possibility, but it seems clear from cardiovascular research that attempting to supplement arginine without maintaining BH4 levels is very likely to fail. (Without sufficient BH4, greater amounts of arginine increase decoupling of nitric oxide synthase resulting in production of damaging superoxide and peroxynitrite, as noted in the quote by
@picante.)
It doesn't work to supplement significant amounts of BH4 directly, since this results in large amounts of oxidized BH4 (i.e., BH2), and the ratio of BH4 to BH2 is actually as important as the absolute amount of BH4 (because DHFR, which recycles BH2, becomes impaired at lower ratios).
Rather, the best option (in addition to avoiding inhibitors of DHFR like green tea and folic acid), may be to use methylfolate, which acts as a peroxynitrite scavenger that is particularly beneficial for maintaining BH4 and preventing decoupling of NOS.
So if by chance you were taking the arginine prior to using methylfolate, it might be worth a redo to combine the two at the same time. As a rough best guess (this is just an idea I have), a person might start with somewhere on the order of a ratio of 1mg of methylfolate for every 1g of arginine supplemented and adjust either or both of these up or down. I'm guessing this will depend on a person's overall antioxidant status, as well as how much methylation a person can tolerate. (Lower amounts are better to start with of course.)
Some in vitro research indicates that increasing nitric oxide (via iNOS/NOS2) might possibly be beneficial with respect to EBV (e.g., see the two articles here:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/nos2-snps-up-or-down.34511/#post-537372).