ME/CFS: The Human Herpesviruses Are Back! (Ariza, 2021)

[Boba]

thats the thing and its not anybody's fault.



Stress is somehow an exacerbation, not the cause. I was already pretty ME ridden when my horrific stressors pilled on.

We cannot forget that in the past, we lived near animals, in smokey environments, swilled ale.

Now we live in the Better Living Through Chemistry world, and it failed us. So that is lists of stressors on top of basic ones (my grandparents hid the children in the potato cellar). (Invaders coming down the chimney). Thats stressful, isn't it? (for all parties).

My father couldn’t handle stress as well. Whenever I sensed a threat my body became extremely nervous and my chest was about to explode. I thought that if I try to manage this nothing bad would happen in the long run, just happiness and success. Just endure it and learn from the situation was my motto. I became trapped in situation that ate me off, but were necessary to reach my goals. Pretty ironic that nothing is left of my former life. Should have listened to my body more. There will always be guilt

 

[SlamDancin]

I think it’s well documented that stress hormones have immune suppressive effects and @Hip has posted studies here showing viruses’ ability to capitalize on the favorable environment that stress hormones create. I think a lot of us have trauma/PTSD as one of the causative factors of our illnesses

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Pretty ironic that nothing is left of my former life. Should have listened to my body more. There will always be guilt

me, too. Since I was actually warned.

Handed the multipage article on day one of my new job: How To Prevent Burnout.

Since I was really good at it, well how can I NOT be the in charge of that. And then, well maybe I'd better take over THAT project, if its ever to turn out.

Nobody but yourself is reliable. On it goes.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I think a lot of us have trauma/PTSD as one of the causative factors of our illnesses

In my case, being born triggered something and within one year, I'm a list of problems allergic. Just kept going from there.

 

[Irat]

Sorry you experienced that. I can’t get my head around the fact that stress happens to everyone, but so few get mecfs. 1 months before my health plummeted I was the happiest person and didn’t see my life as stressful. I’ve always been a sensitive person, but why do 2 weeks of stress destroy me like no one else. One feels guilty for not being able to avoid these stressors. But again, my nervous system changed after contracting HSV and HPV. We had an underlying condition, it wasn’t just the stress. Will we be able to fix that? I hope so

It is not the stress itself ,it's about how your primed,and what's your individual story and how we perceive stress ,whats thethreshold ,your capacaty to self regulate i think ...(or better said our unconscious part of the brain where our story is written)

.,for example a brain or heart surgeon can operate 10 hours everyday with lots of responsibility under artificial light and does not feel stressed .

Or someone can t get over a breakup while someone else can move on quickly.

 

[Irat]

We can handle stress,that's why we have a sympathetic and a parasympathetic nervous system.the problem arises when we are stuck in flight and fight and freeze.....tired and wired ,which means both branches are up and stuck

.that is was me/cfs is in my opinion ..

.

 

[Treeman]

have never heard anyone theorize about herpesviruses playing a positive role in the body.

I have a background in plant science. There are many recorded symbiotic relationships. However if one of the partners gets less viral then the other party can become parasitic. I can't see any reason why this may not be similar with viruses within the human body. We have many symbiotic relationships already, gut bacteria for one.

 

[Boba]

We can handle stress,that's why we have a sympathetic and a parasympathetic nervous system.the problem arises when we are stuck in flight and fight and freeze.....tired and wired ,which means both branches are up and stuck

.that is was me/cfs is in my opinion ..

.

It is not the stress itself ,it's about how your primed,and what's your individual story and how we perceive stress ,whats thethreshold ,your capacaty to self regulate i think ...(or better said our unconscious part of the brain where our story is written)

.,for example a brain or heart surgeon can operate 10 hours everyday with lots of responsibility under artificial light and does not feel stressed .

Or someone can t get over a breakup while someone else can move on quickly.

I hear you and it always bothered me why I was stressed in certain situations and others not. Being dependent on people was my trigger. I was always thinking differently and out of the box. Analyzing situations and recognizing patterns was my super power. However there was a lot of conflict potential because I was always analyzing everything to identify problems. But my processing of the „problems“ was always subjective. They quickly became threats and my heart started beating fast and was gasping for air when the person in front of me wasn’t behaving as I wanted him/her to behave. Some work trauma developed and made me very vulnerable to situations where work and money were involved. I saw that and tried to calm myself, but it didn’t work. However I know of people who were not like me and became sick as well. A 13 year old child became severely sick with Long Covid and 30 year old with totally normal behavioral patterns ( but with a sleeping disorder) became severe as well. Another LC patient I know was totally normal as well, but was exercising professionally and became bedridden as well. Those are different people with a different background that became I’ll. Therefore I‘m trying to not feel so guilty, because there is another process going on here which made us susceptible of becoming sick. Even I if I would not have done this one project my chances of becoming sick would have been very high. I remember when I was totally fine, no stress, meditation and yoga were my anchor points but still I would get double vision and ask myself what’s wrong… It is not our fault, it just happened. I want to get out of this hell soon.

 

[Treeman]

Latent herpesviruses also arm natural killer cells, an important component of the immune system, which kill both mammalian tumor cells, and cells that are infected with pathogenic viruses.

Viruses: You've heard the bad; here's the good -- ScienceDaily

 

[Irat]

I hear you and it always bothered me why I was stressed in certain situations and others not. Being dependent on people was my trigger. I was always thinking differently and out of the box. Analyzing situations and recognizing patterns was my super power. However there was a lot of conflict potential because I was always analyzing everything to identify problems. But my processing of the „problems“ was always subjective. They quickly became threats and my heart started beating fast and was gasping for air when the person in front of me wasn’t behaving as I wanted him/her to behave. Some work trauma developed and made me very vulnerable to situations where work and money were involved. I saw that and tried to calm myself, but it didn’t work. However I know of people who were not like me and became sick as well. A 13 year old child became severely sick with Long Covid and 30 year old with totally normal behavioral patterns ( but with a sleeping disorder) became severe as well. Another LC patient I know was totally normal as well, but was exercising professionally and became bedridden as well. Those are different people with a different background that became I’ll. Therefore I‘m trying to not feel so guilty, because there is another process going on here which made us susceptible of becoming sick. Even I if I would not have done this one project my chances of becoming sick would have been very high. I remember when I was totally fine, no stress, meditation and yoga were my anchor points but still I would get double vision and ask myself what’s wrong… It is not our fault, it just happened. I want to get out of this hell soon.

No need to feel guilty ,but empowered.

Over exercising is pure stress for the body,and you don t know what's going on in ppl .most think they are healthy when they are not .,but running on stress hormones,metabolicy unhealthy ,chronically inflamed whatsovever

Wish you get better soon

 

[Pyrrhus]

Latent herpesviruses also arm natural killer cells, an important component of the immune system, which kill both mammalian tumor cells, and cells that are infected with pathogenic viruses.

Viruses: You've heard the bad; here's the good -- ScienceDaily

For anyone interested, here's the paper @Treeman is talking about:

Move Over, Bacteria! Viruses Make Their Mark as Mutualistic Microbial Symbionts (Roossinck, 2015)
https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.02974-14

Here's the relevant bit:

Mammalian viruses can provide immunity to infection by bacterial pathogens, as shown in mice infected with a gammaherpesvirus that increases resistance to Listeria monocytogenes and Yersinia pestis. Latent herpesviruses also affect natural killer (NK) cells, an important line of defense against pathogens and cancer because they kill virus-infected cells and tumor cells, in addition to producing cytokines like interferon. While NK cells do not require specific sensitization (i.e., they can kill cells on first encounter), they do require arming before they can efficiently produce their cytotoxic effects. This arming function is provided by a latent herpesvirus in mice (23).