West Nile Virus (WNV), a mosquito-borne disease that arrived on North American shores in the late ’90’s, is a virus that tends to scare people when they first hear about it. For 90% of the human population, there is nothing to fear from this virus, the remaining 10% may come down with some form of encephalitis or meningitis which in even fewer cases, can lead to spinal paralysis affecting some portion of the body.
Birds, particularly Corvids (your crows, ravens, magpies, etc) are rather susceptible to this virus. If you see them starting to die off in numbers higher than usual for your area, it is time to notify your local animal conservation branch so they can begin some sort of mosquito control in your area. Larger animals such as dogs and horses, can develop encephalitis and either die from it, or act in a drunken state due to the intense infection going on in their head.
Most sources I’ve looked at, say that if a human comes down with WNV, most times it will be a mild case that makes them think they’ve caught the summer cold or the summer flu, and they treat it accordingly, usually to great success. Harsher symptoms may mean treatment at the hospital and as noted, severe cases can result in paralysis.
What is interesting, is a note in one article stating that for harsher to severe cases, anti-viral treatment methods often don’t work. Incubation of the virus after being bitten is anywhere from 3 to 14 days, which is typical of what we often ascribe to colds and flus.
Of concern at this point in current history, Healthline reports that having an impaired immune system can increase your risk of severe WNV symptoms. This same report mentions that studies are now being done on whether Interferons can help treat encephalitis. In other words, will assisting your immune system help treat these harsher symptoms?
Other treatment methods are being explored as well, most of them from a mainstream medical perspective where one source claimed that Interferon use may actually be detrimental to the cause, but said that corticosteroids are being tested for potential use.
At this point in this article, I am going to switch gears for a few moments and then tie it back to WNV.
As one interested in getting my Biblical Natural Health Practitioner’s Diploma from New Eden, and never having had much faith in the mainstream medical system since my kids were very small, the worlds of natural medicine, food as medicine, and functional medicine (also known as integrative medicine) have increasingly appealed to me to where I and my daughter now research wild plants for use in our own foods, medicines and hygiene products. She wants her herbalist certificate very badly now that we’ve undergone 1.5years of a manufactured global health crisis.
But that health crisis is opening the doors to other methods of treating what used to be considered only manageable at best or untreatable at worst. That same crisis has broadened our (my daughter and I) understanding of the foods, herbs and spices we generally have in our home and just how useful they are in the current viral landscape.
We have an anti-malarial list of foods that are available to North Americans either at the local store, or out in the wild. These foods contain a few different compounds spread across the list, some that have quercetins in them just like HCQ, others have insecticide capabilities like Ivermectin, some blow up the virus, bacteria or parasite in the bloodstream just like onions and garlic do, etc. A couple of the foods in this list are also listed in a scientific document that lists off all the ways interferon can be boosted in the body. I won’t share that document here because it lists quite a large number of unhealthy ways to do that and some of those ways are regularly engaged in by people who don’t care about their health and abuse it. Too much Interferon actually DOES cause issues with your immune system, but not enough Interferon nearly has the same list of issues. You can get info on this from reputable doctors such as Dr. Mercola.
A similar list of foods is known to interfere with the spike protein given off by the so-called “vaccine” for COVID-19. Several of those foods are also on the anti-malarial foods list.
This brings me back to talking about WNV. HCQ, originally developed as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, was found to be extremely useful in treating malaria for well over 70 years now in places around Africa. Several sources state that it is “the drug of choice” across Africa for treating Malaria and that even the World Health Organization recommends it for use in treating WNV, Lassa fever, Malaria, etc. Now it should be noted that Malaria is known as a parasitic infection, not a viral infection. Keep that in mind.
One of the main reasons HCQ is so effective is the presence of Zinc in the blood stream. If you are low on this mineral, HCQ may not do much for you regarding treating COVID-19. However, the good news is that Zinc is necessary to unlock the most bio-available form of Iron to humans found in red meat. Zinc is found in leafy greens most readily, so a diet of red meat, healthy starches, healthy grains, fruits and green salads, will ensure your body has what it needs to fight off potential viral, bacterial, or parasitic threats. Yes I’m a rebel in the nutrition space and believe in all things in moderation rather than cutting out a given quadrant of the food table.
So HCQ + Zinc along with Azithromycin, treat COVID-19. HCQ itself has been used for 70 years or more to treat Malaria, and what should I find when researching any connection between HCQ and West Nile Virus??? But the WHO recommending it for WNV in “third world” countries too!
Now, Webmd, the medical site some hate, some love, and many treat as a medical form of Wikipedia, restates many of the claims that WHO makes and that history already records about the various uses of Hydroxychloroquine. What they say below the list of possible treatment uses is interesting. I quote:
“Experts aren’t sure how hydroxychloroquine helps. They think it’s because the drug changes how your immune cells send signals. It can also turn off certain processes that cause inflammation.”
This lack of full knowledge of how HCQ works is reflected in a number of links I looked at for this article.
A Thailand doctor’s take on treating WNV involved Zinc, Vit C (strong dose), and two other ingredients you can read here. This was from 2012. Another article on this same domain contains more food-as-medicine concepts related to the treatment of WNV. As you read through the blog articles and the comments on both links here, you’ll start to see a trend, and this trend is no accident.
Vitamin C helps you fend off the usual corona viruses (colds and flus) every year because it contributes directly to strong bones and teeth. Strong bones create healthy levels of blood that your body pumps around to deliver nutrition and fight off invaders. The blood cells that do the fighting are your white blood cells, or antibodies. They contribute to your overall healthy immune system. When you lower your immune system, you become susceptible to colds, flues, viral pneumonia, and more recently COVID-19. However, because COVID-19 seems to be introducing auto-immune deficiencies/disorders/diseases into people who previously didn’t have them, maintaining one’s healthy immune system as a prevention method is even more imperative now.
Vitamin D is also very important to maintaining one’s healthy immune system and it is highly recommended that those living in the Northern hemisphere take Vitamin D supplements during the less sunny months, or if they spend most of their time indoors. 10,000 IU is often the suggested maintenance dosage but it is wise to seek your naturopath’s advice if you are at all in doubt.
Typically, one’s immune system gets lowered in the following over-arching ways (meaning, these are broad umbrellas with many smaller, more specific methods under them which would take too long to exhaust here):
- Staying up late
- Partying
- Regular diet high in sugar, particularly processed sugar (health bugs really like their sugar!!!)
- Alcohol ingestion (related to high sugar intake)
- Recreational drug habits
- Isolation from other humans (believe it or not, we teach our bodies what to fight off by being around other humans and fighting off anything they might be carrying)
- Breathing heavily-polluted air for prolonged periods of time (this goes for wearing a mask all day as well, as you are breathing in what your body is trying to dispell through your lungs)
- and the list could go on.
One of the biggest ways to avoid the cold and the flu is simply by not eating sweets every day, sugary drinks every day and getting a good night’s rest. However, because it is culturally acceptable in first world nations to engage in all of the above, even considered a normal part of everyday life, it is challenging for most people to learn how to live and eat in a way that maintains a healthy immune system.
When the body’s immune system is attacked and forcibly lowered such as with HIV, up to this point it’s been considered manageable at best, and various treatments have been explored since HIV/AIDS first became a massive problem in the ’80’s. What is interesting to note is that Ivermectin was being researched as a potential treatment for HIV over the past 9 years. This article states what India already knows, that Ivermectin is useful for treating WNV, and COVID-19, also known as SARS-COV-2. India was successfully keeping COVID-19 at bay across the country using Ivermectin, until the so-called “vaxx” came along, then deaths began to shoot up. One news report I chanced across, stated that India may actually charge their local WHO representative with Crimes against Humanity for insisting on the “vaxx” and downplaying Ivermectin. But look at the list this science paper suggests:
“Cell culture experiments have shown robust antiviral action towards a whole range of viruses, including HIV-1, dengue, Zika and West Nile Virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Chikungunya, pseudorabies virus, adenovirus, and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Close to 70 clinical trials are currently in progress worldwide for SARS-CoV-2. Although few of these studies have been completed, the results that are available, as well as those from observational/retrospective studies, indicate clinical benefit.”
Researching Ivermectin reveals a family of viruses known as “Flavivirus” or a polyprotein. Check out this abstract for a very interesting read back in 2012. I have PDF’d this particular abstract.
Another report lists both HIV type 1 and SARS-2 among the antiviral effects of Ivermectin in addition to treating WNV, yellow fever, Influenza A and Respiratory Syndrome. The article mentions this statement:
“… it could serve as a potential candidate in the treatment of a wide range of viruses including COVID-19 as well as other types of positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses.” Ivermectin was originally developed in the 70’s to treat River Blindness and Elephantiasis, parasitical infections, in Africa. Notice the term there, “positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses”. . .
Hmmm. . .
As for HCQ, a report published March 18, 2020, shared an interesting set of experiments and tests done inside China (never reported by mainstream media that I was aware of). One of the comments in this article says:
“HCQ is still widely available to treat autoimmune diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.”
I’m going to quote a few lines here that are of interest to understanding not merely how HCQ works, but how COVID-19 works as well.
“Both CQ and HCQ are weak bases that are known to elevate the pH of acidic intracellular organelles, such as endosomes/lysosomes, essential for membrane fusion5. . . . Time-of-addition experiment confirmed that HCQ effectively inhibited the entry step, as well as the post-entry stages of SARS-CoV-2, “
The entry step referred to is
“through changing the glycosylation of ACE2 receptor and spike protein6”
Numbers by words are reference links in the original article.
“Since acidification is crucial for endosome maturation and function, we surmise that endosome maturation might be blocked at intermediate stages of endocytosis, resulting in failure of further transport of virions to the ultimate releasing site.”
Another note that directly relates to the issue and research around Interferons, is that
“HCQ is a safe and successful anti-inflammatory agent that has been used extensively in autoimmune diseases and can significantly decrease the production of cytokines and, in particular, pro-inflammatory factors.”
Remember our anti-malarial list of foods contains a number of foods where quercetins and quinines are constituents. HCQ is a quinine and based on this particular article, able to assist in calming cytokine storms. This bit of knowledge actually opens up a fair bit of the anti-malarial foods list to assisting with treatment in early stages of COVID-19 infection! Due to West Nile Virus causing severe inflammation in the nervous system, this means HCQ is a valid treatment for WNV as well.
In short, WNV can be treated by Ivermectin, HCQ, etc.
(For more articles written after March 2022 related to the intersection of faith and health, please visit my coaching website categories: health, and Natural health.)
