Coxsackievirus - the Real Pandemic!
Early on in my clinical practice, I realised I would not be able to help the majority of people get well unless I addressed their chronic infections. One infection stands head and shoulders above the rest as regards numbers of people who test positive for it - Coxsackievirus. I have kept statistics on the infections I have seen in my clinic over the years and have seen a whopping 97% of patients with active Coxsackie infection!
Dr. Armin Schwarzbach of Arminlabs in Germany, a specialist infection laboratory, says, “the level of infection in the UK that we are picking up in our own testing exceeds that of any other country…It is unclear why that is - we urgently need studies.”
What is Coxsackievirus?
Coxsackie (named after the area near New York where it was first identified) is an enterovirus (transmitted via the oral-faecal route) that belongs to the Polio virus family. Enteroviruses enter the gut first, then go on to infect the central nervous system in individuals unlucky enough to develop the chronic version.
Coxsackie and the Heart
The Director of Research at AONM (Academy of Nutritional Medicine), Gilian Crowther, has written an excellent article about this common virus entitled: Coxsackie - Doing damage to our very core: the energy delivery mechanisms of our heart. The article lists the following ways Coxsackie can wreak havoc on health:
Can trigger an autoimmune attack on the mitochondria (energy producing units in cells) in the heart, creating chronic fatigue and myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle).
Can alter immune chemistry in such as way to depress the immune cells that protect us from viral and bacterial invasion.
Can bring about calcium overload in tissues, again affecting mitochondria and blocking energy production.
Coxsackie and Chronic Fatigue
Coxsackie B1 is a particularly nasty strain of this virus. It was highlighted as a cause of chronic fatigue/M.E. (myalgic encephalomyelitis)/fibromyalgia conditions by Professor Malcolm Hooper and the John Richardson Research Group. Professor Peter Behan suggests that Coxsackievirus may be the main cause of chronic fatigue symptoms as far back as the 1980s.
This backs up my own experience with this nasty virus. It was in 1979, while a student at Oxford University, that I fell ill overnight with a mystery infection that gave me unrelenting vertigo, crashing fatigue and changes to brain tissue that were still visible on MRI 25 years later. In fact, I had to take a year out of my degree course to try and recover. Rounds of hospital tests produced no clues other than elevated white blood cells (a sign of infection), and the reassuring news I did not have a brain tumour or sepsis.
Somehow, I managed to get back to Oxford and sit my finals but my health was never quite the same again. Prior to 1979, I had no attention at all on illness. Post virus, there was always the niggling concern about running out of energy or remaining upright. A number of years later private lab tests by Dr. Armin Schwarzbach revealed seven different strains of Coxsackievirus and by this time, the virus had done a fair bit of damage.
There was virtually no understanding about infections causing chronic fatigue and neurological symptoms in the late 1970s, even in the hallowed portals of Oxford! The college doctor was convinced I was a malingerer and we had many acrimonious exchanges in his office. Not much has changed since the late 1970s except that psychiatric medications are now dished out like Smarties for anything that doctors don’t understand. The NHS didn’t run lab tests for Coxsackievirus back in 1979 and they still don’t.
Something can be done about it
How many people in the UK are suffering from chronic fatigue and unexplained neurological symptoms? How many know about Coxsackievirus or have even been tested for it? If you suspect this virus is affecting your health, you will need to get a private lab test for Coxsackievirus and ideally a test that gives you a snapshot of the state of your immune cells at the same time.
If your lab results show that you have active Coxsackievirus, what can you do about it? If your immune system is overwhelmed by a chronic virus it can’t shift, the wrong thing to do is nothing. The virus won’t go on its own. Rather, you will need to improve your underlying immune chemistry which the virus may have been manipulating to allow it to survive without detection.
This is best done with natural tools as it is pretty impossible to drug your body back to health. Each person will have their own reasons why their immune system has not been able to do its job and see the virus off. These may include multiple infections (in gut, teeth, jaws etc.), lack of quality sleep, chronic stress, toxic inflammatory foods etc. Whatever the factors involved, the clinical goal is to get the virus to go from being active to dormant and asymptomatic so you can get on with your life.
If you suspect you may be suffering from Coxsackievirus or have had a positive Coxsackie test in the past and would like to see if this has quietened down, please email the Good Health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com or ring on 07836 552936.
To your very good health in 2022!