STI's (Structured Treatment Interruptions)

Vitamins

Ask Dr. Kaiser

Question:

Dr. Kaiser, I'm hesitant to start anti-viral medication because my
belief is once you start them you must stay on them indefinitely. Your first chance is your best chance. I would go on anti-viral meds tomorrow if I could have regular STI's such as 3 weeks on, then 3 weeks off, and so on. I believe this pattern would fit my personality traits. Would this fight the virus enough but not give it a chance to mutate while my body got a break from the meds every three weeks?

Dr. Kaiser replies:

STI's (Structured Treatment Interruptions) are currently being
studied very aggressively. Several different protocols are being looked at. These include:

Taking a break from antiviral meds until your CD4 cell count dips below a predefined level (such as 3000 or 350 cells) and then restarting them.
Taking a break from antiviral meds until the viral load increases to above a predefined level (such as 25,000 or 50,000 cells) and then restarting them.
One week on antiviral medications alternating with one week off antiviral medications
And so on...

It is premature for any HIV(+) patients to take any sort of unsupervised treatment interruption. Certainly, if your CD4 cell count is high (over 500-600 cells) and you are experiencing toxicity from your current medication program, you could take a supervised break from medications and closely follow your viral load and CD4 count, adding them back only if necessary.

With that said, I have been having outstanding results with my own STI protocol in patients who meet the following criteria:

Their CD4 cell count has been over 500 cells/mm3 for at least one year
They are closely following the other aspects of my program including taking my Double-Strength Immune Support Vitamins Program 1 packet 2x/day
They agree to have labwork checked once a month for the first six months of the protocol

I have been extremely impressed with the success rate of my STI protocol to date. As soon as I have a large enough body of experience and data with this protocol, I will be publishing it in a medical journal and on my website. Until then, I can only discuss it with my individual patients so that nobody tries to do it in an unsupervised fashion.

Thank you for your question.

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