Virome-Microbiome Balancing Act | Best Nutrients for Depression

From eNewsletter 3/8/2021

DID YOU KNOW that with many struggling emotionally during this pandemic, certain nutrients with antidepressant effects can be indispensable? According to a new study in Nutrients, the following were found to help with depression symptoms and with conditions as severe as major depressive disorder: folate, S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe), alpha-lipoic acid, 5-hydroxy-tryptophan (5-HTP), zinc, magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, and coenzyme Q10.

Make Your Voice Heard A house resolution (H. Res. 116) has been introduced by Wisconsin Representative Glenn Grothman to recognize the significant role of vitamin D for immune health. Make your voice heard by contacting your House Rep with this simple digital voter voice message. We've been waiting a long time for this. Let them hear you!

Single, Paid Version Newsletters Now Available! The results from last week's poll showed that most want the option to purchase single issues of NCI Well Connect paid member edition. Today's edition includes 7 segments you don't get in the free edition:

• Well Connect Feature: What is niacinamide/nicotinamide?

• Mental Minute: Diaphragmatic breathing

• Mythbuster: Does hypnosis create hallucinations?

• Brand Buzz: Tuna in a pouch and medjool date syrup

• Your Healthy Kitchen: Instant frozen berries yogurt

• Wild Card: Does daydreaming have value?

• eInspire: Quote from Muhammad Ali

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Our COVID-19 Vaccine Opinion This document was updated today.

COVID-19 Condition Monograph For those interested in conventional and integrative treatments for COVID-19 with over 250 references, this is our COVID-19 Condition Monograph.

Post-COVID Syndrome (PCS) If you, or someone you know, has PCS, we provide individualized consultation or our Post-COVID Syndrome Action Plan.

Virus Prevention And Treatment Even with a vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 will be endemic. We also need help fighting the other endemic viruses: influenza (flu), norovirus (stomach flu), adenovirus (common cold), and four other coronaviruses (common cold). Prevent and Fight Coronavirus 2.0 Protocol.

OUR VIROME VS MICROBIOME Steve and Bonnie: Yes, you read it correctly...virome. It has been estimated that there are over 380 trillion viruses inhabiting us, a community collectively known as the human virome. Over the next decade, you'll be hearing as much about viromes as you did over the last ten years about microbiomes. If we could have only been more prescient about our viromes before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

If we said to you that viruses can be beneficial, at this current time, it may sound crazy. Viruses of course can bad, as is the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19.

The virus does not want its host to die. It wants to coexists with us so it can live, just like bacteria does. However, when a virus is new to the host, our immune system goes crazy trying to fight it. The reasons a virus turns deadly are if we are already sick, are exposed to a huge viral load, and cannot turn off our immune system. Our own immune systems kill us, not the virus.

We are in our infancy in understanding just how important viruses and bacteria are to the host functioning properly. For the first time, epidemiologists discovered that bacteria can control viral activity in a positive way, just as viruses can control bacteria in positive and negative ways. Parasites can even control viruses and bacteria. All of this works without us even realizing it if the host is functioning optimally.

The vast majority of viruses (including influenza and coronaviruses) are completely eliminated from our bodies fairly rapidly - generally, a few days to a handful of weeks. However, there are a handful of viruses that can lead to long term or even life-long infection. These include most if not all of the members of the herpesviruses group, such as herpes simplex, chicken pox/shingles virus (varicella-zoster virus), cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, HIV, and a few other viruses that are less well known, such as adenoviruses.

There are also a few viruses that can reinfect you at some point after you eliminate the virus, in spite of your immune response, either because the virus changes (like influenza and coronavirus) or because the immune response doesn't last a long time (like norovirus and coronavirus).

New research also shows that viruses that live with us long-term can directly trigger genetic expression, positive or negative, even where all other environmental factors have not induced expression. Scientists have found that chronic herpesvirus can switch off the effects from Crohn's disease and celiac disease in mice. Whereas chronic norovirus can switch on Inflammatory Bowel Disease in mice if gone unchecked.

We know this may be difficult to get your arms around. What it shows us is, like with an imbalanced microbiome (less healthy probiotic bacteria and more pathogenic bacteria), an imbalanced virome can also wreak havoc.

What does it all mean for us right now? Until we have ways to screen our viromes, we can follow a very simple mantra...balance is everything. A balanced microbiome will help keep a balanced virome, and vice versa. This can only be accomplished by consistently supplying the host (you) with the right raw materials and potentially a probiotic recommended by your health professional.

WHAT IS NIACINAMIDE/NICOTINAMIDE This article is reserved for NCI Well Connect Members. You can get this article by signing up here. You can get our free eNewsletter by signing up at the top of our website.