Dark Ages
We are living in the Dark Ages of Heath, where we are surrounded by thousands of contagious viruses, bacteria and other pathogens in the environment that would like use our bodies as their long-term home. Once these microbes have insinuated themselves into our metabolisms, they frequently remain there for life, whence they slowly (and sometimes rapidly) degrade our physical and mental health. Most of the time this health degradation is subtle and subclinical. You may not realize it, but even in a “healthy” individual, pathogens living in their system will subtly reduce that person’s mental and physical faculties, so that they will never reach their complete genetic potential. Other times, the health damage wreaked by these pathogens is overt and severe, precipitating a clinical disease, much suffering, and often an early death.
Pathogenic viruses and microbes are very commonly found in people: Epstein Barr virus is found in around 90% of adults, HHV-6 virus in over 90%, cytomegalovirus in 50% of adults, parvovirus B19 in 50% and Coxsackie B virus in 55% of adults. Most of these, once caught, cannot be eliminated. We are all riddled with viruses.
This page examines these circumstances, in the hope that human ingenuity will address and rectify this dire problem within the foreseeable future.
The Hygiene Hypothesis, or the Microbial Overload Hypothesis?
The Hygiene Hypothesis states that the lack of exposure to germs in our modern sterile environments is causing a rise in many allergic and auto-immune disease conditions (the hypothesis rests on the idea that our immune systems are not getting properly “trained” or “calibrated” in the supposed modern sterile environments).
I want to refute this argument, in favour of the reverse pespective: the Microbial Overload Hypothesis.
More recent research is indicating that diseases like type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and many others, are caused by persistent viral or microbial infections.
Most of these viruses or microbes are passed from human to human, just by normal social contact. We pick up many viruses from our early days at school, and we harbour them in our body tissues for decades sometimes, before they manifest as a disease. For example, most of us will have picked up the human herpes 6 virus (HHV-6) by the age of three without realising it; HHV-6 is thought to be a causal factor in MS. Many of these viruses will infect us without us knowing, as often they enter our bodies without showing symptoms. Once in, many viruses stay for life, and nearly every virus and microbe in our body employs immune evasion strategies, which to say, these microbes actively attack, disrupt and misdirect our immune system, in very cunning ways, in order to survive. In simple terms, immune evasion is the throwing of a spanner in the works of the immune system in order to avoid being destroyed by the immune system. Now, as we accumulate more and more pathogenic viruses and microbes in our bodies each year of our lives, the sum total of all the various different microbial immune evasion attacks begins to take its toll, each attack on the immune system causing serious problems, and thus it is not surprising that our immune systems buckle under this strain, start to malfunction, leaving us more likely to succumb to allergies and auto-immune conditions (as well as leaving us more vulnerable to contracting new additional infections, which then further strain the immune system).
In short, viral and microbial attacks on the immune system (ie, immune evasion tactics) are the most logical explanation for immune system errors and malfunctioning such as allergies.
Unfortunately, as we get increased urbanisation, which results in us living in ever more crowded conditions, we get a daily exposure to more and more people, and, therefore, to potentially more contagious viruses, etc.
In traditional rural life, there were far less people living on top of each other, compared to modernity. In addition, modern global travel enables new viruses and microbes to circumnavigate the globe very quickly, to infect more people. It is the more acute infections like SARS, bird flu and swine flu that make the news, and for which control measures are devised. But for every overt new virus like SARS, there are almost certainly dozens of hidden viruses than quietly go into circulation. These “hidden” viruses will not always cause an acute fever and immediately perceivable symptoms, they often have very mild initial symptoms, and thus enter unnoticeably into the body, where they may slowly smoulder away in our tissues, and cause a chronic disease many years later.
Thus rather than saying we are living in more hygienic environments, in fact the reverse is true: we are probably more exposed to disease-causing pathogens than ever before in history. This is more likely the reason why we are seeing a rise in so many diseases. And we can expect this trend to continue as our social milieu continues to become more compressed and overcrowded.
Thus the Microbial Overload Hypothesis suggests that there will be further increases in many diseases.
How Viral Pathogens Can Cause Depression
Persistent viruses and pathogens are probably major causal factors in many of cases of depression.
Many common persistent viruses can cause depression, such as Epstein-Barr virus, coxsackie B virus, human herpes 6 virus, cytomegalovirus, influenza A, West Nile virus, as well as many other pathogens.
One mechanism that explains how such viruses cause depression is through the effects interferon-alpha: Chronic infection with any of these viruses can lead to raised interferon-alpha levels (interferon-alpha is secreted by cells of the the immune system as it tries to control the virus), and it is now known that interferon-alpha can significantly affect the serotonin system.
However, this is not the only way that a persistent viral infection can cause depression. Certain types of depression originate in the hypothalamus, which can be dysregulated by viruses such as coxsackievirus B, which have a particular affinity for, and disruptive action on, the hypothalamus.
And another very powerful (but indirect) mechanism through which persistent viruses can cause depression is by raising glutamate and quinolinic acid levels in the brain (high glutamate levels are linked to depression). The excess glutamate/quinolinic acid in this case comes from the activated microglia cells (microglia are specialized macrophages permanently resident in the brain). When the microglia are activated in response to a persistent infection in the brain, these microglia produce lots of glutamate and quinolinic acid, which can then lead to both depression and anxiety disorders as a result of this neurochemical imbalance.
IN SUMMARY: It is quite probable that many cases of depression are ultimately viral in origin, through one or more of these mechanisms. We are just beginning to uncover the complex biochemistry behind the way pathogenic infections cause mental conditions such as depression.
Burnout Syndrome
Burnout is a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest (from wikipedia).
In the future, I think it will be realized that burnout is a variation of chronic fatigue syndrome. CFS usually caused by respiratory and neurological viruses such coxsackievirus, Epstein-Bar virus, HHV-6, parvovirus, cytomegalovirus (especially when a person has several of these in his body).
CFS can suddenly appear after a person catches one of these viruses. Burnout is the same: it can suddenly manifest for no apparent reason; but the real cause is probably a neurological virus.
Viral Pathogens and Intelligence
Are the most intelligent and/or mentally well-balanced people those with fewer persistent neurological viruses in their system? This hypothesis could very be easily tested. In addition we could see if persistent neurological viruses were associated with any other undesirable personality traits, such as criminality, anti-social behavior, even extreme shyness, anger and rage problems, and other such anomalies of personality. It may well turn out that many of these mental characteristics have a viral or other microbial cause.
Are Liberal Sexual Values Contributing to the Spread of Respiratory Viruses?
Chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety disorders, and other neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis are all strongly linked to respiratory viruses (that is, viruses that are passed person-to-person by respiratory secretions). Respiratory secretions such as saliva are often exchanged during deep kissing. Given that current sexual behavior often involves lots of experimentation with many different people, which invariably involves kissing, contemporary sexual values may act as an important channel in the spread respiratory viruses around the general population. Thus we may see more diseases appearing (later in life) as a result of these spreading respiratory viruses.
It must be realized that there is no such thing as safe sex. However, if you are going to have a brief encounter, you may wish to refrain from deep kissing on the mouth (and of course use a condom for intercourse), and this will lower you chances of catching a chronic respiratory virus that you may later spread to your family, or your next girlfriend or boyfriend, just by normal household contact.
Other factors increasing the spread of viruses and other pathogens are: the massive urbanization taking place around the globe, which brings people into close contact in more and more crowded cities; and the ubiquity of air travel, which allows new microbes to spread around the world very easily (globalization unfortunately helps open up ‘new markets’ for microbes too).
Co-Infections
Some general research should be done to see whether people with recurrent infections – such as fungal skin or sinus infections, periodontal disease and dental decay, recurrent bacterial ear infections and the like – all have a some common pathogenic denominator such as viral infection (from coxsackievirus, Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, HHV-6A, etc, etc) that is compromising their immune system.
Secondary recurrent infections usually occur more frequently once you have chronic fatigue syndrome, which is generally caused by one or more of these immune-compromising viruses. Recurrent infections could be more efficiently eliminated if we could treat the fundamental underlying viral (or bacterial) infections that cause immune suppression.
In my case, I never had any periodontal problems until I caught my virus. So it is quite clear that this virus is facilitating the growth of oral bacteria (that form plaque / dental calculus), presumably by its immune-suppressive effects.
In caring for critical cases of bacterial infections, antibiotics are of course fundamental, but it might be a good idea to give immune system boosters also, such as natural killer cell activity boosters, as this may make a big difference.
More Rapid Aging due to Pathogenic Microbes
Scientists that study aging have cataloged a number of mechanisms through which aging occurs. These mechanisms include: free radicals, glycation, DNA damage, mitochondrial damage, hormonal decline, inflammation, telomere shortening, and so forth. However, very little attention is given to the process of accumulation of pathogenic microbes in the body as a mechanism of aging. Microbe-casued aging I would suggest is perhaps the most significant cause of aging, and I suspect that the disruptive action of pathogenic microbes in the body underlies many of the other aging mechanisms listed here. In other words, if our bodies could be cleared of all the myriad pathogenic microbes and their foreign DNA (or RNA), then this would greatly reduce the rate of free radicals, glycation, DNA damage, mitochondrial damage, hormonal decline, etc.
Transduction
Transduction is the process in which bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) or mycoviruses (viruses that infect fungi) inject new genetic information packages into the bacteria/fungi they infect. In other words, transduction is the distribution of genes to microorganisms by means of viruses. The transduction process is constantly active in nature, and it randomly introduces new genes, carried within viral containers, into bacteria/fungi and other microorganisms. It is this constant exposure to new genes that helps such organisms to evolve. Transduction, in fact, is the main reason why bacteria have been seen to evolve so rapidly, quickly mutating into new antibiotic-resistant forms, for example. Transduction is a primary evolutionary force for single-celled microorganisms.
In higher forms of life such as animals and plants, however, viruses are an outdated mode of conveying and introducing new genetic information. When nature evolved the mechanism of sex as a means to introduce new variations in the genes of these higher life forms, the evolutionary role of the virus – which is vital for single-celled microorganism evolution – suddenly becomes not only unhelpful, but rather pernicious in terms of animal and plant survival. Viruses are a legacy mechanism that originated in the world of microorganism evolution; but this ancient viral mechanism appears only to harm higher forms of life.
It is time we left this ancient system of viral gene distribution behind, now that we have sex as our gene introduction system.
Except when we use viral vectors under controlled conditions, such as introducing new genetic packages into our body’s cells for gene therapy, there are few circumstances where a human virus is of any benefit to the human being (with the possible exception of herpes simplex perhaps, which although it appears to help precipitate dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, it apparently also confers protection against the bubonic plague).
Random viral injections of genes into microorganism life forms may be nature’s ingenuous way of widening the gene pool for the benefit of these lower lifer forms; for bacteria in particular, transduction is a highly effective means of rapid evolutionary adaptation.
But for higher life forms such as humans, these random viral injections of genes into our cells nearly always plays havoc with our metabolisms, and precipitates disease. Human beings should not have ANY viruses in their bodies, and should not be subjected to random insertion of genes by viruses.
It is just a question of whether we are clever enough to do something about eliminating this ancient legacy system of evolution – the viral conveyance and insertion of genes – from infecting and interfering with the human metabolism.
Viral Causes of the Obesity Epidemic
Two adenoviruses have been linked to causing obesity: adenovirus-36 and adenovirus-14. AD-36 is present in 30% of obese people, but only present in 11% of non-obese people. AD-36 induces obesity by injecting ones of its genes (called E4orf1) into the nucleus (the DNA control centers) of human cells. Once the E4orf1 viral gene is inside the nucleus, it turns on the cell’s fat-producing enzymes and instigates the generation of new fat cells (adipocytes).
This is an example of how a virus will insert to own genetic instructions in to the human body, and these viral instructions then go on to alter the way the body’s systems work.
It is quite possible that other viruses are contributing to the obesity epidemic also. In particular, any virus that can damage or alter the workings of the hypothalamus (that area of the brain that regulates hormones, emotions, and the sensation of hunger) may also be able to cause obesity (or weight loss), since such a virus may increase/decrease hunger levels.
Again, with adenovirus being a respiratory virus (that is easily passed person-to-person by kissing, or just by living/working in the same household/office), you can question whether it is such factors as liberal sexual values and overcrowded cities that may be contributing to the wider spread of this obesity adenovirus across the populace.
