An article crossed my desk yesterday that I want to summarize and explain to you. It's about the antiviral properties of an herb called artemisinin. Common name would be sweet wormwood, but you see it as artemisinin quite a bit when you're looking at it in its herbal form. How does it have antiviral properties? Why do we care?

Artemisinin has been used for decades as an antiviral treatment, anti-malaria treatment in other parts of the world. We know it works. It has a good history, good reputation. Lots of people use it. It's very safe. But mechanistically, how does it do that? That's more what this article is dealing with. We know it works. Now we have a better idea how, but let me give you a real quick virology 101.

The way a virus works. First of all, it's not alive. You can't kill it like a bacteria. Antibiotics don't do anything for it. It doesn't work that way. It is a box that delivers genetic material. It lands on the outside of a cell, injects its genetic material into that cell, and now that cell just simply converts into something that produces more of those viruses. Then it lets those go into the fluid around the cell. They attach to neighboring cells, they inject their DNA, those cells produce more. It exponentially starts to spread, and after a couple of days of that, you build up enough of it, your immune system finally recognizes it, kicks in, and now the battle is on. You start feeling sick. You make mucus, you get inflamed. You know the drill.

Now, the way our immune system deals with it, because I already said you can't really kill them, but our immune system is pretty good at destroying viruses. But it has to see the virus. Grab an empty or a blank antibody, and then it takes information from that virus and encodes it onto that antibody. Think of a locksmith cutting a key to fit a lock.

Now you have an antibody that is a template to go after that virus. Well, your body will take that template and start churning out a whole bunch of antibodies, and ideally the amount of antibodies you're churning out would overwhelm that exponential rate of multiplication for the virus. You get ahead of it, kill it off. Virus is over, you feel better. Life goes on.

Now your body has other ways of fighting it. It heats it up with a fever and stuff, all those other things. But I'm more concerned with the antibody component of this. Vaccines were supposed to help by showing you part of that virus ahead of time to shorten that antibody production curve when the virus shows up. It shows up. You recognize it. Instead of grabbing a blank antibody and creating a template, you already have the template on the shelf. You see the virus, you recognize it, grab the template and start printing more antibodies, and all of a sudden your reaction goes more quickly. You get ahead of the virus faster and you're not sick for nearly as long.

Seeing a virus previously can do the same thing. You've already made antibodies to it. You've already fought it once successfully. No big deal to ramp that up and get going again. That's basically how a virus infects us and replicates in us and how we normally deal with that and kill it off. Those are the basics.

Now, what do we know about artemisinin in response to viruses? It does two main things. Number two, is it goes into the cell and slows that rate of replication. It makes it a longer process, if you will, for that genetic material to get in there and convert the cell into just a factory to make more viruses. That slows down. Obviously, that's good news. That allows you a better chance to get ahead of it with your antibody reaction.

But the other way it goes about it, what I think would be the primary way is more interesting. It blocks a receptor site on the outside of that cell that normally would allow the virus to attach to the cell and inject that genetic material. Think of it like a helicopter landing pad. It goes to the cell and it blocks a whole bunch of those landing pads, so when the virus is trying to land on there, they just get kicked off and they can't do their job. They can't give that material.

Now, which landing pad it affects is what I thought was really interesting. We knew this, there were rumors about this, but it's important for you to know. It blocks a receptor site called the ACE-2 receptor. If you want to look it up, and I recommend you do, look up ACE-2 receptor on the cell. That receptor is important for the replication of anything in the herpes family. Like cold sores, canker sores, general herpes, anything like that. And Epstein-Barr virus, which is the one that gave you mono back when you were in high school, but it can come back later on, reactivate and cause all kinds of chronic fatigue, chronic illness kind of things.

But there was another virus recently that you may remember hearing about in the past four or five years that used the ACE-2 receptor site in order to infect cells in us. Being able to block that ACE-2 receptor site with interestingly enough, yet another anti-malaria compound. In this case we're talking about artemisinin, but there were others that were discussed. If it blocks that ACE-2 receptor site, it makes it much more difficult for a virus like the one we recently dealt with to latch on, put its material in there, start replicating and cause trouble.

Now once you're already sick, although it can be helpful to take artemisinin, I think it works at its best when you can take it either really early in the process, or you know you got exposed but you're not sick yet, or you know it's going around. You're a school teacher and you know some kids in class are starting to get sick, start taking your artemisinin and you will be likely better virally protected. If it slows down the replication, your own immune system, which is really, I think probably the only way you can treat a virus is with your own immune system. But this just slows it down enough that your immune system can get the upper hand and get the job done.

Consider artemisinin. This particular article recommends a brand called MediHerb, which is a standard process artemisinin. We carry it at the office. It does really well for people. We've been using it for years. There are plenty of other brands out there. There's no research on a particular brand that I know of, but general research on artemisinin is very clear about these mechanisms.

Again, treating a virus is best done by your own immune system. All the artemisinin does is throw up some barricades to slow the virus down so that your own immune system can get ahead of it and do a better job of not allowing you to get as sick as you would if you weren't slowing it down. Best way I can say it.

If you have any questions, let me know or give the office a call, but I wanted to share that with you. I thought it was really interesting. They've confirmed it's the ACE-2 receptor that gets blocked. All right, have a good one. Bye.