Chronic Ross River Virus symptoms healed with diet
by Sue Kira, Naturopath & Clinical Nutritionist
Client name and identifying information changed
Jasmine had been diagnosed with Ross River Virus (RRV) about eight years prior to seeing me and although most of the symptoms of the virus were gone, she still suffered from on-going fatigue, low grade aches in her joints and recurrent headaches every few days.
Jasmine was most concerned that whenever she tried to get fit at the gym, or even from walking, she would really ache for a week and her knees were too sore to take any pressure when she wanted to do floor mat exercises such as push-ups.
Initially when she first got the virus, her joints and muscles ached so much that she was prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s) and cortisone, but these made things worse by giving her added tummy discomfort and not relieving the pain. She couldn’t sleep well and stopped taking them after a week.
On the advice of another naturopath she was put onto some supplements like fish oil, vitamin C in large doses and magnesium, which seemed to help in a small way, but the cost was too high for her to continue considering that the pain relief was minimal.
Jasmine had read many blogs on how hard it was to treat RRV, so she resigned herself to ride through without treatment it until it went away. Eight years later, she was fed up with it and came to see me for help.
Having had a bad dose of Ross River Virus myself about 11 years previously, I knew how she felt and it was very unpleasant, to the point that I had to crawl up stairs because it was too painful to walk. I couldn’t take anything to help and the damage to my cartilage from the virus was not good. But loads of research drew me to several conclusions.
In particular, you really need to be gentle with your body and let go of your expectations. You can read all about this in the next case study – Ross River Virus 2. There are more than 100 comments to this article from fellow sufferers of this horrible virus.
Apart from recommending to Jasmine to be gentle with herself, I had her digestive system checked and sure enough, she had ‘leaky gut syndrome’ so we set-up a gut repair program. The gut repair and anti-inflammatory foods were also useful to help her cartilage regenerate (which I continue to do today).
Within three months of commencing the diet, Jasmine’s symptoms dropped by about 50%, after suffering for the previous eight years! We continued the cartilage regeneration for another 12 months before her joints were completely free of pain, but there were still issues to resolve along the way.
Jasmine had previously been consuming loads of coffee and lollies to try to be alert, but this was driving her inflammation and pain even more without her realising it. Once we removed these pro-inflammatory foods, the fatigue and headaches quickly departed.
I also suggested that she introduce more gentle activities at the gym and allow plenty of recovery time between sessions. Jasmine found that she actually got fitter faster and had more energy this way, rather than how she previously tried to push through it all.