Re: thanks. didn't think it could occur this early?

"is there anything alternative that anyone has used to keep their hiv under control without meds"?

Absolutely! About a zillion different things! So many things that it would take too long to recount them all! For everything, you'll find some people for whom it seems to be working. Unfortunately, nobody can predict with any sort of accuracy who these people will be (or whether it is even a given product that is causing their good health). The people promoting alternative treatments for HIV generally refuse to test and evaluate them using strict scientific standards. When scientists have been intrigued by supplements that patients said were helping them, the results from the clinical trials have always been disappointing. Interest often falls in a given supplement or alternative healing protocol after its major proponent or poster-child dies of AIDS (this has also happened enough times that it'll take too long to recount!). Having lived with this virus for many, many years, I've seen too many self-promoters selling their own brand of BS in an attempt to garner either income or self-glorification. For that reason, I say "be very careful" when evaluating people's claims about alternative treatments - more often than not, they're simply unsupportable. Supplements often seem to show some short-term benefit that disappears in the long-term.

I would recommend the following forum as a better place for advice on supplements for HIV than this one (since there are so few people with HIV in this forum):

http://forums.poz.com/index.php?board=8.0


Safety of HAART:
Really depends on the combination of drugs you're taking! Some combinations are unsafe (ddI + Viread is a good example), some are more likely to cause severe side effects (d4T, ddI, AZT among the nukes). If you are in the US, you are unlikely to ever take any of these. I have no idea what combination your doctor would be prescribing for you (has a genotype/phenotype been performed for any reason?), but the most popular drug combination in the US today (especially among people who've never taken meds before) is Atripla - a once-per-day pill that contains three different antivirals (tenofovir, emtricitabine, efavirenz). I've never taken it (and will never be able to - I'm resistant to efavirenz), but the reason for its popularity is partially its convenience and partially its tolerability. As with any drug (including the natural ones), there are adverse effects. One major difference between licensed drugs and alternative ones is that you DO know what these adverse effects are, and how commonly they occur (the FDA requires tracking of such things. With alternative medications, no one is keeping track). If I'm reading you correctly, you're concerned about serious injury or death, not about transient changes (e.g. one of the most common side effects from Atripla is "vivid dreams". Some find them annoying, many like them, but I don't think this is the sort of thing you're worried about). If your doctor is competent, he should spend a decent amount of time with you telling you the risks of the medications you're going to be on. One reason for this is because serious injury can usually be avoided IF you know what you're looking for and are being monitored. For example, any drug (natural or alternative) can cause an allergic reaction (although reactions to some drugs can be more common and/or frequently serious than reactions to others). For every HIV med that I can think of where allergic reactions are common, proper monitoring can prevent them from being serious, so your doctor should tell you what is "serious" enough that you need to call/come in if you experience it. Could you be the 1 in 10,000 (the numbers are closer to this than to 1 in 100) who dies from an adverse reaction? Absolutely! However, doing labtests beforehand (because, for example, some people should not be given a particular drug if they have pre-existing kidney disease, liver disease, or other abnormalities) and properly monitoring the person on the drug (to catch any adverse incidents early) will make this outcome even less likely. Even in people with asymptomatic HIV, the risk of death from drugs is far, far smaller than the risk of death for those not on drugs:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10597779?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2....
(note that this is an older study; the medications used a decade ago are less tolerable than those used today). But this is a personal decision, and it's really one that should be made with your doctor. There's no doubt that there are people who SHOULDN'T be on HAART.

If you tell me the specific combination that you would be taking, I can give you more specific information about the risks.

If you ever want to know what the risks of a particular drug are, you can always look up the full prescribing information.

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