{"id":11428,"date":"2016-06-20T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/?p=11428"},"modified":"2016-06-21T15:15:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:15:43","slug":"can-i-increase-my-cd4-count-without-hiv-treatment-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/11428","title":{"rendered":"Can I increase my CD4 count without HIV treatment (ART)?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is still a common question but the answer is still definitely &#8220;no&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The only proven way to increase your CD4 count is to use ART to reduce viral load to undetectable. Then your immune system has a chance to repair itself.<\/p>\n<p>There is\u00a0no such thing as &#8220;immune boosting&#8221; drugs or diet. In the context of HIV this idea is nonesense. It is good for your general health to eat well, to exercise and to get good sleep &#8211; but these things do not increase your\u00a0CD4 count.<\/p>\n<p>Even in 2016, with very effective meds that have very low risk of side effects, people ask\u00a0&#8220;do I really need treatment&#8221;. That is actually a slightly different question. This answer will depend on discussions with your doctor.<\/p>\n<p>For some\u00a0people HIV will progress very slowly, so the urgency for treatment will be different. But even at high CD4 counts, being on ART is better than letting HIV continue to be untreated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is still a common question but the answer is still definitely &#8220;no&#8221;. The only proven way to increase your CD4 count is to use ART to reduce viral load to undetectable. Then your immune system has a chance to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load","category-starting-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}