what can you do to prevent HIV from turning into AIDS?

Answer 1

Taking medicines is quite important. However if the CD4 count is lower than 800 and the viral load of the hiv virus (the presence of the virus) is low or undetectable, there is no need for medication at that point.

It is very important to have a ballanced diet, excercise, try to lead a healthy life, eliminating vices and reducing stress as much as possible. Taking vitamin and other dietary supplements.

Doing lab work to monitor the blood about every three months is a must.

When the lab work shows that there is need for treatment to be started, medications should be thoroughly revised and decided which ones to take. It is true that a lot of them have quite strong side effects. Good thing is that meds have improved a lot since the beginning of the 90's and are much more effective. HIV poz people can be healthy for a very very long time, before developing AIDS.

Answer 2

AIDS is basically an advanced form of HIV infection. It occurs because HIV batters a particular cell that's important in coordinating the body's defense against infection - the CD4 cell.

A person is said to have AIDS when their CD4 count falls below 200 or when they develop one of a set of specific uncommon infections that are called "AIDS defining opportunistic infections".

The best way to keep HIV from developing into AIDS is to take a cocktail of anti-HIV antiviral drugs. These suppress HIV (although not perfectly) so the virus takes longer to batter the CD4 count to the point where someone's immune system is noticeably week.

Taking the cocktail of anti-HIV drugs is difficult - there are several of them that need to be taken frequently during the day and they all have a fair number of side effects. For this reason, some patients elect not to take the medicines in early HIV but to reserve them for when they're sicker. It's a decision that needs to be made after talking it over with the doctor.