LARK LANDS

Lark Lands is an internationally respected treatment expert, a contributing writer and editor for the American Academy of HIV Medicine, The Positive Side, CATIE’s Practical Guides, the www.AIDSmeds.com website, and the Houston Buyers Club, and a long-time treatment activist, journalist, and educator. She is the author of the Symptoms and Side Effects Series, e-booklets with comprehensive information on treatment approaches to common problems. A former think tank scientist and the long-time Science Editor of POZ Magazine, she was a pioneer in bringing attention to the need for a total integrated approach to HIV disease.

In particular, her work and writing has focused on the significance of nutrient deficiencies in people living with HIV and the potential for good nutrition and nutrient supplementation to slow disease progression, resolve symptoms, and lessen side effects of drugs while improving their effectiveness. She teaches people how to integrate the best pharmaceutical treatment approaches from the world of Western medicine with supportive nutritional and complementary therapies. She believes that it is only through such integrated approaches that people can live well with HIV, not just longer.

As a respected AIDS journalist, Lark’s articles have been widely printed and reprinted in AIDS newsletters and on websites, and distributed throughout North and South America and Europe. Thousands of copies of her treatment fact sheets have been distributed annually through PWA coalitions, buyers' clubs, and community-based organizations. Her monographs and fact sheets have been well-reviewed by AIDS journalists who have described her work as "one of the most valuable guides to developing strategies for survival of AIDS in print to date.” She has worked individually with thousands of people living with HIV to develop integrated programs based on her Positively Well approach, a program aimed at healthy, symptom-free long-term survival.

Lark has given her Positively Well seminar to thousands of people in the United States, Canada, and Europe. She is a frequent speaker at international, national, state, and local AIDS conferences, and has presented keynote or plenary addresses to many of the largest AIDS conferences in North America. Currently, she is presenting a new seminar called Living Well...Not Just Longer!! to groups throughout North America.

In her seminars, Lark presents information on the key components of an HIV wellness approach to preventing body damage, eliminating symptoms, reducing drug side effects, slowing disease progression, and lessening the risk of infections with nutrients, antioxidants, cytokine regulators, hormonal treatments, dietary practices, and complementary (often called alternative) therapies, combined with the best available antiretrovirals, immune modulators, and other pharmaceutical therapies. Depending on the time available, she also provides information on integrated approaches to the treatment of opportunistic infections, cancers, wasting, and other conditions—including both the latest updates on cutting edge pharmaceutical approaches and information on the nutritional and complementary therapies that can be combined with drugs to greatly increase the chances of full resolution of such problems.

Lark frequently shares information with HIV specialists throughout North America and is in frequent contact with HIV researchers and treatment activists around the world, keeping up to date on the latest breakthroughs and sharing information of interest.