Migraines, Chronic Fatigue, Hashimoto’s, Food Reactions, Autoimmune…or is it EBV?

Today we are diving into Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and its significant impact on health, particularly chronic immune issues. EBV, known for causing mononucleosis, can also trigger autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's, lupus, and multiple sclerosis by hijacking the immune system. We also highlight the importance of recognizing EBV as a root cause of various chronic conditions and advocate for a comprehensive approach to treatment.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Epstein Barr Virus and its impact on chronic illness, including fatigue, headaches, and muscle weak

• Epstein Barr Virus and its connection to various autoimmune diseases

• How Epstein-Barr virus hijacks immune cells and replicates, leading to chronic infection

• EBV infection and its impact on the immune system and overall health

• Managing Epstein-Barr virus through self-care, immune modulation, and avoiding triggers

• Managing Epstein-Barr virus reactivation through lifestyle changes and supplements

Please note that transcripts may contain minor errors or inaccuracies. We hope you enjoy reading them and find them helpful.

Hey, you're gonna be okay. I'm your host, Elizabeth Mae, and my functional health practice helps people heal when they've exhausted traditional options. When no one can figure your health challenges out, my team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health. You're listening to my podcast where we'll hear stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause approach.

You guys, I'm really excited about this episode: migraines, chronic fatigue, koshimoto's, autoimmuners at EBV. Why? We're gonna talk today about one of the big four things that we see in our practice chronically dysregulating immune system. So of those four, EBV or Epstein Barr virus is what we're going to go into. My other big three are mold, Lyme, and streptococcal bacteria. So this episode is near and dear and tied to my heart because EBV truly was the most impactful dysregulator of my health when my health crumbled, which threw me into this whole world of trying to figure it out, eventually going to school and becoming a practitioner and finding my love of working for people to help them find hope in their chronic healing health situations and challenges. So after I had my second son, my health pretty quickly deteriorated. I was super fatigued. I couldn't do a whole, whole lot. I was kind of like crawling around, so much muscle weakness, exhaustion, um, headaches. I had other issues. I was living in some mold exposure, some pretty hefty, um traumatic home environment, which is stressful, all of that on the body. And we will we will peel back the layers on EBV today and learn that stress plays a huge role. So if you're one of these people who's like, you know, when I get more stress, that's usually when I struggle. We want to think about Epstein bar virus. So let's move right into like what is EBV, aside from something that contributed to Elizabeth's epiphany about functional medicine. So at this point, I'm just so thankful for EBV, which is weird because EBV is Epstein bar virus, commonly known as mononucleosis. So thankfulness and mono don't usually go hand in hand with you know most folks, but truly really grateful for all that it has taught me. And so EBV is a virus. What is a virus? We kind of have to start there. Viruses aren't alive, they don't grow, they are not made of cells, they can't even make their own energy, they're just genetic material encased in protein. So without that ability to like be a being, they rely on the host cells to replicate. So they're looking for a home. Your cells are where they would like to live. They actually feed off of the host cell's energy. Hello, fatigue. Like if that virus is entered into your cells, each cell is mitochondria, which creates our energy. But since the virus is not its own being, it's going to take from your cellular energy. And when it comes to mono, that's where the fatigue piece comes from. But with a virus, destruction happens when the viral replication rate surpasses the host immunity system capacity. Basically, when the virus is in enough cells and it's replicating quickly enough to surpass the ability of your immune system to keep it in control. So basically, viruses take over. Think about your interaction with COVID. That's another virus. You know, you start feeling sick, you start feeling sick, and down the hill you go. And soon it's like all the symptoms are full-blown sick. At that point, we would say that viral replication rate has surpassed your body's ability, the immune system's ability to um to have capacity for healing. So at that point, we can see cellular destruction of the body with any virus, but the Epstein bar virus is in the human herpes family. So we would kind of think of this as like a super popular group for viruses to belong to in the world. Um, you know, the the herpes family is going to contain other viruses like HH HSV1, which is going to create like cold sores. Um, herpes zoster is shingles or chicken pox. We're familiar with that. We're gonna see that infecting B cells. We'll get to that later quite a bit in the Western world and in Southeast Asia also is type one, and we find this affecting more T cells, another type of immune cell. So you're already seeing how EBV is really powerful and it's gonna hijack the immune system. So, type two of this human herpes virus four is found in predominantly Africa. Um, you can see this is a root cause for Burkett's lymphoma. If you want to take a little Google at that route, we're gonna talk a bit about EBV's connection to um carcinomas, lymphomas. It's really, really pertinent and interesting, and I think important for anyone dealing with chronic viral issues related to Epstein Bar is to understand that, you know, we never really get rid of a virus that we've had. That's part of how the immune system works. The immune system will put your virus into dormancy. You're still going to carry it with you, but it's not active, it's not replicating, but it's truly not something that we ever purge. Once you have a virus, it's still in your body, it's just not actively replicating, actively making you sick, thanks to your wonderfully functional immune system that is able to do that. So when we have an illness where um human heartbeats four or Epstein bar virus, also call it mono, is active, we're gonna see symptoms like, you know, fatigue, brain fog can be pretty intense, muscle weakness. Kind of think of like acute times, you know, we've heard of somebody having mono, that initial infection. We can see a swollen spleen. A lot of times kids have to sit out of sports because we don't want to injure that spleen and cause a rupturing. We can also see depression in that time, you know, when the body's like so exhausted and you can't do much at all, depression can kind of slip in too. Um, we're gonna see things like gallbladder removal or struggle, acute gallbladder pain, pain on that right side of the body. We can also see it affect the liver. So liver enzymes will activate um typically as well. And we see headaches come along with this. A lot of people get a sore throat, maybe like a laryngitis experience. The key is multiples of these symptoms are there at one time. Everybody experiences a bit different, but by and large, that initial infection really has a lot of these um symptoms. You know, related conditions to Epstein Bar, which we're gonna dig in deep here, are gonna be things like Hashimoto's or thyroid dysregulation, thyroid autoimmunity. Often I find that Epstein Barr chronically is active in the body and is at the root of this. Um, EBV is also related to lupus. So a lot of times when we're working with someone who has um elevated Epstein bar or chronic Epstein bar, they also have a lupus diagnosis that they may lightly match or they may not fully have matched the diagnostic criteria, but their traditional doctor kind of had not many other options. So the lupus diagnosis, it was other things like multiple sclerosis. We'll get into kind of the mechanism, autoimmune hepatitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, um, shogun syndrome, neurological problems, recurrent vertigo and dizziness, melanomas and lymphomas, like I said, we move into that cancer family. All these things and conditions are related to Epstein Barr potentially as a root. So when we think about root cause approaches, we want to think about what's going on, what was happening in a body that it suddenly received an autoimmune thyroid diagnosis. We're gonna kind of get into how EBV can be at the root of that and many of these other conditions and um autoimmune diseases. So a really good example of a person presenting with EBV at the root is gonna be kind of multi-things going on. This person may present with thyroid dysregulation, maybe they're going hyper-hypo, maybe they have a new onset Hashimoto's diagnosis, and an extreme this person may have an autoimmune cascade. So first it was Hashimoto's, and then we're seeing there's some Shogrin syndrome diagnoses, and their rheumatologist is a little perplexed because they don't really have rheumatoid arthritis antibodies, but they're having arthritis type symptoms. They're having a little bit of rashing here and there, so they get the lupus diagnosis, and then they move on because that's not necessarily helping, and they're having neurological issues. Maybe they're having vertigo dizziness, so they hit up the ENT. They're also having some shooting pains or muscle pain, so they're off to the chiropractor or the PT. And you can see how quickly we've stacked in multiple doctors for multiple systems, and really at the end of that process for a client that we're getting at that place, all that they say their doctors have had to offer is saying, you know, it's just your autoimmune disease. You got that new autoimmune diagnosis. We got a couple things going on. Um, and it's just that that's causing all your symptoms. Just rest. We'll see it pass, you know, it'll get better. But this is just part of life with autoimmune disease. And I really want to strongly say absolutely not. EBV is likely at the root of this kind of group of issues in like our sample client, if you will. So let's talk about how Epstein Barr virus presents. There's kind of three forms. You've got that acute infectious mononucleosis, commonly called kissing disease. Um, typically it's passed in college, high school years, middle school. Um, children actually do pass it, but when they get it, we don't really notice it. They don't tend to have that extreme fatigue and exhaustion. Um, the second form is going to be chronic active EBV. So that's kind of what I'm interested in, what we see a lot of clients coming to us with is this chronic activation. Oftentimes they don't know that it's there. We're uncovering it as we're seeing their various diagnoses or their various um red, big red stop signs they've met in their traditional care pathway. Their doctors are like, you know what, we don't really know what's going on. So we're gonna see those people having chronic active EBV. And then we can also see severe chronic, acute EBV. And I've actually experienced this in my life where there's a conglomeration of really acute symptoms. It can be truly terrible, it can lead to death. Um, we're gonna see things like the enlarged spleen, maybe the spleen burst, maybe we have hepatitis, maybe we have um cancers coming together with really extreme fatigue. There can be a lot of things at one point that kind of hit a fever pitch with a severe chronic acute EBV. When we talk to these clients, we can kind of work backwards and hear the fatigue setting in. Some of the autoimmune cascade was there, maybe their tongue was a little swolly, their throat was a little sore. You know, there's usually signs leading up to that severe chronic acute EBV. And what we see in my practice most are going to be kiddos with mono or kiddos and teens, college kids with recurrent kind of episode there, or mostly adults that have that chronic active EBV going on. So let's talk about chronic, common issues or lab markers that EBV is going to affect. So, what kind of symptoms could we see? What lab markers might indicate that this is going on? Fever, hepatitis can be something that enlarged spleen. Um, at its most extreme, we can see liver failure or unexplained fatty liver, elevated liver enzymes. Um, again, at the extreme, we can see malignant lymphomas, lower natural killer cells. We can even see lower levels of B cells. A lot of times when we have a client come in who has more severe chronic acute or um just chronic EBV, we're gonna go ahead and run an immune cell panel and just look and see are there less B cells? Are there less natural killer cells? Because we'll talk about how EBV hops inside of your immune cells and actually will lys, which is basically it it replicates itself and then it like busts out of the cell kind of confetti style and sprinkles itself, new multiplied cells around the body. So we can have lower levels of those immune B cells after a while. Other things we're gonna see is um just limb swelling, you can have peripheral neuropathy issues. Um we can also see a condition called, which conditions drive me insane because we literally have a word for everything now, but um pancitopenia, I think is how you pronounce it. We're just gonna see the number of red and white blood cells and platelets in the blood much lower, all three of them together, kind of a bone marrow-mediated issue, but that can be more some more of those like really severe chronic acute EBV symptom loads. So, how does EBV do all of this stuff that I'm saying that it does? We're gonna kind of walk through that. So, the key with us thinking through EBV processes is to remember that a virus is not really a living being, it has to attach to something that is living to give it energy. Um, it's kind of parasitic in that way, right? Like it needs a home, it needs a host, and EBV is gonna affect your immune cells. Specifically in the Western world in America, are B cells, which are a type of immune cell. And EBV gets inside of that B cell or any cell that it's chosen to be inside of, predominantly they're gonna be immune cells, and they use that cell's energy to replicate. So viruses want to replicate. They want to have more, more, more, more, more, more, more of themselves. Um, and that is really what's going on when EBV infection takes place. So, how do people become infected initially? We talked about the mononucleosis, that infectious phase, you know, the upper part of the throat, mouth, larynx, voice box, pharynx, endothelial cells. That is where we're gonna see the EBV cells hanging initially. They're gonna move into the blood and lymphatic cells, they're gonna hang out in the thymus, lymph nodes, like they're trying to get around, right? They're primarily in our saliva. So all of those areas do have saliva involved. Um, we can transfer EBV through blood transfusions, but most often we're just getting it from someone else's saliva. It's just moving that way. So it's called kissing disease, also known as glandular fever, but really because of that, you know, you kiss somebody, you swap saliva, and there we go. So EBV does prefer to infect lymphocytes, which are a type of immune cell, like the B cells, like the epithelial cells, often in the tonsils. So again, yes, EBV can even cause tonsillitis, which is wild. Um, and sometimes in kids, when we're seeing like kind of an acute tonsil presentation, this is one place that I'm gonna go and wonder is there EBV at play in this? Usually it's a combo of EBV, strep, one or the other more things, but um can totally affect the tonsils. Now, when we're infected, we do shed and we're transmitting it via saliva. So a lot of questions they get are around like, am I going to pass this to my children? Am I going to pass this to my spouse? What does transmission look like? Well, big disclaimer, I want you to know that 90 to 95 percent and stats are pretty consistent, really pushing that 94 to 95 percent infection rate in Americans. So most people have been exposed. So when it comes to your spouse, pretty good odds that they've already been exposed. No biggie, right? When it comes to your children, they may not have been exposed yet, but they will be exposed in their lifetime. The odds are pretty good up there at that 90 to 95 percent infection rate. So oral cells can infect upwards of 365 days, so that your oral cells, saliva can do that. Now, saliva, as um the passing agent, really those EBV cells drop off quite a bit after 180 days. But seriously, like I'm pretty sure that's six months, that's quite a long time that saliva can transmit mono. And then as far as the blood goes, EBV is gonna drop in the blood after 120 days. So it's still pretty, pretty good length of time. You can kind of see how it's super easy to contract it via kissing. And when we're talking about an initial exposure, someone's initial mononucleosis exposure, five to six weeks after that, the infection severity typically will be greatly decreasing. Now, this all depends on the immune cell health and function of the host, right? Because EVB is gonna go implant in those B cells, enough kappa beta cells for my nerds in the audience, T cells and natural killer cells, and prioritizing those B cells. That's totally EVB's favorite. And then after several weeks, if the immune system is able to like kick that back, you're gonna see dropping after five or six weeks of symptom load. But a lot of times people have these chronic infections. So infection is not um typically noticed in kids. Like I said, they don't tend to get the um symptom load that adults do or even teens. Um, the big thing here to think about is like the immune system doesn't actually prevent EBV from coming into the body. That's really not how the immune system is entirely designed to work, from what we know. Um, you're gonna be exposed, it's what happens in the immune system once the virus is into the body, right? If the virus is able to get into this B cells, immune cells, and create a lot of replication, or if the immune system is strong and it quickly sooner than later puts a stop to it. So that's kind of an explanation of that acute infectious phase. Can we pass it with the acute? You're gonna have a lot more of the sore throat, pharyngitis, you're gonna have cervical lymph node enlargement. You can have neck pain, right? Because those lymph nodes can push on your neck. Um, they can push on nerves in your neck. That's a huge thing we'll kind of talk through when we talk through the migraine headache connection is that cervical lymph node enlargement. Um we can also have the fever, that acute time, extreme fatigue. Some people, kiddos, struggle with vomiting during that time. The biggest thing that I hear, or I'll sometimes ask, you know, like a teen with mono is gonna say, I feel like a bus hit me. Like I just feel run over. If I'm working with an adult who has this cascade of other diagnoses or symptoms, and they creep out, I just feel like a bus ran me over. I just feel like you're hit by a truck a lot. That is classic EBV for me. So again, we can remember those like extreme symptoms of the acute infection, but like really we're looking at sore throat, um, the fever, the exhaustion, muscle pains, mygias, that kind of thing. Now, when it does persist, remember we can see the ruptured spleen. Puffy eyelids in a chronic person is big. Like, I will see a client for the first time. I typically do my clarity calls on the phone. And sometimes in intake calls, I will see them for the first time and be like, dang, clear. Puffy eyelids, swollen throat, um, puffy throat area. Sometimes when the throat is swollen, even interiorly, you can have related troubles with breathing. Sometimes this client will um it look a bit jaundice. We can have at its worse all the way to jaundice. We can have seizures, we can have encephalitis. So there's gonna be a lot of itis when it comes to the EBV. I want you to kind of like latch on to that. Acute hepatitis is another one. Um, headaches and headaches and encephalitis, right? Like encephalitis would be not the same as a headache, but you're having local discomfort in the head swelling. We see rashes. So some of my really severe cases, particularly in adults who have recurrent rashes with like a little eczema, EBV is driving that. Anemia can develop. Um, in anybody with chronic EBV, we can see a hypersensitivity to bug bites where there's like a lot of swelling. And then with EBV, if it's active, whether it's a chronic reactivation or it's that initial mono, we're gonna have decreased appetite. So sometimes in teens, we can even see like a big weight loss really quickly that's aggressive, and that can be EBV. So we talked about this, this acute infection, but the thing I really see the most that I feel like people need to learn about the most is reactivation. It's possible. You can reactivate mono, you can reactivate EBV. Those of you who have experienced that or experienced chronic fatigue, you know that it ebbs and flows. Sometimes you're good, sometimes things are harder. We'll get into two, like food reactions and histamine issues can be EBV at play. Same idea. That cycling where we feel better sometimes, then we really struggle. Other times, for me, those hard times are signaling me to say, sounds like a little reactivation of a chronic issue. Is it EBV reactivation? Things like triggering events. We've talked through those, right? Like stressors. So that can be everything from divorce to a loss of a family member, death, um, college, any any kind of like big change, you know, like something that's big, a big sickness. So we're really seeing in a lot of research that's pouring out after you know the more acute COVID season that COVID can actually reactivate Epstein Bar virus. We see that with a lot of. Other um sicknesses too. Vaccines can reactivate Epstein Bar and other infections. Um, other stresses like moving, job loss, antibiotics can even cause a reactivation of Epstein Bar. And then pregnancy can cause a reactivation. Again, hormone changes with Epstein Bar are huge. You know, I teach that pregnancy is a triggering event for immune dysregulation, but when it comes to Epstein Bar, everything from puberty to menopause, postpartum, that perimenopause season, those can all be triggering events. And I really stress a lot to my clients. In those seasons, we want to manage stress really well. Now, with puberty, we also have the added problem, if you will, of the puberty diet, right? Like to some degree, there's a lot of candy, there's a lot of pizza, there's a lot of leaning on that standard American diet trash. And that's going to lower the immune system function, make their bodies just like ripe for an EBV infection. And they can kind of ebb and flow. If you've got a teen that like just struggles so much with tiredness through their teen years, we want to think about EBV and if that's reactivating and ebbing. Now, mainly stressors can cause issue too. So we think about college, you know, EBV is the second top college infection. Secondary to respiratory infections, which I'm gonna be real clear that I am for certain that that's related to mold, but we'll talk about that on mold episode week. But EBV is a really high um rate in colleges because of, you know, we're living close together. There's a lot of saliva interchange, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot going on. There's several triggering events that can create that reactivation. When we have the chronic activation, we're gonna see more of those chronic type symptoms, something that consistently continues headaches, um, neck pain, weakness, achy legs, uh, my gallbladder hurts a lot, my right side's a little achy, maybe under my left rib is a little tender here and there. Fatigue is a huge one. Depression, again. So thinking about my teens, but also my postpartum moms. Like we want to think about the body as a whole. If mood stuff shifts, depression shows up, we're experiencing fatigue. I want you to think EBV. There's a low-grade fever that often comes with EBV too. Then we have that limb swelling that I mentioned. And then, you know, like sometimes people get sick and they'll say, I got sick, and it took me a month or longer to kind of like recover. For me, that again is a question of like, is this a chronic reactivation of EBV or were they truly sick with something else? I want to dig into that. So again, EBV, when it's chronic, is using your cells to allow them to replicate. Now, eBV also makes mRNA, and so that gets inside of your cell and will actually quiet the infected cell's ability to kill itself, which is what an infected cell should do. When it becomes infected, it's gonna kill itself. It can also send out signals to rescue immune cells, but that mRNA actually limits the cell's ability to do that. And then it's gonna inhibit two types of cells that are any viral. So the the micro RNA is gonna inhibit the two antiviral cells coming out to help clean that up. So essentially, you're seeing EBV is like hijacking all the mechanisms in the immune system that should protect the body from being overtaken by EBV. Now, the immune modification will keep the B cell, right? So the B cell is no longer suiciding itself once it's infected. EBV's in there, it's in charge. And um, the B cell now it's kind of driven by the EBV. We're kind of entering, like, I don't know, gaming mode with these cells. So EBV is driving the B cell, it's gonna try to move it into blood circulation, it's going to be um multiplying itself inside of the cell. We call this lysing, and then it's gonna bust out of the cell. It will explode. I call it confettiing. So you've got this B cell that's of your body. EBV got inside, it's driving it around in the bloodstream, it's copying itself over and over again inside of your cell. And when there's enough copies, it will lice or confetti out of the cell, bust up that B cell. And now you have more EBV cells all over the body. And this kind of creates that like a feeling of I'm being taken down. Like that's kind of what's happening at a cellular level. And with EBV in the B cells, EBV can even evade immune cells that are just out patrolling. Your immune system is beautifully designed, it has many layers of protection and has many different ways that it patrols and keeps pathogens at bay or keeps them out. But because EBV is kind of stealthy and it can evade and has these little patterns that trick those good immune processes that were designed to keep you healthy, we can see EBV taking over pretty quickly in an immune compromised person. And again, this mRNA is just keeping rescue cells from responding. So even if your immune system wants to, once we've got that EBV in our B cells and they're really replicating quickly, they're just they're dysregulating the immune system in so many ways that the immune system can't get on top of it. And that's when we see that chronic EBV come out. So um when EBV has gone chronic, we know that it does a lot of things. So this is really where I'm interested, and I find that EBV is a root cause. We're just gonna kind of go through some connected issues. When it's chronic, it's gonna contribute to autoimmune activation, cancers, and allergic type responses. So let's kind of walk through that first. Chronic EBV activation and autoimmune disease is huge. The first one that is so, so common is um how EBV will hide in the thyroid tissue. EBV loves to get inside of an organ as well and hang out there, replicate, live, function off those organ cells, and just have a happy little life. Well, it has an affinity for several organs, liver, spleen, thyroid's a big one. And when it gets in the thyroid, it dysregulates how the thyroid functions. And we see thyroid autoimmunity start. So if I have a client who comes in and says, I have Hashimoto's or I'm starting to have graves, the thyroid's kind of like jumping back and forth. My first thought is let's see what the EBV is doing here. Um, multiple sclerosis has a big link to EBV. When we have a leaky gut or a leaky brain, which is a whole other topic, but essentially food is not staying in the gut. It's allowed to get into the bloodstream, and things in the bloodstream are not staying out of the brain because there's been a breach in the blood brain barrier, um, just some circulating bladder on the brain that allows only things into the brain that belong. But sometimes this can become um dysfunctional and we have a leaky brain. And so the EBV cells will get into the brain, they begin to form lesions on the central nervous system, could be spinal cord, could be the brain, right? The brain is part of the central nervous system, and we begin to have those lesions that are typical of multiple sclerosis. So when I hear that a client has an MS diagnosis and they ebb and flow and they're not always progressing in a negative manner, maybe diet really helps them a good bit. Or to be honest, if you have MS and you have lesions, I would there's just so there's just a myriad of research around EBV and MS. I would definitely investigate your EBV titers and go down that journey because you can have MS symptoms without having the lesions. You can have lesions without having an MS diagnosis yet. And it's really tied up with EBV. So other autoimmune or disease issues we see Parkinson's is um in the research related to EBV. Shedgren syndrome is a big one. Systemic lupus, we talked about that a little bit, and EBV is triggering lupus in this molecular mimicry of associated antigens, and then the immune system gets more confused, and you have that lupus presentation. Rheumatoid arthritis, that's another one. Arthritis, body pain, um muscle pain symptoms can pop up, and we can either have antibodies again through that molecular mimicry, um, antigen piece, or you can just have the pain, atherosclerosis, celiac can be triggered or can be related to um EBV, mixed connective tissue disorder is something else that we see, autoimmune hepatitis. We talked through that. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis can also be triggered or can masquerade um for EBV. Now, other things that develop over time from viruses, type 1 diabetes. We're seeing more research about um viruses triggering that. I even have some kid clients in the same house were diagnosed at the same time in the same season after sickness. It's way more common than you think. And I think we really need to start thinking about strong immune systems in our children to help mediate infections that can turn on autoimmunity. Scleroderma, glom. I'm the best pronouncer and truly the worst pronouncer. Um, glom glomular nephritis. Okay, basically, it's a group of kidney diseases that are going to damage the glomular lyre. These are just tiny filter units in your kidneys. The damage can be caused by the inflammation of these little filters inside your kidneys or the small blood vessels in the kidneys can cause some immune system attack to begin, right? So, like there's some dysregulation in the kidney. Is it EBV hanging out in the kidney? We don't have super clear mechanism stuff at play, but we see that with other organs, right? EBV will get in the thyroid tissue and that begins the autoimmune process. Essentially the same thing's happening here in the kidney. So all of these things really can can be stemming from EBV. Something that I look for is when EBV is prompting a cascade of autoimmune disease, or someone started out with one autoimmune disease and quickly developed several others. That was my story. A lot of times EBV is at that root. And in that instance, we need to respond with more urgency, right? Doctors are trained to handle acute problems that have a prescribed standard of care, a very clear pathway for them to treat. With ABV, there's not really a clear pathway. Antivirals don't work on ABV. Um, when it comes to autoimmune processes in traditional medicine, there's a lot of we don't know why, how, we're not really sure what's going on. So you're not really going to get any kind of um acute support. But in my opinion, when we see this cascade of autoimmune disease, we have to dig and really look for what is starting this. And a lot of times it's EBV. And EBV, again, it can settle in the organ and begin that autoimmune process. So when you have multiple autoimmune happening at one time and kind of showing up out of nowhere, to me, that says EBV is starting to settle in many organs. Oftentimes the thyroid is the lead organ, oftentimes this happens postpartum. So just some kind of things. I think as you listen to this, if this is something you're experiencing, it will be familiar. But there are so many mechanisms and ways that EBV interacts with our body. It's really important to hear all the parts and let yourself kind of hear each little part, maybe that is reflected or connects with you. Chronic EBV and cancers. Let's talk about this. There is a connection. There's a huge connection with Burkett's lymphoma in Africa. There are like whole books published all about this, it being a very clear route. EBD is well documented to cause cancers and tumors. We find EBV cells inside of tumors and cancers. So just to list out some that have been shown in the research to be connected to EBV, you've got Hodgkin's lymphoma, cutaneous lymphoma, Burgett's lymphoma, pediatric Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, stomach cancers, nasopharyngia carcinoma is a huge one that we see tons of EBV research connected to stomach cancer, papillary thyroid carcinoma, malignant lymphoma of the thyroid, angioaminoblastic T cell lymphoma. And the last thing that we see a lot of in research is a smooth muscle tumor called leomyosarcoma. In clinical practice, when I have somebody who's had chronic EBV issues, I also see benign tumor growth. I have a client that had a very large tumor removed from her uterus larger than a baby. Um, that was likely caused by EBV. I have lots of clients who have tumor issues or growth issues. And when we address the EBV, we see those received. So there's definitely something going on here, right? And digging more into the cancer connection with colon and breast cancer, for example, 52% of 44 colon cancer sampled in one study contain DNA fragments of EBV compared to zero zero percent of other viruses found in the same sample. So we're looking at colon cancer samples and we're finding that 52% of them have EBV cells inside, whereas there's no other virus inside of that colon cancer sample. Fascinating, right? We're gonna kind of dive into a little GI stuff, but when EBV is elevated, when when ulcerative colitis is present or issues are persistent and elevated, that increases our colorectal cancer risk. When it comes to breast cancer, EBV has also been found in invasive breast carcinomas. So at this point, we really can't ignore the role of EBV in perpetuating cancers. But for me, I really want to go back to what's going on with that. We have major immune challenges in America. We have major lack of healthy body support in America that's gonna weaken an immune system. And we're gonna kind of get to some conclusions later on, but I kind of want you just to think and hear that EBV really can lay a perfect environment for cancer and tumor growth, can perpetuate it, can be inside of it. You know, these things are connected. Next, fatigue. Chronic fatigue. If you suffer with chronic fatigue, if you suffer with fibromyalgia, if you've been diagnosed with CFS, I want you to know that chronic fatigue syndrome used to be called chronic EBV syndrome. So now when we fail to like fully recover from that initial infection, what's going on is that that fatigue piece is setting in and hanging. So for me, after I had my second boy and I had mono, which thinking back, maybe I had it in college. Um, but that reactivation after I had him, I just really took like a year and a half to recover and still didn't recover great, didn't have long-lasting energy all day. Um, my fatigue would be present. I would occasionally get like fatigue. Some of my clients I see are bedridden at times, comes out of nowhere, totally bedridden, can't do much. Um, sore throat will ebb and flow, muscle aches or headaches. You want to think EBV when you're seeing these things. Chronic fatigue, you want to think EBV. It's so closely tied. We see it over and over again, and it can be solved. So, next issue. We talked about how there's lymph swelling a lot of times in the throat area, right? So we want to kind of think through this process of like lymphedema issues in the throat, cervical lymph node enlargement. Okay, so what is that gonna do? If you have lymph node enlargement in your in your cervical spine, we're gonna have occipital lobe pain. So the base of your skull experiencing occipital lob pain, or maybe some people identify more with um a migraine that's going down the back of my neck and really hurting at the base of my skull. That can be again part of that kind of combo of the um limb swelling in the neck, right? It's very, very common. And we're gonna see things like headaches perpetuating at its worst. People have migraines. Um, sometimes that pain goes from the neck down past the shoulder blade, and we see upper back pain. But truly it's the lymph piece that is causing the pain, the headaches, the migraines, the occipital lobe pain, vertigo, and dizziness can come into play too. It can affect the inner ear, it can affect nerves that are running through there. Like I said, when I meet clients for the first time, sometimes we'll see a swollen neck, even where I can see lymph swelling or the tissue itself is puffy. Puffiness is huge with EBV. And when we start addressing it with our pathogen-specific immune therapy process, often like the first time I meet with somebody, I'm like, wow, I can tell you started your immune therapy because your eyes are not swollen anymore and your throat has basically like uninflamed. I can see your tissue there as opposed to seeing just puff. So these kind of deals when it comes to migraines, neck pain, are often connected to EBV. Moving into GI issues. So EBV chronically can trigger GI infections. We want to think about how if we've got one thing tricking the immune system, dysregulating, then we can have other infections coming through. There's lots of documentation and studies of EBV activating H. pylori. So an upper GI infection where you kind of have like recurrent heartburn, you can have reflux and digestion, it kind of shows up differently for people, but it's definitely in that stomach upper esophagus area. Strep can be a recurrent infection at the root of SIBO. If you've had recurrent small intestine bacterial overgrowth, EBB can be there driving that reactivation. GERD, we've seen the research as well, ABV can trigger that. And if symptom load is at peak stress, right? So say you have H. pylori ebb and flow and sometimes you're good. But when you get stressed, really bad. Same with that bloating, that SIBO experience. Things can be okay sometimes, but when stress comes on, your GI symptoms get worse. We want to think about EBV. Other illnesses that chronic EBV affect. EBV can cause ulcerative colitis, we talked about that, but it can also cause Crohn's and IBD. Again, if symptom load of these conditions are heaviest at peak stress, we want to consider EBV. EBV can also affect oral genital ulcers, cold sores. For me, the research shows that EBV will activate these. For me, I'm seeing that the immune system is so dysregulated by EBV that these other infections are allowed to kind of persist and reactivate. Acute gallbladder inflammation is another related um effect of EBV. Now it can be acute where you are like having major pain, you gotta go to the hospital, we gotta get this thing out. Or it may not be really super well explained. But you can have a gallbladder that has no stones, but you're having inflammation, you're having pain, and they want to take it out. Often EBV is at the root of that. Gillian Barr syndrome. So another condition that's related in the research to EBV. Ocular diseases like pink eye, dry eye, mcatosis polaris, those little bumpies we get on the back of our arms sometimes that can be related to a vitamin A deficiency can also be related to EBV. Back to the itises, retinitis when it comes to the eye. Um, psoriasis can have a connection to EBV. Psoriasis is one of those things, man, that ebbs and flows with the immune system, right? When you're well, psoriasis goes away. When you're not, psoriasis comes back. For some people, it's the opposite. When you're sick, the psoriasis shows up. When you're well, psoriasis goes away. It can be connected to EBB. And then last oddity would be polymyocytosis, which is chronic inflammation of your muscles. I don't know that anybody really ever gets this diagnosis because we all just kind of like doctor ourselves, right? Like if you need to go to the chiropractor, if you need massages on the regular, if you're always stretching. I think about when I had EBV initially, I would just like sit in a chair and like regularly reposition myself, regularly stretching, regularly just like shifting and pulling my body. And my muscles were just so chronically achy and inflamed after I addressed my EBB. Zero issue there. Now, getting into EBV and food reactions, kind of crossing over from some of that GI stuff, depending on the antibodies that you have present in your testing for EBV, which we'll talk about and unpack here in a minute, there can be cross-reactions with IgG responses from foods. So remember, IgG is that part of the immune system that's building an army against something. So we can have IgG antibodies against a long-term infection, you can have it against various foods. But with EBV in the picture, you can kind of have like this false negative when you have food testing. So, or false positive, I'm sorry, you can have a false positive when you do IgG food testing. So you may have more. More um ebbing and flowing of foods. A lot of times clients will say, you know, there's some foods I can do sometimes, and then other times I can't do them. Or I can do like I can eat this food for four or five days, and like on the sixth day I'm gonna have an issue. So high histamine we can see be related to EBV in this way. Common cross-reacting foods with EBV. Let's talk through these. Tree nuts are a big one. Cashew, almond, Brazil nut, peanut is another one. If you used to be able to do nuts and then you couldn't, ding ding ding. Egg white is a big one. Um, squid, um, shrimp, some seafoods, imitation crab, seaweed, anything that's gonna be higher in iodine can interact with EBV sometimes. Um, so if you feel like you had an onset of shellfish, fish-related issues, it could be that. Other foods that can be cross reactors or seaweeds, banana, ginger, which is actually really helpful against EBV, but it can kind of present as a reaction when you use ginger, it can actually be creating some die-off. Um, mustard seed, carrot, um, oranges, zucchini is a common one, pineapple. So we can see in the research that these foods cross-react with certain antibodies. They're an interesting chart that will show if you have the particular group of these antibodies, then you're probably gonna have food reactions with these foods. But this is kind of a summation of a lot of things. Now, this all probably feels overwhelming at this point. I want to say two things. EBV was a chronic, debilitating health issue for me. I am better. I am fully better, I'm hanging better, I have more energy than I've ever had in my life. Like, there is hope and there are answers to addressing EBV. It is not you have EBV, you're having cancer, you're gonna have chronic fatigue forever. No, it's not. So let's kind of talk about like what do we do? Now that we're overwhelmed about it, what do we do? How do we test for EBV? First thing I want to say is labs are great. You need an experienced practitioner ordering and interpreting. I have seen so many different titers come from general practitioners that just order like a monopanel, depending on your lab, that can be different things. The panel that we run is 10 parts. There are five different things we're looking at, and we're looking at IgG and IgM antibodies for each of the parts. Now, standard labs are really interesting and even vary by country. In the US, our doctor's looking for an acute infection because that's what they have protocols and ability to kind of sort of treat, more diagnose. There's not much treatment plan. You might get symptom with like the Tylenol, like I said, well wishes and a little rest prescription, but like antivirals don't really work against EBB. Other countries are gonna look at wider um ranges, they're gonna look at different um protein antigens. You're gonna get more info, but the testing we use is kind of a conglomerate of what you're able to get internationally here in America. It's much more thorough. And when it comes to testing, because of EBB's ability to invade the immune system and get in there and lice or shed or confetti themselves, you know, your labs can look like a past infection when it's actually a long-term latent infection. Learning to read each of these various parts we're about to get into is really important because you can have misdiagnoses on past infections. Um, sometimes doctors will see the early antigen be negative, and that's the end of the conversation. But truly, early antigen is going to be present when you have infectious mononucleosis the first time, but you can have a grouping, a pattern of the antibodies when you have reactivation. So you want to find somebody who understands the idea of reactivated EBV, and you want to do the widest panel that you can. Um, and it's really important to think too about how EBV cells work, right? They like to get into an organ, they like to make a home there. So, like with the thyroid, EBV is gonna go make a home there, you're gonna see secondary signs of like Hashimoto, some thyroid autoimmunity starting, for example. We have to take into account symptoms and testing always. Because EBV gets into the immune system and changes how it functions, we don't always have a strong immune response to have really great testing. I've had clients before who on paper are such clear EBV cases. We do their titers and their immune system, their immunoglobulins overall are very low, indicating an immune system that's just like extremely tired. That immune system cannot mount a response against the EBV to give me labs that add up and say, hey, this person has a reactivation. So there's definitely nuance here. You want the whitest testing, you want somebody who knows how to interpret. Touching on like maybe the top five or so um antibodies, you're looking at CVA, IgM antibodies. Remember with the immune system, IgGs are that army that builds over time. We think about them as the IgG ground troops. You're gonna get a lot of them to deal with something that's there for a long time. We have IgMs, which are kind of like the Marines. They're there for acute situations, and we're kind of looking at a mix of those when it comes to EBV. So EBNA, IgM, when it's positive by itself, it will tell you that you have a current reactivation with VCA, IgG, so back to that gut army side. This is gonna stay with a person throughout life. It's not gonna show active status by itself. If it's combined with an early antigen IgG, it could show an active activation. But this is gonna be something that a lot of times doctors may errantly look at and say, oh, it's really high, but that's old. Yeah, it can indicate that you've had the infection before it's been a long time ago, but that's not the end of the story. We have to look at multiple pieces here. So eBNA IgG is going to indicate a past infection only, unless that E early antigen IgG or EBNA IgM are also positive. And then again, you've got EA IgGs. This is early antigen IgG. This is the most important marker for a current or chronic reactivation. And remember, EBV can have and flow. You can have a chronic activation this week on lamps and next week, it'd be pretty chill, but you're still showing symptoms. So I need to assess always both symptoms and testing. Very, very important. Now back to the overwhelm about all this. Sometimes clients say to me, like, okay, whatever. Like, I have ABV, I'm just gonna have my family like avoid it, or I learned about it, I'm gonna avoid it. No, you won't avoid it, right? We go back to 90 to 95 percent of Americans have ABV exposure, they have those elevated BCA, IgG antibodies that show they've had it before. We know that the virus over time, virus in general, creates tissue damage to brain, nerves, skin, lung, organs. So anytime we're seeing a body kind of like declining, again, I'm wondering, hmm, what's chronically here causing issue? Anytime I see a ton of mucus, I'm thinking viruses. Anytime I'm seeing cancers at this point of the liver on somebody's health history, stomach cancer, lymphoma, cervical cancer, tumor removal, um any tumors in the reproductive area, neck and throat cancer, leukemias, thyroid nodules, cervical cancer. I'm curious. I want to look into viral roots for that. Again, viruses are roots for autoimmune diseases. So here, type 1 diabetes. I want to consider viruses as roots for rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, sugarins. Those are common with ABV. There are other conditions too. I want you to kind of think through a little bit. We kind of talked through like Gillian bars related, Bell's palsy can be related. We can have nerve damage. Um, we see that a lot too with Lyme, which we'll talk about when we get there, and chronic fatigue syndrome, right? Hands is something I want you to think about with EBV. Pediatric acute neuropsychiatric disorder, and it can be rooted in all sorts of pathogens. EBV is one of those. If we have destruction, tissue damage of the central nervous system or brain, we can have acute neuropsychiatric issues. Now, with EBV, I most commonly see as leaning more towards the depressed side of things, like extreme depression, extreme fatigue, those sort of things. But EBV is often wound up inside of a PANS diagnosis, whether it be for a child or an adult. And when we go to teasing apart that PANS diagnosis, EBV is one of those infections that has shown through while the immune system is dysregulated. So something else to think about is EBV can activate other pathogens. Long COVID is often EBV. Reactivated that EBV and it hangs longer. Studies are showing that COVID can reactivate EBV, they can exist together alongside one another, or COVID can stimulate EBV to hang longer. The sky's the limit when it comes to pathogens interacting with the immune system. So if you've got EBV, you want to be kind of vigilant about your self-care because EBV can activate herpes spam. Sometimes people are like, yeah, I get cold sores during when I had EBV, or I got strep throat at the same time. A lot of times it's not just one thing, or chronic EBV makes you much more sensitive to infections reactivating and you kind of having ongoing sickness issues or being sensitive to sicknesses. So EBV is going to activate other pathogens. How you take care of yourself really matters. If you've had EBV before and you feel it creeping in, I really want you to take some time to learn what your triggers are. I want you to start observing. I want to give you eyes to see what can cause that. And if you've had it ebbing and flowing for years, we really want to dive into a clarity call and talk about healing EBV through immune modulation, recalculating that immune system so it's able to address the EBV. There are many approaches to dealing with it. Most of them are using antiviral herbs and kind of beating back the viral load of the body. For me, that never worked, that never resolved it permanently, that never really gave my body staying power. My immune system was still dysregulated, other infections still broke through. EBV may have been lessened, but it really wasn't until I worked through an immune therapy process that modulated how my immune system handled the EBV. It retrained it to identify EBV. Instead of it ignoring it, that I saw great healing progress that stuck. So with taking care of yourself, we want to think about hormonal change seasons. Those are big seasons where you've got to buckle down on that self-care. You got to rest. You have to preemptively make sure that you're taking care of yourself. So we're not going to have a reactivation. When you're in a season of taking immune medications or steroids or immune suppressants for various reasons, there's plenty of medications. We can actually create an EBV reactivation because we're interacting with that immune system. Vaccination, same thing. If I was going to have to get travel vaccinations at this point in my life, I might do it because I like to go places, but I would take such vigilant care of myself because I know that vaccinations interact with the immune system and they have the ability to reactivate EBV. EMF radiation is shown in many studies to allow for EBV reactivation. Really important to think through. Stressors in life, we talked about those. Oxidative stress, and I kind of throw this together with mold exposure, biotoxin illness, major toxic exposures, everything from like I started working at a car painting company and I started to get more sick. Hey, that's toxic exposure, right? That you're not used to or that's new to you. I moved into a moldy apartment. That's a lot of toxic waste, mold cells, mycotoxins that your body needs to clear out. Even oxidative stress just from like ongoing inflammation, oxidative stress from a poor diet. You're pounding that standard American diet, eating inflammatory oils, and lots of other junk for us, chemical laden foods, we can have that oxidative stress that's gonna really bring the immune system down, weaken the body, and allow for an EBV reactivation. Nutrient deficiencies can set the stage. Anytime we alter stress, sleep, diet, physical activity, we have a lack of sun. A lot of times my EBV people, their first spring after addressing EBV, they will say, I've never had an early spring like this. Literally every spring, I'm like February, March, April, I'm super sick until the sun comes out. Once I've got the sun, once I'm outside, I'm doing better. Or I like crave a trip south during the winter. If I don't get it, I struggle with sickness, lack of sun can really affect the body's ability to deal with EBV. We talk through toxic exposures. I want you to think about everything from dirty water in your house, you're not filtering, to you, you're working in a new factory and there's lots of um chemical exposure to you moved in next to a factory and there's lots of exhaust or fumes to you live in a town where there's been a chemical spill. All of these toxic exposure things can can limit um the immune system's function as the body tries to deal with that toxicity. Too much change is another big thing. If you're dealing with a lot of good, bad, stressful, not stressful change, that can trigger the immune system again. We can it begin those issues. So remember, a healthy, balanced immune system is gonna keep the infection dormant. If you've had EBV before, doing that impeccable self-care anytime you're sick, anytime you're exposed to mold, those things are gonna help you prevent reactivation. But think about it this way too. If the overwhelm is setting in, 90 to 95% of the country is infected with EBV. We're carrying it around. Look around. Is 90 to 95% of the country functionally unhealthy where they're like bedbound, experiencing all these symptoms? No. It's very, very possible for a body with a balanced immune system to keep that infection dormant. Sometimes, though, people really struggle with getting out of an EBV reactivation phase for various lifestyle factors. So things that we can do to help EBV to beat it back. We're gonna look at herbs, things like turmeric, licorice, frankincense. I used to use a drop of frankincense on my tongue when I was sick initially, and like within a minute, my tongue blisters would go down, my mouth would stop swelling, my throat would stop hurting. It was crazy how helpful. Chinese school to skull cap. Chinese skull cap or scutelleria is a great herb that can be really helpful. Reishi mushroom, again, immunomodulating, but really helpful against EBV in the research. Maybe it's something you don't want to use if you're fungal or mold sensitive, but can be really helpful. Ginger is huge. Berberin, wonderful multi-purpose herb that can affect blood sugar. It goes head to head with metformin in studies. It can do so many great things for your gut bacteria. It also has been shown in the research to really affect EBV. Other less strong players, but still valid: lemon balm, echinacea, stinging nettle, dandelion. I love to get all of these through teas. And then antioxidants. The more antioxidants we have on board, the more the body is gonna be able to kind of deal. So foods like green tea, decaf green tea, I say it all the time. Grab that organic box of green tea from the grocery, have yourself a cup every day, and you're gonna give yourself such a good dose of antioxidants to help balance that EBV load and really support the immune system. Sulforophane comes from cruciferous family vegetables, most concentrated in broccoli sprouts, really, really great food support. Resveratrol is part of red grapes. So that's another place where we can get some more nutrients to really help with the body. Resveratrol also comes supplementally. It can be a great help. But when we're sticking to food, coconut oil, garlic is very antiviral. Spirulina, brown seaweeds, and ginger are all going to be things that are really helpful. Now we kind of talked again about avoiding activators, stresses, toxins, but I want you to think about methylation. If you are familiar with methylation and you know you have poor methylation or you have MTHFR differences, supporting methylation can even help to push back um EBV viral load. So taking things like folate over folic acid, if that's an issue for you, eating plenty of greens, those sort of things can be helpful. When it comes to nutrients, we want to think about selenium. Huge power of selenium to beat back that viral load. So Brazil nuts can be great, supplemental selenium, but selenium is just an antioxidant, right? So we're back in that antioxidant place. Vitamins E, C, D, and A can help. They can also harm. If we have inadequate levels of those, EBV is going to make a happy home in your body. Lysine is an amino acid that we see having great antiviral effects against EBV. So that can be really helpful. Sometimes bringing that in supplemental form, always work with a practitioner and be a little aggressive. So just think about if you're starting to have maybe some response to some of these things. Is it really that the thing is the problem? The lysine is with your body doesn't do well with lysine. Or is it that lysine is starting to hit take care of that viral load and you're just feeling yucky because the body's cleaning out that viral load? Something to think about. Zinc is really helpful. Probiotics and the bifido family, especially probiotic in general, increasing if you tolerate them is really helpful because that's just going to fortify your immune system in so many ways. The biggest thing that I have found helpful and what makes our practice have such good success, completely resolving EBV reactivations, is modulating the immune system. That part of addressing the host, addressing the body where the EBV is reactivating is super important. Other supports, if you're having mitochondrial fatigue issues, you want to think about vitamin D3, vitamin CIVs are shown in the literature to be really helpful. Cocin is huge for supporting energy. We always want to manage and mitigate stress. Always want to manage and mitigate radiation, EMFs, exposure to those sort of things, because those can encourage EBV reactivation. We want to eliminate toxic factors, but we also want to eliminate toxic relationships, people, anything that's stressful in your body, like setting boundaries is awesome for EBV. Resting is awesome for EBV. We want to also reduce toxic exposure through our foods. So eating more organic, exploring even just eating organic for the dirty dozen can really help lower your glyphosate load, your chemical exposure through food. And then you're going to get a higher quality food, a more nutrient-dense food when you're eating organic, which gives your body more nutrients, more antioxidants to run the processes it needs to run to keep that EBV in control. Now, you can totally eat your way out of EBV. You can beat it back with supplements, you can rest. But I'm telling you, that immune modulation piece is so important in our process of using and integrating a pathogen-specific. So it's EBV-specific immune therapy process is the game changer when it comes to EBV because of the way that we learned EBV works and it gets in that immune system and is sneaky and changes how the immune system is able to support it. There are plenty of other supports that we walk our clients through because when you're dealing with this chronic viral infection that comes back over and over again, you've really got to address both the viral load and the body that is allowing it to persist, right? We look at toxin load in the home, we look at food sourcing, we look at clean air and water, we eliminate mold exposures, we really work on those EMF levels. We encourage internet being turned off at night because we can help to support that load on the body at every turn. And we really want to do that because EVV stinks. It is strong, it is powerful, it reactivates. And to break that cycle and really get immune modulation, we've got to look everywhere. We've got to manage those triggering events, we got to mitigate stress. We're teaching our clients all kinds of stress mitigation. We're sleeping well, we're always working on detoxing through healthy life habits of limiting toxic exposures and supporting the body in its normal detox pathways. Because when you have viral pathogens and they're lysing and doing that confetti all over the body, and then they're dying and they're being cleaned out, you have a lot of waste. Another big thing that you can do to support your body is so. Basic, but regulating your blood sugar and eliminating any big challenges to the body. The big thing I want you to remember is that EBV is around, it can chronically reactivate, and that status of chronic reactivation can be at the root of so many autoimmune diseases, of so many various cancers, of so many cascade immune-based issues. And with it being so common, 90 to 90 for five, with it being so common, 90 to 95% of our population having exposure to EBV in our lifetime, we really have to think about EBV as a root. So when it comes to migraines, chronic fatigue, Hashimoto's, autoimmune disease, I want you to think, is it EBV?

I hope you're leaving encouraged, curious, and hopeful. If you learned something, I'd love for you to share this episode with a friend. Hey, we're all healing together. You can learn more about my practice, our team, and what it's like to work with us at heyheymae.com. I teach lots on Instagram and answer questions each Monday. My Instagram handle is @HeyHeyElizabethMae. And my cookbook, Hey Hey Everyday, is available on heyheymae.com and Amazon. Happy healing.