Disclaimer: because pictures of bacteria and parasites and viruses and all sorts of bugs are often creepy and upsetting, I decided to add cartoon eyes to all of them. That is NOT an accurate representation of Epstein Barr Virus.
Good old Epstein Barr. It was there all along, reactivated. It was written down in black and white in some forgotten test results buried under tons of German bureaucracy in 2005. It became visible again in 2015 with some long due new tests, but I couldn’t treat it until well into 2018.
They say that treating chronic disease is like peeling an onion, you need to confront one problem at a time. So in my onion, I had to first peel away and treat Lyme, then parasites, then mold. It took two good years, and I was feeling way better, but some invalidating symptoms were still lingering.
When I finally managed to give some loving care and attention to my EBV, the results were beyond expectations.
To continue with the onion metaphor, treating Epstein Barr felt like I was getting close to the core of the onion. Even if all my immune problems began after getting amalgam fillings at age 15, when my health precipitated in 2003/4 (after a mysterious insect bite and a very traumatic year) it had all the marks of reactivated Epstein Barr which, coincidentally, are the same of a typical post-viral onset of ME/CFS.
After two weeks of what I considered the worst flu of my life, for the following 5 years I experiences swollen glands, feverish feeling, slightly raised temperature, extreme exhaustion, POTS, post-exertional peripheral neuropathy, and a plethora of other symptoms.
I had no idea that was my problem. The positive tests I had done in 2005 were overlooked by a really bad doctor, and I went on without a clear diagnosis except for ME/CFS and fibromyalgia,
he various upgrades I had made on my health with proper nutrition, removing amalgams, detoxing mercury and all sorts of anti-inflammatory practices for sure contributed to my recovery without a direct treatment.
In 2014 I was once again left to fend for myself by the medical system when I was diagnosed with pneumonia and given zero treatment. I spent weeks researching, and I treated myself with (among a lot of other things) high dosage Vitamin C and industrial dosages of Echinacea (which is an antiviral) and later on with juicing and ozonised water.
Unbeknownst to me, this must have acted against EBV, because after the bout of pneumonia I felt better than I had in many years, and for the first time after years of struggling, I felt completely in remission.
Everything came back after moving into mold in 2015. They say Epstein Barr is an opportunistic infection LINK that occurs when the immune system is weak or severely damaged by something else.
The first time it reactivated that might have had multiple causes: the Lyme infection from the bite, or was it the trauma I experienced the year before everything began? my only flu vaccination, done one year prior? I will never know. The second time was the mold.
I was diagnosed with reactivated Epstein Barr in 2015, then in 2016 I discovered the old (positive) tests results, that had been criminally downplayed by the specialist I had seen in 2005, and everything was clear.
I want to share here the list of treatments that I believe were successful. After 3 months of real treatment I felt completely normal again for the first time since the first remission, and after 6 months some symptoms that had lingered for 13 years disappeared completely. I could walk without any restrictions.
As I explained elsewhere, LINK sadly I had to stop treatment because it was making the new problem of mold colonisation worse for some reason.
I am waiting patiently to be able to resume it, because I believe any of these supplements, or even better a combination of them, can solve my problem (in addiction to diet and detoxification, as usual).
Here is the list!
1. First and foremost, a diet without sugar, gluten, dairy, and processed food. I have recently come to believe that grain-free (paleo) is even better, but I am still on the fence with that. While food is unlikely to treat a serious chronic infection by itself, eating the right things is the ground zero of healing, and thanks to modern science we can even pick foods that can help us towards our goals. In my case, that meant slightly antiviral food, this is a list of antiviral food according to functional medicine.
2 . Conventional antivirals
When I decided to attack Epstein Barr directly, at first I tried to get some conventional doctor to treat me. Finally I had a diagnosis, treating a viral infection should be pretty straightforward, right? Right?
Wrong. Apparently most doctors don’t recognise the Elispot test, and all of my symptoms meant nothing to any of them, most of them didn’t even listen or let me finish.
The positive test I had from 2005 meant nothing to them either, maybe they thought that in ten years without treatment I must have miraculously healed by myself (in a way I *had* miraculously reached remission some years earlier, but that took years of constant effort and around 20.000 euros of alternative treatments).
I managed to convince one doctor (one out of six) to prescribe me Acyclovir, but the longest treatment he would sign a prescription for was two weeks. Two weeks of antivirals after 13 years of chronic infection felt like a drop in the ocean, also it had a lot of side effects, so I skipped the Acyclovir and moved on to more sustainable treatments.
3. Monolaurin (Lauricidin brand, but I am sure other brands are fine too) – monolaurin is a relatively new product,. Glycerol monolaurate is a chemical extracted from coconut oil, a beneficial saturated fatty acid like caprylic acid that exhibits strong antimicrobial properties. I first read about it by word of mouth in some facebook group, by someone who had been prescribed monolaurin by their functional doctor, so I bought a box. It worked like a charm without any side effects, except for some mild die-off in the beginning, so for me it’s the treatment of choice.
There aren’t many peer-reviewed studies, about its efficacy, on humans at least – works on pigs, and poultry.
This study and this other one (about humans) seem to be from some more official sources.
Anyway, I had found plenty of anecdotal evidence online that it worked against chronic Epstein Barr, and that was enough for me. Maybe 3 weeks in, I started to feel REALLY BETTER, and after two months practically ALL of my lingering symptoms were gone. That was before the recent mold c colonisation, but that is another story.
4. Olive Leaf extract – I took it for some months before the monolaurin and later I alternated the two. There is evidence of in-vitro antiviral activity, check out this other article too, and olive leaf extract is even mentioned as one possible treatment in an “official” source about EBV .
For me it worked some, but not spectacularly. Also some brands were way more effective than others, for some reason.
5. L Lysine – this is the cheapest option, and for that reason it was my first choice. Plenty of research about it too, for example here. In my case, there was a snag: for some mysterious reason, it irritated my gallbladder, and each time I tried to take it I had to stop it after some days. So, in the end no L Lysine for me.
6. Takuna – Takuna is an anti viral herb used in the Cowden protocol for Lyme. From the sharp increase in well being any time I took it for a longer time, I can deduce that it works, but other treatments were just as good and way more cost effective, so I abandoned it. I still keep a bottle in the house in case viral infections, it worked well for my Covid in 2020.
7. High dosage Vitamin C – this is an interesting topic and there is much to say about it. You can read more information here LINK. For our purposes, I will just say that I took Vitamin C powder many times a day, up to bowel tolerance (which sometimes allowed me up to 60 grams per day), and in 2021 I tried for 3 months Vitamin C IVs 4 -5 times per week. In both cases I felt much better and more mobile. I believe the well being that ensued was due to reduction of active EBV, but I have no tests to prove that. There is a vast amount of material about Vitamin C reducing viral load, not least Covid. Find more in this other article, all about high dosage Vitamin C. LINK
8. CBD oil – can’t say if it has any antiviral effects, or if it contributed to eliminate EBV in any way, but when I went into complete remission I was taking CBD oil too, so I think for the sake of completeness I should add it to the list.
9. Ozone therapy/ Ozonised oil – everything I know about ozone is explained here LINK – my experiences with ozone are still limited, but there is a vast literature about its antiviral properties, especially since Covid.
10. Rife machine – As any other infection, Epstein Barr Virus will respond to frequencies. For some people the results are spectacular, for others they are not. I am not sure about the reason why – possibly the kind of machine and if they got the right frequencies. I wrote an article about bioresonance therapy and Rife machines, you can read it here LINK.
There are surely many more ways to treat chronic Epstein Barr Virus, I don’t have experience with the herb Cistus Incanus but I read good things about it, and I did not mention Anthony William’s book Medical Medium because a) I don’t like to quote people who receive their medical advice from spirits and b) you can find most of the book’s suggestions if you search really old threads on the health forum called Curezone. Anyway, because several people have found relief following those suggestions made more popular by the book, I feel the need to mention that source too.
By saying all this I mean: there are many treatments out there, and if one doesn’t work, please don’t stop searching.
This was my list of treatments for Epstein Barr Virus, thanks for reading!
