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  4. Have you worked with herbal remedies in trying to address Epstein-Barr virus or at least to bring antibodies down within range? Can you share your experience and knowledge on treating patients with Epstein-Barr virus? I see this constantly in women that have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.

Have you worked with herbal remedies in trying to address Epstein-Barr virus or at least to bring antibodies down within range? Can you share your experience and knowledge on treating patients with Epstein-Barr virus? I see this constantly in women that have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.

Amy Nett: Okay, so for Epstein-Barr virus, I think this is a pretty nuanced topic and somewhat controversial, and I think even the testing can be a little bit difficult. I don’t generally treat if just the IgG antibodies are elevated in the absence of elevated early antigen D antibodies. If I see an elevation in the early antigen D antibodies, then I might consider treating, but so many of us have been exposed to EBV that just elevations in IgG don’t necessarily prompt me to treat. There’s a lot of different herbal options for treating Epstein-Barr virus, and a good starting place might be looking at Stephen Buhner’s book on herbal antivirals, and I think the key is to find a few different antiviral treatments that you feel comfortable with and then just start working with those because again, there are so many, I think, different approaches in terms of using herbal medications and supplements for treating Epstein-Barr virus, it’s more a matter of just becoming—finding those that work for you and getting really comfortable with those. You have to be also aware and sort of giving patients a heads-up that they could see a little bit of a die-off type reaction, so also always start low and slow and build up slowly. Also, if your elevated antibody titres for EBV, I would also make sure to check other viruses, and you may or may not want to get into testing for Lyme or other chronic infections, mycoplasma pneumonia, etc.

I think, again, just starting with a few different herbal supplements that you feel really comfortable with and then slowly sort of expanding out in terms of which supplements you prefer to work with.

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