Landy Peek (00:33)
Welcome back to the Landy Peak Podcast. This is your host and friend, Landy Peak.
And today's episode is going to hit home in a way that you might not have expected. I'm sitting down with Andy Bartholomew. She is a functional nutritionist. EBV specialist, and a woman who knows firsthand what it means to lose your spark and fight to get it back.
We're talking today about the Epstein-Barr virus, one of the most common, most overlooked viruses in the world. And before you tune out, thinking, mm, that's not me, want you to listen closely. if you've been exhausted for no reason, if your body feels inflamed off or like it's running on fumes, if you've been told everything's normal,
but you know something isn't, or you've had mono, this episode is for you. Andy doesn't just bring the science, she brings the real talk women need. We go beyond labs and diagnosis into the emotional, hormonal, and nervous system layers that set the stage for chronic fatigue, autoimmune flares, and the kind of burnout you can't sleep your way out of. This conversation is validating.
paradigm shifting and packed with practical tools that help you feel like you again.
Speaker 1 (01:49)
I am so thrilled for today's guest. want to welcome Andy Bartholomew to the Landy Peak podcast. Andy, can you share just a little bit about yourself for the audience?
Speaker 2 (02:01)
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm a functional nutritional therapy practitioner, which means that we are looking at the whole body system. And you know that because you're part of my big circle too. And I specialized in Epsom bar virus and the reason behind it, because I was hit with this virus in my forties and
They told me that I had Hashimoto's and depression and chronic fatigue. And they wanted to put me on three different medicine. And I totally refused it. So I started doing my research and during my research, I found in every article, every book, there was something about EBV, Epstein-Barr virus, but they never really went into it.
But energetically, because I'm also a Reiki practitioner, I felt something connection. And I started my research, did my antibody test and boom, that was it. I was totally reactivated. So this is how my journey started from overall nutrition, becoming an EBV specialist. And then I met my mentor, Dr. Kasha Kynes, who has a certification program.
for practitioners and I did that. And I've been working with women, mostly women who are in their 40s and beyond, helping them, I call it, reclaim their spark. Because I lost my spark. I lost that vitality, that energy, that fun side of me that I used to have. My son always told me that, mom, you're not laughing anymore.
or you don't get the humor. And I said, I know, and I don't know why. So reclaim your spark is what I want women to have back in their lives.
Speaker 1 (04:11)
I love that. And I think there's a lot of women listening that can resonate with this mid space in life and losing their spark.
share a little bit about what Epstein-Barr virus is so people can help get a picture of what you're talking about, the symptoms and how it's impacting women's lives and men's, human's lives.
Speaker 2 (04:33)
If it is actually one of the most common viruses in the world, would say research studies shows that about 90, 95 % of the world population has this virus. Now, it doesn't mean that everybody has symptoms. And to tell the truth, before COVID, most of the people were asymptomatic, but that doesn't mean they are not infectious.
So there's a big, big thing about epsom bar that even though you don't have symptoms, you can be still contagious. I think that's why it's so widespread. So epsom bar virus is part of the herpes viruses, ⁓ but there's a main component, the way this virus works in our body. actually, when it hijacks ⁓ immune cells,
Most of the time it's B cells or T cells. Those are one of our immune cells that are helping ⁓ get rid of everything in our body that doesn't need to be there. So when they are hijacked by this virus, they actually dismantled their ability to call out for other cells to come and destroy me because I'm infected.
The cells usually have this skill, I would say, to call on other cells to destroy them if they are infected with a virus or bacteria or any kind of pathogen. So that's a big difference about Epstein-Barr from other viruses. And the other one is ⁓ it also changes the DNA of the cell in a way that they cannot destroy themselves.
So that's another part of the cells. They have this ⁓ ability to commit suicide. If they are affected, they can actually destroy themselves. So EBV actually turns that off. Wow. Just think about it. Nobody, no immune cells can recognize that there is a virus replicating in the body.
and then the cell is not able to get destroyed by themselves. So this virus is able to just replicate as long as we give the right environment and EBV thrives in toxic environments.
Speaker 1 (07:16)
Okay, so what do you mean by toxic environments?
Speaker 2 (07:20)
Really good question. So we have organs that are very, very toxic, like liver, kidneys, those are the ones that are eliminating the toxins. So when this virus is in a latent state, means that it's under control, it's not replicating in the body, making you sick, it stays in these toxic organs. ⁓
Speaker 1 (07:46)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:46)
Most of the time it's the liver, the kidney, sometimes the thyroid. And then it still replicates. It's not sleeping, but it's there. when toxic environment, when I'm talking about that, I'm thinking of when we have a lot of stress, we are creating a lot of oxidation in the body, which creates inflammation and inflammation.
feeds the virus because those are the little toxic cells that we are creating in the body from that when these things die off. stress is the number one reactivator.
Speaker 1 (08:30)
Interesting.
when someone they might not know they have Epstein-Barr, but they're starting to feel symptomatic. What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (08:40)
You know, this is really interesting because as we, as I'm learning about my, ⁓ clients symptoms, they are so different before COVID. I'm saying this all the time because unfortunately COVID brought out a lot of EBV from their hiding places. ⁓ and then I think the reason is because viruses don't really come alone.
Speaker 1 (09:03)
Really.
Speaker 2 (09:09)
They always bring a friend. COVID reactivated other latent viruses. Some people got the, ⁓ the epsom bar. Some people got shingles. ⁓ Some people got the cytomegalovirus, which is one. So when people have symptoms, I would say I put them in kind of two
categories. One symptoms are usually like feeling allergy symptoms, sinus one. And those are very interesting because people are saying that I never had allergy issues. And all of a sudden I have, I have sinus congestion. have ear aches. have, ⁓ watery eyes, headaches. Headache is one of the, the most common
Speaker 1 (09:45)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:07)
symptoms and in studies it shows that headache could be the only symptom. 78 % of the people in the research studies showed only headache as a symptom. So just think about it. What do we do when we have a headache? We are not thinking of I have F-C-BAR, I need to do something totally ⁓ specific.
No, we usually either lay down a little bit, drink some more water. Worst case scenario, we have to take some painkillers. Most people somehow get through the headache. And this is one thing that I really press with my clients that we really need to go back to the history of their symptoms. Because then we will know when things started shifting.
Speaker 1 (10:48)
Great.
Speaker 2 (11:04)
Because when EBV gets reactivated and reactivated, it brings on more symptoms. The worst one is chronic fatigue. That is a biggie. So that's one of the main complaints from my clients of no energy at all and total exhaustion that they cannot think clearly.
Speaker 1 (11:12)
Bye.
Speaker 2 (11:34)
They cannot move, their muscles are giving up. So it's like a whole body fatigue.
Speaker 1 (11:42)
That is so
you said a lot of times this is kind of spiking or really showing in women in 40s plus. We also have perimenopause coming in where we can be having hormonal headaches, where we're having fatigue, where we're having a lot of the similar symptoms. How are we teasing out? This is hormonal.
This could be Epstein-Barr, especially if it's a headache and something we're not even aware of.
Speaker 2 (12:14)
really good question. And you know what? Hormonal changes are the second biggest reactivation. If we go back to childhood, ⁓ first time people are getting Epstein-Barr ⁓ is usually when they go through puberty. And then they get it. around, well, right now, puberty is kind of pushed out, unfortunately, but
Speaker 1 (12:33)
⁓ interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:42)
It used to be between 13 and 15 years of age. And then it comes back in college years and then mono comes in. Mono is one way of EBV coming out. if you had mono, you have Epstein-Barr. That's all to it. So that's one thing. If anybody's listening and say, I had mono, then you have Epstein-Barr in your body.
So you need to be aware that those headaches, the fatigue, ⁓ the muscle aches, the pain, digestive issues, I forgot, immune system is in our gut. So anything in the gut, the brain gets really affected with F-Symbar as we ⁓ go through the re-activation.
Yes, that's what I see in my clients that when they are going through premenopause, they get hit a little bit of reactivation and we don't really think about it. But then as we go through menopause, it gets worse. Okay. they go through all the channels, you know, they get to the doctor and ⁓ talk about their maybe thyroid.
maybe the digestive issues, the depression, anxiety that they have and nothing changes. Then I would say, okay, let's go back a little bit and look at maybe a viral infection in the body.
Speaker 1 (14:16)
Wow. So how, I mean, it's fascinating because I've had some of these symptoms and chalked it up to it's perimenopause. It's a headache. It's, it's whatever. When you have someone that is walking in your door or meeting you virtually,
Do they typically already have an Epstein-Barr virus diagnosis or is that something that you're helping coach them through to find?
Speaker 2 (14:44)
Both. I have a huge social community overcoming eczema virus. It's on Facebook. It's public. Most of the people in there know that they have eczema. Or they started researching and thinking, this is me. This is exactly what I'm experiencing. And I went through all of those channels and nothing
Speaker 1 (14:45)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:12)
nothing have changed. Then they come in and they say, have this and this and this, could I have EBV? And it's an online client. usually just ask them if they would willing to either fill out my questionnaire, which gives them a more detailed what symptoms, what diseases, what diagnosis could be ⁓ correlated with EBV.
Speaker 1 (15:13)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:40)
If they are in a really, really bad state, so they have all the symptoms showing up, I would say let's do an antibody test. Because we can actually hone in from there if there is a viral replication, active replication going on in the body.
Speaker 1 (16:02)
Okay, that makes sense. So when you're talking about someone with Epstein-Barr, is this something that hits and all of a sudden and it's like, whoosh, like you get a cold or the flu hit virus or is it something that you see more of a gradual transition?
Speaker 2 (16:22)
going back to when we were talking about the headache. So it's going to give you symptoms here and there. But again, it's a virus, just like a cold virus. has something that if you are nurturing your body in a way that you are teaching your clients, you you're eating your nutritious whole food diet, your exercise, your head movement, I wouldn't say.
exercise, movement, you sleep and you have, my biggie one is connection because we are losing that. So I put it in. You need to have those social interactions to get your happy hormones going. I think most people can go through these little symptoms pretty easily. we getting into that age, like the forties, when we have kids growing up,
Speaker 1 (17:14)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:20)
So they're in school. ⁓ Most of the moms are the ones who are taking their kids to piano, football, whatever. So they are always on the run. After they work ⁓ eight hours, then they take the kids to all of their places. They come home and they start cooking. They don't really have that downtime. The body's always in a sympathetic state, just pushing.
you know, the cortisol and adrenaline and insulin out, we are creating the best environment for EBV to start reactivating. And when that hits that time, so after 40, the symptoms are much more severe.
Speaker 1 (18:09)
interesting. And it's partly hormones that we're putting ourselves through.
Speaker 2 (18:13)
Parking.
And then not to mention that because we are always in the run, we are not eating. We are not eating like sitting. I know that was me taking my son to a football practice. I had my snack or whatever I was having. That was my late lunch at three, three 30 or four o'clock on the go. that's not really the best way of.
Speaker 1 (18:39)
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:47)
nourishing our body, even though I was eating my, you know, my protein, my carbs and my salad and everything, but how much was actually absorbed because I was on the run. I was never sitting down, taking deep breaths before eating and so on. So, simple state was my normal state.
Speaker 1 (19:09)
And I think sympathetic state for a lot, if not most humans in today's age is the normal state. And we don't realize how much stress that's putting on our system because we're not allowing that parasympathetic, the rest and digest, allowing us to take in the nutrients from our food to really tap in because it's go, go, go, go, go till we crash and then go, go, go, go, go again.
Speaker 2 (19:35)
agree. 100%, 150%. I, one thing that I still want to mention and I forgot trauma and a lot of women and I'm not excluding the men because I had some, I had some men clients, but I have to say most of the time it's women who get hit with Epstein-Barr. I don't know. There is no research studies on that one, but I think it, it is.
Speaker 1 (19:43)
⁓ yes.
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:05)
connected to that big hormonal change that we go through. Yeah. know, starting at the forties.
Speaker 1 (20:12)
curious if, and this is just coming from a client conversation I had this morning, around the emotional load that she's carrying versus her husband. And while he is helping with their child, she is the one that is carrying the entire load and the grocery shopping and the making sure the dentist appointments and the school stuff and the babysitter is there so that they can go out and do things. And while he is a very involved dad,
there's just that inequity in the amount that she is carrying. And we're talking about like, what can you do about that? But I'm curious if, yes, we have the big hormonal shifts and men don't have that big hormonal shift at, know in the forties, but also how much of our go, go, go, and how much of our emotional load is impacting us as women being higher in getting abstinence bar.
Speaker 2 (21:08)
huge time. And this is exactly why it is important to not just work with the body and the physical, but also looking back and helping the mind, the mindset, the clearing out childhood traumas, that and emotional traumas too.
And I just wanted to go back to what you were mentioning that we women, you know, we are the one who are keeping track of everything. my husband is an absolute amazing dad, really amazing. But the difference, how we go through like something that happened with my son, for example, he was talking about, you know,
in middle school was a ⁓ hard time. don't know. think, ⁓ and I think this is the time when women are, that's when I got realistic. because they are changing. That's when the drama comes in and the social media comes in and they are trying to get independent. But there was a ⁓ time when Cody was going through something and we discussed it as a family.
because he was hurt or something was going on, I carried that emotional ⁓ trauma from my son that he went through in the classroom. And I was just going through that, my God, I need to help him. I need to go through what, maybe he's going to hold onto this and, you know, just as a practitioner, hats was on, I need to nurture him. My husband was like, okay, what did you do? good, awesome.
He was done. Yes. was his way of dealing it. He talked about it. Yeah. He was present. He gave his ⁓ support and ideas. But after the conversation, that emotional thing was done. Yeah. Maybe I was carrying it through weeks. Yes. You know, was about it.
Speaker 1 (23:04)
I am
I am so glad you brought that up. I've done the same with my daughter who had a really big struggle in the third grade. And I did carry it emotionally and I worried and I have too much knowledge in my head. So I'm also looking at, it's not just a bump in the road, but how can I prevent her from having this as an identity shift and how she sees herself and the emotional impacts and how can this not be a trauma story for her? And what can I do to get support?
Speaker 2 (23:54)
Woo!
Speaker 1 (23:56)
And my husband didn't go there. And I will share things that are going on in my head. And he's like, that's scary. Like, I never think that far into whatever's gonna happen. And it's like, I've gone to worst case scenario. And he's gone, it's done. So I'm so glad you brought that up because that's an unseen stressor that we as moms are carrying.
Speaker 2 (24:23)
Yeah. So it's very important. And again, it goes back. We are keeping our sympathetic state going, the fight and flight. Uh-huh. And, you know, we were talking about it that we all have stress, but the way we look at stress needs to be the way we look at how we get out of that stress mode afterwards.
Yes. I think this is very important to learn to, okay, there are things that I'm going to experience and there I have, you know, I stress is a main component of my program. When I go through with my clients, because it's not about saying, I can't change my job. I can't divorce. I can't let my son just go.
And I say, this is not the goal. The goal is when you have a stressful situation, what are you going to do afterwards or within, you know, in that moment, how are you going to calm your, your system down? Yes. And those are the main components of the mindset and emotional traumas. And then we are bringing in those coaches. I, I am not a coach for that. So I usually ask.
coaches to come into my program and take that side because I think it's really important. As I say, we heal the body, we're that emotional trauma side and the mindset too. Beliefs and the habits and so on.
Speaker 1 (26:07)
It's you.
Yes.
And it all starts with the nervous system. And for a lot of us, as I've worked with my clients, one of the questions I ask is, can you tap into safety inside of your body? Do you know what it feels like to feel safe? Has there been an experience in your life that you felt safe? And a good majority of my clients have a no. And it's because we've always been kind of on where we've had to have that sympathetic, let's go, let's perform.
Let's turn down our own emotions, turn down our own thoughts, beliefs, systems so that we mold into who we needed to be to feel okay. And that was our safety. It's not a true safety in your body. So completely agree. One of the big things I teach my clients is how do we tell your body that it's safe right now? Little small moments of safety accumulated as how we shift the nervous system. It's not like one big
We'll do it in a therapy session, but it's, I'm safe right now where I am. I'm safe right now where I am. And signaling the body, I'm okay. In this moment, I'm okay. And as that adds up, that's when our nervous system starts to really shift and start saying, I'm okay overall. And then we get to that flexible nervous system where we have something big happen. Our sympathetic activates. We have to...
you know, react in a certain way. Maybe there's a car coming or we have to jump out of the way or whatever it is. But then we downshift back into that parasympathetic and we don't get stuck up high. We're coming back down. And if we've had trauma in our lives, then sometimes our nervous system has those glitches and we get stuck where we don't have fight, flight, freeze, fawn available to us. Maybe we get stuck and just fight.
or we get stuck and we can't use fights. So we just have to use the others and we want the flexibility to be able to choose what's appropriate in the moment. And it's so huge when we bring back that safety and go, ⁓ my gosh, I can rest. I can sit without feeling guilty. I can breathe a deep breath and not the little shallow breaths that I've been living on for so long.
Speaker 2 (28:33)
And then with that, you're going to be able the next step we are going to go into looking at the digestive system. Lots of people are asking me, what should I do for my digestive system? Yeah. See it. You have the bloating, you have the, the gaseous and then that could be food related. ⁓ And that could be related to something different because your nervous system.
is on high alerts. All of the other things like bringing in the enzymes, bringing in the hyaluronic acid for digestion is shut down because the body has to get out of that situation that is dangerous. I think everybody's hearing it, that association that the body says run.
Speaker 1 (29:04)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:32)
And this is exactly what I'm teaching. I know that you have your own method. I'm coming in from the hormonal way because I'm also a fast like a girl coach. So we do a lot of hormones. ⁓ And when we are in this fight or flight, our cortisol is just pumping. That's the one that says, go, go, go.
We can do it. It gives that huge energy burst so we can actually do what we want. ⁓ Now, all these people ran. know, ancestors ran because they saw the bear. Now we don't have that bear. We have the situation. What we do is we sit.
Speaker 1 (30:03)
Absolutely.
Right?
It's ticked.
Speaker 2 (30:21)
And then when I say, ⁓ cortisol wants you to move. So get up, go for a walk or just actually do some squats right at the moment or jump a little bit, put on your music and dance a little bit because your cortisol needs you to move. As you move, the cortisol says, ⁓ okay, we did it. ⁓
Speaker 1 (30:25)
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:51)
So that's my little thing that I ask my people to do when they are in a stressful situation. You can do that. You don't need an equipment for it. You don't need anything. Even if you're doing, and you know what? Even if you're in a stressful meeting, you can actually do the calf raising. That is a movement. And that is actually a really good movement because your muscles,
We need to engage our muscles with cortisol. That's all to it.
Speaker 1 (31:25)
You're 100 % right. Because we are in a society where we do sit, where we do kind of shut down from like, I can't get up and move. I'm in a meeting. I, you we start scrolling on their phone where I found it myself. I was using the scrolling as it, when I had anxiety, because I was trying to get some, some kind of movement or activation going by just like scrolling. And it was just making more me more anxious.
And so a lot of women are stuck in this high cortisol state where we're not shifting down, where it's flooding our system. It's impacting our hormones. It's incredible in how it's impacting our lives. And I love that you brought up, can move and it doesn't have to be go for a run. It doesn't have to be a big exercise. It gets to be something as small as dance or a walk or jumping up and down. Anything that just kind of gets that body like,
Okay, I'm moving, which signals to that system, I'm saving myself. We're getting out of that, whatever it is. And that's what we need is to be able to finish that story and not get stuck in that pattern.
Speaker 2 (32:38)
Yes, and it doesn't have to be long either. No. One to two minutes is enough for the body to realize that the danger is gone. You know, we need to go back to the basics. That's all we do. I mean, we talk about it a lot. And this is basic. This is really in our DNA that we need to run. We need to not run. We should say we need to move because we don't
but we need to move away from that stressful situation in a way that our body feels that we are moving, changing our muscles. ⁓
Speaker 1 (33:20)
And I love that, just move away from the situation. And it's such a simple view. If you're like, okay, I'm in a stress, I'm just gonna move away. And just allowing ourself that separation and the brain to go, okay, I'm okay, I'm safe. It's over, it's done.
So one of the things you talked about, your gut health, what would you share with our listeners around gut health of something that we can do or be aware of if we are thinking we're experiencing Epstein-Barr or if we know we have Epstein-Barr?
Speaker 2 (33:52)
Biggie for Epstein-Barr is feeding our T-regs. And the T-regs are little, again, ⁓ cells that are helping our immune system. And the way to help the T-reg, the T-regular cells, is giving more fiber.
Speaker 1 (34:09)
Okay.
interesting.
Speaker 2 (34:14)
more fiber because that is going to help those cells. As I mentioned at the beginning, Epstein-Barr goes for the T cells and the B cells. So we need to get more of those cells so the body, the immune system is getting over that bump that we are doing because as the virus spreads, as the virus replicates, I should say, it's not spread.
and putting it into DNA, but if we have more good cells, the B cells and T cells, our immune system is going to be able to fight. And this is a biggie. Epsomber is a very opportunistic virus and very strategic virus.
Speaker 1 (35:07)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:08)
comes out of its hiding place when it knows that the immune system is vulnerable. Just think back to COVID. A lot of people got sick, even though they say that they never had any problems, but they were always in a stressful situation. And when there is stress, your immune system is low. That just goes hand in hand. We cannot fight this. This is fact.
Speaker 1 (35:17)
Great.
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:37)
So when we are building, and this is the most important thing in my protocol, we have to build the immune system back up.
Speaker 1 (35:49)
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (35:50)
And with everything, it's not just Epstein-Barr, it's everything. Our immune system is the system that is going to fight every single pathogen that comes into the body, virus, bacteria, even cancer. Because we all have every single cells in our body. Everybody has those things in there.
do they come out is depends on the environment that we create. And it's not just the external environment that we are involving ourselves, including ourselves, but the internal environment as well.
Speaker 1 (36:30)
let's talk about the internal environment.
Speaker 2 (36:32)
So the internal environment is a calm environment. We have wonderful good bacteria, which we need to feed them. And feeding them is again, comes from food. So I think most of us heard that food can be either medicine or it can be poison. And this is exactly what we are talking about. So the food has to be
Speaker 1 (36:43)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (37:02)
in a whole food ⁓ form. It's not coming in a package. So I just give you an example. I was talking to one of my clients, she was so sweet. And I was asking ⁓ her to write a, I mean, every client of mine has to do a food journal. Food journal, when they write down everything what they eat, drink.
Speaker 1 (37:06)
Okay.
Bye.
Speaker 2 (37:30)
what supplements they take, what movements they are doing, and also ⁓ emotional stuff, what comes up as they were eating. I felt irritable. Or before I felt really, really hungry. ⁓ afterwards I felt sad. That is so interesting. You're eating something, you should feel energized and happy and let's do it. And then some people said, I felt like,
I just wanted to go to bed and wanted to just, I felt like sadness coming through me. Okay. That just means that that meal was not figured out too much carbs. Definitely. And then they also write down the elimination. Now this is a biggie. I actually, I'm getting ready to talk about poop. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (38:24)
No, this is where we go.
Speaker 2 (38:25)
important. I teach people how to look at their poop. I know some people have discussed it and I say I need to know. So I teach them the Bristol stool number which goes from one to seven. And then so this lady going back to her story, she wrote down that she was eating her protein and then mashed potatoes and I said, oh.
What kind of potatoes are you using? Because, you know, I want to know if she's using sweet potatoes or red potatoes. And she was saying, it's coming from a box.
Let's look at that box. The ingredients, how much potatoes are in that? And there was not no potatoes. was all starches from tapioca, corn, and all kinds of things. So we really need to go back to the whole foods. then, here's another thing that I don't know if you notice with your clients, but
Speaker 1 (39:24)
Great.
Speaker 2 (39:32)
People don't know how to cook. And that's one thing that we can teach, but they don't enjoy cooking.
Speaker 1 (39:42)
Right?
Speaker 2 (39:43)
And this is so interesting because I grew up in a family that my grandmother was making her own bread and or own pasta. Mom was working, but we always cooked. And from very early age on, I was cooking too. And that was a kind of ⁓ connecting. That was my mom and daughter.
Speaker 1 (40:10)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:14)
timing. It was me and her in the kitchen. My dad was away. My brother was away. ⁓ So it's just like, I, this is one of my big dream to create a, an EBV healing kitchen where I not just share the recipes, but we are cooking and we are connecting because I think that is, we can connect on zoom too, even though it's not,
I'm going to just jump into another one. Research studies just shows that even though we are connecting on zoom, happy hormone, which is the oxytocin is not creating in the body because we are not face to face. don't have that energetic exchange of the proximity. So even though we are connecting, some people say I'm connecting.
but it's not that as connecting in person. But just going back again, basics, having fun creating something that is going to feed your family. And then in the program that I teach, we do cooking and we bringing back seasonings, herbs and spices that people, I mean, most people have salty,
Speaker 1 (41:16)
Right.
Speaker 2 (41:42)
sugary, sweet and maybe sour. Those are the three things that our tongues are right now exposed to. There is so many more. Bitter, which is so important for our liver. ⁓ And so we need to bring out, we are going to like, what I say is you're going to wake up your taste buds and they are going to be like,
Speaker 1 (42:09)
Yes.
Speaker 2 (42:11)
Mmm, just go like wow Because that is huge Creating that environmental in internal environment is creating really good Nourishing food that the body is actually able to use immediately. Yeah, and ⁓ the other one is
Speaker 1 (42:18)
It is.
Speaker 2 (42:38)
creating that calmness inside. When we are ⁓ stressed out and we are going back to stress again, but it's just so important that I think everybody understands that ⁓ the stress shuts down everything else in the body.
Speaker 1 (43:00)
And we feel that.
Speaker 2 (43:01)
and then we are just surviving.
Speaker 1 (43:07)
That's a huge thing. We're just surviving. We're not thriving. We're not truly enjoying our existence. We're just getting from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. Check, check, check, go to sleep, wake up, start again, drink a thousand cups of coffee because that's how I'm going to get through. Cause I only had four hours of sleep and that was my existence. And then I did have to crash and burn to be able to come back and say, I need to do things differently. And I love that you brought in cooking because it is such a
whole system experience when you're cooking whole foods and you have the fragrance and the textures as you're cutting vegetables and the different spices that you're coming in and bringing in. And your nervous system is also downshifting because you can't do it fast. There's step by step. There's the rhythm that comes with cooking. There's the predictability that comes with cooking. And it's a whole system shift.
when we're creating food. And it is something that we've lost, I think because it's such a go, go, go society. It's get home, we have to get something on the table so that we can eat, so that we can get to bed because if the kids don't get to bed and off we go. It takes time to cook. And my daughter's 10 and this is her first year where she cooks dinner for the family. And we have worked and there is still oversight with hot things.
but she has the ability to cook a full dinner for the family. She's a good little cook, but it is that bonding between us. It has been this experience where we have taken time, we have learned, we dig out recipes, we learned so many skills for kiddos as you're learning to cook, where we're looking at math and reading and it's so fun and figuring out. And my daughter loves to cook and my son loves to bake.
And so it's a fun experience for both me to spend one-on-one time with kiddos, but also to have this huge sensory experience as we're creating something we then get to share. And it's such a whole system healing experience.
Speaker 2 (45:18)
I am so glad that you did that. My son was the same. He started cooking and then he went to baking. And then, know, a funny, interesting thing is that my husband started to bake. He is now 55 and then I think around 48. Maybe he went through menopause or women pause or whatever you call it, but he started baking.
Speaker 1 (45:31)
Really?
Speaker 2 (45:43)
He started baking, he's making bread and usually pastries. yeah. Like he's British, so he's bringing in these pies filled with either ⁓ savory stuff or ⁓ meat and then, but not sweet stuff. I'm the one who makes the sweetest stuff, but yes, breads and pastries. So men can do that too, not just...
Speaker 1 (46:10)
Yeah, my husband cooks doesn't bake but cooks, is I love because that's really nice to have dinner done for you.
So as we're coming to a close, this has been a phenomenal conversation. Thank you. Is there anything else you would like to share around EpsiMar that the listener really needs to hear?
Speaker 2 (46:35)
think one very important thing that I would like to mention is about the external toxins. Yes. Because we always look into the internals that what we eat and put in our body, but what we expose
Speaker 1 (46:43)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:53)
is very important. And even though research studies are not showing that what I'm going to talk about is reactivate Epstein-Barr.
But what research shows that it actually makes Epstein-Barr virus symptoms worse. And what I'm going to talk about is a lot of people are going to say, ⁓ no, because it is EMF. You know what
stands for? So it's Electro-Magnetic Field. And what it is, is the The smart meters
are put on our houses now.
because it used to be analog. ⁓ You see it. It just does that. And now it's everything is ⁓ or smart. Bluetooth in the car. Brand new cars are going to, they have these, what did they call them? You know, the connection where if you have an accident, you don't even have to call 911. ⁓ They immediately go.
I don't know what they call it. I have a story for that one. I had a client and what we, what she, we went through the program. She was really good at home. She was, she was re aware of EMF that it bothers her. So she had to shut down the, the wifi at night. And I highly recommend that everybody does that. I actually unplugged.
Speaker 1 (48:13)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:29)
the TVs, the cell phones, everything. and she was doing really well, but she told me that I don't know what's happening each time I get into my car after around 45, 50 minutes, I just got really tired. Like it's, you know, I was thinking the monotone when you're driving or the vibration, and then we figured it out and I started like asking, okay,
Tell me about your car. ⁓ And she says she had the brand new, I don't know what model it was. And I said, ⁓ do you have that, that Bluetooth thing? And she says, yeah. I said, okay, I think that's the problem. That's the problem. Because we knew that she was really reacting to EMF within the house.
And she was shielding and doing all the stuff that she was able to do to reduce that EMF exposures. But in the car, she wasn't aware that that's something that was going on. So one of her homework was to get rid of that. And she couldn't. They couldn't shut it down. She went, even went to the dealer where she bought it. She called up the
the manufacturer and they said they cannot shut it down. So this is one thing, this is so interesting because we never even think about, I always drive, my cars are very old, so we don't have those features. But think about that, that maybe, maybe you are so sensitive to this external and it is toxic.
Speaker 1 (49:58)
interesting
Speaker 2 (50:22)
toxic to the body, are more and more research studies are coming out. And I have a really good resource. He ⁓ calls himself the EMF guy. And if you just Google EMF guy, he will come up and he is a phenomenal ⁓ person to really get on the email and stuff because he's doing the research for us.
Speaker 1 (50:50)
wow.
Speaker 2 (50:51)
is really going into and doing what it does to the body. So maybe that is if you're feeling tired in the car after just going and you cannot drive more than 45 or maybe two hours, you shouldn't feel tired. If you have, again, if you are nutritionally fed, you should have energy. But if you're feeling tired,
Speaker 1 (51:08)
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:20)
Check in with your car. Is it a new car with these new features that everything is connected to our satellite and Bluetooth? Because that could be it. So that's one thing that I want people to understand that it's not just internal, but there are so many external and EMF is one of the biggie for EV.
Speaker 1 (51:45)
my goodness. Andy, thank you so much for this conversation and your wealth of information. You're incredible. I am confident there are people listening that are really connecting with what you have to say. How can people further the conversation with you?
Speaker 2 (52:01)
So if people know that they have EBV, Epstein-Barr virus, and it doesn't have to be a blood test, and they have the symptoms and they researched and someone maybe told them that you might have EBV, I would love them to come into my Facebook group, which is overcoming Epstein-Barr virus. There are three questions. Please fill that out because otherwise it doesn't let you in. And then in the Facebook group,
I do ⁓ weekly videos, trainings, master classes, and talking about master class, I'm going to do my EBV basics master class, which is going to be a good one for people who are like listening and saying, hmm, I have this, I have that, but I don't know if I have EBV. I go really into,
how the medical society sees Epstein-Barr virus. And unfortunately, it's not a good one because the doctors are not recognizing, still not recognizing EBV as a reactivated virus. They are thinking about it as ⁓ a past infection like mono. And then I go into the research studies that are coming out and
Speaker 1 (53:04)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (53:25)
Some people, and we didn't even touch autoimmune diseases. In my masterclass, I show a research study that was actually coming, it came out two years ago, maybe a little bit more, ⁓ that showed and connected abstinence virus ⁓ to seven autoimmune diseases, Celiac.
Speaker 1 (53:29)
No.
Okay. ⁓
Speaker 2 (53:51)
So I talk about that and I also talk about the different types of Epstein-Barr virus because we have different types. then I go and explain very generally about how this virus works because it's really important. And I touched a little bit about the B cells and T cells, but I go deeply in when the symptoms come, how it shows up on a
on a blood test and then I go into a very general ⁓ interpretation of the blood test. And I also say, always say a blood test is just that time of the moment, that moment of life. And then what I really need to know are the symptoms that you're experiencing. Because if your blood test says, it's not reactivated, I can still show you that you are in a reactivated state.
Speaker 1 (54:27)
Okay.
Speaker 2 (54:48)
based on your symptoms, the history of that, what we look into. So those are the two things that ⁓ are coming up and people can tap into if they are ⁓ interested. And also if people want my little questionnaire, it's created by Dr. Kasha Kynes. She is my mentor. I can definitely send it to people so they can reach out to me.
Speaker 1 (55:18)
That would be amazing. So I will put all of Andy's contact information in the show notes, including her Facebook group, so that if you want that questionnaire, you can reach out and she can send it to you and join the Facebook group. And Andy, thank you so much. This has been such an incredible conversation.
Speaker 2 (55:34)
Thank you. I really appreciate this
Landy Peek (55:36)
What an incredible conversation with Andy. If you found yourself nodding along, thinking, wait, that could be me. You're not alone and you're not imagining it. So many women are walking around exhausted, dismissed and misdiagnosed. Told that it's just stress or hormones or just aging. And what if it's not? Just one thing.
What if your body is pointing you to something deeper? We can't heal what we haven't named. And in this episode, Andy gives us language. She connects the dots, not just to what's happening, but to why. Her work is rooted in truth, nuance, and possibility. Because when you understand what's really going on inside your body, you stop blaming yourself for what you can't fix with mindset or green juice. You really start to heal from the root. I want to thank you so much for spending
time with us today and really doing something so good for you in really opening up what could be going on inside your own body. And because I think it is so important, I want to tell you that I think you're amazing, that you are smart and brave and courageous and fun and funny. And you are making such an incredible difference in this world just by being you. I love you and I like you.
and I wish you all the happiness that today can bring. We'll talk to you on the next episode.
Landy Peek (57:01)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace
any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives. And as we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from the conversation today, please share because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious.
Because that's the fun in this world.
