Herpes is usually treated as a minor nuisance on the lip. Dentist Elena Belyaeva painted a different picture in her lecture in Kaliningrad: a whole family of viruses that lives with us for years and speaks up when immunity slips.
What this is and why it matters
I listened to this lecture in Kaliningrad on 4 October, and I will admit the start surprised me. A device, TCM, supplements, and then suddenly a table of viruses on the screen. Elena Belyaeva is my mother, but that is beside the point. She is a dentist and maxillofacial surgeon with forty years of practice, has spent the last fifteen years working on restoring the body through nutrition, and she opens every lecture with the table of herpesviruses. Why? Because, in her observation, people come to a dentist, or to any general practitioner, not with a virus. They come with its expressions: frequent colds, endless fatigue, a sore throat that will not go away, flare-ups at the worst possible moment.
The idea she starts from is simple and uncomfortable. Herpes is not "a sore on the lip that goes away in ten days". It is a family of eight human viruses, and according to the medical literature the overwhelming majority of adults carry at least one of them. We are born with it and we live with it, as Elena put it. The question is not whether it is there. The question is how well the body keeps it under control.
One caveat, without which this cannot be said. Everything written here is a retelling of a doctor's lecture and her practical experience, not medical advice. Diagnosis and treatment are for your own doctor. WHIEDA products are not medicines.
How it works: the virus that stays
The main feature of herpesviruses is latency. After the first encounter the virus does not leave the body. It falls asleep in cells of the nervous and immune systems and shows nothing for years. While immunity is in order, all is quiet. Stress, chilling, illness, exhaustion, and the virus wakes up.
Hence the phrase of Elena's I remember: it is a circle. Flare-up, doctor, medicine, remission, and again. According to her, it can be broken only one way: by working not with the virus as an enemy but with the state of the immune system that restrains it.
Symptom or cause
There is a subtlety that Ludmila Lomachenko also raised at the meeting. The body signals a problem with symptoms: headache, fatigue, itching, temperature, digestive trouble. The habitual path is to remove the symptom: a pill for the head, an ointment for the itch. The problem disappears, usually not for long. The Chinese approach suggests asking first why the head hurts: toxic load, vessels, lymph stagnation or chronic viral load. The symptoms are the same in different people, the causes differ. That is why Elena asks us not to stop at fighting manifestations, but to find out with a doctor what stands behind them.
A family of eight viruses
Here is the order in which Elena goes through them in the lecture. I have added what is known from the medical literature.
- Type one is the familiar herpes on the lips. Flare-ups often come under stress. Elena described patients whose recurring outbreaks literally wreck their appointments.
- Type two mainly affects the urogenital area. Cystitis that "never goes away" and unsuccessful attempts to conceive are sometimes connected with it, so she advises not being embarrassed and discussing it with a specialist.
- Type three is the chickenpox virus, also the cause of shingles. The case where a rash appears "around the body", often with severe pain.
- Type four, the Epstein–Barr virus causes infectious mononucleosis. Elena stressed that it is regularly mistaken for a sore throat: enlarged tonsils, high temperature, difficulty swallowing, antibiotics do not help because the illness is viral.
- Type five, cytomegalovirus: in her words, up to eighty percent of women of childbearing age carry it. Studies show regional variation, but the point is the same: for those planning a pregnancy the question really matters.
- Types six and seven are less known to the general public. Type six, in particular, causes a sudden three-day fever in infants.
- Type eight is linked to Kaposi sarcoma, which mostly develops with severe immune suppression.
What to discuss with your doctor
Here I move to the most practical part, because this is what Elena repeated most often.
First: general indicators such as haemoglobin, white cells and ESR do not give a picture of viral load. If you or your child are constantly troubled by colds, prolonged fatigue or tonsillitis, ask your doctor about testing for the Epstein–Barr virus and cytomegalovirus. Usually this is a blood test for IgM and IgG antibodies, sometimes PCR. What it means and how to read the results, the doctor will explain. Diagnosing yourself from a lab form is not a good idea.
Second, for women: if you are planning a pregnancy, discuss testing in advance. Cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy remains one of the most common congenital infections, and doctors take such preparation seriously. At the lecture Elena gave the example of a patient who had lost two children before birth. The diagnosis in her documents was connected precisely with cytomegalovirus. Elena worked with her on general support of the immune system, and a year later the woman gave birth to a healthy boy. This is one case, not a guarantee. But it shows well what the discussion is about.
Third, the most careful point: some viruses of the family are being studied in connection with more serious conditions. The Epstein–Barr virus, for example, is studied in connection with multiple sclerosis and some lymphomas. Elena spoke about this directly: numb hands, tingling, unclear sensations are a reason not to postpone a visit to a neurologist and to raise the question of viruses. I would add: the link is under study, and it is too early to draw cause-and-effect conclusions. But to ask the doctor a question, it is enough that the question exists.
Immunity, the thymus and temperature
Now to why this lecture was heard at a WHIEDA meeting at all.
Elena used the phrase "competence of immunity". Not "boosting immunity", a common and not quite accurate formula, but returning to the immune system its ability to cope by itself. In the lecture she explained this through two things.
First, the thymus. It sits in the upper chest behind the breastbone, is responsible for the maturation of T-lymphocytes and is most active in childhood. With age it gradually shrinks and is partly replaced by fat tissue. Elena showed the spot on herself: when her throat starts to tickle, she feels it first.
Second, temperature, and here it gets interesting. A raised temperature during infection is not a malfunction but the body's natural reaction: for many viruses and bacteria fever is an unfavourable environment, and immune cells work more actively at higher temperature. That is why doctors usually do not advise bringing down a mild temperature without need. Elena draws a practical conclusion from this. In her words, in a person with strong immunity the temperature rises two to three hours after meeting an infection, and the body copes quickly. If a person is unwell for several days with no fever, this, in her observation, shows that the immune system is working sluggishly. Hence her interest in warming: if the body knows how to heat itself, external warming may help it repeat what it does during illness.
The TCM view: cold, phlegm and warmth
Traditional Chinese medicine has two words that Elena keeps repeating: cold and phlegm. When a patient arrives in China, in her account, the first thing offered is to "drive out cold and phlegm". For someone who lives in the Arctic, as she does, and does not see the sun for months, this is no metaphor. Feet freeze, shivering, the body does not warm.
Hence the whole set of traditional practices: back warming, acupuncture, moxibustion with mugwort sticks. The Chinese like to work along the meridians to bring a problem out through warmth. Mugwort is raised there to the rank of "imperial herb".
Now it is clear why after the table of viruses Elena moves on to the devices. Wentun, as she describes it, gathers these three practices in one device: a platform, microcurrents and gentle warming. The Cell Activator works on a different principle, a directed air flow; she uses it for work with swelling and individual zones.
The explanation Elena gives in the lecture is built on the same logic. When warmed, the body repeats what it does during infection: the blood heats up, and, in her words, for viruses, bacteria and parasites located in vessels and tissues this environment becomes unfavourable. She herself sits on the Wentun in the evening and says that during a course she feels the body "cleansing". This is her explanation and her experience, and I give it as it is.
Two caveats without which an honest conversation is impossible. First: this is not treatment and not a guarantee of results, the device does not replace a doctor. Second: for herpes on the lips, temperature and overheating are known triggers of flare-ups, so if you are prone to outbreaks, begin warming at low levels and discuss it with your doctor.
How she herself uses the Wentun
Practical details Elena gave in the lecture:
- A session is in the evening, 30–45 minutes, programmes six to seven. She started at level five or six.
- For people aged 55–60 she advises starting at four and not switching on the maximum straight away, as young people do.
- In the first sessions the warmth can be uneven. In her case one leg warmed normally while the other "stuck" at the ankle. From about the seventh session the warmth went the right way.
- If unusual sensations appear, such as a cough or aching joints, do not play the hero. Lower the level and discuss it with your doctor.
- Do not expect an effect in a minute. For warmed blood to rise further, it takes time.
- If you feel you are coming down with something, she sits on it for 30 minutes in the evening.
It must be said that with heart and vascular conditions, during pregnancy and in other states where heat procedures are not recommended, the device should be discussed with a doctor before starting.
Prevention instead of rescue
I like one phrase I heard at the same meeting. It is not about viruses, but about everything: a Russian remembers his health three days before death, a Chinese three years before. An exaggeration, of course. But the point is that TCM is built on prevention, not on putting out fires.
What you can take from this today without buying anything:
- movement: lymph has no pump of its own, in the legs working muscles move it, and we sit;
- sleep and reducing chronic stress, which for many is the trigger of flare-ups;
- evening warming, be it a bath, a sauna or procedures, if there are no contraindications;
- comfortable shoes with good support: the foot pulls a chain of muscles up to the neck, and Elena always starts there;
- regular preventive tests, not only "when things get urgent";
- a conversation with a doctor about viruses, instead of a trip to the pharmacy for yet another remedy for the symptom.
For those who want to add devices, WHIEDA has a range. I use the Wentun, the insoles and the supplements myself, as does our whole family. But it is better to start not with a purchase but with a question to your doctor.
Conclusion
Elena Belyaeva's lecture is neither an advertisement for a device nor a medical manual. It is an attempt to explain in ordinary human language that herpesviruses are not a trifle, that immunity is a system one can work with, and that warmth, one of humanity's oldest tools, deserves attention.
If after reading you want to act, take one step: book an appointment with a doctor and ask about testing for the Epstein–Barr virus and cytomegalovirus. The rest can be thought through later. The WHIEDA range can be viewed in the catalogue: to the catalogue →.