Want To FIX FATIGUE & Feel FANTASTIC? Begin By Choosing the Life You Love (& These SIMPLE Biochemical Principles): "SHINE" With Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

31% of adults have severe fatigue, and then most everybody wants more energy. So number one, where is it coming from? Is it just day-to-day fatigue where it's just a healthy thing and they need rest? Is it coming from having tripped a circuit breaker in the brain called the hypothalamus? We'll teach you today how to turn that circuit breaker back on. It's Not a single magic bullet, but it's not that complicated either.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life?

Let's do this. Well, I was bow hunting. I was bow hunting for turkey during fall turkey season, and I sometimes go out with a book because occasionally you're out there for a few hours in the dark or just waiting, and I occasionally will thumb through a book. And, I had a book out there with me in a tree stand actually while hunting for turkey. That's how I read this book. It's called "From Fatigued to Fantastic." I get a lot of books about this kind of stuff, fatigue, functional medicine. A lot of them are just kind of the same old, same old, but I could tell just a couple chapters into this book that this guy who wrote it, Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, really knew what he was talking about and was speaking from a deep wealth of actual experience with his patients. I then went and checked out some of his Instagram videos and educational videos. I downloaded this app that he made called the Smartphone App with Cures from A to Z that kind of give you At-A-Glance Dictionary to tackle any issues that you're having. And, I just thought, gosh, this is such a wealth of information that I would love to get Dr. Teitelbaum on the show to talk about being from fatigued to fantastic. He graciously agreed. So, he's here with me. And, as you're listening in, if you want the show notes, just go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Fantastic. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Fantastic. And, Jacob, I don't— do you care if I call you Jacob because it's going to take up a lot of airspace for me to say Dr. Teitelbaum 100 times. So, Let's go. Go with Jacob. And, the idea of fatigue, I think it can be a very catch-all term or there can be a lot of things that contribute to it. You mentioned Long COVID, you talk about fibromyalgia in the book, CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome. But, in terms of how you actually go about when someone, let's say, walks into your office or sends you an email or does a telemedicine consult or whatever and they tell you that they're tired and they're fatigued, where do you actually start as far as testing or deeper digging or questions that you would ask?

Well, it's really pretty easy. Once, you know, 31% of adults have severe fatigue and then most everybody wants more energy. So, number one, where is it coming from? Is it just day-to-day fatigue where it's just a healthy thing and they need rest? Is it coming from having tripped a circuit breaker in the brain called the hypothalamus, which means the fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long COVID, one simple question will distinguish. Can you get a good night's sleep? If you're exhausted, you sleep all day and all night when you have a chance. But, if you have trouble sleeping, can't fall asleep, can't stay asleep, you tripped that circuit breaker called the hypothalamus and that's what needs to be addressed.

That is actually really interesting. That's an unexpected answer to my question. How well do you sleep? And why is that? Why is the hypothalamus so affected by fatigue that one of the first things that goes south is sleep? What's actually going on there?

The hypothalamus is a key circuit breaker that controls sleep, your entire hormone system, and what's called autonomic function, your ability to have blood pressure, pulse, gut function, things like that. It uses more energy for its size than any other area in the body. So as energy levels in the cells go down, it goes off first. It actually serves a protective function, kind of like a circuit breaker. Many of you out there, I know I was myself before I came down with post-viral chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, we're gonna damn the torpedoes full speed ahead instead of resting. And there comes a point, I mean, sometimes that's healthy, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes you need to rest. So that circuit breaker pretty much takes us out of the game. The problem is once you've rested, it often will not come back on by itself. We'll teach you today how to turn that circuit breaker back on. It's not a single magic bullet, but it's not that complicated either.

So, are you saying that if I'm fatigued and I'm having trouble sleeping that if I really dial in my sleep, whatever, dark room, cold, not working in bed, maybe taking some adaptogenic herbs or something to help me sleep at night and I begin to sleep, let's say, 7 to 9 hours a night and I'm able to do that consistently, that if I were to do that for a few weeks, I could still be experiencing daytime fatigue because the issue doesn't necessarily go away by logging extra sleep?

It could, but you're likely not having chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia if even with those basically lifestyle measures, the dark room and the rest if you're able to get to good sleep.

Okay, I got you.

You just have— you haven't tripped that circuit breaker completely. If you're tired, achy, brain fog, can't sleep, then you've tripped that circuit breaker and there's what's called the SHINE protocol, sleep, hormones, infections, nutrition, exercises, able, that turns that circuit breaker back on. Our randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study showed 91% of people with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and this now applies to Long COVID. We have several studies on effective treatment for Long COVID, can recover with an average 90% increase in quality of life. This is very, very, very treatable unless you go to your regular doctor. But, you know, you don't need the doctor for a lot of this. You can do it on your own, but you gotta know it exists.

Did you come up with that, the shine? Is that your word? And what's it stand for again?

Sleep, hormones, infections, nutrition, and exercise is ABELE. It's funny, it used to be the SHIN protocol and Dr. Oz, I was talking to him about it and he said, "Yeah, yeah, that's all good. Prove it." And he sent me this Lieutenant Commander gal in the Air Force who had severe fibromyalgia. He said, "Get her well." So, a month later, she was well. And he said, "Okay, now you can be on the show." But she's the one who said you got to add E to SHINE. You got to have exercise even if it's mild for conditioning. So, that's how it turned to the SHINE to SHINE protocol.

Yeah. I actually agree with that. I actually have been through times of fatigue in my life that didn't really involve COVID or significant chronic stealth co-infections or anything like that, but yet, moving and exercising paradoxically, right? Because you'd think it just exhausts you more, but sometimes that actually kind of restores my energy levels. And I'll wake up sometimes very fatigued or sluggish or brain fog and 5 minutes into a workout be feeling fantastic with the highly scientific term being I'm shaking off the cobwebs or at least clearing them out a little bit.

Have you seen a stagnant swamp versus one that river that's alive and active.

Yeah, yeah. Great metaphor. Great metaphor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I come to you and you ask me, "Hey, are you sleeping well?" And, I've already told you that I'm fatigued. I say no. What's the next step?

Okay. So, you're not able to sleep, then I'm going to go ahead and look. I don't do blood tests to make the diagnosis. You don't need any testing to diagnose fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID. It's very simple. You can go on my website Vitality101 and do a free quiz in your own 5 minutes. I'll just tell you. You don't even have to bother with that. Tired, achy, brain fog, can't sleep, you've got the fibromyalgia. If not, you've probably got other causes of fatigue.

Wait, you said tired, achy, brain fog, can't sleep. Those are the four.

Yeah. And I'll give you 100 other symptoms, but that you commonly may have numbness and tingling, lightheaded on standing, a little disequilibrium, but the core four, that tells you that you tripped the circuit breaker. So, Either way, I'm going to be looking for causes of your energy crisis. On the blood testing, that'll include nutritional things like vitamin B12 and iron level. I don't do other nutritional testing. It's easier. Just, one, they're not reliable. Two, I can give you the nutrients and they're not expensive and you don't have to take handfuls of pills and just flush your system with nutrients, really good vitamin powder, and that'll take care of it.

Okay. And I may interrupt you a few times as you go through this, but when you said you don't do nutritional testing, what testing are you referring to?

Oh, God. I mean, there's things where I can test for all the amino acids, all the multivitamins, omegas, and there's hundreds of other very fashionable tests that propose to look at the most recent wisp of smoke off the fire. And unfortunately, one, they're interesting, they may be a little helpful, but this is a very dynamic process. Most of these levels are fluctuating minute to minute in the body, and the tests just aren't, in my opinion, that accurate. And you can spend thousands of dollars doing all these different ones. I'm just going to give you a 50-cent multivitamin. It'll take care of most of those.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, what I'm hearing you say is that a lot of people might go first to these super fringe expensive very comprehensive tests like a Genova Diagnostics metabolomics or something like that when there's lower-hanging fruit such as maybe multivitamins and minerals that they haven't even paid attention to yet.

Yeah. I don't want to use the word fringe. Places like Genova and like many of these other labs, they're very good labs, but I don't need— for things I don't need testing for and that it's more reliable to just take a vitamin powder and it takes care of the problem, I'm going to go that way. If I have a really tough case, that 10% that doesn't respond to anything, And then, I'm going to start using some of the more esoteric testing that is less proven. I have a problem with tests that I'm concerned may be positive on 80% of the healthy population as well as on sick people. It doesn't tell me anything.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. So, I interrupted you when you were talking about looking at some of the basic nutritional needs and then what comes next.

Yeah. So basically, what I'm going to do is some of the testing, I'll do hormonal testing. I'm going to look for a number of infections, although most infections I'm going to diagnosed based on symptoms and response to treatment. So, I'm gonna break it down on these categories. There's a simple test. A lot of you out there who have this have what's called POTS. You stand up where a big bag of water gravity sends the blood down to her legs. And because this circuit breaker sends the blood back to the body, it's not working and you get lightheaded and then you get brain fog. You don't need a $2,000 tilt table test. For all of this stuff, you can email me at, and if you want to put this in your notes, it's fatigue, F-A-T-I-G-U-E, doc@gmail.com.

FatigueDoc@gmail.com. Careful doing that. You're going to get blasted. I'm assuming you got some pretty good filter set up for email.

I'm a teacher and I'm happy to teach and I've organized the information for people. So, you can ask for the information sheets for fatigue or fibromyalgia or long COVID. If you have nerve pain, you can ask for those. If you have if you have a lot of sensitivities to everything, you can note that. I will send it to you and it just organizes it. I know I'm going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah here, but it will take it all and just put it together. And then, here's how you start, here's how you move forward, here's how you tell.

Even though admittedly I'm more of a book, your book kind of does that too, but it's nice that someone could email you.

Not everybody has the attention span for a book.

Yeah. And, not everybody's stuck in a turkey stand for 6 hours with your book. Right?

So the book is great. And for those who want the textbook, that's Franck Fattig's fantastic book. That is the textbook that will go through all of these and tell you in really straightforward language how to take care of it. For those who want, especially with long COVID, something short and sweet, there's a shameless plug. My book, "You Can Heal from Long COVID," just came out. June 9th.

Yeah. You sent it to me, by the way. I didn't read it yet, but you sent it to me. Got on my shelf.

That's a short and simple version for people. So, there's all kinds of stuff you can do. So, the bottom line is you got these issues, how do you optimize energy production? And, SHINE is the way to do that.

Okay. I want to dig a little bit more into the details of what the SHINE protocol involves, but do you ever get called out by some of these other fancy functional medicine practitioners, many of which I've probably had on my show saying, "Dude, you're just looking at symptoms. You're just asking somebody if they have brain fog or fatigue or they're not sleeping well. You got to be more precise than that. This person could have some chronic stealth coinfection like Lyme. We need to be testing for this stuff from the get-go so we're not wasting our time." Ben, I'm a science geek.

I couldn't get a date to save my life in school even if I could talk to a girl back then. And I'm a science geek. I go through to the medical libraries for fun. You're in the turkey stand in the libraries or now online, just going through the studies. Anybody is welcome to call me out on anything. They don't anymore if I'm in the room. They'll wait until I'm not in the room because I'm happy to answer them and say, here's what the research shows. Fancy testing, one, if I take 5 people and do 5 tubes of blood and send it to 5 labs or even the same lab, I'm the same person, I'm going to get different results from most of these tests. I'm not impressed with the reliability for many of these.

Interesting. Yeah. And see, that's why I liked your book because you're actually doing a lot of this stuff from practical experience. So, what you're saying is you're just seeing so much variation in the results of this test even in the same patient that you'd rather put more faith in the symptoms.

What you are telling me as a person that you have, what your symptoms are, and how you respond to different things symptomatically gives more information pieces of paper that have black and white scribble that may or may not be valid on it. I'm sorry, we love things in writing no matter how bullshit they are.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And then, in an information era, it's very easy to get a lot of bullshit shoveled your direction. And, in many cases, the schooling system doesn't help this out, but because it's in writing, you assume it to be true, which can be quite dangerous considering how easy it is to get something in writing these days, not just published, but on the internet.

I have 3 of my 12 grandkids here with me. They're like 6 to 11. And what I've been teaching them is all the stuff that they get in the newspapers, on TV, it's a fiction. They're making it up just like the cartoon shows.

Yeah, some of it at least.

No, no, no. And it's not that they're bad people. There's no bad people out there. It's just a lot of misinformation. I love fiction. I mean, I'm a geek. Give me a Lord of the Rings and I'm a happy camper. But, I like my fiction to be labeled fiction.

Yeah, yeah, true fact. So, the idea of looking at symptoms and then addressing your treatments based on that and your experience kind of leads me to what I'm really wondering here is what are the big wins? When somebody actually has fatigue, you talked about your Shine Protocol, but what are some elements of that that just seem to work over and over again if I come to you and I've got fatigue? Okay.

So first of all, let me note that after 50 years in medicine, I retired from seeing people about 18 months ago. So I'm no longer treating directly. My focus is on the teaching. But I am happy to send the information. So where do you start? Number one, you make a list of the things where you put energy each day. And you have one side that says things that feel good. Leave your brain out of this list in the beginning. Feels good, things that feel bad. Then for that second list, the part that feels bad, put a star by things where you will be homeless or arrested if you don't do.

Give me some examples of the feels good and feels bad.

Well, for example, I may like reading. I like reading my Kindle. I'm a reader. I like to read. I like to go through the science literature. All of that feels good to me. So I'm going to spend doing that. I like playing with the grandkids. I like playing with my wife. I like going out for my walks. These things feel good. Doing certain kinds of paperwork, addressing nonsense things with the paperwork. I remember I have 5 kids, so going to the school meetings. I used to be the chairman of the board of over about a dozen organizations. And except for starting a new school, because I thought the school system was crap in the city where I live, I started a new school. I was chairman of the board. That felt good. But all the other meetings that I was doing where a good citizen will go and a good parent, I'm not going to show a finger sign that gives an expression of my joy towards those. I came home one day and my wife's at midnight almost, and my wife said, "How was the meeting?" I said, "Horrible." She said, "Anything useful happen?" "No, it was a waste of a lot of high-powered people's time for hours." And I don't think you have to have chronic fatigue to have an experience like that. No. And she said, why do you do this? And it's like a light went on and all those on my list, off, off, off. I kept the school. I told the school I'd give you 3 years to get started up and stable and running. And I'd be the chairman of the board of fundraising for that. Every one of the rest of them I cut loose. For those of you with CFS and fibromyalgia, you probably have 30 bags of paperwork you haven't been able to get to. If you use this and you get yourself feeling great so you can go back to those 30 bags of paperwork, your body will thank you again. You haven't been arrested for it yet, let it ride. Go do something fun.

So, from a practical standpoint, I'm assuming that if someone's listening in and they have fatigue and they're taking notes here, they could theoretically write to their employer or to their coworkers and say, "Hey, I need 4 weeks here or I need 8 weeks." Or maybe you can tell me, Jacob, what a reasonable period of time would be to be able to tackle some personal health issues, focus on some things that are really draining or really not draining and stressful for me right now, and then I'll come back after X period of time to begin to dig into some of these things that are still my obligation or still expected for me to do.

So, here's the thing, Ben. This is not a one-size-fits-all. And that's why when I first noted this and people are going to say, "Well, gee, this is all nice and good, but give me something to freaking help me get better." But what I'm doing is starting with This is how you start it, and then we'll go into the biochemistry. Because if you don't start it this way, you're gonna crash and burn. What's a reasonable amount of time off? See what feels best to you. That will tell you your personal responsibilities. Your brain will tell you what you're supposed to do to be a good boy and a good girl and sacrifice yourself for everybody else, because that's what good citizens do, damn it. You know, turn your brain off for this. See Picture being off for 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 decades. See what feels better to you. Let that— sometimes you got to go.

Yeah. Yeah. You mean there's certain things that just don't serve you that you should not be doing because they obviously drain you. Very similar to like if you run a business and your calling is not copywriting and you're banging your head against the wall trying to do the copywriting every day when you're better served by, I don't know, working with the books or doing Bigger Vision stuff, not being in the weeds as much. That's just a permanent lifestyle adjustment for you. But surely, there has to be some research or some science. I don't want to push back and push back to you on everything.

Push back on me.

That shows that there's a certain amount of time that it might take for the hypothalamus to come back on board for that circuit breaker to start working again. I realize that's not a very scientific explanation of it, but is there any hope for people to know an approximate number of weeks or days to get over something like this?

Using the approach we'll talk about today, most people start feeling better in about 2 months. And, 75% of— most people are feeling an average of 75% improvement in quality of life at 3 months.

Okay, got it. That's very helpful.

And, in the book, I talk about for each treatment, this is a fair period of time. If I'm giving low-dose naltrexone and I give 4 weeks, it's going to do nothing. At 8 weeks, it starts working. If I'm giving what I take myself on busy days, this one thing I have on my desk, it's called HRG-80 Red Ginseng Chewable Tablets. I did a study on that.

Say that again.

It's funny. I gave up on ginseng about 30 years ago because they started using the farm ginseng, which was useless. It was the wild ginseng that worked. And then a friend of mine came up and he said, try this stuff. The way it's put together aquaponically, it had the old levels of ginsenosides that had the active components. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he said, he stuck one in my mouth kind of a thing. It was, you know, and I'm pretty energy sensitive. I could tell in a minute, I could feel the difference. And it's kind of healthy energy, you know, it's, and a special kind of red ginseng, H-R-G-H-0, and use the chewable because it'll cut, drop the cost 75% just by using—

H-R-G-H-0 chewable red ginseng.

Yeah. I just took half a tablet this morning.

Interesting.

It's a busy thing. And, you can take it every day or just some days. In the study, 188 people who had at least a 50% drop in function, their energy went up an average of over 60% from just taking 1:1. So, these are simple things that you can do. And that, I tell people to give it 1 bottle, 30 to 45 days is enough. But really, for a lot of people, you'll know quickly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I run into the same thing with my own supplementation. I tell people who start using NAD, for example, Usually, it takes 5 to 7 days for that to start to accumulate for you to really start to feel the effects on fatigue, sleep deprivation, recovery, et cetera. And, it varies from supplement to supplement. You mentioned 30 days for something like red ginseng. I know some people get on an adaptogen and feel it right away like ashwagandha or shilajit or something like that. But, it does highly depend.

You're right. I'll tell them 6 weeks. I'd rather have them be pleasantly surprised when one day later they're already feeling the adaptogens.

Yeah, yeah. I hear you.

I hear. So the timing varies, but in terms of the letter to your employer, that's, see how it feels to you. Try on different things in your mind and see how it feels. The best definition, Ben, that I've heard for burnout is when your soul grows too big for the role that you're playing. And, you know, if you've hatched from that egg and you're trying, you've outgrown it. And now you're trying to stuff yourself back in the shell. Your psyche's not going to support you on it, no matter what you do physically. You can kind of tune things up and keep them going a bit, but that means it's time to start taking a look around, see who you are, where you are in life. And again, your brain is just telling you the product of your programming as a child. How, and as an adult, see what feels best to you. And what works.

Yeah. As a physician, I'm sure you're used to people being vulnerable with you. I didn't think that the show would go this direction necessarily, but I'll share that just this morning, I actually almost broke down crying in front of my computer. I was helping to get my kids ready to leave for camp, take care of morning chores, assist my wife who woke up not feeling that well. And I grabbed my cup of tea and I went into the office because usually there's a few fires that I need to put out in the morning before I, you know, go do my workout and have breakfast and get ready for formal obligations. And I had at least 20 emails and I had about 100 and I think it was about 115 emails in the inbox. And at least 20 of them were big things. Like, hey, we need to have this chat immediately, or I need to talk to you before the end of the day. When can we hop on a Zoom call? Or, I need you to review this 20-page contract and get it back to me tonight so we can get it signed for a video shoot tomorrow. And my heart just like sinks and sinks and low. And don't get me wrong, I love my job, Jacob, but I almost broke down crying this morning. At 6:45 AM in front of my computer. And, you know, it's not because I have chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia or something like that. I just had a big workload. And for me, you know, the way I approach that is I just basically think, okay, one by one, just get through this one by one. Look at what's the most important things that you need to do. Make sure that you actually triage this and don't necessarily tackle the things that don't need to be tackled right away. Go get your workout in so you feel a lot better and you have some energy coming back into this. I can tell you by the end of the day today, even though I might stay up a little later than usual on a very busy day, I'll get through it all. But yeah, I mean, I run into that kind of stuff all the time. And if I didn't have strategies in place like eating good nutrition food, exercising, working out, movement, stopping every half hour to move a little bit and blow off some steam, get good sleep, focus on relationships and my children and my wife, I could see myself emailing myself into a state of chronic fatigue.

And, it would be a protective mechanism on your body's part to get you to pull you off the side of the road and see who you are and what you want. Because Ben, you may have outgrown a lot of this detail high-pressure kind of stuff. What I found, I'm an efficiency expert geek. I mean, the amount of stuff I can get done, and roll through. I mean, when I was in college, I was paying my way through college, did college in 2 and a half years because you paid by the year tuition. So, everything through, was working to pay my own way because my dad was dead, was doing a bunch of other stuff and the rest. I'm very efficient when I want to be. But what I found is when you're very efficient and you're very good at what you do in terms of getting all this stuff rolling through, rolling through, it doesn't mean you get caught up. The universe just sends you more. Yeah, exactly. And there comes a point where you need to say, you know, I can do it, but I'd rather start being a bit more than doing. You know, it's like when you run away from the city and suddenly you're out turkey hunting. I don't think it was the middle of back out Los Angeles, you're doing a turkey hunt with the kids. So you're escaping the city, but you're taking it with you. And you can change the expectations you have. It doesn't have to be sudden, but you can start to get a sense of how much of this do I want to delegate, or have I outgrown? I like to do the teaching. I'd like to continue doing that, maybe see what feels good and start seeing what in your life feels good. Do that list. See what feels good. And, you just withdraw the energy. For those people who are like everything needs to be done yesterday, you send them a note, "John, I know I got the business for you and a lot of deadlines, a lot of pressure. I'm not the one to handle all that kind of stuff. I will get to the stuff when I can. If that doesn't work for you, then I'm not your man." Yeah, yeah.

It makes really good sense. Between 3 companies, I've got 32 employees, delegate and outsource, a great deal yet. I wanted to share that story is to make sure that people know that we all sometimes feel like we're fighting a big uphill battle. And, what you just told me, Jacob, is reminiscent of this guy named Chad, father, CEO, Ironman triathlete, 11 kids. He's featured in this book I wrote called "Boundless Parenting," but he told me sitting across from me at dinner one night, "Ben, your business will eat you alive." Your business will eat you alive. The emails, the tasks, the opportunities, the growth from $1 million to $100 million becomes $100 million to $1 billion. It never stops. So, you must set up your life in the following order of priority: God and your spiritual growth, your wife or your spouse, your children, your health, and then business is fifth. And that is something I've really made a concerted attempt to do and has been a lifesaver for me.

He gave you wonderful wisdom. Can I add a sixth one to that?

Oh, I'm curious.

Yeah. Create from being instead of doing.

Create from being instead of doing. You mean like having creative outlets in life?

Be happy. Be joyful. Be quiet. Be at peace. Be vibrant. And from that state of being, let stuff flow from you as it naturally will. That's where your inspiration comes from. You're so used to from the age you're coming, you're growing through to, well, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this, I create, I do this. You're getting to the point where you're just going to start spinning your wheels. Yeah. And so you're at an age in the highway of life, you're hitting past 35, where you're going to go ahead and there's an exit on the road of doing that's called being. And you will see, if you look around the execs and CEOs, of the major companies that I didn't have friends in. They're ones who keep going faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. And everybody hates them. The board hates them. They're all burnt out. They have a life from crap. And, you know, the company doesn't thrive. And then you have the ones that have the CEOs that they're not micromanaging everything. They're setting a tone and the direction and the mission statement, if you're like to speak that language, of the company, they are basically expressing where the company goes. They don't say much, but when there's key decisions, they'll go, no, I think this decision, and it's a knowing that people have, and they just handle the ship by turning the bow, you know, the rudder just a little bit here and there, and then they're off living their life, but every so often they adjust the rudder. And the boat goes perfectly, and you have a choice. The first one leads to burnout. The first one is really good for women who hate their husbands, so the husbands can burn out and die and leave them wealthy widows. You'll think about that. We'll hit you with Iceland later tonight. If you want to have a healthy life and happy wife, start to get into a space of being. Choose, and you create states of being by choosing what they are. I am really happy. I choose to be happy. People say, "But everything works out great in your life. Of course, you're happy. You moved to Hawaii. You've got these great kids and grandkids." Yes, I chose to be happy and then great things happen.

Happened. Yeah. And, that Viktor Frankl-esque mentality of choosing contentedness and spreading that to others from a business standpoint can permeate an entire organization. Spirit of scarcity, rushing, and unhappiness that I often find myself guilty as charged backsliding into that attitude and beginning to bark orders and micromanage, especially on a busy stressful morning like this. But what you've explained, actually choosing the attitude that you want to permeate into your organization and spreading more happiness and joy and creativity and abundance is a much, much better way to live and probably one that has much lower risk for things like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

Yes, and I'm going to invite you to notice because you have a really good mind and you're used to using it. There's times to get out of your mind and just to see how things feel. So, later on today when you're out in the turkey hunt again later, have a little notepad. Leave my book at home. Have a little notepad. Do put things that feel good, things that don't. Don't think about the to-do list, feel into each of them. Just picture them. How does it feel? Feel good, feel bad. And then how does it work out? You know, how does it feel? How does that work out? Those, that's how I steer. So, and then you don't have to make sudden changes. It can be, okay, I'm going to give you guys 90 days heads up that I'm going to be doing less of this minute-to-minute micromanaging. If you have a contract you need for a video tomorrow, I need at least 30 days, I need ahead to get to it. I'm not doing deadline, whatever. See what feels to you and start to reclaim your life. And then you start to picture things, just daydreaming and see what things feel good while you're daydreaming in that turkey stand. And, you know, and then add those things to the list that feel good. They don't have to be practical at all. But once you have a list of 4, 5, 8 things that feel good, you're going to start to see patterns that, oh, well, this can happen in this direction, or you'll forget about it. And this great virtual reality game we call life will start bringing that to you.

I can tell you my top 4 on my feel-good list that'll likely materialize when I do this later on today, and I will. 4 I could think of off the top of my head would be pickleball, playing my guitar, cooking, and praying.

Good. Give yourself room and space where you can do it comfortably and not feeling like you're having to be somewhere else at the time.

Yeah, because those are 4 things when I go do them, I'm constantly thinking, gosh, I don't have enough time to be doing as much of this as I want to right now.

So Ben, can we talk, let's talk about the biochemistry a bit of feeling better.

Yeah.

Because usually I'll do 95% biochemistry and 5% mind-body, but today we've got happily drawn into kind of the reverse thing. And that's perfect. But for the rest of the folks out there, a couple key things. We talked about shine. 8 hours sleep was the average, 8 to 9 hours was the average night's sleep until light bulbs were invented. So if you're wondering what an average night's sleep, and it varies from person to person, there's no one shoe size fits everybody, but give yourself a weekend or two where you sleep with no alarm clock, nothing you have to do in the morning. See how many hours you sleep naturally and what feels best. So, you know for yourself what your body wants. But, I like my 9 hours sleep a night.

Which sometimes requires going to bed a little bit earlier. Yeah, this isn't just sleeping in. This is sometimes making a choice to watch a little less TV after dinner.

Well, I walk my talk. I do what feels best. And, I moved to Hawaii about 20 years ago with my wife and child number 5 went to college and we're on the Big Island of Hawaii. So, sleep 9 hours, is about right. Now, a lot of you, especially if you're hypothyrologic sleep centers, if you have stress, so the sleep center's not working, there's melatonin. I like it, the sustained release melatonin so you're not waking at 2:00 in the morning. I like one called EP120, 10 milligrams sustained release. That's what I take. There's a mix of herbs, revitalizing sleep formula. There are essential oils. Lavender is wonderful. Sleep mask, I mean, Ben, you mentioned the dark room. We understand the value of that. Even little bits of light throw you into the adrenaline part of your mind when you're sleeping. A sleep mask, $15 investment, well worth it for many people.

So, I make a quick comment about the sleep mask, by the way, because there's a study as recently as about 6 months ago backing up the efficacy of a sleep mask even in a dark room thus causing hypothesis that part of it is the blocking of light and part of it similar to a gravity blanket or a gravity pillow is the calming effect of having something slightly weighted over your eyes. Isn't that interesting? Like a proprioceptive effect.

What's swaddling? Anybody who's had a baby, you swaddle the baby, they calm down. You're swaddling your face. And, for those of you with nerve pain or even fibromyalgia pain, a heavy blanket can be helpful. For those of you with nerve pain, you can ask me for the study from my "Oh Pain Free 1-2-3" book on nerve pain. When you email me at fatiguedoc@gmail.com, you can ask for the nerve pain section. If you have reflex sympathetic dystrophy or currently called CRPS, there's treatments for that. You can email me for that information sheet, but that's a little off topic, but just know that's available. These are all free. That people can do. But, yes, the heavy blanket or that it has the swaddling effect, it calms down the nervous system. Very good. You are way ahead of 99.99% of doctors.

You know that. Well, I get to talk to a lot of smart people like you at least twice a week for a while. That's the majority of my education is just getting a chance to chat about this stuff for a long time and read books. Alright. So, we've got the sleep component. And what else for the biochemistry piece here?

Hormones. Low thyroid. The blood test missed the majority of people who need thyroid hormone. It's important to understand what the normal range means when you do a blood test. For most tests, it's based on called two standard deviations, blah, blah, blah. You take 100 people, the lowest and highest two people are defined as abnormal. Add us a 95.5 to 95% in the middle. That's called 2 standard deviations. So, to put it in English, a normal range for shoe sizes would be size 5.5 to 13. So, if you put Ben and I in a size 7 shoe, the shoe doctor will say, "It's in the normal range. There's no problem with their shoes." Yeah.

You haven't seen my feet lately.

Yeah. And that, I mean, I'm 12 myself. So, that's an exact analogy to what's going on with the testing. And it gets worse from there. So tired, achy, weight gain, cold intolerant, find a holistic doctor who'll consider thyroid hormone. Adrenal fatigue, 1/4 of Americans I think these days suffer from that. If you get irritable when hungry, you get hangry, that's adrenal fatigue. There's 30 other symptoms I can give, but that's the best one where, and what I recommend is let your spouse know. I'm one of those. My former wife was one of those and I think doesn't play well together. So, adrenal fatigue, hangry, adrenal support. Simple. There's a product I use called Adrenoplex. I have like 7 things that will smooth the thread. I was full of adaptogens, the licorice.

And for the approach to the thyroid and the adrenals, it sounds to me like you're using a lot of natural support, not necessarily prescription medication for something like this.

The thyroid, it's best if you can get the bioidentical Natural Thyroid, but it's by prescription in this country, although you can find it. And, that's better to have a holistic doctor. The adrenal stuff, you can just get it on your own. Yeah.

And, I've been messing around with this. I interviewed Dr. Amie Horniman. She has a product called Thyroid Fix. So, it's T2 iodine, selenium, some other thyroid supportive compounds. It's just T2 though. There's no T1 or T3 or T4.

Well, she's bypassing the regulations by going over the T2. Predominantly. How is that working out for folks?

Seems to be getting really good responses from people, especially people who are doing the home body temperature tests. It actually seems to make a remarkable dent in the drop in body temperature.

And there are labs you can get the blood tests even without a prescription. So, good. So, people, you can start to do this at home. The adrenal is easy to start with. Bioidentical progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, that's a whole nother show topic if you want it, but those can be helpful.

Infections. And for people following, we're on the I now of SHINES. We got sleep, hormones, infections.

There are many chronic low-grade infections. We just don't have tests for them. Well, we have tests, but I wouldn't spend the money on them. They're not especially reliable. I diagnose Candida by if you are sugar craving, not to be confused with sugar craving from the hangry, that's feed me now or I'll kill you. This is more what I call the happy Twinkie hunter. It's going through the cabinets for something sweet. You have nasal congestion, postnasal drip, sinusitis, irritable bowel syndrome, gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation. These sound like you, that's usually gonna be Candida overgrowth. There's, in the book I talk about the medications, but good probiotic, fermented foods can help. There's the EP300, bee pollen, bee propolis I should say, not pollen, but it's a bee propolis. Which has antifungal properties, the herb berberine, 500 milligrams 3 times a day. For those of you with long COVID, especially post-vaccine, get the book, "You Can Heal from Long COVID," and go through the whole thing. I don't talk about the ivermectin much in that either. There's some things that are so politically charged that once you mention the word, half the people in the country won't hear anything what you have to say.

Well, the bright side is your book wouldn't take that long to burn anyways. It's a nice short read.

Hey, it makes a nice little silver and pink sparks as it burns.

I haven't read it yet. It's on my books to read shelf, the COVID one. So, so far I've only read the "From Fatigue to Fantastic." So, we've got the infections and that would include Long COVID, something like that.

It includes Long COVID. So, post-viral, there's protocols in the book for if you have chronic flu-like symptoms, then just look at the book and look at the post-viral protocols. If you suspect Lyme disease, and again, I'm not trusting the Lyme tests very much on either side, positive or negative. But there are symptoms that say if you have these symptoms, take an antibiotic for 6 weeks, doxycycline. Or if you had— so many people come to me and I say, well, I've been crippled in bed, but I had the stetal work and I got this antibiotic and it went away and I was healthy for 10 days. And I said, so they put you back on the antibiotic, right? And they said, no, they wouldn't give it to me. Why? You know, As well, they said they can't use long-term antibiotics. Well, if you had acne, they'd give it to you for 3 years.

Good point.

Yeah, yeah. So, I will go based on symptoms. I will treat for different infections.

Okay, got it. And by the way, quick rabbit hole, you had long COVID yourself?

I had post-viral chronic fatigue syndrome back in 1975. When I was in med school, I was Rolling through med school quickly again. I was the third youngest in my class of 300. I was working as a nurse in Children's Hospital to pay my way through med school. And those three things are the easy parts of my life. I made the mistake of trying to be an arbiter in a psychotic family that had been Auschwitz survivors mostly and trying to create peace and rest. And then, there are other things. And then, I got this nasty viral infection. Crashed and burned. I found myself homeless and sleeping in parks. That's how I learned about chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

Man, how long did it take you to get over it?

A year. A year to recover enough to go back to med school. I didn't even know I could go back to med school, but I found out after I got myself better that I could. And, that was how I started learning and putting together this protocol since 1975.

Yeah. Kind of a blessing in disguise that happened to you while you were still in your formative education years and probably a little bit flexible in terms of what you were willing to learn or motivated to learn about.

And Ben, nothing that's ever happened to me has turned out to be anything but a blessing. Yeah, yeah. I don't even see them as being in disguise anymore. Everything I own except for our home went up and cars went up in the Lahaina, Hawaii fire. Oh, man. Really?

I didn't realize that.

And we didn't have any money in the account or stuff. We had, you know, that was our retirement fund for, we had two rental condos. And the funny thing is those buildings are still standing. They're the only ones. Everything else is ash. We haven't even been able to get back in. It's been almost a year now. I know that that will turn out to be a blessing and a gift. Wow. I see it behind us being a phoenix. And this is every 100 years it burns down. Decides what it wants to be when it grows up next. And then, I get to, along with many other people, help along in that process.

By the way, has it burned down before? Is it actually like Phoenix like that?

About 100 years before.

Wow. Interesting. I didn't know that.

Burnt to the ground.

Wow.

Wow. So, all these things turn out. So, sleep, hormones, infection. For nutrition, cut back sugar, increase salt, Avoid junk that they say food-like substances on it. I used to teach the 3rd grade nutrition class when I lived in Annapolis, Virginia. I teach it. Basically, the concept was food is food and junk is junk. And look at the ingredients. If you can't read it, don't eat it. You know, if it says corn, you know, if it says food in the ingredients, if it's hydroxylated body-related, hanan, 379, 276, Colored dye number. Don't eat that crap.

You know what the number one question I get about that though that's pushback? People will look at the label. Let's say that powdered multivitamin that you brought up earlier. People will look at that and be like, "Well, I can't pronounce half this stuff. How could this be good for me? Plus, it's processed in order to be extracted." What's your typical response to something like that?

Well, you got to know who's making this stuff. That's the thing about it. It's really hard as not an expert. It's hard enough as an expert to kind of sort through. The vitamin powder, that's one that there's a company called Terry Naturally is gonna be making that. It's called the Energy Revitalization Drink Mix. I had made it about 19 years ago, but the company that made it went mostly mass market and they didn't wanna bother with a complex product. But it has the perfect amount. I know that sets me up when I say that, but I have the research showing here's how each amount of each nutrient was picked. And why we picked each kind of the nutrient. I don't know if I'm going to make any money from that yet. The company, I just got a company to make it so it's available for the public.

Even though based on the wisdom of what you just shared, it's best to consume food that doesn't even have a label, right? There's just natural produce, shop the perimeter of the grocery store, et cetera. But, there are now some pretty good label scanners. Gosh darn if I can't remember the most popular one off the top of my head. Somebody was just showing it to me the other day. And, you scan the label and it actually tells you, hey, You might not be able to pronounce this, but it's actually good stuff, or stay away from this, or it has a rank scale for the health aspects of that labeled product. And so, I would imagine there's probably at least half a dozen apps in the App Store now that allow you to scan a product, a vitamin, a freaking sunscreen, and actually know. So, it's a lot easier now with technology.

Good to know. I didn't even know that. I just go by companies. Explore the companies and how good they are or not in terms of trustworthy.

Okay. So, anything else on the end components?

Yep. Basically, there's a Smart Energy System. It's a mix of ribose, ashwagandha, rhodiola, green tea extracts, cassandra, and licorice. So, we just did another study on that that I need to be writing up today to submit for publication. The journals are bugging me to get that in. That was increased stamina 81%. So, even for healthy people, who just want more healthy energy. So, the Smart Energy System, that can be that. That is one of two products I make myself and you can get on the endfatigue.com. Everything else I mentioned, you can go to Amazon. I don't make a penny on it. So, this way, 'cause when people are telling me products, it's like, who's making on it? So, this is my way of keeping it all transparent.

And what about the E?

E is exercise as able.

Oh, E is exercise.

Okay. Right. So the thing is for most of you with CFS and fibromyalgia, you have what's called post-exertional malaise where you go ahead and you even walk to the mailbox and you're in bedridden for 3 days. And because your energy level is so low, you can't condition. This overall protocol will increase the energy and So, you can start to condition. It'll teach you how to go ahead and do the NRT when the blood rushes to your legs when you're exercising the POTS. So, email me for those of you who have that. Ask for the exercise information sheet for people with CFS and fibromyalgia. I'll give you exercises laying down that you can do that won't trigger that drop in blood flow to the brain.

How does it work exactly? Is it one of those machines that compresses and relaxes and moves blood around the body like a like one of those lymph circulation boot arm type of setups?

It's more that you're horizontal instead of vertical so the blood doesn't rush through like while you're doing it.

Yeah, that's what I meant was horizontal because I've done ones like that where it's almost like you look like the Pillsbury Doughboy and you zip up the arms and the legs. There's one for the torso and it compresses and relaxes. So, you're moving lymph and blood but you're not exhausting your HPA axis with hard exercise or weight training or cardio or something like that.

It's a mix of things. The information sheet will go through the details without. But Ben, I'd like to finish with the same thing I started with, which is that if you do this stuff so you can get well to go back to a life you hate, I've done nothing for you. We've all wasted our time here. If you get your energy recovering so you can go ahead and figure out who you are and follow your bliss and do a life you love, you will look back and realize that that little having your car pulled over on the road of life worked out really well for you so you could get to reset your GPS and figure out where you actually want to be going.

Yeah. I think a lot of people keep driving the car at the same speed and simultaneously as supplements, medications, biohacks, et cetera, try to figure out how to just squeeze gas in the tank and fix an engine while the car is still going 75 miles an hour down the highway. And, what you're saying is, "Hey, first, slow down the car and do less." And, a lot of these things, for example, the Shine Protocol, it's going to work a lot better if you're not trying to do it while you're still going a million miles an hour.

Well, it's not so much the speed of a million miles an hour, it's that you're going in the right direction. Make that list. It won't take you about 20 minutes. And so we start to withdraw energy from the things that don't feel good. You don't have to quit your job. You may just find that, oh, I don't like these parts, but I like these, and I can get my boss to delegate those, or I can delegate those, and start to take on the things I like. So sometimes you need to quit. Most of the time you don't. Most of the time you just need to get a sense of what feels good to you and make some adjustments. So I'm not recommending quick changes, I'm recommending make that list, see what feels good to you, see what works.

Yeah. The life satisfaction piece is huge. I used to do adventure racing and somebody told me during a race once in which I got lost, he says, "Hey, it doesn't matter how fast you go, Ben, if you're going fast in the wrong direction." And you're right. Even if you slow down the car, it might be going northeast and what your soul really wants is southwest. So, yeah, it's really good advice. And, And honestly, I'm kind of glad that our podcast took the direction of some of that wisdom from you because frankly, there's no way that in the time allotted, we could go through, I'll hold up the book here, all of the deep biochemical science in the book. I mean, it addresses andropause and heart function and Jacob's approach to migraines. And, he mentioned low-dose naltrexone and he goes through his approach for that, his approach for optimizing heart function. For optimizing methylation. So, it's kind of like an encyclopedia of knowledge, almost like a cookbook for fatigue. So, definitely pair the book with some of the lessons that you've just learned. It was my intention today to introduce you to this guy and to his mind and to his work because it's certainly one that I'm going to keep on my shelf for people who come to me, which happens pretty frequently with fatigue issues, with pain with fibromyalgia. So, Jacob, I'm very, very honored to have met you and to have been able to have this discussion with you.

Ben, likewise. And again, guys, get a life you love. It's not that hard. Just make that list and start to follow what feels good. And, you're going to look back and realize, "Holy shit, I got this place that's awesome. I did that and here I am in Hawaii." So, enjoy. This is meant to be a fun ride. Life is not a problem to be solved. It's not that I asked my cat what he needed to do to be worthy of food and all the things, and he just looked at me like, "You feed me, you stupid kid." I was born worthy, baby. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a cat for you. I'll put the show notes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Fantastic including the email that Jacob shared, the link to his Cures phone app, his books, not just this one but also the new one on Long COVID, And, I definitely plan to read that and we might actually wind up doing a two-parter. But, in the meantime, folks, check out his book, check out the shownotes again at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Fantastic. Jacob, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.

You're welcome, man. My honor and pleasure.

Alright. See you later. I finished my podcast with Dr. Teitelbaum. I took off my shirt and started my red light therapy and started bouncing around in my office. And then, I realized I forgot to tell you about the app that I was going to follow up on for food labels. Jacob just hung up, so I just pressed record again. And, the app is YUKA, Y-U-K-A. And then, there's another one that's called Think Dirty, Think Dirty. So, Y-U-K-A and Think Dirty. And then, again, I want to emphasize that podcast with Jacob, I actually had anticipated taken a much deeper dive into the medicine and the biochemical aspects. But, a lot of what we talked about on this show actually isn't in his book in quite as practical way as we described. So, I thought it was a great discussion. I hope it helped you out and you weren't bored just hearing a couple of dudes talk about their emotions and choosing the life that you love. But, I would love to hear your comments, your questions, and your feedback. So, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Fantastic, That is your shirtless nipple-filled addendum. Thanks for listening.

Do you want free access to comprehensive shownotes, my weekly roundup newsletter, cutting-edge research and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life, and a whole lot more? Check out BenGreenfieldLife.com.

It's all there.

Ben ben-greenfieldlife.com.

See you over there.

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