Dr. Diane Mueller (chronic illness expert) explains less-obvious medical causes of chronic fatigue beyond lifestyle factors, including hidden thyroid dysfunction (reverse T3), adrenal insufficiency (low cortisol/DHEA), micronutrient deficiencies (B12, vitamin D, B vitamins, vitamin C), chronic infections (SIBO, parasites, Lyme), and environmental toxins (mold, metals, pesticides). She emphasizes cellular inflammation as a mechanism and recommends expanded testing and working with clinicians.
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Hey, everybody. Talking about chronic fatigue and what causes chronic fatigue today I'm chronic illness expert Dr. Diane Mueller, and this is very complicated. Make sure you go back and watch my last video about how do you know if you have chronic fatigue? But in this video, we want to talk about some of the common causes. So we want to make sure that first of all, your thyroid is good. So that's basic and obvious, but many people just have TSH or T4 measured in their blood, and that is not a full thyroid panel. One of the things that can happen with the thyroid is the body can kick out a molecule called reverse T3. This particular format, T3, is blocking thyroid activity. So you can have completely normal thyroid levels. But even elevation of this molecule called reverse T3, the normal level in your blood for thyroid will not be able to do their function and they can cause fatigue as well as a lot of cold hands, hair loss, eyebrow hair loss, constipation, skin dryness, all those types of things. So if you've been told your thyroid is normal, but you look up all these classic thyroid symptoms like I just mentioned, and you feel like, gosh, it just seems like your thyroid is related to feeling tired all the time, then absolutely, you want to make sure that you are working with somebody that can do more testing on your thyroid to really see if you have other hidden reasons for low thyroid like I'm talking about. You can always work with us. Find out about our clinic in the show notes. So what else will cause chronic fatigue? So we absolutely want to consider things like adrenal gland problems. So this can be low cortisol, low ds, dhea. These are the stress hormones. We, we really want to make sure we have enough levels of these hormones because they're not just helping us with stress, they're also helping us with energy. And if we have low levels of these, we can absolutely get fatigued. Beyond that, we want to consider micronutrient deficiency. So oftentimes vitamin D is tested for, but we want to consider B vitamins, vitamin C. These are all very, very common ways of having low nutrients. And B12 will often times cause fatigue. B12 in blood work is not 100% accurate. We can get a little more accurate by ordering something called an MMA methylmalonic acid. So I'm getting into the weeds with technical terms here, but I want you to have actionable steps, which is why I'm using this medical jargon. So, like mma, a lot of you guys probably have not heard of this, but I want you to tell, I want to tell you that it's called that what it actually is is methylmalonic acid. So if you start talking to a doctor about what this is and why you want to order it, you come from a place of being informed. So we also want to consider infections, right? So infections in the gut, such as small intestinal bacteria, overgrowth, parasites, these sorts of things can cause fatigue. And we want to consider hidden toxins such as Lyme disease, mold illness and other environmental toxins, other metals, glyphosates, plastics, pesticides. And what happens a lot of these times when we have things like infections and fatigue. Fatigue, they can cause inflammatory molecules and inflammatory molecules that get increased, can inflame our nerves, we can get cellular inflammation. And really when we're getting our cells, when our cells are inflamed, a very basic way of looking at this, oversimplified way of looking at it, but it's helpful for understanding is when the cells are inflamed, they're not able to do their job as well, right? And every cell in our body needs energy to do its job. And so if our cells are busy trying to combat and calm the inflammation because of these infections and toxins in us, the cell doesn't have the required amount of energy to do its cellular functions. Guess what? We get pretty tired when that happens. So these are some of the most common reasons and we really, the biggest take home point is we need to get outside of just looking at the thyroid and sometimes measuring a cortisol and some basic blood work and saying, oh, if you're fatigued and it's not one of these root causes, then you're fine. No, you're not fine. You know, if you're fine, the body is supposed to have energy, right? The body, when taken good care of, has energy. Now of course, you will always want to make sure the basics are covered, right? I didn't mention the basic lifestyle things, but we want to consider hydration, we want to consider sleep, we want to consider how deep we're sleeping, what our diet is. All of those basic things can often be root causes. But if you've done all those basic things and your lifestyle is looking really good, then there's probably a more, a more major cause like infections or toxins or hidden nutrient imbalances or problems with the thyroid hormone being blocked or something like that, that's leading to the fatigue. So if you want to ask me questions, sign up for my next masterclass. It's in the show notes, it's live, there's a Q and a there where you can show up. I will present things on Fatigue is what we're talking about. So show up for that to get more information on fatigue and be able to ask me your questions. I hope to see you.
