Address The Underlying Causes of Fatigue with Dr. Evan Hirsch!

Hi, and welcome to How Humans heal. I am Dr. Donni Wilson, and I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Evan Hirsch today. He is a medical doctor and world renowned energy expert, founder and CEO of the International center for Fatigue. Thank you so much for joining me today, Evan, I'm so glad to have this conversation with you.

Hey, Dr. Donny, thanks so much for having me on.

Yes, I mean, here's the thing is fatigue is such a common symptom. The thing is that I think a lot of people may not use the word fatigue. And so I want to really dive into, like, what really is fatigue and how is it unique to each person who's experiencing it? But before we do that, just tell us a little bit more about you, like what got you to be doing what you're doing and specializing in this area.

So there were two major things that happened in my life, actually three that really led me down this path. The first thing is that when I was in high school, my older sister came back from college and she walled herself up in her room. Turns out she had chronic fatigue. I didn't really understand what was happening at that time, but eventually she kind of came out of it. So that was my first taste. And then the second time was in 2004 when I started my family medicine residency and I met my wife, Stacy, and we fell in love. And three months later, she couldn't get out of bed, and she was running a business, she had several employees, and it was just really challenging for her. And so I was there doing my family medicine residency and asking every doctor that I possibly could and researching it when I wasn't working 80 hours a week and trying to help her, and I couldn't, I felt incredibly powerless. Here's this woman that I love. You know, it was definitely challenging on our relationship, you know, but she finally, she found a naturopath and read about adrenal fatigue by Dr. Wilson and figured out a number of things, and there was still not a lot of information out there. So she got mostly better by about three years. And then we got married, we had a kid, I graduated from residency, I started my practice, and I started a functional medicine practice. The first functional medicine training I did was In September of 2007, right after I graduated, and immediately was practicing holistic functional medicine. But unfortunately, three years later, I got chronic fatigue, and it just about destroyed my life.

Your sister and your wife. And then you experienced it and you're like, oh, this is what they were feeling.

Exactly. Yep. Yeah. I didn't understand what it was. And I just kept pushing through it, you know, because that's how I got through medical school, and that's how I got through different aspects of my life. And pre med and whatever it was, sports, it was always just, you push through it, right? And so that's what I was doing in my clinic. And I had a seven figure business, successful in many senses of the word. You know, wonderful family, wife, kid, you know, all this sort of stuff. 10 employees, 4,000 square feet of office space. And I couldn't keep my head above water. I was taking naps underneath the desk. And I had to keep hiring people to do my work because my brain fog was so bad I couldn't remember anything. I had all this body pain. And then I would go home and my wife, who she, you know, she's just come out of fatigue. She's got. We've got this new baby, and she's like, hey, can you do the dishes? I couldn't even do the dishes. Dishes. Like, it was awful. And my daughter's like, hey, daddy, can you play with me? And I couldn't play with her, you know? And so I felt shame, I felt guilt, and I wasn't good at being vulnerable. I'm still learning how to be better at that. And so I wasn't willing to acknowledge the challenges that I was having. I was just like, oh, I just, I can't do it, or I'm tired, or I didn't. I didn't really have that sort of awareness until finally I was like, enough of this. And I started going to practitioners and not finding the answers that I wanted to. And so then I was like, okay, I got to do this on my own. And so I went through, and I knew from a functional medicine standpoint that if I found every single cause of low energy and fatigue, that I could just fix them. I could just go one after the other and fix them down the list. Go down the list. And so that's what I found. I found that there were 33 different causes and that I had 30 of them. And I find that most of the people that I work with or everybody that I work with who has low energy has 20 plus causes. So some people have 30, some people have 20, and they all have different causes, which makes it a little bit more complicated to treat. But that became my mission, and I wrote a book, bestselling book about it, and created online programs. And I'm just on a mission now to help as many people as I can take their energy to the next level.

Awesome. I mean, how. I'm so glad that you figured it out. But it sounds like even with the brain fog, you were able to think it through well enough to say, I need to be systematic about this and make a list and work my way down the list. And at least you had that training and background to understand some of these underlying causes. And I think that's the thing with a lot of people who experience fatigue or chronic fatigue. They may not have that training or background. And so they're going into the doctor's office, and the doctor might run some basic blood work, right? There's some simple. Like, when I think of fatigue, the first thing I'm thinking is, let's make sure. Find out if there's anemia, right? We gotta. That's, like, top of the list. Is there anemia? Okay, we need to address that. Or like iron deficiency or B, vitamin deficiency, anemia. And then we might go, okay, let's check out the thyroid. Because if there's an outright obvious thyroid issue, that's a very common cause of fatigue. And so we can start to kind of come off the top of the list with regular blood work. But I think what happens for a lot of people is the regular blood work comes back, quote, normal, right? And they're like, the doctor's like, well, maybe it's just you're getting old, or maybe you're just stressed and you just have to deal with it. Right? And they send them out the door because it didn't meet these criteria in the standard blood work. I mean, you must hear this all the time from people, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. And when it comes to thyroid, pretty much 95% of the people that we see are either undiagnosed thyroid or they're just underdosed, where they've been told that they have low thyroid, but they're just not taking enough of it. And then not enough people are taking into account the relationship between thyroid and adrenals, because thyroid may look fine, but if their adrenals are in the toilet, when you start working on their adrenals, all of a sudden the thyroid looks much worse. It's because the thyroid's like, compensating for the low adrenals. And so then people are like, well, what's happening now? And they're, you know, then they're kind of flipping out. But the reality is, is that they were holding the fort down and the adrenals were not. But now the adrenals are coming back. Thyroid's coming back. And then the sex hormones to complete that three legged stool of the hormones has to come back in order to be able to be functional and make the body as robust as it can be.

So on this list of 33 causes, and these are some of them, right, the hormone imbalances. And like you're saying, and this is what I find too is a lot of times it's with the thyroid, it's that it's subclinical or sub lab or whatever we want to call that, where it's like there's symptoms. The thyroid's obviously not optimal, it just might not show in the blood work. And a lot of people are in that category where the thyroid is just not totally optimal. And as you're saying, the thyroid is affected by so many other things including the adrenal glands. So it's like sometimes we get hyper focused on the thyroid and we end up missing out on all these other potential causes of fatigue. I'm sure you see that too, right? Where maybe a practitioner said, well, let's just treat your thyroid or let's just treat your adrenals, but they're still tired. So obviously we didn't get all the causes.

Exactly. Yeah. And I tell people, you know, when you've got your 20 plus causes, they're like 20 nails in the bottom of your foot and you can pull out the thyroid nail and you can pull out the adrenal nail and you can pull out the mitochondrial nail and you'll feel better, but you're still walking on nails, right? You know, so you got to get rid of all of them. And you know, you get to this mass effect where you've gotten enough, where you're noticing a significant improvement. But you know, people do improve all along the way with every single nail that you pull out. And so they're going to feel better sooner rather than later. But the question is, you know, we always are going for complete resolution and we also want to make sure that.

We are fixing the root of the root of the root. Right, the why of the why of the why. Right. And so the adrenals and thyroid and sex hormones and nutrients and mitochondrial dysfunction and neurotransmitter deficiency, those are actually not the root of the root of the root in my world. Like those are all caused by the toxins that we're going to be talking about. The heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, the allergies, they mess with these deficiencies and damage them and cause about 80% of them besides the lifestyle habit stuff. So it's just an important picture to Remember? Yeah, we can take these band aids. Even if they're natural band aids, they're still going to be helpful, but the goal is to actually make sure that we're removing whatever has caused them.

I love that as a naturopathic doctor, I'm always focused on what really is at the root cause. Because also, once we get to the real bottom of it and address that it's a positive ripple effect, everything else gets better. So much easier than if we're focusing on 10 little things that aren't the root cause. We're just spinning in circles, but we dig deep and we go, oh. So as always. Yeah, I love how you said that you always have to ask why again? Why is the thyroid out of bal. What did cause these nutrient deficiencies? Let's figure out the why that's underneath. And it reminds me, like in my first book called the Stress Remedy, I have this diagram where I talk about the root causes and how they disrupt the hormones, the digestion, the immune system, the nervous system, and then produce these symptoms. And the symptoms are really indicators, right? Because sometimes we get so focused on the symptom of, let's say, fatigue, and we're so focused on that, but we lose sight of really this fatigue is showing us that something's out of balance and we need to work our way through to find all the causes. And by the way, I've been through fatigue in my life at various times, rather severe fatigue from various reasons, as you're saying, including alongside of the migraines I was experiencing. And so I completely get what you mean. I had to go through this process of looking at what are all the potential causes of the fatigue and the migraines. And it's by going through that list. So I want to dig into it more with you. What else is on that list of potential causes for people? Because maybe someone listening is thinking, well, I've done some of these initial things, but is there something else on the list I haven't addressed yet? So tell us more. What else is on that potential list that people should consider if they are not quite feeling their best energy yet?

So I divide this list of causes into deficiencies and toxicities. So deficiencies are things that are not in the body or in your life that are supposed to be. And toxicities are things that are in your body or in your life that aren't supposed to be.

Okay.

And so when we look at the deficiencies, they're the deficiencies in hormones, like we just talked about deficiencies in mitochondrial function. Right. The mitochondria produces 80 to 90% of our energy. Found in every cell in the body except for red blood, cel cells, nutrients, so vitamins and minerals. Vitamin D, iron, magnesium, vitamin B12. Those are kind of the big ones that I see. And then deficiencies in neurotransmitters, whether it's serotonin or dopamine or gaba. And then there's the lifestyle habits. So this is deficiencies in good food. So not enough good food, not enough good water, not enough sleep, not enough movement.

And so those are the deficiencies. And then when we look at the toxicities, we're looking at heavy metals. So 100,000 pounds of mercury are dumped into our oceans every year. 80% of all lipsticks have lead in them. Cadmium comes from secondhand smoke. There's chemicals, 86,000 different chemicals that we're exposed to on a regular basis. 500 chemicals before you even walk out of the house in the morning with all the exposures, there's molds. Over half of all the buildings in first world countries have water damage, and most of those have mold. And most people that I speak to are like, nope, absolutely not. There's no way that I could be living in mold or that I ever lived in mold. But the thing is that the house, any house that you lived in, in your life, in any point, I mean, before you lived in it, obviously at any point in the house's life where it had a busted pipe, a leaky roof, or a flood in the basement could potentially have mold in it, and consequently you would have been exposed to it. That's just an important one that people need to pay attention to. And then infections, whether it's Lyme type infections, Borrelia, Babesia, Bartonella, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia. Some of the viruses, like Epstein Barr virus, are now the pandemic virus. HHV6, cytomegalovirus, mycoplasma, which is not a virus.

Parasites, yeast, bacteria, those are a lot of different infections. And I find that pretty much everybody who has low energy and fatigue has some sort of infection. And mold plus an infection are huge things that not enough people are talking about. There are people specializing in mold, there's people specializing in Lyme and other infections.

But they're like, in different camps.

Yeah, they're in different camps, and they're not combining all this stuff and they're not understanding the relationship between all of these. So that's heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and then there's allergies to foods and Inhalants, there's negative emotional patterns. So ACEs or adverse childhood events or adverse life events. Anything that you have that has happened to you in your life that you associate with being a negative experience will increase the stress on your body. And it's one of the reasons why we have an emotional coach on our staff to support people going through our program. And then the last thing is electromagnetic field. So anything that's plugged into the wall or has a battery that can put off wavelengths or frequenc can damage your DNA and upset the immune system.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I love how thorough your list is. And I completely agree. And it's. And it's. You know, I see these things in my patients. You know, I see. I'm checking for toxin exposure, mold toxin exposure, viral infections or Lyme or other kinds of tick disorders that are. That are just hanging there. And to some degree, it becomes a perfect storm, Right? I think that's what you're saying, too. It's like, by the time you have. Once you get depleted in nutrients and your gut health is imbalanced, and then your immune system isn't protecting you as well. So then these infections are more likely to show up, and then a toxin comes in, it makes you more susceptible to infection and allergies and gut issues, and then it just becomes this perfect storm, right? And next thing you know, you're like. Because I think a lot of people, what they say to me is like, well, what came first? Right? And it's. I say to them a lot of times, there's no way to know that answer because it is such an interconnected sort of tangle of issues. But I'd love to hear how you explain that.

Well, you did a really good job. One of the things that I say is that the immune system becomes dysfunctional based off of the total body burden. And so as we go through life, you come out of the womb and you get a whole bunch of stuff from mom, right? So we know that in one study, 287 different chemicals are found in cord blood, right? So we know that there's toxins coming out. We've seen it time and time again, mostly anecdotally. I haven't seen any studies on this, but people who are having miscarriages from having infections, moms having infections, and then they find it in the fetus. And so we get a lot of stuff from mom. All the good stuff and all the bad stuff, unfortunately. And then it's whatever exposures you have in your life. So for me, I Grew up in New Jersey, exposed to ticks, had a lot of gluten and dairy growing up. Pooped once a week for the first 20 years of my life because I didn't know any better. And I was constipated from dairy and had a cheese sandwich pretty much every day and a tuna fish sandwich, which is one of the reasons why my mercury was through the roof. And then I had mercury fillings. Right. So I'm just getting this mercury on.

Top of some mercury.

Right, exactly right. And so it's just accumulating in my life and then I live in a moldy place and I have a stressful relationship and I go to medical school and I travel internationally and I get a parasite eating off of whatever that I wasn't supposed to eat. Right. So once again, it just keeps accumulating until. Exactly. Until the body's like, no more, I can't do it anymore, I'm going to shut down. And then you get cell danger response where the body is like, hey, I'm just going to protect myself. And we're just not going to function to our utmost because we've got all of these toxins that are going to utilize this machinery that we have. So.

That'S how this story ends up happening. And so when we unwind it, we have a four step process that we take people through in order to make sure that they are successful in this process.

No, I'm so glad you're mentioning that. I really want to hear your four step process because that's the thing is like, it can feel like it's overwhelming by that point. You know, even once we're, as we're pointing it out, we're like, it piles up. It's like a snowball effect. And next thing you know, you're like, well, where do I begin? And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck that I observe. You know, by the time I see them, they've said, I've been to all these different practitioners that maybe address this aspect or that aspect, but it's like they're still feeling worse or they're not feeling as well as they could feel. And it can feel like it's overwhelming and confusing about how to take the next step. So I love that you have this four step strategy to say, let me walk you through it step by step so your body has the best chance to recover. So tell us about that. Tell us about your four step process.

So the first step is to assess the causes. Right? We've just talked about there's these 33 different causes. Now, fortunately, 75% of these causes can be determined by symptoms alone. Right? So 27 of these, which means that when people join our program and they start working through the workbook, within the first hour, they're going to know 75% of their causes. Right. So then you're not fishing, you're not being like, oh, maybe I should take this supplement, or maybe I should take this supplement. Right? You're going to know, based off your causes, a number of these and you can start replacing them. So that is an incredibly important part of this. And some of the challenges that people. Practitioners have, frankly, and people is that they don't know. They don't know which causes they have, but sometimes they think that their causes may be like somebody else's based off their symptoms. So if Joe over here has a B12 deficiency and he gets, he takes B12 and he feels much better, but then Sally over here takes B12 and she doesn't feel better. She's like, well, what's wrong with this picture? But the reality is, is that of these 20 plus causes, Joe may have causes 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, whatever. And Sally may have causes 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Right. So their causes are going to be different, which means that their treatments are going to be different. Right. And so that's, that's how you can really fine tune what you're going to need to take once you actually know what causes you have.

And I think it's so important to realize that because it's sometimes we, we use the word fatigue as if it's the same for all of us, but it's really not the same for all of us. You're really pointing out that it's very unique and we need to understand your underlying causes so we can make your protocol specific to you.

Exactly. And then step two. So I'm going to take big picture here and say, okay, we've talked about these causes and we've talked about the importance and how like the toxins cause about 80% of the dysfunction with the deficiencies. So people may think, well, step two has got to be about the toxins. Right? You got to go about that. Nope. Toxins are actually done in step four. And the reason why is because it is very stressful, removing toxins out of the body. So we have to make you as robust and strong as possible. So we replace the deficiencies, we replaced the adrenals, the mitochondria. Those things actually make the thyroid better. And so we do them in a particular order. And then we ramp up, we do a subjective ramp up of the thyroid to get you to the dose that you need to be at. Subjective just means based off of your symptoms. And then we go into replacing the vitamins and the minerals and working on the lifestyle habits. Notice I didn't say lifestyle habits first. And a lot of that has to do. Yes, they're incredibly important. But so many people that we see are too tired of doing lifestyle habits because that's what a lot of the stuff that they're getting in the outpatient space where they're, like I said, very important and they're going to make everything else better. But so many of the people that we see, and this was part of like Stacy's story, my wife's story was that she was gluten free for 20 years. She was eating a paleo diet, she was a daily meditator. Right. You can be doing everything right and you can still have fatigue and low energy. So we replace those things in step two to make you as strong as possible.

Yeah, it's, it's, I think it's so important to help people to understand that they're like, there's a way to do it that helps the body heal more efficiently because it's tempting. Sometimes, like we're feeling tired, so we get tempted to skip ahead or get faster. Right. To jump into what should come at the end. We want to do it at the beginning. And it really is important to slow down and think it through and say, really we need to get your body ready first. We need to help restore what's depleted and help build you up so then we can actually take the next steps on the journey. And so I love that, I love that your protocol includes that to say, wait a minute, let's prepare your body before we start going to the next steps.

And that's essentially what we're doing in step two and step three, we are preparing the body to be able to get rid of the toxins. And we are having some small wins, sometimes some big wins along the way so that you can have more energy while you are getting there. Right. So then step three, we're opening up the detoxification pathways. Detoxification is kind of a fancy buzzword, but there are actually medically detoxification pathways in the body, in the liver, in the kidney, in the lymph, which is the garbage system of the body, in the intestines, in the neural lymph, which is the garbage system in the brain that all need to be open. And the more toxins that you have in the body, the more these pathways are clogged. And so I think of them as kind of like these tubes that you're dumping things into, you're detoxifying and they are getting out of the body through these different pathways and they're just full. They're fos, they're full of stuff. Right. And so if you go into step four and you grab something that's a toxin and you try to put it into one of these tubes, guess what? It's going to go back in that compartment, it's going to go into a different compartment, it's not going to go out of the body.

And you're going to feel worse.

And you're going to feel worse. Exactly. So that's why step three is so important in opening all this stuff up. And we're using herbs and doing a number of different things. I'm an md, but in the online space I operate as a health coach. So everything that we're using is not prescription based, it's all natural. So that's what we do in step three. And oftentimes we have to dip back into step three from time to time as people are going through the process in step four, because people may be familiar with the Herxheimer reaction or die off, where you start to remove things, you start to kill off infections and then all of a sudden you feel worse. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that step three really is like a funnel where as you dump these toxins into it, the bottom of the funnel and the, and how open that is, it really determines how well you are going to feel going through the process. So if you've done a nice job in step three and your detox pathways are this big, you can go at a more rapid rate and start removing things. But if it's really narrow, you got to go where you're just dripping a little bit at a time. And that is going to help you be successful. Because slow and steady wins the race. And the body likes small steps and small victories in order for you to be successful in this process. So that's step three.

It's so important. And I think it's this paradox, right? We're so used to thinking that we're supposed to do more and bigger and faster and actually for this kind of healing to happen, we really. Part of it is just getting used to or learning how to pace ourselves in the process and to know that it's not right. I think you'd probably agree it's not just a. It's not like you just have a whole upward curve of feeling better. Sometimes you feel a little better, and then you feel a little worse, and then you. Like, this is what you're describing. Like, we have to. We have to use this journey of healing to understand your body and what, you know, maybe then we realize, oh, we needed this nutrient. Oh, now we need to do it this way. This dose. We got to pull back and go back on this. You know, it's like this. This process of learning as you go so that you can. But it is this forward and back a little bit and forward again and back a little bit. Right. So we can actually make progress, right?

Yeah, I'll say that. You know, it's five steps forward, two steps back, but in the end, you're going to get there. You know, journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. And every single day, you just have to continue to make progress. But, yeah, I absolutely agree. So should we go into step four?

Definitely, yes.

Okay. So then in step four, we're removing these toxins. So the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, the allergies, the negative emotional patterns, and the electromagnetic frequencies. And so, you know, when you talk about kind of like the bumps in the road, as I call them, this is really where you. Where people need support. Right. We are. Instead of being doctors, we should be. Or providers, we should be called course correctors. Yes, Right. Because, you know, you can. You know, it's the support on a daily basis. And we've kind of like baked this into our program because we were just seeing if you've got a question, you need an answer. Right. You need to know what to take, how to pivot. And so. And that's really the place in which you want your practitioner, where you want that support in order to be able to deal with all that stuff, that stuff in step four, you probably don't need your practitioner so much. In step one, two, and three, it's step four, where that becomes so much more important and so much more valuable.

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And, and it's, and again, like individualized. Right. It's going to look, it may look different this, this, you know, phase four for each person, but it's like. Yeah, that's probably why like you're saying you need this person who understands it to be able to guide you. And I think for people to go into it understanding that this is a, like it's, I'm making a choice to invest in myself in time and energy and focus over time. Right. Because we want to get you all, you want to get them all the way to the end obviously, so that they're feeling better and it's, it's, it's not going to happen in a week or. What do you find? What do you usually tell people in terms of like how long to expect this process to take?

Yeah, you definitely have to set up expectations, you know, and so I generally say It'll take between six and 24 months. You know, most people it takes a year. You know, and that doesn't mean that you're not going to be better in six months or a year, but you're, if you want complete resolution, which is kind of always the goal, otherwise you got to keep taking these supplements and you got to keep worrying about the other foot dropping or you know, like what's going to happen to your adrenals if you're still exposed to mold or whatever it is. Right. You just have to, you have to play the long game and you have to understand that that's, that it is a process and you just want to find a mentor who can guide you through it. You know, whether it's Dr. Donnie, whether it's me, whether it's somebody else, you just find somebody who you resonate with because you're going to be hanging out a lot with them and who you feel like is going to be able to provide you this support through a process like the one that we've been talking about.

And it's so worth it as you go along. I mean, it's so exciting when, right. When we talk to patients who are in the midst of the process or finally feeling more themselves and their energy again, and they're just like they was. They always say to me, it was so worth it. Like, nobody ever gets to the end and says, oh, that was not worth it. Right. Like, it's like.

Like, exactly.

It's so worth it, even, you know, so just knowing, like, it may be tough in the midst of it, but it's so worth it when you can look back and be like, wow, I got my life back, I got my body back, and now I can do what I. What I love and what I've been wanting to do with my life. It's so important.

Yeah. And it's more than just the physical. You know, we have a big mindset component, so we're focused on the mental. We've got a big emotional component, and we've got nervous system retraining coaches on staff that guide people through the process. So, you know, it's mind, body, spirit, emotion, you know, all of those things. And so if you want to continue to improve yourself as an individual in this life, whether your energy is a 5 out of 10 or whether it's a 1 out of 10, you're going to want to continue to evolve every single one of these aspects of your life, you know, and you will come out better on the other side for so many reasons. You know, there's so many lessons that we learned that I learned from illness. You know, I learned to slow down, I learned humility, I learned vulnerability. And they've all been beautiful lessons that I would not have learned otherwise.

That's such a beautiful point. Right. Like, then you're. You're in the. More in the moment with yourself and your experience and the learning opportunities and allowing. You know, we don't. We don't want to be attached to what we're experiencing in terms of fatigue, but we also don't want to be too. Putting ourselves in too much pressure and living in what we wish was happening. Right. It's like, how do we be with it and still be completely committed to the potential of it changing? And that's what I hope people listening do. Get the. Get some hope that it can. Can change your body, can heal when you're addressing it at the root cause and a systematic way as. As you're sharing. Evan, thank you so much. And I see your book behind you, Fix youx Fatigue. So it's. I'm sure you write about this in your book.

Yes. Book is about five years old, but yes, I do talk a lot about this in the book. It doesn't have all the latest protocols and all that, but it's definitely a nice introduction to the four step process.

And then tell us more about your program. I'm really curious about that.

Sure. So we have one on one and group aspects to our program. With me, with our health coach, with our nervous system retraining coaches. We have two of them. One offers community check in calls and does meditations and the other one is providing the nervous system retraining. And then we also just hired a mindset coach. So all these are being provided one on one and group components to walk people through this four step process to make sure that they know what causes they have and then matching up the correct treatment with those and then smashing any barriers that show up along the way.

Amazing. Amazing. It sounds really like a all comprehensive program that really people can feel like they can feel safe and they have expert guidance all along the way.

We try and you know, and a lot of people are like, well I don't think I need that or you know, like especially the emotional stuff and the mental stuff. But I can tell the people who are thinking that right now like you're going to be the people who go through our program and are most successful are those who participate in those components of the program. So you just got to recognize that you just got to do it and just think of it as you're just, there's nothing wrong with you, you're just improving yourself and you're going to learn stuff about yourself that you didn't even know was possible. You know, I had a pretty happy childhood, but turns out that I also had some aces. I had rejection of a peer group a couple of times which really changed the way that I looked at things and then fatigue and what it did to my confidence. And so I'm utilizing all these things in my personal life and my life is so much richer and I'm less triggered by my wife and other things going on and I'm more resilient. Right. So we don't know what we don't know. And so, you know, you have to be open to all these different things and kind of trust your mentor that they know what's best for you. It's gotta, it's gotta resonate with you. Of course. But I always encourage people, you got to be open if you really want to hit the finish line as soon as possible.

Well, ultimately we live in these human physical bodies, but we also have an emotional, emotional and spiritual aspects of ourselves and we can't. They're all Integrated, you know, they're all interrelated. It's not like we can. If we just pay attention to one, then the other may still have something that's kind of keeping us. Us stuck. And I think that's probably one of the ways that people might experience it is they might say, well, I've been taking some supplements, I've been making diet changes, but I keep finding myself right back where I started again. Well, then I would think, well, what are we missing? What haven't we addressed? And sometimes it might be, hey, there's a food that we didn't realize, or there's an infection or a toxin we didn't pick up on yet. Let's go address that. But it could also be, oh, there might be a limiting belief, belief from your childhood, let's say, that hasn't been processed. And that might be the thing that's. That's keeping you stuck. So it's. Right, it's like just, we want to be, as you said, open to. Because the commitment is really to healing. By the time you're like, I will do whatever it takes to feel better, right? Then that. Then you're like, okay, if that means I need to relook at my childhood or consider something that, you know, some thought pattern that might have me stuck, it's worth it it. If it's going to help you feel better.

Amen. Couldn't have said it better.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. It's so great to talk with you. I mean, you're located in the Pacific Northwest, right? But I'm assuming you help people everywhere, correct?

I have a virtual practice. So this is my home right now where you're seeing, you know, I don't have a brick and mortar anymore. I closed it down in 2018. And I operate in the online space as a health coach. So I provide education and recommendations. And we have supplement and lab stores in the US in the uk, in the European Union, and in New Zealand so that we can help people all over the world.

Amazing. It's like.

Do you know the statistics? I mean, I don't even know if they do a good job of counting how many people experience fatigue, because I think a lot of people have fatigue and they're not reporting it. Right. It's just so normalized.

Well, it's the seventh most common presentation at a primary care doctor's office. And in one study through the National Safety Council, they found that about, gosh, what was it? 50% of people fall asleep at their desks every day? 50% or 50% have reported falling asleep at their desk in like the last month.

Wow.

And that.

So it's pretty common.

Yeah, I can't remember all the stats, but yeah, it's incredibly common. And you know, the issue is also like you talked about initially is that people don't understand kind of like this whole definition around it and they just think they're getting older. You know, as humans we're incredibly adaptable. Right. So and you know, we don't realize how important physical education class was when we were kids. Right. And so now we don't prioritize it because it's not built into our day. But we need to do that. We need to build self care into our days. Whether it's, you know, we've got a sauna in our home and you know, we're eating right and whatever, we're going for walks, we're doing exercises, we're doing red light therapy, like whatever it is that you need to do in order to be able to take care of yourself, you have to prioritize it. You have to make sure that on that wheel of life, all the different aspects, your work, your relationships, your health or your energy that you're working on all of them and you're continuing to evolve if you really want to live an extraordinary life.

Life, absolutely. Oh my gosh, it makes, it makes complete sense and to, and to just bring this awareness to like if you're, I guess I would say like if your energy feels lower than you would like it to be at any point in the day, it doesn't even have to be that you're exhausted all day. Right. Like it could be where you're just like, you're like you said, having to take a nap in the middle of the day. And naps are okay too. But if it's like you can't even function without a nap now, it's like, okay, there's, there's a reason here why you're feeling this tired or I'm trying to think of other ways that people describe it.

Yeah, yeah. So if, if people are getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night and they're tired during the day where they just don't have enough energy to do what they want to do and they are surviving on caffeine. So whether it's five hour energy coffee, black tea or even green tea or even chocolate, and potentially they're crashing throughout the day, usually around between 2 and p.m. you know, that's a big adrenal time where oftentimes people will Crash, then there's a problem, and the body is yelling at you to do something about it. And if you don't listen now, you're going to have to listen later, because all of these causes that we're talking about are also the causes of heart attack, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, cancer, autoimmunity. So your body is giving you a message, and so you have to pay attention and you have to do something about it. And, you know, when I. When I lecture to people and I say, all right, who wants more energy? And everybody laughs and. And all the hands go up in the room like it's an epidemic. And if you are not feeling like you have enough energy, you need to take a look at your life, and you need to start prioritizing things around your health so that you can have more energy. Because energy is very much a currency of life, where the more energy you have, the more you can do, the more successful you're going to be at work, in your business, leading communities, whatever it is. Right. So that's who we're here as well.

Absolutely. Oh, wow. It's such an important message. And to just say, like, you're saying that if the fatigue might just be the first red flag, and that if we don't address it, then eventually other red flags start coming up, including these, the main causes of death for humans from heart disease and diabetes and cancer and dementia. It's like, these are the things that happen when we pass by those red flags. So we might as well listen to the red flag now and be like, okay, what? What does my body need? It's going to be so worth it to address it. And then you can, like, you're saying, go on and do what you enjoy and live your passion without constantly feeling like you're drained and exhausted and dragging yourself through life.

Yeah. You know, one thing for me is that I didn't realize until I did a values exercise with my wife that fun is, like, one of my top values.

Oh, interesting.

And so I wasn't doing things that were fun. Like, I'm a singer, I love to sing. I play guitar, I play basketball. Like, those are fun for me. If I'm not doing those things, I'm having less fun in my life. And if you're low energy, you're consequently going to be having less fun. So for me, one of the big things in getting back my energy was to actually have more fun in my life. And so that's been a real, real gift.

And I can see where, like, when you've been Feeling awful, and you finally feel like you have more hours in your day that you can do stuff, then you're like, I want to spend it doing something I enjoy. I mean, I know that was true for me, too. I'm like, for me, a lot of it was the fatigue, but also the migraines where, like, if I. If I was like, what do I want to spend three days dealing with a migraine pain, or would I rather spend that time doing something fun like ballroom dancing is what I'm like. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'd rather go do a bunch of ballroom dancing classes than to be at home in bed with a migraine. So let me figure out, what do I need to do to create that and have the energy and the time to do something I enjoy instead of being in pain or in fatigue.

And that's what people need to figure out in order to keep them motivated. Right. You know, it's. It's. What is that thing that's going to get you out of bed? Or what's that thing that is going to make you take your pills? What's that thing that's going to make you reach out and ask for help? Right. Is it your kid? Is it not? Like, I was not being able to play with them, you know, daddy play with me. And it breaks my heart every time. It's like, I can't deal with this. Right. So. Or is it your business, or is it your relationship, or is it dancing or whatever it is? Right? So just figure out what that is for you and hold onto it for dear life, and let's let it carry you to the finish line.

Love that. Yeah. Let it motivate you. Let it be the thing you wake up in the morning saying, this is why I'm taking these steps to figure this out so that I can be able to do this thing. And we talk some about the infections, and I know that's an area that you focus on quite a lot. Maybe if you want to share a little bit more, like when. If people are listening who are like, well, maybe they've heard they had Epstein Barr or they know they had Lyme or. Or they've wondered if this was part of it, what would you say to them in terms of how to bring that into this equation of healing?

So I think one of the most important things that we can talk about is based off of your symptoms, which infections maybe you have, because a lot of people are reliant on the testing, and even the cdc, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta State that the testing is for epidemiologic studies. Whether it's ELISA or whether it's a western blot test, you're looking at the immune system's reaction to a bug. Well, there's a problem inherent in that, in that statement. If the immune system is dysfunctional. So if you have heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, guess what? Immune system is dysfunctional. And so you're not going to get a very accurate read whenever you're looking at the immune system.

So already the test results are not going to be that helpful.

Exactly. And then there's something called a pcr, so which is a DNA test of the bug. But in order to check a PCR either in the blood or in the urine, that's where the bug needs to be. Most of the time. The bugs are in the tissue. Right. So they're not in hiding out.

They're hiding out in their hiding spots.

Exactly. They're hiding, for sure. And so a lot of these are clinical diagnoses, and there's certain characteristics that can help people determine whether or not they have a particular infection. Let's start off with, like Borrelia, which is also known as Lyme. So you can't really have Borrelia unless you have two symptoms. One is symptoms that come and go where some days are worse than others. And oftentimes you don't want to schedule an appointment with your best friend because you don't know how bad you're going to feel. Actually, it's your best friend. You probably don't care because they'll, you know, they'll let you cancel or whatever. Right. They'll understand. Yeah. And then the other thing is whether or not those symptoms move around the body, whether they migrate, and that can be joint pain, muscle pain, or nerve pain, that one day, one week, or one month is, let's say, left shoulder. And then the next day, next week, next month, it's in the right knee or someplace else. Right.

So changeability in multiple ways. Yeah. That can kind of say to you, okay, And I agree with you because I always say to patients, I'm like. Because they'll say to me, should I do testing for Lyme? And I'm like, and there's specialty labs that do this. And I'm like, I have to be honest with you. You could spend thousands of dollars on this testing, and you might still end up with a question mark. So I would only I want you to know that going into it, because how frustrating is it to think you're going to get an answer and spend all this money and still end up with the lab giving you a big, giant question mark. Where when you're. What you're saying is, let's just listen to the body, understand the body, do a thorough history and see, hey, let's look for the patterns of the symptoms that help us understand if this infection is active. And then if we get the symptoms or the signals that the infection is active, then we can use our protocol to implement and observe for a response to the protocol. Right?

Right. Yeah. And what's worse than a question mark on that lab test is a no. Right. Because people will be like, I don't have Lyme. I've seen a bunch of different doctors and they ran those lab tests and they said, I don't have Lyme. So they're just going to be sick until somebody says, hey, guess what? Don't rely on those lab tests. Let's see what symptoms you have. You know, which, which infection do you have? Do you have Borrelia? Do you have Bartonella? Do you have Babesia? Which one do you have? Let's go after it and then let's, let's watch what happens.

And I love how you're, you know, you're like, you're very matter of fact about it. Like, because I think a lot of times what happens is people get a diagnosis or a potential, you know, hey, this infection is potentially playing a role, but then the process of treating it feels so overwhelming. They get stuck there. And what you're saying is, no, that's that, you know, once we know what's going on now, we can just go right down my protocol. It doesn't have to feel overwhelming. It can just be follow the step by step process and you're going to get there.

Yeah. And everybody is an individual. And, you know, there's something that I call the whack a mole effect that pops up. You start going after one infection and then another one pops up. Right. So let's say we're talking about Borrelia, which we don't usually go after first, but let's say we're going after Borrelia because somebody's got joint pain that's kind of moving around the body. And so we start treating them with tinctures, with herbs. And then all of a sudden they start sweating like crazy. Well, that's obesity. And so then we have to give them something for Babesia. So it's this walkabout or I don't even know what to call it, but it's the whack a mole effect that you have to then kind of plug the gaps of what ends up happening and dealing with each infection as it comes to the forefront and say, hey, I'm here. And you say, okay, I'm going to pay attention to you now. And that's kind of how you know how to treat each of these infections.

I agree. I mean, there's a matter of trusting it as a practitioner. When you see it enough times, we see these patterns and we see that there's almost something inherent in the body or the process that's deciding what to show us first. And if we can observe that and respond to it and we go, okay, we're doing this. And then whatever the next thing that shows up, okay, let's do that. And whatever comes up next, let's do that. And it's a matter of trusting that process and listening and responding to it versus just railroading over it without being responsive to what, what we're hearing from the body, what we're seeing from the body. Right?

Yeah. And this is those nuances where you really need a mentor. You know, a lot of people are like, well, what supplements are you using, Dr. Evan? I'm like, I could tell you, but then I'd probably hurt you. You know what I mean?

So different for each person.

Yes, totally different for each person. And if you don't know what to do when things go sideways, guess what, you're just going to feel worse. So a lot of the products that I use, people will google them and there' warnings from other people where they're like, do not take this supplement because it gave me so much die off and blah, blah, whatever. And it's because they didn't know how to take it. The practitioner didn't know how to take it. They didn't work up subjectively, they didn't work up gradually, they didn't go through step three and have enough die off support on board to avoid a die off or Herxheimer reaction. Right. So there's so many nuances to this and that's why you need a practitioner.

I completely agree. It's so many times, I mean, people are trying to heal so they're trying to do it on their own, own and then they, they get stuck because it's. If they don't have this whole system and support, they can get stuck and then they feel worse. So anyone listening? If you've been trying on your own and you keep finding like everything I try I feel worse and I feel like I'm not getting anywhere, then that's exactly when, when we're here to help you, to say, to help figure out, okay, here's what, here's the step. You skipped over. You didn't realize you skipped over, but we go back and address that now. We can help you get through. And as you mentioned, the dosing is so important and so unique for each person. And some people who are going through this process need very low doses. We have to go in tiny little dosage steps to learn what's the right amount for your body. One herb for one person may be completely different herb for a different person. Right. So it's learning one's the right amount and the right timing for each individual to be able to get through this path. And I know you and I share that passion for helping people to do that.

It's.

I can totally hear that from, from, you know, from. And see that in everything that you've created is like, you're just like, hey, I don't want you to have to go through what I went through and try to figure it out on your own. I figured it out and now all you have to do is just show up and we're here to guide you.

Yeah. And I do think that people can figure it out on their, on their own. But you know, how many years is it going to take? You know, when you hire a mentor, you're just compressing time. You know, why do you, why do you hire a piano teacher? Right. So you don't have to do all that research. Like, you don't have to like learn all these different techniques on how to learn piano or whatever. Right. You can do that if you want to. And you know, there's plenty of people who are self taught in different instruments or whatever and they just practice every day and they become experts in it. But when it comes to something like medicine and it comes to like compressing time, yeah, you can probably get better in 10 years, but if you want to get better in six months or a year, that's when you hire a mentor, no matter what it is in life.

I love it. And this is such a beautiful place to wrap up today. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for everything you're sharing. I'll definitely be having in the episode notes how to be in touch with Dr. Evan so you can reach out and you can learn about his program and get his book and everything. Is there anything you'd like to share in terms of how best for people to learn more from you and connect.

With you so you can check us out@energy4leaders.com I'm all over social media under my Name or under EnergyMD or under Fixture fatigue. We are moving from fixture fatigue to the EnergyMD. So that's something exciting that's going on in our world. If you are interested in seeing whether or not you have Bartonella infection, you can take that quiz@energyforleaders.com just scroll down to the bottom. But yeah, we're just, we're here to serve. We've got a number of different price points to support people where they're and yeah, we just want to make sure that you take a step in the right direction every single day and you're going to be successful.

I love it. Thank you so much, Evan. It's been really a pleasure to have this conversation with you and to know that you're there doing this work. It really helps me to just have hope too. Like there's those of us who are figuring out systems to help people. And I'm so grateful to you for doing that. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

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