EP 145 WTH?!? The Doctor's Chat: Regain Your Health from Long COVID and Fatigue with Dr. Evan Hirsch

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Welcome back everybody. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel and this is what the health. I have Dr. Evan Hirsch on the line today and we're talking the four step process to resolve chronic long Covid. This one is such a huge topic these days. I want to give you some information on Dr. Hirsch. He's a world renowned energy expert, best selling author, professional speaker. He's the creator of the energy MD method, science backed and clinically proven four step process to resolve chronic fatigue and long Covid naturally. Through his bestselling book, his podcast and international online programs, he's helped thousands of people around the world. He's been featured on TV podcasts, summits, he's been on my summits. And when he's not at the office, you can find him singing musicals, dancing hip hop and playing basketball with his family. Dr. Evan, welcome aboard.

Hey Greg, thanks so much for having me on.

Yes, you are very welcome. And I'm really. This is very timely conversation and massive, massive issue for so many people. One, this is couched in your four step process for healing chronic fatigue. And the long Covid thing has come along and swept the world. Let's talk about your four step process to resolve chronic fatigue and chronic long Covid. What's going on?

Yeah, so the first step is to figure out all the causes. Now when I say that we're looking at over 30 different causes and everybody who has long Covid has a combination of about 20 of these causes. Now people are going to say, no way, I don't have 20 causes, I just got Covid. But the reality is, is that there were things that were building up in your body and then Covid was the straw that broke the camel's back. So of those causes, those 20 plus causes, the root, root causes that are causing some of these other causes, and I can explain that more in a little bit, are things like heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections and trauma. Those are kind of what I call the big five. And so consequently those things are already in the body. We, we basically come out of the womb with toxins and then we accumulate them throughout our lives. And then all of a sudden you get something like Covid and that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. So the first thing we have to figure out is which causes you have. Now, fortunately, about 75% of these causes can be determined by symptoms alone, which means you don't need labs to get started. You just need to know your history and your symptoms and kind of put those together. So that's step One. Anything on that before we move on?

No, that's great. A question on that though. So it's clinician, provider, coach taking, thorough history, asking the right questions for somebody. Because a lot of these are very vague. As far as it could be a gazillion different things. As far as the symptom goes. Is this the piece of the puzzle that you find? Why somebody gets Covid has the experience of it is fine. And then there's the person that gets Covid is okay. Like, I've even talked to patients, they're like, I had such a mild, like 12 day issue, but three months later they're like flatline. Like everything has never better since. Is that the piece of the puzzle? I like that you said it was like the thing that broke the camel's back.

Yeah, absolutely. It's the heavy metals, chemicals, molds, and other infections that basically hijack the immune system. So, you know, when you get a virus, it is normal and natural that you should have a bunch of symptoms as the body is expelling the virus. So it's really interesting that you said that these people had mild symptoms because generally that's what we see is that if you have five or more symptoms and they're mild, you're far more likely to get long Covid. And a lot of that is because the virus is skirting around the immune system. So then the immune system can't expel the virus and the virus just goes deeper into the body, hides from the immune system and starts wrecking havoc. Got it?

Got it.

Yes.

So step one, clear.

Yeah, so that's step one. The other thing I wanted to mention is that of these 20 different causes that people have, everybody has a different combination of 20. So there, it's kind of like there's a. There's deficiencies and there's toxins. Deficiencies are things that are not in the body that are supposed to be toxins are things that are in the body that aren't supposed to be there. With these deficiencies. People usually understand these, they're usually familiar with them. So deficiencies in hormones, adrenals, thyroid, sex hormones, deficiencies in mitochondria, deficiencies in nutrients, vitamins, minerals, deficiencies in lifestyle habits. So not getting enough good sleep, not getting enough good food, not getting enough good water, not getting enough good movement, and then deficiencies in neurotransmitters. So those are the deficiencies. And then the toxins are the things we've been talking about. The heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections. I would put allergies in this category. I'd put electromagnetic field. I'd put structural issues. So these are things that are kind of inhibiting the body from. From being well. And it's always a combination of these. And everybody has an individual combination, which is why it's so important that we, you know, we treat people as an individual and figure out which causes they have. Because then the rest of the process is really just about matching the correct treat with the cause that somebody has. So that you're not wasting money on causes that you don't have. Right. Somebody says, hey, maybe I should be taking B12 because this person got better from B12. But do you have a B12 deficiency? Otherwise you're not going to feel better from B12. Right. You're wasting your money on a supplement sort of thing. So it's that, it's that matching process that we find to be really helpful.

Got it. Yeah. Is this why folks go to see a bunch of different providers and they don't get help?

Yeah. And a lot of that is because they, you know, a lot of providers out there, even functional medicine providers, really smart people, they're really, they're focused on the deficiencies because they can get a lot of people better. By replacing the adrenals and the thyroid and the mitochondria and the vitamins and minerals, you're going to feel better. And so they can help, probably, and fixing their lifestyle habits. Right. They're going to get 90% of the people better who walk into their office. Right. But it's that other 10% that they can't help. And that's because those people have heavy metals, chemicals, molds, and infections and trauma, which each one of those is probably. You know, I spent five years learning sort of thing, so it's kind of like it's just a whole nother realm. There's a whole bunch more information to know. And unless you're doing this all the time, like you and I are, it becomes. It becomes hard to. To catch, to diagnose, to treat. And then you don't know the bumps that kind of come up along the way.

Got it. What's your step two?

So step two is to replace the deficiencies. So we talked about the deficiencies and the toxins, and we talked also about how the big five are the most important root. Root causes are the toxins, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections. But the reality is, is we can't go directly at those. We have to build up resilience first. And we have to make people feel good. And so we do that by starting to replace the deficiencies. What I call the big three is the adrenals, the thyroid and the mitochondria. When you optimize these, you get a significant uptick in your energy and that always feels good. It also helps you with your resilience because in order to get those toxins out of your body in step four, it's actually quite stressful on the body. So we have to make sure that you're more resilient by boosting some of these deficiencies. Then we go into step three where we start opening up the drainage pathways. The liver, the kidney, the lymph, the neural lymph, which is in the brain, the gallbladder, the intestines. We have to make sure that these pathways are all open so that when we start to grab the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, etc. That they have a place to go. I see this as a funnel for those of you who are watching this. Making a funnel with my hands, where step three is essentially controlling the bottom of funnel. So the width of that funnel is directly dependent on opening up those different drainage pathways. And then you can start dumping the toxins. As long as you have an exit strategy, they got to have a place to go. So that's step three. And then step four is to remove these toxins. And so a lot of this process is really all prep for step four, but it has to happen this way, otherwise people are going to feel worse when they start to have die off or the body's not prepared. They got no place to send these toxins. So sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get to step four, but it's always time well spent.

Yeah, it's always, you know, people want to know, right, what can I take for this right now? And if you open those doors up too quickly for them, they feel horrible. Where they, you know, they'll just bail on the treatment of like, forget that. That doctor just made me worse. What do you tell, what do you tell people? I mean, there. Is that the reason why you feel worse during treatment. What can you do about it? Is it slow it down? Is it change the order of things? What do you see with that?

Yeah, so oftentimes it's, it's slowing things down a bit. So it's usually that rate that we have to figure out of the amount that you're able to dump versus the amount that you can get out of your body. So that's kind of the rate limiting. Step Right. From chemistry. Right. That's, that's what that, that's what that step is. And that's why it's so important. So we can slow it down or we can increase the width of the bottom of that funnel. And so that, that's what we call Herxheimer support or die off support. When things are being killed or being removed out of the body. You can do this by increasing the dosing of certain things. And we've got a whole list that we kind of go through. But a lot of it is the same stuff that we used in step three to open up the kidney, the lymph, the neural lymph, the gallbladder, the intestines, to just take more of those things depending on what symptoms people have. So if they have headaches, sometimes that means that their lymph is clogged. And so we increase the lymph support. But the biggest one really is the liver and the kidney support that we find is most effective at mitigating the die off. But there's things like Alka selts or gold. You can make the body more alkaline by taking something like trisalts, potassium, magnesium, sodium. You can do coffee, enemas, colonics. So there's a number of things that can be supportive at opening that pathway so that you can start to dump more.

Got it. And on the support front, you had mentioned the adrenals and mitochondria. Do you have some favorite go tos for folks on that? I mean, the deficiencies are so rampant. And what I'm seeing with the long hauler community and why I think that certain people are really kind of stuck with it is this piece of they came in, you know, they may have felt vital before getting Covid, but then what, what evolves and what unravels is like they're just stuck with it. The fatigue, the brain fog, the malaise, the coming and going of, you know, hot flashes or fevers. Even in the afternoon we've seen folks like that. What are you seeing or what do you put in as to the why for long?

Covid. So some of the symptoms that you're talking about, sometimes they are from COVID itself. So Covid can cause over 200 different symptoms. It really depends on where in the body it goes. So if it's in the muscles, it can cause muscle cramping, for example. The other thing that we're seeing with COVID is that it's acting as a biofilm disruptor. This basically means that it's breaking up hiding places of Other infections. If we're finding that, let's say that, let's take the muscle cramp example, that we're going after Covid and we're not having success with the muscle cramps, and then we start going after Bartonella, which is an infection that can cause muscle cramps, then we'll have success. Sometimes it's from COVID and sometimes it's from the infection that Covid has allowed to be, be opportunistic. And so that's kind of that combination where you also have to know a bunch about some of these other infections like Lyme and Epstein Barr virus and the different Lyme co infections like Babesia and Bartonella and Ehrlichia, because oftentimes they're going to pop out and they have to be addressed as part of this whole picture.

You know, that is, that's so crucial. I mean, seeing so many people with these latent viruses or past infections becoming real again to them. I see a, a lot of folks that get kind of freaked out around it because they had maybe chronic fatigue in their 20s and now they're in their 40s and 50s and you know, it's like, God, I don't like feeling like this. This totally triggers me back to my youth where I was wiped out for a decade. How do you walk somebody through that? Just in the mental, emotional, psychological realm? Because there's, this is loaded territory.

Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So we have a daily mindset practice that we take people through. And it's just, you know, this is when you get sick, it's really an opportunity. You know, oftentimes, you know, there's not a problem until there's a problem. And once you see that there's a problem, then you actually do something about it. Right. Preventive medicine is really hard to do because people don't care until there's a problem. Right. And so this gives you an opportunity to take a look at your life and figure out what's working, what's not working. Because oftentimes there is significant mental and emotional stressors in addition to the physical stressors that we've been talking about today. So we have a four step mindset practice that we take people through of gratitudes. Envisioning your ideal day, looking at any sort of limiting beliefs that you have and flipping them into empowering beliefs and then asking yourself empowering questions. And so this is something that we recommend that people do every single day in order to retrain the brain and to make yourself more resilient. You know, successful people leave clues and these are habits of highly successful people. Whether you're a financial guru or whether you're a world famous basketball player. You know, they're all doing something like this and they're practicing some kind of mindfulness practice. You know, whether it's meditation. I mean even Michael Jordan was doing meditation, right? Phil Jackson's a big purveyor of meditation. So those are, those are the, a lot of what we talk about. And then the trauma component, you know, it was really huge. And so sometimes it's little t trauma where it's more of stressful events that happen to you in your life that changed the way that you looked at the world, that increased the stress on you mentally and emotionally. And sometimes they're big t like really significant abuse and the body doesn't really know the difference. It can react the same to both of those and that can cause chronic stress on the body that persists for decades. So it's an opportunity. We don't go back and revisit those, but it is an opportunity to through the mindset. Mindset practice and some of the work. My wife does something called NARM or neuroaffective relational model for trauma in our program in group and then in one on ones in order to address and help people through their. By focusing on the future and retraining the brain and not reliving the past.

I love that. That is such a massive, massive win for people to put that in and to engage with you guys and gal around that to get the support needed right. It's, it's way beyond. Can you tell me what to take?

Right.

I mean it's a multifactorial process of multi dimensional. Being stuck with symptoms and having the right support, the right care team involved is so, so crucial. You know, I was just in a provider, my providers, we have a weekly grand round. So talking about this specific topic for long haulers Covid and you know, really looking at it around, you know, the component around the price of what therapy costs versus the price of what the illness costs. And I think it's in our mindsets around okay, there's a dollar amount for those therapies. But what doesn't get calculated into many people is what's my opportunity cost? Like what is my life force energy? What is happening to my life right now? Like I'm not able to play with my kids. I'm, I'm, you know, canceling social engagements with friends and community. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm in kind of grasping on to all of these limiting beliefs of who I am because of this illness. And so that is such a massive, massive piece for people. So thank you for sharing that.

Yeah. Well, I was just going to say I'm glad you said that because it's such an important part of this process. And the sooner that people realize that in order to, I mean, it's kind of like getting a master's degree in your health. Like, you have to make the investment. It's like anything in life, right? You have to invest the time, the energy, the money to figuring it out and getting it done. And if you don't, unfortunately, if you don't find the right mentor, then you're kind of spinning your wheels until you do. You know, you're not going to ask your piano teacher to fix your car or to teach you how to fix your car. Right. You got to ask somebody who's focused on that, who can, who can help you, who's done it before.

Yeah. Well, the energy, MD in the house. Dr. Evan Hirsch, thank you for coming on. Any last parting words that you'd like for our listeners and viewers?

Well, I think I would just say to give people hope and to remind them that there is a way out of this and that the most important way is to figure out the causes that you have. If you've got heavy metals, chemicals, molds and infections in your body, in addition to the COVID which most people do, you have to figure out which ones of those you have in order to have success getting better. You can't just focus on the treatment, so focus on the causes in order to have success. Love it.

Thank you so much. You all listening and viewing. We would not be doing this without you. I'm bringing you the best and the brightest minds out there looking to support you all and your families and communities. If you like today's show, give us a five star review. Also tell people what you learned and then think of a couple family members, community members that could actually benefit from this. This was really action packed. We've got the four step method. I'm going to put down how you can interface with the doc. It's energymdmethod.com I'm going to put those in the show notes, the links over there on working with us. Not everybody is a great candidate either. Maybe you want to talk about that. Like how? Who do you know? How do you know that you're the right person to work with? How does that come about for you?

Doctor? Yeah, great question. So. Well, there's a couple of things I mean, the way that I know that I can help somebody is depending on what they've done already and whether they've found the causes that they have and they fixed them. Because it's really a two step process. Find your causes and then fix them. And so there's a hole somewhere, right? And we find that there's three reasons why people aren't successful is number one, they don't find all their causes. Number two, they don't get the right treatments for those causes. And number three, they don't have somebody to guide them through the bumps along the way. Right. Because there's always going to be bumps. And that's one of the ways that providers like us can compress time for folks, is to help mitigate those bumps and to navigate around them when they pop up. But you know, the people who are really good fits are people who are organized enough to take supplements three to five times a day and willing to do that. People who are willing to make the commitment and show up to their one on one and their group calls. People who are willing to work on their mental and emotional health in addition to the physical stuff, people who are going to ask questions when they come up and not just sit there. So those are kind of the, a lot of the big picture stuff that we see when we're asking people questions because and for a lot of long Covid people who, a lot of them have never even taken a supplement before. So this is like a whole new world. And they're only exploring it not necessarily because it's their philosophy, but it's because they haven't gotten where they wanted to go in the conventional paradigm. And they're like, I got to look outside. And then all of a sudden they're like, okay, you know, I got to change my diet and I got to take supplements. That's totally antithetical to anything that I believed before. And some of them can't even make that jump. But those who do and realize, okay, I know enough to know that I don't know that I haven't gotten where I want to go with what I've been doing, right? What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, right? So you have to do something new. And once they accept that and they realize it and then they're like, okay, now I'm all in. I'm going to do this, I'm going to see this works, then they're going to be a much better partner. Love it.

I heard some of your hip hop background right there. That was awesome.

Thank you. Was I breaking it down a little?

Yeah. There it is, everybody. So thanks for tuning in and we will see you all next week. Take care.