137: Fix Your Fatigue & Enjoy Exceptional Energy – with Dr. Evan Hirsch

If you struggle with fatigue, this is the most important thing you need:

Fatigue can be a complex puzzle to “figure out.” To solve your lack of energy riddle, you need a meticulous, thorough, medically trained specialist who loves taking comprehensive deep dives into each patient’s health to find the answers that will restore their energy.  

That is what the patients of Dr. Evan H. Hirsch get: a caring doctor with the determination of a bulldog. Hirsch leaves “no stone unturned” while working with his patients. Finding the cause(s) of fatigue takes time and requires a curious mind willing to consider multiple possibilities that may not fit inside the box of conventional medicine. 

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Hirsch points out that prescription pharmaceutical side effects are the “number three killer in the U.S.” Taking your fatigue issues to a “functional medicine doctor” like Dr. Hirsch might be the answer to your fatigue battle.  

Dr. Hirsch does not want to only “manage symptoms” like many general practitioners. That’s why he founded the International Center for Fatigue. 

Hirsch knows from experience how debilitating fatigue can be. He suffered from severe fatigue for five years before achieving resolution using a set of methods that are now helping many people who follow the Fix Your Fatigue program he pioneered. 

Hirsch is also the author of the book Fix Your Fatigue: The four-step process to resolving chronic fatigue, achieving abundant energy, and reclaiming your life! 

Suppose you are a doctor who needs some tips to transition your practice to the virtual, online world. In that case, Dr. Hirsch also consults with licensed, functional medicine providers desiring a more digital service experience for patients. 

Board-certified in integrative medicine, when Dr. Hirsch isn’t helping patients, you can find him singing and dancing in musicals (wow) and playing basketball with his family. 

In this podcast, we cover

• The differences between a functional medicine doctor and a regular general practitioner
• The sad fact that many Americans suffer from “medical trauma” and the different patient experiences Dr. Hirsch provides
• The systematic testing Dr. Hirsch conducts to find your cause of fatigue
• How your symptoms reveal 75% of your fatigue causes and how you can get this information in one hour
• Ten categories of fatigue
• The deficiencies and toxicities that cause fatigue
• Why you should skip that tuna fish sandwich  
• The insidious role mold plays in fatigue
• Chronic infections and fatigue – you can have one and not know it! 
• Mindset training to help you overcome fatigue

You won’t believe how many chemicals hit you daily.

Fatigue is a matter of deficiencies and toxicities, meaning you need a trained professional like Dr. Hirsch to help you replenish the deficits and get rid of the toxic junk accumulating in your body. 

We get exposed to 84,000 different chemicals regularly. Most of these chemicals are not adequately studied – things like pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and plastics, which are all around us. 

Dr. Hirsch shares that one thing he was doing years ago that led to his fatigue syndrome had to do with his extensive traveling by car across the country. He always had a plastic water bottle with him that was cooking in the sun on these trips. Dr. Hirsch ended up with too much plastic in his body. Plastic in the body is not something people knew about until recently. 

The good news is Dr. Hirsch shares how you can detox plastics out of your body. 

Mold: the silent fatigue devil.

Many folks suffering from fatigue do not realize that mold is behind their lack of energy. 

Mold is a huge problem. Half of the world’s buildings have water damage, and most of those structures have mold. 

Most people don’t think they have a mold issue because they have never seen mold in their house. They forget that their childhood home had a flooded basement at one time. Or they had a leaky roof or a broken pipe at some point. 

Few GPs receive training in molds during medical school, so they do not consider it a diagnosis. 

Mold symptoms generally resemble fungal symptoms: rashes, itching in the anus and ears is common. These symptoms often get worse after eating sugar. The worst sign of all is brain fog, which can get pretty nasty if untreated. 

Mold is just one of many causes of fatigue discussed by Dr. Hirsch in this episode. You can get them all by listening to this exciting conversation. 

Finally, a doctor who takes chronic fatigue seriously and works hard to find a solution for patients. Not just shrug his shoulders because he’s overwhelmed by the complexity of the issue. Don’t miss this episode! Take advantage of the information offered here so you can overcome your struggles with fatigue. 

Are you tired of feeling tired all the time? Tune in! Let’s restore your energy. 

Episode Resources:

Dr. Hirsch main website: www.FixYourFatigue.com  
Dr. Hirsch’s Book – Fix Your Fatigue: The four step process to resolving chronic fatigue, achieving abundant energy and reclaiming your life! 
Evan Hirsch, MD on FACEBOOK
The Fatigue Doc on INSTAGRAM
Evan H. Hirsch, MD – Fix Your Fatigue YOUTUBE CHANNEL
 @DrEvanHirsch on TWITTER 

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade T. Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the awesome health podcast. Glad for you to join us today. We are excited and delighted because we have a world-class expert today, Dr. Evan Hirsch, who is a world renowned fatigue expert, the founder and CEO of the International Center for Fatigue.

 Wade T. Lightheart: There's a lot of people with fatigue. He suffered with fatigue for five years before he achieved resolution using the fix your fatigue program. We're going to talk about that in a second. He pioneered this in his medical practice, through his bestselling books, podcasts and online programs. He has helped thousands of people around the world optimize their energy naturally. And he is on a mission to help a million more. You might be one of them or someone, you know, he also helps licensed functional medical, excuse me, medicine providers, transition to a successful virtual practice. That's really a big deal in a COVID world so that they can have more impact more success and a greater quality of life. He is board certified is in integrity, excuse me, integrative medicine. And this is a really expanding and important field. We can probably talk about here. And when he's not in the office, you can find him singing, musicals, dancing, and playing basketball with his family. Dr. Hirsch, welcome to the podcast

 Evan Hirsch: Way. That was quite an intro. Thanks so much for having me on

 Wade T. Lightheart: Well, Hey, you know, you know, fatigue is a big thing. And probably then I would say it's probably, if not the number one, certainly in the top three things that people end up going to a functional medicine doctor for, I would like before we get into all your background and everything, or how you got to I guess how you get this fatigue thing, can you explain to people what the difference between a functional medicine doctor and say your regular GP and why that's so important, especially today.

 Evan Hirsch: It's a great question. And you know, I am an MD, a medical doctor. So I did go through that conventional system. And what I learned in that system, a lot of good things were kind of how to diagnose something and, and then how to treat it using pharmaceuticals. So you really don't look at things as a cause if you don't have a pharmaceutical to treat it. And so this is conventional medicine, oftentimes also you're covering up symptoms and the symptoms may get better, but you're not necessarily getting at the actual cause. So if we take, for example, high blood pressure, if somebody has high blood pressure, you can take prescription medications and they can lower your blood pressure, which is great. But the idea around functional medicine is actually looking at the cause underneath that. So what is actually causing your high blood pressure? Is it heavy metals?

 Evan Hirsch: Is it a magnesium deficiency? Is it stress, whatever it is, we figure out what it is cause it's going to be different for different people, figure out what it is, fix that problem. And then you don't need those prescriptions, which also have a lot of side effects. You know, the number three killer in this country is side effects from medications, from prescriptions. And so the less prescriptions that we take the better. And so we just need to keep asking the question, what is the, why? What is the cause? What is the why of the why of the, why like the cause of the cause of the cost so that we can really get down to the root cause. And that's really what functional medicine is looking at us, looking at that root cause, different areas of imbalance in the body and the biochemical individuality. So what your cells are saying versus what my cells are saying, and when they're off, how do we fix them?

 Wade T. Lightheart: I'm curious as you know, a medical practitioner who has gone through the medical model and as it, as it says in, I believe in the new England journal of medicine is we do not treat or cure illnesses. We treat the symptoms of disease. And I think that's a very big component and we have a world, particularly in the United States or in North America where we go to our doctors and we think that's healthcare, but it's more like essentially disease or symptom management as opposed to health hair health care to me is something preventative or looking into, like you said, the causes, at what point in your training did you realize that you want it to kind of take that next step, which is far more complicated than just saying, Hey, you've got these symptoms, let's give you this drug. It would seem that your methodology is much more inclusive and probably a little bit more difficult than that model. Would that, would you agree with that?
 Evan Hirsch:
 I would. And for me it actually happened quite early. So I was in my gosh was in my first or second year of medical school. I think it was my first year. And I was asking a lot of why questions, right? Because I'm naturally very curious and I wasn't getting the answers that I wanted. And I actually had a pathology professor who became a very good friend of mine. We actually sang in a group together called DACA Pella when we were in medical school. And he actually exposed me to hypnotherapy and gave me some books to read about native American healing. And my first training that I did while I was still in medical school, that was more alternative, was a hypnotherapy training. And then from there I met somebody who said, Hey, you should join us at the American holistic medical association. I'd never heard of it before. But then I went in my mind was blown about how to, how to treat people more naturally using vitamins, minerals, herbs, all that.

 Wade T. Lightheart: This is awesome. And so I guess when a lot of people go to their traditional medical doctors and they go through the run of the mill, which, and I'm not here to throw medical doctors under the bus, they're very motivated, intelligent people who work really hard and are confined to a very narrow toolbox, I would say, given their intellectual capability and their training, you know, and, and also severe time constraints. Right. what would you suggest to someone who might be struggling with some conditions like fatigue, which is a big one, it's a huge one. It's, it's, it's a really big problem and they're not getting anywhere with their GP. The GP is telling them, well, it's in your head or, you know, we can't really do anything about it or, you know, maybe eat a better diet or get some more like, you know, it's kind of like these kind of cliche statements. And then they run a bunch of tests and, you know, the person sends in this mill for a lot of years and they say, okay, they walk into your door. They finally given up on that model and come into your door. What's that conversation like? And how does that, how does that ensued based on how their care was before and then how you would approach that?

 Evan Hirsch: Yeah. So unfortunately way too many people have medical trauma in this country and around the world where the conventional model has shamed people into believing that there's something wrong with them and there's nothing wrong with them. You know, the, the question is not, what are you doing? The question is what happened to you, right? Because all this stuff, you know, this is not the individual's fault. Like they're not at fault for what happened to them. There are things that ended up happening along the way, stressors, whether they're mental or emotional, physical, like some of the toxins we're going to talk about today, that ends up building up in the body that ends up leading to fatigue. Now, just because a doctor did not test did not have the right test to determine whether or not you have a cause or didn't have the right knowledge to determine whether or not you have a particular cause doesn't mean that you don't have that cause.

 Evan Hirsch: And the thing is, is that, and this is not just conventional docs. Unfortunately this is also natural docs. And even some integrative and functional medicine docs where they say, you know, I can't help you. And if somebody, if a doc says that it generally means that they're not being curious enough, or they're not expanding their differential, they're not looking for what else it could be. Because if you are, if you continue to expand that and you're not having success with what you're doing, you're going to continue to look for what else it could be. Cause that's how we learn. You know, I used to get people better to a certain point. And there were people that I couldn't help. And it was like, okay, well, why can't I help these people? Let me go learn. And then I was able to help more people. And there was people that I couldn't help.

 Evan Hirsch: And it was like, okay, well let me go learn so that you create this really big differential of all of the potential causes that it could be. So you can make sure that you're not missing anything. And that's what we do at that first appointment is that the journey begins with step one, which is determining what causes an individual has because everybody has multiple causes when it comes to fatigue, there's these 10 categories of causes and everybody has something from every single one of those categories. And everybody has something different than their neighbor, which is why it becomes so complicated. So you can't just take one thing and think it's going to fix this problem where you've got all these different causes.

 Wade T. Lightheart: You know, that's a, a great, I would call wide scope, accounting approach and understanding what the potential causes are. And then also being able to go through systematically and test for those things that so you can make lifestyle alterations or some sort of way of removing that obstacle towards health and vitality. I I think of recently I was at a Tony Robbins event a couple years ago and he ran into some major health issues because of high levels of mercury. In fact, he, I think he's got one of the highest recorded levels of mercury and the history of that couldn't even believe he was alive. And he's spent the last few years going through extensive detoxification of mercury from his body, which has been very difficult for him, very hard and has had compromised him on many occasions, but he's just, you know, Flint went through it, had he not gone to individuals outside the people that couldn't help him with this condition, he might not be with us today.

 Wade T. Lightheart: And his contribution will be taken from the world. How do you, when someone comes in with let's, let's deal with fatigue particular, because I know that's your, your big wheelhouse, you've written a book on it and stuff. Can you talk about if someone has fatigued, what is, what is, how do you approach it? How do you go through this list? What are the kinds of tests are you running? How does someone get at, like, where does someone start with this when they're just, you know, I'm so tired. I I'm, I don't have that energy. I don't feel like I used to, something's not right. And everyone's like, Oh, it's in your head. And you're getting old, all those kind of cliche fix.

 Evan Hirsch: So the first thing that people need to do is they need to realize that there's a problem, right? So a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm just getting older. You know, they go to their conventional doc, it's too much work to keep searching. Right. I'm going to go to another doc. And then I'm going to go to this alternative doc or, you know, like, how do I know that I'm going to find what I need? And it's just too much work. I'm just going to change my life. I'm going to slow things down and maybe that'll work for people. But if you're like you and I, where you're a professional, you've got big goals. That's not going to work for you and you need to figure out what's wrong. So the first thing is realizing there's a problem. You know, if you're surviving on caffeine, if your energy is crashing throughout the day, if after lunch, you want to crawl under the desk and take a nap.

 Evan Hirsch: You know, if you, if on the weekends it's just about recovery and you can't really go out and do what you want to do, then there's a problem. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing was figuring out what the cause, because whether it's an HR problem at work or whether it's a problem with your car, like your gas pipe or whatever it is, you need to figure what the cause is in order to fix it. Right? So that's really the mission that people should be going on is figuring out what the cause or in fatigue's case, what the causes are, because it's never just one thing people think, Oh, you know, I was fine until that moment in time, when all of a sudden I had a car accident or this person broke up with me or whatever, or I kissed somebody or whatever got COVID.

 Evan Hirsch: And then all of a sudden I'm laid out and it's actually, that was the straw, right. But it's this buildup over time. So that's the first thing that we do in step one is determine the causes that people have. Now, interestingly, 75% of the causes can be determined by symptoms alone, which is super cool because people can join our programs. They can go through that step one workbook and at the end of an hour or so, they're going to know seventy-five percent of their causes, which means they can start taking supplements that are specific to those causes. And then they can spend their money on the 25% of those causes that really need the labs.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So what are some of the causes of fatigue overall?

 Evan Hirsch: So let's not jump into that. So we talked about these 10 categories of fatigue, and those can really be divided up into deficiencies. So things that are not in the body that are supposed to be, and then toxicities, so things that are in the body that aren't supposed to be there. So if we look at the deficiencies,

 Wade T. Lightheart: That's the two major categories, right. I'm missing something that I need, or I have something in my body that I shouldn't have.

 Evan Hirsch: Exactly. Okay. Yep. And so those deficient and what's interesting too, is that the toxicities actually cause 90% of the deficiencies,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Correct? Yeah. That's, that's an interesting component, especially with the modern food additives and components and all the chemical agents that have been added ad nauseum, expanding daily, and very little research going into, or very little public re disinfect or information about the long-term consequences, as well as the buildup factor of these things. Like a little bit. Okay. It doesn't harm you, but how many pesticides do I need to eat over 20 to 30 years before he messes me up? You know, I don't know. Right. there's an old thing with the one time, the whole thing of mad as a Hatter terminology, but they use mercury on the hats. Well, a little bit of mercury probably wouldn't hurt that, but you're doing with mercury every day, you'd go mental. Right. So 

 Evan Hirsch: That's a really good point. Yeah. We gave an

 Wade T. Lightheart: Extreme example, but I think it's fair to say that it happens for a lot of people just being, living in the modern world.

 Evan Hirsch: Absolutely. Yeah. So those toxicities are causing most of those deficiencies. So you would think that we could go right at those toxicities, but actually that's step four. We can't go right at the toxicities because we have to start by replacing the deficiencies. And then we'll go into, we'll talk about step three and step four too. But if we go, can we go into the specific causes? Yes. Okay, great. So when we look at those deficiencies, we're looking at deficiencies of hormones. So the adrenal gland is a little triangular gland sits on top of the kidneys, produces cortisol as well as other stress hormones and regulates a whole bunch of amazing things, including your ability to get out of bed in the morning, those crashes that are happening between two and 4:00 PM. Those cravings that you have for salty and sweet food, the sleep problems you're having the regulation of your blood sugar as a whole bunch of stuff.

 Evan Hirsch: And so that's important. There's deficiencies in fibroid and sex hormones. There's deficiencies in nutrients like vitamins and minerals, they're deficiencies and neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine things that affect the mood. And then there's efficiencies in lifestyle habits. So not enough water, not enough good food, not enough sleep and not enough movement. And then of course there's deficiencies or dysfunction in mitochondria, which produces about 70 to 80% of our energy and get squashed by all of these toxicities that we're going to talk about in a second. So those are all the deficiencies that actually have to get boosted in order to be successful at removing the toxicities because removing the toxicities is actually stressful on the body. So we have to be as resilient as possible. So we work on our mindset during this process and got a process for doing that. And then we're also boosting all of these deficiencies to make you as robust as possible.

 Evan Hirsch: And then we go into step three, which is to open up the detoxification pathways because in step four, when we reach into these to our tissues and kind of pull these toxins out into the bloodstream, we want to make sure that there's a pathway for those toxins to be able to get out of the body. So in step three, we're opening up these detox pathways. And this is the reason why a lot of people feel worse when they're going through detoxification because they haven't done step three appropriately. They haven't opened up the bowel so that people are having two good bowel movements a day. They haven't opened up the liver and the kidney, these amazing filters that are so important, they haven't opened up the lymph, which is the garbage system in the body or the neural lymph, which is the lymph system in the brain because you gotta be able to dump from one system into the next, into the next, into the next, in order to get it actually out of the body. So I think of these systems as like tubes where they're clogged right now, when people have fatigue, cause everybody who's got fatigue actually has these clogged tubes. And so you have to open up those pathways in order to be able to grab something, to put it into that tube. So it can actually clear itself.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Very, very, I love the structure.

 Evan Hirsch: That's great. Yeah. So that's step three and then step four is going into the toxicity. So it's the heavy metals that you talked about over a hundred thousand pounds of mercury have been dumped into our oceans every year. The issue that Tony Robins had was cause he was on a sword fish diet, the bigger the fish, the more the mercury, because it's stored in fat. So we're talking about swordfish and halibut and tuna, you know, environmental protection agency, the EPA no longer recommends tuna fish for, even for pregnant women. It used to be. I remember when I was going through residency, it was like a couple of cans a week is okay. And then it went to a couple of cans a month and then it went to one can a month. And then it went to none because mercury is a neurotoxin and they were finding just very large amounts in fish.

 Wade T. Lightheart: They're very common in the bodybuilding world, which I had a background in for older bodybuilders to run into neurological conditions. And I can think of a former, some former national champions that I knew that had high levels of mercury toxicity because these people have been eaten a couple cans of tuna every day for decades. Right.

 Evan Hirsch: That's so interesting. So yeah, so heavy metals like mercury and then 70% of lipsticks have lead in them. And there's a lot of other exposures that we have there used to be leaded gasoline, obviously leaded paint in many of our homes. And then with chemicals, chemical toxicity, 84,000 different chemicals we're exposed to on a regular basis. And most of those haven't been appropriately studied. Like you talked about, and those are things like pesticides and herbicides and insecticides and plastics that we're exposed to on a regular basis. You know, part of my story was that I had pretty much all of these causes. I used to drive across country. I've driven across country six different times taking different routes, loved it, but I always had a water bottle next to me that was being cooked in the sun. And I was just, you know, drinking out of it all day long. Right. And so that's how I got a lot of the plastics in my buddy. And then just growing up without the knowledge about organics, a lot of pesticides and herbicides as well. Go ahead.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Quick question on the plastics, because this is becoming a growing pattern I'm seeing in some of the testing data that we're finding is people having high levels of plastics literally inside their tissues. Do you have any hacks on removing plastic from the body?

 Evan Hirsch: Absolutely. So one of the things that I love to do or something that, you know, I don't know, I don't know everybody who's in your audience right now, but I would say saunas are really amazing for getting rid of a lot of toxins. And they can get rid of a number of different toxins. They're usually not going to get rid of everything, but that's, that's one thing that you can do right now is to get yourself a good far infrared sauna. I do have some of those on my recommended page. If people are interested in what I recommend, there's also certain binders that people can take like charcoal or flax seed, different fibers, pectus all, or like modified citrus pectin. There's a number of these. And there's some combination products that I like to use. And then there's things like inositol cystine or glutathione, which are the body's main antioxidant detoxifiers.

 Evan Hirsch: So those are some of my favorite ones that I like to use. There's other, some natural ones like cilantro and chlorella cayenne, there's a number of different products that I like to use in combination products, especially. But those are just some of the ways where you can start getting, cause it's all about getting layers off of the human system, because if we think about it, all this stuff that we've been building up over time, you can think about the body, like a barrel, like a large rain barrel, where over time we've been accumulating crap. And it's only when it starts to spill over all this crap starts to spill over. Then we actually start getting symptoms. And so we have to start bailing this crap out of the body, but we also have to have to poke a hole in the bottom and allow it to drain out. So these are just some of the ways to do it.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Okay. That's great. Sorry. I interjected in your whole series because I think we got the number four. There was number five, right?

 Evan Hirsch: No, it was great. Yeah. So heavy metals, chemicals, molds, molds are incredibly insidious. So half of all, first world buildings have water damage and most of those have mold. So it's a huge problem. And most people don't believe that they have any mold, cause they've never seen any mold in their homes, but they also forget that maybe the home that they grew up in had a flood in the basement, or maybe there was a leak in the roof or maybe there was a busted pipe. Right. So it can be any of those things in any home that you ever lived in. Even if that home was when you were five years old. Because like I said before, it's this accumulation over time. So let's say you were like me where I grew up eating tuna fish sandwiches and had mercury fillings, whole bunch of mercury. And then I lived in a moldy place when I was in medical school. Right. And then I was exposed to those chemicals that I talked about or in gross anatomy. I had formaldehyde poisoning, which I didn't know of at the time. So it's this accumulation, but I didn't have fatigue until my thirties. Right. So it's just, but when I tested, yeah, I had tons of mold from the place that I lived in when I was in medical school.

 Wade T. Lightheart: One of my mentors, Dr. David, Carlos, who was a disciple of Paul Bragg with these scenes was in a Mexican prison for five years coming back, or he was bringing acupuncture gear from Brazil. And they said that he was carrying contraband drugs and he spent five years in a Mexican prison, wrote 12 books and, and, and pros, mind you and treated 17,000 people and taught a hundred different doctors. His methodologies in Bali was in there because Mexican prisons are a little different than ours and taken out with cancer. And he felt it was the level of mold that he was exposed to. And he wasn't able to detox fast enough when he was in his seventies. And wasn't able to recover from that, unfortunately. So I think mold is one of these really insidious things that really can cause problems. What are some of the symptoms people experience with mold in particular? Because it's so widespread and very few GPS will even mention it.

 Evan Hirsch: Oh yeah. Pretty much none. You know, they're, they're not trained on it. I wasn't trained on it in medical school. And a lot of that, once again, it comes from, if you can't test for it or you don't have a test or you don't believe in the test and you don't have a prescription for it, it's not something that you're going to treat. Right. So the symptoms generally they're they present as fungal symptoms. So oftentimes there's rashes, there's itching, oftentimes itchy anus, itchy ears are common symptoms. There's worsening symptoms after eating sugar. And usually the worsening symptoms are brain fog and oftentimes there's pretty bad brain fog. And so that just means foggy thinking, not able to remember words, you know, walking into a room and forgetting why you were there, but those are the most common symptoms that I would say there can also be neuropathies that can be like weird shooting pains in the body pain in the bottom of the feet some times.

 Evan Hirsch: So it's mainly weird symptoms that can't be explained. Now you can also get weird symptoms that can't be explained from heavy metals chemicals as well as infections. And so this is why when we talk about those 25% that you really need lab testing for it's heavy metals and chemicals and molds, and actually with mold, there's two tests that are needed. There's a test to determine whether or not you're living in mold, because if you're living in mold, you're not going to get better. You have to remediate the place that you're living in, or you have to find a new place. It's not that hard to remediate. So don't get overwhelmed by that thought, but you have to do a test to determine whether or not you're living in mold. And then you have to see if there's mold in your body, because if you have mold in your body, but you don't have mold in your home, that means that the mold in your body came from a different home or a different place that you worked or whatever, you don't have to remediate the home. So it's kind of, that's part of the, the slew thing that, that has to happen to determine, you know, what to do next

 Wade T. Lightheart: And how do you test for mold?

 Evan Hirsch: So the best test is a urine mycotoxin test, excuse me. So mycotoxins are toxins produced by the molds and that live in different parts of the body. Now the urine test really is the best way to determine, and there's really no false positives on this. If you find that you have urine mycotoxins or mycotoxins in your there's really nothing else, that's going to be causing that. It's not like some mold testing that's done in the blood where you're looking at indirect markers where you're looking at how the immune system is responding to mold. Not, not the best test, best test is going to be actually to see the mold in your body, in the form of these mycotoxins coming out.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Got it. Okay. so let's say someone comes into your, your practice. They're tired, fatigue. You've recognized they got some nutritional deficiencies. They go, we, we, you bolster up that sort of stuff. You suggest, Hey, we're now we'd get you kind of back on track. We've got to now then detoxify, what kind of timeframes are we looking at for people in order to do this? Because I think with a lot of people were trained on this, Hey, I got a problem, take a pill. It goes away where if you've got something that's been a contributing factor for five, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years, whatever it happens to be, I would suspect that your process takes a little bit longer. What, what are, what are what's? What have you found typically for people to address fatigue, assuming they're motivated and assuming that they are doing what you recommend because compliance is another big issue, right?

 Evan Hirsch: So it generally will take six to 24 months depending on the number of causes that somebody has and the severity of those clauses. And then also if they're living in a moldy environment, right? So our program that we offer is six months and then people can continue with us if they want to, if they need that additional support. But after that six months, six months, they found the causes that they have. And then it's just about removing them. And that's kind of where that, that variability comes into play. But most of the people that we see, I mean, yes, there are some people who aren't that compliant, but most of the people we see are to the point where they're like, I understand they see the success stories that we've had. They're like, just tell me what the protocol is. I'm going to implement it. You know, they're kind of at their wits end, you know? And so, and so we don't see that much of an issue, unless for some reason they're not able to tolerate supplements or they can't get out of a moldy environment or whatever it is. So there's always some of those other nuances, but it's, you're absolutely right. There is a variability and it really depends on, on the severity that they have and the number of causes that they have. And we didn't finish with toxicity. So I'd love to jump back into that whenever you want,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Please let's go back there. And my, my, my bad, I got, I had a boss here.

 Evan Hirsch: No, I paused. But yeah, we talked about heavy metals chemicals molds. And just to tell people where we're going, infections, allergies, negative emotional patterns and electromagnetic fields. Those are the other toxicities that we're going to talk about. Right. And so need to get infections right

 Wade T. Lightheart: Away. I think that's a, that's one that I think people, people think of an infection. I got something on as a cut and I'm infected, but infections is a lot deeper than that.

 Evan Hirsch: Absolutely. We're talking about chronic infections. So the CDC centers for disease control in Atlanta a couple of years ago, had a statement that there are 30,000 new cases of Lyme disease per year in the United States. Now that number is 476,000 that they have, they have a grade two, so right. And so there's w here in the United States new cases,

 Wade T. Lightheart: And that's not counting how many people have got it and don't even know about it.

 Evan Hirsch: Exactly. And it doesn't include the co-infections as well. So Lyme is Borrelia, but it doesn't include things like Bartonella or Babesia or Anaplasma or licky or Epstein-Barr virus, or now COVID, you know, we've got long COVID or long haulers. Now that we're seeing that we've incorporated into our program to help those people. So there are a lot of these chronic infections that get into the body. And oftentimes they've been with you for a long time, but they're not a problem until you get a number of those stressors, a number of those things where all of a sudden the immune system is hijacked off into left field because you have heavy metals, chemicals, and molds, and then the infections come out and they become opportunistic, right. Are taken advantage. What's that

 Wade T. Lightheart: Death by a thousand cuts.

 Evan Hirsch: Exactly. Yeah. And it's important to remember that, you know, we are 90% in this human form where 90% bug cells and 10% human cells. So we normally have this beautiful symbiosis that ends up happening, and you guys have these great probiotics, you know, that help to rebalance that. Right. And so this is, it's one of those huge problems that I see mold and chronic infections are a lot of those things that other doctors don't want to touch. And that so many of these people who've got chronic fatigue or myalgic and cephalitis, which is what they call it in the UK and beyond have, they've got generally a combination of those two and it hasn't been found and it needs to be so,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. So it was a curiosity. What is it just because it's too complex, too long to deal with, like, what's, what is the obstacle there?

 Evan Hirsch: I think it's both, you know, cause there's, it's not just conventional docs, it's natural integrative and functional medicine docs were like I take care of this stuff and that's too complex for me, which is fine. It's good to know, you know where you're at, but you also have to know when to refer. Right. Cause a lot of people are, they continue to try things which aren't necessarily working or they think, Oh, we just need to tweak this a little bit. And then we're gonna, you know, like going after the gut gut is incredibly, it has to be fixed. But if you're spending all of your time fixing the gut and you're not focusing on molds, heavy metals, chemicals infections, like you're not going to get the person better if they have those things. So it's just, it's just kind of next level thinking where, but it is complex and dealing with mold and helping people navigate mold remediations and whatnot can be very complicated. That's why we have a health coach on staff who has done this numerous times, numerous times. She is a mold remediation coach and she's excellent at it so that we can hold people's hands and kind of help them through the process.

 Wade T. Lightheart: And if people want to refer out to some other authorities in the industry to hear their own challenges with it, Tim Ferris does an extensive podcast on his exposure to Lyme disease and how difficult that was for him. He was extremely well-resourced Dave Asprey talks about the sufferings from mold and what he had to do to overcome that in his life. And, and you know, these are, like you said to half a million people being diagnosed with Lyme's disease in America alone, that's, that's a big chunk of the population, right? It's far more insidious than what we're currently mitigating for in a lottery. In, in, in reality, what are some other things that we didn't touch on here in your list? Cause then I want to get into your book and your process.

 Evan Hirsch: Absolutely. And I'm just going to one more quick thing on, on the infections. So oftentimes these infections will present with symptoms that are misdiagnosed with other things. So for example, there's something called plantar fasciitis, which is pain on the bottom of the foot. And this oftentimes is Bartonella, which is one of those co-infections that you can get from your, your pet. So upwards of 50% of all domestic animals, cats, and dogs, they lick in the face, you've got Bartonella and you can also get it from mom through the placenta. You can get it from ticks and mosquitoes and all this sort of stuff, but you can get pain on the bottom of the foot. You can get muscle cramps, you can get thyroid issues, you can get problems, sleeping, anxiety, depression muscle pain, usually misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines. So that, and that's just Bartonella with Babesia.

 Evan Hirsch: These people have spontaneous sweating. They're usually the hottest person in the room. They're always asking for the AC to be turned up. Oftentimes they've got chronic costs and then they've got really bad sleep anxiety to the point of panic attacks, depression, to the point of suicidal thoughts. And COVID is actually showing us, it's been disrupting a lot of the microbiome. So it's kind of bringing some of these bugs to the surface. So we're still, we'll see where people will have. COVID they'll get these symptoms and you start treating these, these symptoms as these bugs and then those symptoms go away. So we're seeing that there's some sort of relationship here where COVID is disrupting the biofilm is hiding place of these bugs, allowing these bugs to come out, cause problems that have to be addressed. So that's just like a quick aside, so that people need to pay attention to any sort of weird symptom that you have. You have to think about mold, chronic infections and then secondarily chemicals and heavy metals.

 Wade T. Lightheart: I love this is so thorough. This is a lot of fun. So let's talk about your book, why you wrote it, who it's for and why people need to read this book specifically if they, or someone they know is suffering from fatigue. Because I think this is really important to realize there's so much stigma around someone who is suffering from fatigue that they're lazy, they're unmotivated, they're a hypochondriac. They are, there's a whole laundry list of kind of negative projections or associations or labels that go on people who are really suffering from fatigue. And they may not be finding relief in their conventional areas. And probably a lot of people listening to this has someone in their life, that's suffering from some form of fatigue. That seems debilitating. So talk to me about the book and why.

 Evan Hirsch: Yeah. So the book is called fixture fatigue and it takes people through the four-step process. I'm actually going to be updating it recently because I wrote the book back in 2017 and I've made a number of updates to the protocol, but it's, it goes into my story. You know, I hadn't fatigued for five years, just about destroyed my business, my relationships, my, you know, my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my daughter, it was not a pretty scene. And so I don't, I want to want anybody to suffer with what I had to suffer with and that's why I'm on a mission to help a million people resolve their fatigue. So I take people through the process that I use with people in my one-on-one and my group programs and give them a taste of, of what it's like to, to work with us.

 Evan Hirsch: And then also to see which causes they have. And we're actually, we've got a summit coming up that I'm doing with Dr. Tom O'Bryan and mid June, June 14th, where we're doing the fatigue and auto-immunity summit looking at hidden causes where we're going to actually take people through the process of figuring out 75% of their causes based off of their symptoms. So every single day I'm going to be in the Facebook group, helping people determine what these causes are. And then you're going to have 40 amazing lectures to go with it, to help them understand and kind of flesh out all that around each one of these causes.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Well, we've, we've had Tom on the podcast and he is a wealth of knowledge that yourself, and I think that's so great. We'll make some show notes in here so people can get access to this and watch this. I think that's really, really important, especially considering you're a doctor. I just, as a caveat, how to make sure I'm clear about this for our listeners, how do you maybe rate or diagnose fatigue? And is it a, is it a scale? It like, like how does a person know I'm suffering from, from fatigue?

 Evan Hirsch: Yeah. Good question. And I would clarify first that I actually don't diagnose or treat anymore because I operate as a health coach in order to be able to help people across state lines nationally and internationally about a third of all of our participants are actually international now. And so in order to be able to do that, I operate as a health coach. And fortunately I can do that because everything that I do is natural. So I educate and I make recommendations and it works really well. What's funny is that people see me do that. And they say, well, aren't, don't you feel bad about leaving your MD? And I tell them, I said, at the end, justifies the means. If I'm going to help a million people resolve their fatigue, it doesn't matter what the initials are after my name. Right. I have to figure out how to do that, how to, how to help people on a broader scale.

 Evan Hirsch: But to answer your question, people in terms of deciding whether or not they have fatigue, it really depends on, on the symptoms that they're having. So if they're surviving on caffeine, if their, if their energy is crashing throughout the day, you know, 2:00 PM is a really big time to between two and 4:00 PM. If they if they're not sleeping well, if they're waking up and they feel like they're hung over, these are all signs that there's a problem and they have to pay attention. And so then we go into kind of like, what level problem do they have? Well, if they have a level one problem, this means that they can fix their fatigue with lifestyle habits. So they start drinking more water, they start eating better food, getting off of the standard American diet. They start sleeping more, they start moving more and their fatigue goes away.

 Evan Hirsch: That's great. That's a level one problem. If they still have fatigue, then they have a level two or a level three problem. Now level two problem is fatigue that goes away when you replace the deficiencies in step two. So you're taking your adrenals and your thyroid and your mitochondria and your B12 and whatever else you're taking in addition to fixing your lifestyle habits. And if fatigue goes away, that's considered a level two problem. And then level three is if they have a toxicity, so they still have fatigue. And this is where we see most people. Cause a lot of people that we see have seen conventional natural integrative functional medicine providers, and they're still tired. So it's generally a toxicity or a deficiency that's been missed that needs to be

 Wade T. Lightheart: Love it. And so I guess you're probably going through some of this inside the book of how to kind of systematically go through this. And is that what the book is or what else is in your book? Cause have you had an opportunity to read it yet?

 Evan Hirsch: Yeah. So it's, I'll have to send it to you. So it's, you know, it takes people through the symptoms. It looks at the labs, it looks at how to interpret the labs so that they can get an idea just based off of what they get. Then they can actually go to their practitioner and ask them to run certain labs or they can get them from a lab store that doesn't require a prescription. So there's a number of different things in there. And then I talk about some of the treatments that are recommended, but what's important to remember is that it really is. I mean, I, my editor called him my Magnum Opus. You know, I dumped all of my good stuff. It's like my great work. But what's important to remember is that you really want to do this with a team.

 Evan Hirsch: You know, if you resonate with what I'm saying, you want to choose me as a mentor or somebody else as a mentor. If you resonate with what they say, when it comes to a certain condition, and then you want to go through a process that includes support along the way. Because if you have questions which are going to have questions, you need to be able to ask questions every day. You need to be able to get face to face time every couple of weeks with your mentor, you need to be able to have a community that will support you along the way. And so we've incorporated all of those things into our program so that it can help people get the results that they want because the book is great. And there are people who get good results with the book, but it takes so much more dedication. And it's a lot harder because you're not necessarily your, you don't have those other components that I mentioned.

 Wade T. Lightheart: What are the biggest challenges for somebody who's maybe got to the point where they're seeing you and they want to engage with this? What do you see is the major blockages or challenges to overcome for people to kind of eliminating fatigue forever? Is it, you know, time, energy, money, belief? What, what, what, what, what are those things that are, that are tripping people up on this journey?

 Evan Hirsch: Yeah, it's all of them. So it's, let's talk first about energy. So one of the reasons also why we have stepped to where it is is because the big three as I call it, which is the adrenals, the thyroid and the mitochondria gives people the biggest boost of energy. So I actually don't even talk about lifestyle habits until they've done that because you're not going to have the energy or the will to change your diet, to go to sleep earlier, to, you know, do a whole bunch of other things that require a lot of work until you have more energy. So that's the big thing is that you have to have more energy and in order to work on your energy. So that's the big three is just such an important part of that process. The other thing is beliefs. So one of the first things that we do is we start talking about mindset and we talk about gratitude and there's research behind all of this gratitudes three gratitudes a day.

 Evan Hirsch: We talk about visioning. We talk about looking at your limiting beliefs and flipping them on their head and creating empowering beliefs. We look at your disempowering question and look at your empowering question and create a new empowering question, which is something I learned from Tony Robbins. So it's this process that's so important for neuroplasticity for changing the way that you're thinking so that you can live from a positive state and be grateful for where you are. And then also know that you want to move ahead. That is one of the most challenging things, but having gratitude in the moment ends of rewiring the brain. And we also have a nervous system retraining coach on staff. We have weekly meditations in order to do all this stuff in addition to the mindset so that we can retrain the brain because it's such a huge component of this brain and emotions are just as big as all of this physical medicine stuff.

 Wade T. Lightheart: I love the fact that you've come from a medical background and you're speaking at terminology, which I like, which some people would associate with woo or pseudoscience. But here you are, have a track record for dealing with people who were really have been in a hopeless situation, being paralyzed by fatigue and disrupting their quality of life. Is there any areas that we haven't covered in regards to fixing your fatigue? Let's say,

 Evan Hirsch: Well, just real quick on the toxicity is just a reminder for folks, heavy metals, chemicals, molds infections allergies. So this can be food allergies or inhaled allergies, negative emotional patterns. This is why we do the mindset, why we do the nervous system retraining. And this can be what's called ACEs or adverse childhood events or adverse light life events where it doesn't have to be abuse. As we classically know it as like physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse, or sexual abuse, it can be rejection of a peer group from a peer group or something that is less than nurturing. So I was rejected by a peer group when I was 10, cried my eyes out and changed the way that I saw friendship and other humans as being safe, that ended up increasing my stress and something that I've had to work on over the years. So that's the negative emotional patterns. And then the electromagnetic fields, which is so important now with 5g and 4g and wifi and everything that has a battery of myths, a wavelength, a frequency that can disrupt our DNA that we have to pay attention to. But the big point of this whole talk is find your causes because if you find your causes, it's really simple two-step process. When you think about it, you find your causes and then you just match up the solution with those causes.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So simple, so eloquent and so thorough. Can you share with everyone where they can get your book, how they can follow you all the social media stuff. We're going to put all the notes, but please be shameless in your pitch this, because I know that there are people listening to this right now that are at their ropes and, and they want to, they want to find a solution and you have many of those answers.

 Evan Hirsch: Thank you. So the place to start really is that our website fixyourfatigue.com F I X Y O U R F a T I G U e.com. And really the next step is to get on a free call with us so that you can see if you're a good fit for our program. And you can take the quiz that's on our website, you know, all roads essentially lead to that free call. So, you know, it's, it's worth your time and we get on the call with everybody. So, you know, don't, don't even worry about, you know, whatever you can afford or whatnot. We just want to make sure that we're serving everybody. So, you know, take action. Whether it's with me, whether it's with somebody else, find your causes, take action. One step at a time, you know, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You have to stay in action. And the question that you should be asking yourself every single day is what can I do today to resolve my fatigue? What can I do today to move my health forward?

 Wade T. Lightheart: Dr. Evan Hirsch, the author of fix your fatigue. He's laid out a great game plan and thank you for putting forth, such a beautiful offer. They can call you, they can take a quiz. They can meet with someone that can provide them a roadmap of how they can get out of a debilitating situation. You are a Saint and you're doing good work in the world. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule today. Join us on the Awesome Health Podcast for all our listeners out there. I hope you enjoyed this brief examination of what could be causing fatigue. If you know somebody who has fatigue, who struggled with fatigue, a family member, a friend, I encourage you to listen to this podcast, talk to Dr. Hirsch and his team and get the solutions that you need. There are answers, and that's what this podcast is all about. This is the awesome health podcasts from BiOptimizers I'm Wade T Lightheart signing off for another day, have yourself the healthiest day ever. And we'll see you on the next episode.