What Causes Long Covid/Chronic Fatigue/ME and How To Get Back To Normal with Jenny Tufenkian and Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Episode 110:

What Causes Long Covid/Chronic Fatigue/ME and How To Get Back To Normal with

Jenny Tufenkian and Evan H. Hirsch, MD

00:04

Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast where we help you resolve your

chronic fatigue, ME-CFS, long COVID and MCAS by getting to your real root causes what

I call the Toxic Five, the heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections and trauma. So really

excited about our interview today because we're going to be talking with Dr. Jenny and

Dr. Jenny's last name is Tufenkian. Did I say that right?

00:29

You did amazing. Yes. Excellent. I've been working on it. And so let's learn a little bit

about Dr. Jenny. So she's an expert, does similar things to what I do. So I'm really

excited about this conversation. So Dr. Toofanke has been treating complex chronic

illness for over two decades. Having complex chronic fatigue herself, she had no choice

but to dig deep into the literature and uncover the root causes of chronic fatigue.

Through her research and experience, she developed an effective system to unlock the

five

00:58

core energy drainers that we'll be learning about today, so that those who are too

exhausted to function can start feeling like themselves again. She shares this system

with clients and practitioners online and in person. Her unique spin and secret power is

to combine a very left brain functional medicine approach, along with deep

subconscious work. This allows powerful shifts in both the physical and energetic

bodies. She teaches widely to the public, health professionals and corporations.

01:26

She is also a mom of two, happily married and loves her time outdoors and in the

kitchen. Dr. Jenny, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having

me, Evan. It's just a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I've really enjoyed our conversations over

the last year or so since we've known each other. So excited about picking your brain

and learning from you and learning more about what you do. So...

01:52

There's a couple of things that you mentioned in your bio that I'm really excited about.

One is talking about the five core energy drainers. Can you tell us more about those?

Sure, I call them the five root causes that lead to chronic fatigue, ME, and even long

COVID. And I think we're gonna find a lot of parallels here between what you're doing

and what I'm doing and what we both see in these patients that come to us who are

really sick and have been sick for decades. So the first one is I look at, and I call this the

gateway root cause.

02:22

which is the hormone triangle. So that's looking at the adrenals, the thyroid, the ovaries

or testes if you're biologically male and looking at that system. And this is a gateway

root cause because so many of us are just on the stress express in this culture,

especially if we're parents and professionals and we're just pushing ourselves 24 seven,

it's really easy to get that stress response dysregulated early in our life. And if that

continues and doesn't get addressed,

02:51

then you can end up becoming vulnerable to it becoming a prolonged condition and

entering into extreme chronic fatigue. It certainly was a gateway for me as a mom in

medical school, for sure. The second one is looking at mitochondrial function. And the

mitochondria, as I'm sure many of you listening already know, is the powerhouse within

side of your cell.

03:18

And some of us have mitochondrial dysfunction, which disallows the body from having

normal energy production and can lead to having extreme fatigue. The other one is

looking at toxins. So, and of course these root causes are interrelated. So there's a toxic

burden. We all have way too many toxins in our body because we've done this amazing

thing called industrialization, where we've dunked Diaga into the earth and pulled up

these metals.

03:47

We've created things that we don't even have names for of toxic pollutants that are

really hard for our body to process. And those can gum up the mitochondria and other

parts of the body. The other one is chronic infections. So number four is chronic

infections. And we all have a virus, we have what's called a virome. We have a whole

host of viruses that are in us. We also have a lot of fungus, fungi in us, other critters that

aren't us. And...

04:16

those can come out of dormancy and get activated and lead to the chronic fatigue. And

this is indeed a huge piece of long COVID as I know you're aware of. And the fifth is

looking at that limbic emotional piece. And that's where the trauma that you speak of

really lives inside of the nervous system connected to the brain. And this is where I find

that many people

04:43

if they've experienced early trauma, most of us have some sort of trauma from our

childhood or generational trauma, that can become one of the setups to making it easier

to fall into a chronic fatigue long COVID type of pattern. And then the illness itself is

traumatizing. It's traumatizing to have your body not work, to be able to not rely on it, to

not have the social life that you need to feed your soul and your spirit. These things can

make it all very challenging.

05:12

And these root causes interact with each other. I find that people have one, two, three, or

all five of them, depending on what was going on with them when they came into this,

depending on how long they've been struggling with this condition. And really the work

is to start to uncover which is the key significant root cause. What's the one that if we

focus on this now, it's gonna help shift the body, get back into balance. That's a great

list.

05:40

I'm really glad that you talked about how illness is traumatizing. Yeah. Because it's kind

of like you get you get to this place where you don't feel well. And then you feel worse

because of, you know, your relationship to the illness. You know, you have a certain

identity and you're not able to fulfill that identity. I know when I had chronic fatigue, give

me CFS that I saw myself in a particular way as a great father and a great husband and

a great practitioner. And I couldn't do any of those things. Right. So it was really

demoralizing and disempowering.

06:10

And then there's of course the medical trauma where people go and see practitioners. I

know you talk about this as well. And then the practitioner invalidates them and they're

like, there's nothing wrong with you. It's all in your head. Or they get told there's nothing

you can do, which is the other thing that really I feel angry about when I hear that

because I don't believe that. That's not what I see. And that hasn't been my experience.

And I think that's a very powerful message to put in someone's head.

06:39

And often I need to, we need to work on that. We're talking with people about, there are

ways that your body can heal and heal. But yeah, and I'd say speaking to that trauma of

having chronic fatigue, ME, long COVID, I know that my experience through having it, as

a mom, I found it hard to see my family's concern in their face when they were looking at

me.

07:09

And I became aware of how much they were watching me to see, oh, is mom okay? Is

she okay now? Is she not okay? And sort of this hypervigilance, I began to feel bad

about the hypervigilance they had to have around me, you know? It became this layered

thing that I needed to work through. And then I needed, when I was in periods of

incredible health, it's like I had to retrain them to go like, I'm fine. Like, I can actually

climb this rock and I'm good.

07:39

You don't need to worry about me. Yeah, that's an important point. And it's, you know,

oftentimes when we talk about trauma, we, you know, we a lot of people think about

really significant abuse. Yes, right. But it can be, you know, anything that really changes

the way that we look at the world and, you know, our relationship to our parents, right?

We're supposed to like part of our relationship with our parents growing up. We're

programmed to survive. Right. And so we want to do everything that we can.

08:09

in order to make sure that that relationship is intact. So the concern that your kids had

for you was, you know, part of that assurance to make sure that the parental figure,

right? But then this ends up contributing to limbic system dysfunction and stuff like that.

Can you talk a little bit more about that sort of thing and some like family dynamics and

how that can contribute to these issues? Sure, limbic dysfunction is...

08:33

is really looking at how the limbic brain, which is part of the emotional center, it's a

number of different sections of the brain combined together that creates the limbic

brain. And it connects with the vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve in the body. That

vagus nerve is always feeding information from the organs, from the tissues, from your

body up into your brain. And basically the limbic's brain job is to, it's helping you assess,

are you safe?

09:02

Is it safe right now or is it dangerous? Is it safe, is it dangerous? And we all have filters

from our past experiences. We have filters from our childhood experiences. We have

filters that comes through our genetic line. We have filters in our energy bodies that can

make that filter go over that limbic brain so that we may be more biased towards seeing

things as not being safe or more biased towards

09:32

things feeling pretty darn good, you know, and feeling like we're safe. I have a

practitioner who does reflexology, a friend who does reflexology, and he says,

sometimes I get princess feet. That's somebody that comes in and their feet really don't

have any hard places because their life has been that of a princess. And they haven't

had a lot of life's challenges. Those are not the people I see. I see the people that have

had a lot of challenges, right? And their brain tends to be more filtered towards seeing

things as being more dangerous.

10:02

How that connects to childhood trauma is of course, if you have had experienced

anything as being traumatic and these could be very traumatic events, of course, but

they can also be what we call small T's that turn into big T's, you know, little traumas

that are big because of the stage of development you were in as a child or because you

weren't allowed to process that your goldfish died.

10:26

in an appropriate way, because mom and dad were out of town that weekend and the

nanny was taking care of you. And you didn't have a chance to really feel held and safe

and cry when your goldfish died. It could be, it doesn't have to be a big thing, it can be a

little thing. And that begins to make you feel like you're not safe in the world. And you

start to interpret that with your limbic brain. What happens, the limbic brain is also

seriously impacted by things like toxins in the body, or viruses, or any kind of

inflammation, because it picks up

10:56

The information, say you have dysbiosis in your gastrointestinal system, you have an,

you have irritable bowel syndrome or SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Your

nerves are literally picking up that information and bringing it up through the vagus

nerve, sending it to the brain and saying, we're not safe, we're not safe. You amplify that

with, I wasn't safe when I was four years old. You amplify that with some inflammation

from a chronic infection that hasn't been handled.

11:25

and the limbic brain begins to really begin to make you, begins to say, okay, you're in a

very dangerous place. We need to start making you safe. And the way that it makes you

safe is it sends out even more signals of pain, of fatigue, of depression, all the things

that make you want to go and hide under a rock.

11:50

in your cave so that you can stay safe. It's basically saying it is way too dangerous out of

there. You need to hide. And it throws out a lot of signals to the brain and the body, and

it becomes a vicious cycle. As the limbic brain is sending those signals out, your

hormones are getting altered, your neurotransmitters are getting altered, your immune

system is getting altered. And it makes it much harder for the body to return to that

place of homeostasis and balance that we need to stay to heal.

12:18

From a nervous system perspective, you are stuck in a stress response, in a

sympathetic stress response mode, and you are continually in fight or flight. And it's

really the limbic brain is trying to protect you and tell you to stay safe and to stay hidden.

12:38

Yeah, that's a wonderful explanation. You know, it's doing its best. It's kind of like our

parents, right? They did the best with what they got. Exactly. It's trying to serve you. It's

trying to protect you. It's trying to take care of you. And the reality is, is that it's

screaming at you saying, hey, I don't think you're listening to me because there's things

going on right now. So there's all this inflammation and all this pain and dysfunction.

That was really great. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Often,

13:08

One thing that I've always thought about when you're thinking about the limbic brain is

it's like there's like that inner three-year-old in there. Like that subconscious mind is like

that three-year-old that's just trying, it's kind of having a tantrum, you know, it's trying its

best. It's just not very sophisticated. So what I see with limbic system issues and

trauma is that sometimes it's 10% of the problem for folks and sometimes it's 90%.

Yeah. What are you seeing?

13:36

Totally, I love that, yes, exactly. And that's why I don't say everybody has all of these root

causes. And that's why you have to be selective in terms of, or astute for yourself. Those

of you that are listening can be hearing this and think, okay, which ones are the triggers

for me? The big root causes for me and us as clinicians. I believe it's when we're taking

that history with that person that we can really begin to be listening for different things

to help us decide is the limbic

14:05

really huge for this person or not. I've had people come in where I'm like, hey, your first

stop is limbic dysfunction. I had a patient come into me decades ago and she had a

whole host. She had SIBO, she had fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue. She had had a motor

vehicle accident. She was in chronic stress, chronic pain. She had small intestinal

bacterial overgrowth. She had a ton of food sensitivities.

14:31

she had a whole host of things and I knew I could have sent her out for thousands of

dollars of testing to confirm all of these things I thought she had, but I could tell that she

was severely dysregulated in her limbic brain and I said, I honestly think your first stop is

to focus on the limbic and then we will work on whatever is left. And

14:52

The things that I listen for when I'm trying to figure out if somebody, if their limbic brain

is primary are a couple of things. One, multiple chemical sensitivity. Multiple chemical

sensitivity to me is a sign that the limbic brain is dysfunctioning. And some of you

listening may be like, no way, that's crazy. Like my multiple chemical sensitivity is me,

I'm a canary in the coal mine, I know the world's toxic, I'm just more sensitive, the rest of

you are crazy.

15:19

And I get it because that's how I felt about myself. I'm like, yeah, like, you know, your

bounce, you know, fabric softener makes me feel horrendously ill as it does my patients.

The strangest thing though, when I did limbic healing for myself and I experienced the

night and day experience, once my limbic brain came into balance was, I'm in the

bathroom with the soap in the airport and I'm going, oh.

15:49

kind of that that honeysuckle smell of that perfume grandmother gave me when I was

eight years old, and all of a sudden going like, whoa, I can smell the soap like they

thought it was supposed to smell. It doesn't smell like a toxic chemical that's trying to

kill me anymore. And this is one of the things that I honestly use in myself now. I can tell

if my limbic brain is out of whack just by my sense of smell. If I'm reacting to chemicals,

then I know that it's time for me to do some limbic

16:17

back in alignment. So that's one thing. The other thing that I'm listening for is it's what

are they, what is the lens that they are explaining everything through? Right? And there is

a very, there is a survival fear state that comes on when you're in limbic dysfunction,

when that is dominant.

16:41

And that comes through in how you're describing your symptoms. Everything is too

overwhelming. Everything is too much always. There's never a break. There's never, you

know, it's, you know, it's that Danish film storm scene over and over and over again.

There's never the break in the storm where the sun comes out and you get to dance

around in the meadow, you know, you're just, it's always hard. That is a, that's a very

classic limbic brain state.

17:11

So those are some of the things that I'm looking for, but I totally agree. It's not everyone

has it completely. And so, and you talked about multiple chemical sensitivity, which is

now kind of called mass cell activation syndrome. Can you talk a little bit about the

difference between those two? Because I kind of see them as one and the same. I think

that mass cell activation syndrome is like, it can be...

17:39

multiple different parts of the immune system. It doesn't have to just be mast cells and

histamine, that are overreacting or what are your thoughts on those? Yeah, that's

interesting. Cause I don't see those two things as the same. I see mast cell activation

syndrome as your mast cells getting over-activated as the immune system being hyper

responsive. I would also say that I think that there is a overreaction in many people

18:09

if not all people with chronic fatigue, long COVID, mild sick encephalitis. There is a hyper

inflammation, chronic low grade inflammation throughout the body, particularly in the

brain. And that's where we're seeing a lot of mass cell activation happening in the brain.

And those people may have completely normal IgE levels, not, you know, not high or

even high histamine levels, but that is the process that's happening in the brain. So yeah,

I don't see.

18:37

Because of my experience with limbic healing and multiple and MCAS, I don't see those

as being identical situations, yeah. So then how does MCAS differ from multiple

chemical sensitivity? I think that MCAS is, well, I guess I'll back up and say that.

19:00

if you, when you heal the limbic brain, what we see is that the immune system does be

able to go into a state of normalizing. So in that sense, I could say, okay, if you treat the

limbic brain, your MCAS is gonna go away, which I see over and over and over again.

And I think really, it's just a different lens where I don't, I'm not worried about an MCAS

diagnosis, and that's just me personally.

19:29

I see a lot of people with MCAS, but that feels like secondary to all the other things that

are going on. I know people come in with that primary diagnosis, but to me as a clinician

in terms of what I'm listening for in them and what I'm going to suggest they do so that

they can get help isn't different than if they come in with chronic fatigue, ME or long

COVID, because I'm still looking for the same root causes. And if their limbic brain is in

dysfunction,

19:58

then I'm going to see that their immune system can normalize and their overreactive

system will change. Now that said, somebody with MCAS, I'm more likely to, when we're

talking about the food component about in the diet and the gut, I'm more likely to

recommend, we're gonna go for a low histamine diet to get that histamine low down.

We're gonna go towards supplementation that works on that.

20:23

on that high level of histamine response over reactivity. So that kind of thing. But I think

for me, it's just not a, and this is just, you know, this is just pure, clinician, you know,

which, how do you divide up? How do you label what it is that you're working with? But

so yeah, it's kind of a non-answer, isn't it? No, it's good. I mean, I see it as a spectrum. So

it's kind of like when people are more reactive,

20:50

what's happening, right? The immune system is hyper reactive. There's more of a

burden, you know? And so for me, like whether it's multiple chemical sensitivity, which,

you know, we can't really diagnose and even the diagnosis for MCAS is not very good,

you know? So it's kind of like, what is actually happening? It's like these people are more

reactive to stuff. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, but I guess what I

would say is that I think that that's happening.

21:17

on some level with everyone with chronic fatigue, long COVID magic, encephalitis,

they're all having this. They all are. So what level is it and what are they reacting to?

That's the question. And what's the most effective pathway for them to get in and to be

able to calm that system down. So again, for some people, it's a limbic brain, for others,

it's gonna be diet, for some, it's gonna be both, and there may be multiple other things.

21:42

including some of the other root causes that would make the most sense to get that

other. I mean, you get the mold out, right? If you get that toxic load out of the

mycotoxins out of the body, then a lot of that MCAS goes away because that's the root

cause. I think that's the thing that I trip up about with MCAS as a diagnosis, because

outside of doing green allopathy where you're just suppressing the overreactive

histamine system, you're not really fixing the problem.

22:09

And so that's, I think that's honestly where I'm coming from and why I'm kind of around

it, because that doesn't feel it's like, okay, fine. You have MCAS. Great. That's going to

help put a filter on in terms of us looking at lowering your histamine levels while we are

looking at the root cause. What is the root cause for you? Which health foundations do

you need to address to actually heal this thing? So your body stops doing this. Amen.

Yeah. I mean,

22:37

I call them, you call the green allopathy, I call it natural band-aids, you know, so it's kind

of like this idea of yes, we've got a natural thing that we can use that's like an

antihistamine. Right. But the reality is, is that it's just a band-aid and we need to make

sure that we're getting at the root causes. Exactly. And bless those green band-aids,

right? Bless them because they can be fantastic bridges, you know, fantastic bridges.

23:01

and better bridges to get you across the choppy waters so that you can actually get to

your root causes and get into the promised land. So. Yeah, and there's nothing like

getting a quick win too. Right, totally. Because getting rid of these toxins takes at least a

year from what I've seen. And so it's like, yes, we want some of these band-aids in order

to support people initially while we're working on all these things. The other thing you

said that I really love is that

23:29

the underlying root causes are all the same, whether it's MCAS, whether it's fatigue,

chronic fatigue, ME-CFS, long COVID, like they all, they have all these same causes. And

so let's, can you go a little bit deeper into that? Sure, yeah. So which root cause do you

want me to jump into? There's so many. Yeah, I know, right? We could be here all day.

Yeah.

23:53

Well, let's talk about, let's actually define some of these things initially, because we're

using a lot of these abbreviations and hopefully people are on the same page, but what

is really the difference between like fatigue, chronic fatigue, ME-CFS and long COVID?

Yeah. Yeah, there's so many different words. You know, it's just a problem that we've had

with this condition for forever in terms of it never had a great name.

24:21

and the nomenclature, the naming of this syndrome has been argued over and still is to

this day. So chronic fatigue syndrome is the name that we've used in this country for

decades. Myalgic encephalitis is the term that's been used in most of the rest of the

world. There's a big, big move and effort for physicians and people to start using

myalgic encephalitis in this country instead.

24:46

So we slap them together, CFSME, and try to, as we're trying to evolve this changing of

nomenclature for this term, I see them as the same chronic fatigue syndrome and

myalgic encephalitis. I think myalgic encephalitis is a better explanation of what it is. It

also sounds a lot worse, and it sounds like maybe your neighbors would bring you

lasagna. Hopefully it's gluten-free lasagna. If you said, I just got diagnosed with myalgic

encephalitis, it's like, oh!

25:13

Oh, I'm so sorry, can I bring you lasagna? You know, it's like, when you say I have chronic

fatigue, so I'm like, oh yeah, I'm tired too. And they're like, no, you don't get it. You don't

get it. It's not tired. I talk about people who have mild chicken, cephalitis, chronic fatigue,

long COVID, that they can talk about tired, like a sommelier talks about wine, you know?

It's like, there's all these different kinds of tired. Mm-hmm.

25:39

I see long COVID as a type of myelgic encephalitis. I think COVID triggers myelgic

encephalitis in people. That said, I think that having had both, I got long COVID as well

as having chronic fatigue. Long COVID has a little bit of its own twist to it in the sense

that the COVID virus is very sneaky. It feels a little bit more like Lyme in terms of it shape

shifts quickly.

26:07

It doesn't literally shift into other forms like Lyme does, but how it responds in the body,

it's a lot trickier. It's not as straightforward in terms of it's where, how it responds, the

symptoms that you get from it, how it responds to treatment, different things. It's just a

little bit sneakier. And I think that as we know, it responds, it affects people in different

ways. So we're seeing different patterns of people with Long COVID that we can put into

different kinds of groups.

26:36

I know that the kind that I had really has affected my nervous system. It felt like

something was on my vagus nerve and just like rattling it like, like this electric charge in

my vagus nerve. And thank goodness I knew about the limbic brain before I got it so

that I could keep telling myself that I'm safe, even though every single signal was going

up and saying, no, you're not safe. There's nothing safe about this at all. Feel completely

jacked up by this virus infecting your nervous system.

27:06

So long story short, I see them as all being, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome, magic

encephalitis, all different versions of the same thing. Now, people who are just tired, I

see burnout as being a gateway into this magic encephalitis pattern. And I see

fibromyalgia as being a continuation and a slightly different expression of...

27:29

biologic encephalitis, where you get more of it in the musculoskeletal system, and that's

where it's expressed. But I really still see all of these as being the same in terms of you

need to look at which of these five root causes are really key for you, and you also need

to get your health foundations in order, in order for your body to actually be able to heal

and respond to any treatment that you're doing. Yeah, I think people

27:56

get caught up with what their diagnosis is, and they forget that it's just kind of a

combination of your history and your symptoms and your labs, and somebody trying to

kind of like fit you into a box. And so I love this focus that you're talking about about the

causes is that you really can't go wrong if you're looking at your causes, you know,

whether you have like a human resources problem at work or whether you have a

problem with your car, if you actually figure out the causes,

28:25

and there's always more than one with all these people that we're dealing with, then

you're gonna be more successful. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love you, you used the car

analogy. We had our mechanic, Harold was our favorite mechanic for generations. I

went there when I was eight, he was my dad's mechanic, and then he was our mechanic.

And I first, when I took my car to him, and I was first in naturopathic school, and I was

learning how to do good histories and chart notes. And I saw his report came back from

my car, and like...

28:53

this is exactly what I do with patients. This is the same thing you have, like all the things

you ruled in and ruled out. You have all the things you're still thinking about that we need

to think about and kind of keep in mind for maybe next time. And I was like, this is such

a complete chart. No, you could tell he felt really appreciated that he was seen, you

know, for the completeness of his work, but it is, it's the same thing. You need to keep all

of those root causes in mind and be ready for the next thing. You know. Mm hmm.

29:23

Yeah, I had a mechanic who said the same thing to me, except he said, except you get

feedback, you're talking to a person and they can actually tell you what's wrong. He said,

I am much smarter. I actually have to figure this out without the feedback. You know, he

was telling me about how his job was harder and he was smarter than me. So in terms

of long COVID, why do some people get

29:51

long COVID and some people get COVID and it doesn't proceed to long COVID? Yeah,

such a good question, right? Yeah, I mean, I wish we knew that for sure and had a super

simple way of assessing that and a way of shifting that, you know, before it happened.

So those of us who were at risk for getting long COVID wouldn't get it. But that said,

what I know from my work and from my experience is that I think there are multiple

things that go on. I do think that

30:22

I have a, this hasn't been confirmed or proven, but I actually do think that for some

people who have a tendency towards myelodic encephalitis, there may be a genetic

thing in the mitochondria that alters mitochondrial function on some deep level that we

haven't quite discovered yet. That said, I know genes can be turned on or turned off. So I

don't think that that means that that's your fate for the rest of your life, but I think it's

easier to have a tendency for that. We see so many.

30:48

family clusters with similar patterns of syndromes that I think it points to something

being genetic for some people with myalgic encephalitis. So maybe some of those

people who got long COVID had that genetic piece in their history and it got turned on

under the situation of COVID. That said, I really think it's about having, if you have some

of the setup for some of the root causes already there and you have...

31:16

some of the health foundations out of whack. Health foundations being things like your

sleep and your rhythm of your day, your movement and your ability to breathe, your

digestion and detoxification pathways, your mindset and spirit. You know, how are your

foundations for health? How's your connection with yourself, your higher self? You know,

we're a physical body, we're a mental emotional body, and we're an energetic body. How

healthy are those? Are they imbalanced? Do you know how to...

31:45

get back in balance when you're out of balance. All of those things massively impact our

vulnerability to being well or being sick. And if you get a really wicked virus like COVID

during that time, during a time when you are out of balance or you have one of your

health foundations that is seriously eroded, you're gonna be more susceptible to it

taking root and staying in your body for a longer period of time.

32:13

It's likely I had COVID twice. It's likely I had it in February of 2020 before we knew, well,

some of us knew it was, I mean, I knew it was coming. And it was ironic because I was

on a flight going home and I was so sick, I almost blacked out. And I thought, this is

ironic, because if I pass out in the plane, they take me to a hospital, they will not test me

for COVID because I've not been to Italy or China. And I knew that it was possible that I

had it. And I was very sick.

32:43

but it didn't, and I was sick for about a month afterwards, but I was in a very strong

state, mentally, physically, emotionally, energetically, and I just knew that my body just

needed a little extra time to heal, did the deep work on the deep cough, and I truly came

out of it 100%. The second time I got COVID, I had personally had a low-grade gut

infection that I hadn't treated, and I also had...

33:11

an immense amount of emotional stress, like crazy levels of stress. And I knew the

stress was affecting me. And those two things were really huge triggers. And so when I

got COVID, I didn't have it in me to complete the process of fighting off that virus. And it

went straight into my mitochondria on day nine. I could feel it overnight. Overnight, I

went from feeling pretty good to just could not, didn't have the energy to go down the

stairs.

33:40

didn't have energy to chew food again. Like just, it was crazy to go from high energy to

low energy in such a short period of time. Because the other times I'd crashed from

chronic fatigue, it had been more of that gradual sort of decline. And this was just bam,

overnight. So I think that it's really what is your root health when you get an infection and

it's.

34:07

I mean, people can get chronic fatigue from any virus, from any infection and from any

toxic exposure. So it doesn't have to be just COVID, it can be from anything. And how

vulnerable are you in that minute when you get it? And what resources do you have to

bring to it when you're sick? Yeah, I think that last part was really mic drop, you know,

that any one of these things, any one of these toxins, infections, et cetera, can be that

trigger. Yeah.

34:36

that causes that. And so, you've talked a number of times around kind of like the health

foundations. Can you repeat those? Like what are those health foundations? And then

what practices can people do to optimize those? Yeah. So these are so key for all of us.

And I really think this is the thing, if there's something that I could stand up and just

preach over and over and over again to everyone.

35:02

so that we could avoid so much illness. It would be just making these health

foundations a priority from everything from helping you heal from common colds and

flus to avoiding getting chronic disease to healing chronic disease, to avoid getting

dementia, to helping your dementia improve. It's these health foundations. So really, like

this is powerful medicine, powerful, powerful. We tend to ignore it because it's so,

seems so kind of unsexy, you know, it's like whatever, you know?

35:32

And they are, I'd say the first is sleep, getting your rhythm, I put rhythm and sleep

together because we need to, we really run best on a circadian rhythm pattern. There's

so much that happens with our inflammation in our body, with our immune system, with

our hormones, with everything in our body, if we're on a more regular schedule. So

getting up at about the same time every day, going to bed at about the same time every

day.

35:57

eating at about the same time every day and moving at about the same time every day.

Really setting that schedule for yourself can be very, very helpful. And then making sure

that you are getting adequate sleep. More, less than seven hours of sleep triggers

inflammation. So if that's you, then really focusing in on getting that sleep. While you

sleep, you heal your body. As an adult, that's what we're doing at nighttime is we're

healing. So super important. The other one is digestion detoxification. So as...

36:27

naturopath, functional medicine doctors, we are full in on this gut is so important. So

getting, making sure that you're eating the foods that are good for your body at this

moment in time. There's no perfect diet for everyone. It's where your body is right now

and what it needs for what you're healing. That's what you need to focus on, eating

those foods and not, and just focus and realizing how important your health is and

making that a priority and your ability to detoxify is super important. The next is

36:56

looking at your movement and breath. So some people who are really down with chronic

fatigue, long COVID, chronic fatigue, um, mild chicanchefalitis can't, can't exercise yet.

There are ways that you can do movements. You can, you can imagine it in your head

and you'll get 30% of the benefit as if you actually exercise. And this can be powerful for

you to just start setting that into your schedule. You can also do brief breath work and

that helps.

37:24

move the toxins out of your body, it helps to move the lymph and you'll get the benefit of

the detoxification aspects of exercise when you do this. Just simple yin yoga walking

can be fantastic for people who are able to do that. So really finding the movement that

works for you wherever you are in your health journey is really important for getting the

inflammation down, for helping your brain health, for normalizing your body.

37:49

And then breath just comes along naturally with that. We need to be breathing to trigger

that autonomic nervous system to know that we're safe. Short upper chest breathing is

a stress response. Deep diaphragmatic breathing puts your body into that

parasympathetic state. So that's something that we can consciously begin to shift so

that we can relax our nervous system. It sends the message to the brain that we're safe.

So that can be a really easy way that you can just begin to feel more safe in your body

38:19

and to heal is to just by use your breath. And then mindset and spirit is the fourth

foundation where you're really looking at what are those tapes that you're playing in your

mind all the time? Is it like, oh God, I didn't do good enough, I'm so bad, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, you know, the negative stuff or is it positive? What's that subconscious

message that you're sending to yourselves? We know from research now that the...

38:46

emotions we feel, the things that we're saying have an energy imprint that impact each

one of our cells and that energy imprint impacts the DNA, it impacts what proteins are

created, and that directs how your body can heal. So it's really important to be to work

on healing that inner messenger that you have inside of you, learning how to love

yourself so that you can be saying beautiful things to yourself most of the time. We all

have negative thoughts. It's all part, it's part of the brain.

39:15

and it's part of the brain that keeps us alive, yet working so that the balance is

something where you can come to a place of positivity is really helpful. And then there's

a fifth one that I brought in since the pandemic, which is connection. And connection

really seeps through all of them. And that's connection with yourself, connection with

your others. We are so community oriented and we feel starved if we're not connecting

with community. So how are, are you connecting enough with others?

39:44

And then connecting with your higher self, whatever that means for you. So it's really

that, you know, expanding out to that bigger energy field and being connected in that

way. So I really see that permeates all of those. So looking at each one of those, and

what I suggest for people is to, I know I went through those quickly and it was a lot of

information, but just really imagine that being a foundation for your house and think

about, you know, which ones are really strong and which ones are a little bit,

40:13

weak and need shoring up. And you can choose one to work on, just one, just one, just

choose one to start with and work on that. And you can either choose the one that's the

weakest because it needs the most help. So your digestion is a mess and you really just

want to work on that. Then focus on that and that's going to be huge. It's going to have

massive impact on everything else. Then you can work on the next one or you can

choose to work on the one that's not so bad. Say that you've had horrendous sleep your

whole life. You couldn't even, you never slept well.

40:43

Maybe you don't want to start there. Maybe you want to start somewhere else because

you know that that's a deeper issue. Work somewhere else so you can start seeing that

positive gain. And then as you start working on that, then you can begin to work on that

one that's the most challenging. So that's my best advice for people to work on those.

But it's one of those that you just keep looping through and can keep improving. And

truly, I know a lot of you listening are really struggling with your health and you want to

work on these to get your health to the next level.

41:13

It will literally help anything, any treatment that you're doing will work better. And I also

wanna tell you that this is exactly what elite athletes do. They focus on these health

foundations and they have teams of people helping them do this. So this is not a sick

person activity, this is a healthy person activity that we can keep looking at over and

over again. Okay, how can I boost this up? How can I even do better than this on the next

level? So that's my, yeah. Brilliant.

41:40

And one of the things, you know, there might be people listening who are like, you know,

I've done all this stuff. I did a limbic retraining program for years and I'm eating right and

all this sort of stuff. And that just means that they haven't addressed some of the other

causes right. The toxins that are present. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I get it, man. I get

it. I get it. This is hard. It's so it sometimes there are those points of like, oh, she's I've

been doing this for so long. I've been doing everything right. Like, you know, it's like, you

know, just like

42:10

What is up? I get it. I've been there myself. I have those moments too. Yet I also say that

it's just good to feel those feelings, honor your feelings when you're feeling frustrated,

pissed off, angry, scared, all that stuff and move through it. You know, it's like feel it and

then be able to release it and move through. And there's always something else out

there for you. It's really just keeping that curiosity and that hope alive.

42:36

to keep finding, knocking on those doors. You will find your root causes. You will figure

out your health foundations. There's something else in there for you. And the other thing

that I really believe in has been my experience. And when I work with people, I see this

over and over and over again. There's always a gift in here. And I know it doesn't always

feel like it at times, but there's always a gift. There's something in there where you're

going to come out stronger, more knowledgeable, know yourself better. There's going to

be something that's going to open up for you through this process of healing.

43:05

And that's always exciting. I love watching it when people just hit that transformation

level where they're just like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that I needed to do, there's like,

you know, that there's all this art in me that I needed to do, or there's this new

relationship I get to have, or this new career, or something comes out of this time of

healing. Yeah, I think that's such an important point, you know. The challenges that we

have really can be, it can be a spiritual journey.

43:35

100%. 100%. Yeah. And honestly, I think that's if, um, when you can embrace it that way,

it makes it so much, it makes it an easier journey, you know, because it, it has, it makes

sense. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that I think I'll add on is that, you know, if

you've done like Olympic system retraining program, or you've like, I have this

connection, I'm working on my mindset, I'm not getting where I want to go. It's going to

be, if you continue to do that work,

44:03

like Dr. Jenny said, and then you start to address these other toxins, the effect that

you're going to get, you know, in three months, in six months, in nine months, if you

continue to do that work, or even if you pause for a little bit, and then you come back to

working on your limbic system, all of a sudden it takes in a different way when you're at

a different place. Yes, exactly. I think just the same way that we talk about people get

into dis-health and dis-ease, and it can feel like, oh, my life was fine. I was doing fine.

Then all of a sudden...

44:33

Boom, you know, I'm down here feeling like I can hardly get up in the morning. I can't

function, you know, it's like, I feel like I'm 95 and I'm only 30. That you feel like it happens

all of a sudden, but when you go back, you realize that there is this one thing and this

one thing you're eating this food that you were, it wasn't good for you. You were doing

this thing, you were doing this thing. It's the power of ones. They start adding up and

they all of a sudden tilted the scale. It was just that last little thing that tilted the scale

and pushed you down.

45:02

It's the same thing when you're healing. It can feel like, oh God, I'm working so hard. I'm

putting this diet in, I'm working on my sleep. I'm doing this, I'm doing this. And it doesn't

feel like you're having that huge breakthrough moment yet. But it is, again, it's the power

of ones going up the scale as well. And then all of a sudden there can be that point

when all of these things kind of meld together and your physiology just shifts. It shifts

into a different state. Would you agree with that? Is that your experience as well? I

would. And you know, I find that in

45:31

In our programs, like the magic happens around month six, month nine, you know,

depending on how many causes somebody has, the severity of those causes and

whether they're doing the, you know, the mindset and the trauma work. Is that what

you're seeing as well? Yeah, yeah, it really depends. I bring people in to work for six

months or 12 months at a time, you know, just really focused and some people need

more than that. And some people at six months are doing amazingly well.

45:59

They're the people that have not been as sick as long, don't have as many root causes,

or there was just some things that, you know, frankly were just missed by other

physicians that aren't that challenging to treat, like just, you know, reactivated

Epstein-Barr virus, something like that, where it's just, they just needed one or two things

to really work on, and they were able to shift out. People that have been sick for longer

or have more of the root causes and health foundations that need addressing, it takes

more time. You know, if you have a...

46:28

gut with severe dysbiosis, it just takes time for those cells to heal. Like you said, if you

have a heavy burden of toxins, it's not just one round, it's going to be multiple rounds of

needing to pull the metals out or to work on the mycotoxins or to move out of the house

or to get it out of the car or whatever. You know, I mean, it's a process. And when you're

dealing with four of those or five of those, it just takes time, you know, because we can

only, the body can only do so much at a time.

46:58

And I really think it's just, man, I just wanna say hang in there, people. Hang in there and

keep going. You're doing great work. That's what I wanna say, you know, just hang in

there and keep getting the support you need so that you can get to the next level. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that reframing oftentimes really helps. You know, people are

sometimes thinking, you know, I've been sick for so long. You're telling me this is gonna

take at least 12 months and probably longer. But if you think about it as like getting a

master's degree in your health,

47:27

Like if you got, if you went to college, if you went to high school, like there was a return

on the investment of time, energy and money that you spent in there, right? You got

something out of it. And the same thing goes here for when you make that commitment

and you're working through all of your causes that at the end of a year or two, you're

going to be a very different person. And that changes the trajectory of the rest of your

life. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think those people who have had chronic fatigue for

decades would say, oh, a year or two, no problem. I know.

47:56

I started working with somebody and her comment to me was like, Oh, I wish I'd met you

17 years ago. You know, I wish I knew this 17 years ago. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I

wish I knew everything I knew now when I first had chronic fatigue too, because it would

have been a six month process instead of a two year process to get out of it. But that

said, but yeah, I totally agree. And one of the things that I always tell people is that once

you have long COVID chronic fatigue ME, your body knows that pattern.

48:25

and you are at risk for reactivation. That's just a reality. That our goal is to put everything

in remission and to get your body healthier, but you are at risk for reactivation. One of

my goals is that people leave working with me more empowered. I want you to be

empowered to take care of yourself, and I'm sure, Evan, you're doing the exact same

thing. It's like you want people to understand what is going on with them so that they

can help themselves now and in the future.

48:54

I want people to know what their root causes are so that when they start sensing that

they're at risk for those getting reactivated, they already have the toolkit. They know

which therapies work for them. For instance, when I had Epstein-Barr virus and I realized

what I needed to treat it, my dad was dying and I was midwifing his death and it was a

very beautiful process. Yet I remember opening up my cupboard, my supplement

cupboard and going, oh, this is a stress. Like as soon as he dies, I'm going to be so grief

filled

49:24

it would be a perfect opportunity for that Epstein-Barr virus to flourish. So I started

grabbing my L-Lysine, my olive leaf extract, my monolaurin and started dosing myself at

a higher level during that period of time. And I know I saved myself from a relapse. And

that's what I want for people, other people is to understand how it is that they got into

the situation, what it is that you need to get out of it and how to stay out. You know, like

I'm saying, like sometimes my limbic brain goes off.

49:53

How do I know? I walk into the bathroom at Trader Joe's and the soap makes my brain

freak out. And I'm like, oh, okay, I better do some limbic exercises and get myself, like

the stress is getting to me, right? And so that's how I see it. So we've got a couple

minutes left. I've got a couple last questions for you. So we keep referring to kind of the

limbic system practices that you do.

50:22

Do you have a certain program that you follow? Do you have a recommendation for

programs? How do you incorporate that into your life and what do you tell others? Yeah,

that's a good question. I think there are a number of really great programs out there. I

think there are multiple ways into the limbic brain. I personally have been exploring with

different ways and more efficient ways that I can share it with people. So that's been

sort of a personal project I've had. I do a lot of subconscious work with people.

50:50

one-on-one where we do deep subconscious work with parts work or inner child or that

kind of thing. And I find that that begins to address some of it, yet that day in and day

out practice is different. And I think Annie Hopper's program DNRS is great for some

people. I think Dr. Gupta's program is really wonderful. Some people really like the Primal

program and I think they're all great programs. I know Annie's Hopper, Annie Hopper's

very well. That's the one I did. I did it in person

51:19

Ash taught personally and he's wonderful and I think his program is great. They have

very different personalities and they have different styles in terms of how they approach.

And so I usually have clients and patients say, look at them both. I mean, how do you

resonate with that person? Does their voice drive you crazy? Do you feel like, you know,

Dr. Gupta's is a little bit more meditative and Annie's is more of a neuro-linguistic

programming style. I mean, they're just a slightly, slightly different.

51:49

angles at it. Primal, I don't know that much about, but I have some clients that have

come in finding it helpful. I also think that there are ways that you can, for those people

that are, you know, you're saying some people are 10% limbic and others are 90% limbic.

I think those people that are below the 50% mark limbic, I think there are practices that

you can do that can really help reset that nervous system and limbic brain things such

as doing heart math, coherence breathing is so powerful.

52:18

I've noticed a difference with my HRV levels just doing that on a daily level. And that's

really getting to that. So if you don't have severe limbic dysfunction and you don't have

severe trauma and things that you need healing on, just doing the coherence breathing

can be huge in terms of helping re-regulate that heart-brain coherence and that has its

impact on the limbic brain. So there are many paths up, you know, to that limbic health

mountain for sure.

52:47

and it's finding the one that resonates with you. Dr. Jenny, this has been amazing. Thank

you so much for spending the time with me today. Where can people go to learn more

about you? drje is my website. That's a great place to go in and find out more about

what I offer and what I'm about. And yeah. And then you also have a free quiz, Tired

Type Quiz.

53:14

Yes, Tire Type Quiz. What is your Tire Type? You can check it out at tiretypequiz.com or

it's on my website on the homepage drje I use the same algorithm I use to help people

figure out what their root causes are in that quiz. Excellent, and we'll put those links in

the show notes. Perfect, thank you. Jenny, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank

you, Evan. It's been an absolute pleasure, thank you.