The Problem with Long Covid Clinics with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #132

The Problem with Long Covid Clinics with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #132

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Hey there, welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. Hey, I'm Evan Hirsch and today we're going to be talking about why long COVID clinics don't work. So if you've gone to a long COVID clinic, it's probably because your primary care doctor ran out of options for your long COVID.

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Now, when I say long COVID, you could also call it post COVID syndrome or post acute sequelae to SARS-CoV-2. But generally you've got some weird symptoms, chronic fatigue, brain fog, muscle pain, sleep issues, body pain, numbness and tingling, loss of taste and smell, any other weird symptom that has occurred in your life, in your body since the end of 2019 and has persisted.

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and you probably went to your primary care doctor, they did their best to kind of help you manage some of the symptoms that you're presenting with. And then they've referred you on to specialists. So if you have a COVID clinic in your area, they probably referred you there if you were able to get in. And it's a wonderful idea. It's this idea of having a multiple specialist all in one place, all trying to support you with this difficult illness. And so if you have...

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heart symptoms like heart palpitations, you go and see the cardiologist. If you have pulmonary symptoms like shortness of breath, lung symptoms, you go and see the pulmonologist. If you have gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, something like that, you go and see the gastroenterologist. So these are all, it's a great idea in theory, but unfortunately in practice it falls short.

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They may be able to help you manage some of your symptoms by giving you a medication to mask those symptoms, but unfortunately there are problems with that. So first off, every single medication has side effects. And then there's something called polypharmacy where it's this combination of medications that have never been studied together. And consequently, they're all going to have side effects and you don't know how they're going to interact together.

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You know, one of the major causes of death in this country is use of medications, not because those medications are used incorrectly, even when they are used correctly, it's because of the side effects from these medications or this polypharmacy that I'm talking about, this combination of medications that are taken together and consequently cause death or dysfunction. And we just haven't studied those medications together because they are so potent and because we just don't have the knowledge around it.

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those studies haven't been done. So these are kind of some of the challenges. Now it can help, like I said, help with some of the symptoms that you're experiencing, but if you really want to get to the root cause so that you don't have to continue taking that medication or some of these band-aid approach or rehabilitation, stuff like that, that's what I'm going to be talking about a lot in this episode. So the true causes of long COVID.

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are going to be the persistent virus that ends up causing immune system dysfunction, inflammation, microclots or hypercoagulation where the blood is too thick and consequently the symptoms. Now it's not just the virus. It's never just one thing when it comes to long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome. I've been treating people with chronic fatigue syndrome for the last decade in the last couple of years with long COVID. And the things that they have in common

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are that the real root causes are what I call the toxic five. So this is a combination of heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction. These are all things that build up in the body over time. When you come out of the womb, there's been studies to now show that, even in baby's core blood, we have over 300 different chemicals found. So we're already coming out with a number of toxins.

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And then the exposures that we get in life over time just build up. So my story, I grew up eating lots of tuna fish, which has mercury in it. Every single thing that comes out of the ocean these days, unfortunately has mercury in it. So that comes from coal plants, over a hundred thousand pounds of mercury vapor that's being dumped into the oceans every single year. And then there's chemicals. There's over 90,000 chemicals that were exposed to on a regular basis.

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So this can be pesticides or herbicides, insecticides, or plastics, or cosmetics, or any sort of care product that you have in your home. So then there's molds. So over half of buildings in first world countries have water damage, and most of those have mold. If you see mold, you're lucky because you're able to see it. You're not lucky because you've been exposed to it.

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But 99% of the time mold cannot be seen. It's behind the walls. It's just the tip of the iceberg when you can actually see it. And the majority of the people that we work with who have long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome have mold. In fact, everybody does. And then there's, so that's heavy metals, chemicals, molds, and then there's other infections. So things like Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, HHV6, there's parasites, there's Lyme disease.

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All of these can also be present. And then there's the nervous system dysfunction. So the other toxic four, the heavy metals, chemicals, molds, and infections, all will cause nervous system dysfunction and consequently immune system dysfunction. But so will mental and emotional stressors like trauma, like significant abuse or not so significant abuse. Anything that changes the way that you see the world and that makes the world appear to be a less safe place.

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So that's the toxic five that's so important to address. Now, hopefully you can see why this is a challenge for the long COVID clinics. So in the conventional paradigm, you know, where you're looking, you're making a diagnosis and then you're matching it up with a medication that is going to work for that diagnosis or going to change the symptoms associated with that diagnosis, you're not necessarily looking for the underlying cause. So in long COVID.

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you've got all those, all the toxic five, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, and the nervous system dysfunction that has built up over time. And then the COVID became the straw that breaks the camel's back. Okay, so we have to address the COVID and the spike protein that's present. You need to address the microclots, and then you need to address all of these other different causes as well in order to get you better. So

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In terms of the paradigm, some of the other challenges are some of the medications that, or some of the testing that, you know, that needs to, that sometimes the conventional model wants to do that isn't going to necessarily yield good results. So if you take a look at the, at infections, for example, oftentimes in a conventional practice, you're gonna look at a serology test, which is the immune system's reaction to an infection.

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Well, when you have the toxic five in your body, your immune system is dysfunctional. So any test that you look at that is looking at the immune system is not going to be accurate. So it is an imperfect test. And this goes for so many different tests out there is that they're imperfect. They're either a snapshot in time, or there are a number of nuances around the test that don't get taken into account. And consequently, you might be told that you don't have a certain cause. Okay.

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So that's just one of the challenges that we see in the conventional paradigm. Besides the fact that there's a focus on symptoms, the challenges with the imperfect laboratory tests, which are very largely counted on to make a diagnosis. And then the fact that medications are used that have lots of side effects and are really focused just on managing the symptoms. So this is why I created the energy MD method. So the energy MD method is a four step process.

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that helps to resolve long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome. So the first step is to figure out the causes that you have. So besides the toxic five, there are also some deficiencies that we look at, vitamins and minerals and hormones and mitochondria and lifestyle habits, which we'll go into in a little bit more in a second. So that's what we wanna look at. Now, you may be looking for, if you hear me talk, you might be like, oh, this is great. I need to go find somebody who's

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who's like Evan, you know, functional medicine or environmental medicine or natural medicine. But the challenge when looking at those providers is that 95% of those aren't addressing the full toxic five. Okay. So really important to make sure that you are working with somebody who is going to address those toxic five. So that has to be the first question out of your mouth is asking them individually about what is their experience with dealing with the toxic five. Okay. The other thing too,

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is that in those causes that we're looking at in step one, 90% of those can be determined by your history and symptoms alone and do not require labs. Okay, so there's about $500 worth of labs that I recommend that you get initially when you, towards the beginning of our program, but they are not required for getting better, okay, over the longterm. So then step two is to replace the deficiencies. So this is deficiencies in hormones, like the adrenals, thyroid, sex hormones,

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deficiencies in mitochondrial function. Mitochondria is found in every cell in the body except for red blood cells and produces about between 70 and 90% of our energy. And then there's vitamins and minerals and there's lifestyle habits like not enough good food, not enough good water, not enough good movement and not enough good sleep. Okay, but what's interesting is besides the lifestyle habits, the rest of those causes, the majority of those are caused by the toxic five.

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Okay. But we do step two first, because we want to make you more robust. We want to make you more resilient. We want to give you a little bit of a boost in energy, decrease your overall inflammation, and that can make a big difference. Then in step three, we open up the exit pathways. So in order to get toxins out of the body, you have to open up the liver and the kidneys and the lymph, which is the garbage system in the body, and the neurolymph, which is the garbage system in the brain.

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and the gallbladder and the intestines, all these pathways have to be open. So that when you go into step four and you start removing the toxins that they have a place to go to. And each one of those steps is gonna take you about a month, except for step four, which is going to take you somewhere between six, nine, 12 months and beyond. Okay, so the magic in this program happens somewhere between month six and month nine.

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where all of a sudden the light comes on, we've removed a number of the toxins and people start feeling significantly better. But for complete resolution, it generally takes 12 months, at least 12 months. So 12 months or longer. Now, that might sound like a long time, but when you have been suffering for as long as many of you have, working at a paradigm that hasn't been working for you, it's definitely worth it, right? It takes a commitment of time, energy and money, but you're worth it.

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You know, if you can spend your time, energy and money over the course of the next 12 months and know that you're going to resolve your problem, most people will say that that's worth it to them. If it's not worth it to them, then my program and this video really isn't for you. You have to really want it because it does require taking supplements several times a day, working on nervous system retraining. So working on your mental and your emotional health, in addition to the

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the physical health and removing these toxins and ramping up on them and reaching out for help and being engaged in the community. So we support you in many different ways, but you've got to show up. Okay. So if that's you, if that sounds like something that you're interested in, you can go check us out at energymdmethod.com. There's also a link below this video or in the show notes, and you can get on a free call with me and I'll review your history and I'll take a look and see if I can help you.

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If I can help you, we can talk about our program. If not, I'll tell you, I don't think that we're a good fit for you, and I'll send you elsewhere. All right, so thanks so much for paying attention today. I hope this was helpful for you. I hope you understand some of the nuances now, and if you haven't been having success at your long COVID clinic, why that may have been the case, and perhaps our program is something that you should take a look at. All right, thanks so much for paying attention. I'll see you next time.