Why Pacing is NOT a Real Solution for Chronic Fatigue (ME/CFS & Long Covid Recovery Guide) with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #134

Why Pacing is NOT a Real Solution for Chronic Fatigue (ME/CFS & Long Covid Recovery Guide) with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #134

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Hey there, welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, whether that's long COVID, chronic fatigue, or chronic fatigue syndrome, so that you can get back to living your best life. So today we're going to be talking about why pacing is not a permanent solution to resolving your chronic fatigue. So you might've gone to see your doctor, your local doctor who's in your neighborhood, and they may have told you, I'm really sorry about how tired you are.

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we've run a bunch of lab tests and nothing is showing up. You just need to pace. And you're like, okay, this sounds like some sort of solution. What is that? And they're like, well, pacing just means not doing too much. And you're like, wait a second, that's not a real solution. So essentially pacing is a fix for what's called post-exertional malaise. So when you exert yourself, you stress the system. And if the system is already stressed by some of the causes that we're gonna be talking about today,

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then you're gonna feel worse. You're gonna be more tired. Your energy is going to be drained. So consequently, when you don't have a lot of tools and that's what your practitioner is telling you, that's about all they have to offer for the most part. So not doing too much. So unfortunately, that's not a real solution in my mind. I think that that's management and that's okay, at least initially.

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when you're not feeling well. I mean, we do want to manage our symptoms and make sure that we're not feeling worse, but there are limitations, right? So pacing is not getting to the root of the problem. There are underlying causes. So some of those stressors that I was talking about include things like the adrenal gland. So the adrenal gland produces a hormone called cortisol that manages the stress in the body. So what happens when you exert yourself?

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is that the adrenals will produce more cortisol to deal with that exertion. Your mitochondria, which produces 70 to 90% of your energy and is found in almost every cell in the body except for red blood cells, will also increase production to kind of keep up with the need that you have. So whether that's walking around the block or whether that's going for a marathon run. So you have to keep these things in mind. These are going to be reactions by the body that are going to increase to compensate.

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there's thyroid also that's going to increase. Sometimes there's an increased production of vitamins and minerals. So this is the body's way of compensating and allowing you to function with a higher energy output. Now the challenge is when these are already compromised by what I call the toxic five in the body, which are the real root causes of chronic fatigue, this is the combination of heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections.

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and nervous system dysfunction. Okay, so those are the real root causes. Those end up draining the adrenals and the mitochondria and the hormones and the vitamins and minerals that are in your body. So consequently, when you go to increase the amount of energy production so that you can do more, the body's like, uh-uh, we're already tapped out. Okay, so then what is the solution? So the solution is to fix these underlying causes, is to go after

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these deficiencies, kind of like what I was talking about with the adrenals and the thyroid and the mitochondria and the vitamins and minerals and sex hormones, et cetera, and these toxicities. Now, what's interesting about this process and kind of like what I have already alluded to is the fact that these deficiencies are caused by the toxicities, right? So if you've been seeing a natural doctor, functional medicine doctor, integrative doctor, oftentimes they're going to have you replace these deficiencies.

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which can definitely be helpful. You optimize your adrenals, support your mitochondria, thyroid, et cetera, you're gonna feel a bit better. Oftentimes there's an uptick in your energy. Let's say your energy is like a three out of 10, if 10 is ideal energy, maybe you get up to a four, maybe a four and a half, maybe even a five, but then you plateau because it's not addressing the real root causes, which as I mentioned before, are to address the toxic five.

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So then how do we address this? So I have a four step process that I've been working on for the last decade called energy MD method. And in this process, the first step is to figure out the causes that you have, right? If you wanna go someplace, you need a map, right? If you don't have an end address for where you wanna go, you're not gonna be successful at getting there. You know, if you're pulling up Google maps and it's like, well, where do you wanna go? You're like, I really don't know. So you have to figure out what your causes are.

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And the same goes for so many things in life. If you have a problem with your car, you take it to the mechanic so they can figure out what the cause is, right? You don't just rebuild the engine because you don't know what the problem is, right? You don't slap on a treatment that's not associated with the cause. Because in the simplest form, you wanna find the cause or causes, and then you wanna match them up with treatments that actually fix those causes, right? It makes sense. So the first step is to figure out the causes that you have.

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which are going to be the toxic five for everybody who has chronic fatigue, regardless of whether it's long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome. These just build up in the body over time. You know, we now know that we come out of the womb already with 300 different chemicals found in cord blood and baby's cord blood in the placenta. So that's, that's been shown in studies and that's those studies have been already about 10 or 20 years ago. So now there's even more toxins, right? So those build up in the body.

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or we start off with those in the body. And then we accumulate things. My story was that I ate a lot of tuna fish growing up. Well, that's high in mercury. And then I ate a lot of food that wasn't organic. We didn't know about organic back in the 80s. And so I had a lot of pesticides and herbicides and insecticides. And then I was constipated because I was eating gluten and dairy and my body didn't like those things. They were inflammatory. So I didn't have a bowel movement except for like once a week for the first 20 some odd years of my life until I realized that that was abnormal.

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You're not having a bowel movement every day. You can't get rid of your toxins. Then those toxins just recirculate. And then I lived in some places in medical school that had mold and I had kissed people who had Epstein-Barr virus. I got bitten by ticks. I traveled international and got parasites. I had significant stress, relationships, et cetera. Didn't sleep well, went through residency. Boom. I got my chronic fatigue syndrome. So that's generally what we see.

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in the story of most people who come to see us is you've accumulated these toxins throughout your life and then there's a straw that breaks the camel's back and sometimes it's a virus and sometimes it's a mental or emotional stressor. Sometimes it's living in a new place that has water damage that you weren't aware of. So these all kind of help to put the pieces together. So figuring out the causes that you have initially is essential, okay?

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And then the second step is to start replacing the deficiencies. Now you've just heard me talk about the toxic five and how important they are, but we can't go directly at them. We can't just go in there and start pulling them out of the body. That's when you feel worse. Okay. We have to prepare the body. So by replacing the deficiencies, adrenals, thyroid, mitochondria, I call those the big three, that helps to make the body more resilient. It helps you to deal with stressors and removing these toxins in step four,

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it can be stressful on the body. We also want to give you a little bit of a win and increase your energy a little bit, okay? So that you can also manage all the different tasks that are required in going through a process like this. Then in step three, we're opening up the exit pathways. So this is liver and kidney and lymph and neurolymph, which is in the brain. Lymph is the garbage system of the body, the gallbladder.

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and the intestines. So making sure all those pathways are open. Okay, and we do this all natural. Everything we do is with herbs and vitamins and minerals, etc. So we open up those pathways. It's kind of like the bottom of a funnel. You know, if you're looking at a funnel, you know, if you're going to change your oil or you have access to some kind of funnel, as you dump these toxins into this funnel, they have to have an exit strategy. And so that's here at the bottom, you have to open up the bottom of that funnel.

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so that these toxins can get out of the body. And you have to do this at a rate that your body can tolerate. So the amount that you're kind of dumping into the top of this funnel has to equal the amount that you're able to get out of your body. Otherwise you feel worse. So if you've gone through some sort of detoxification or fasting, or you saw a doctor who said, oh, you've got heavy metals, let's chelate this or let's kill an infection or.

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you know, antibiotics, this, that, the other thing, and you felt worse, it's because you didn't spend enough time in step three. And oftentimes there's a bit of a dance. As we start to remove things at a rate that your body can tolerate in step four, sometimes we have to increase some of the products, the supplements in step three, in order to make sure that you're continuing that process of being able to tolerate removal of those toxins.

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then you go into step four and you remove the toxic five, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, and the nervous system dysfunction.

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So hopefully that was helpful for you. Hopefully now you have a better sense of why pacing can be helpful. It's true. I call it getting your Goldilocks dose of movement. We want you to move as much as you can, but not so much so that you feel worse. Okay. And this is also some of the reason why people get post-viral syndromes and get long COVID is because they go back to exercise too soon. And this is why the demographic

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is now skewing much younger. So people in their 30s, you know, you accumulate enough toxins in your body, the COVID becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back. You're down for a couple of days or you don't even notice that you actually have a virus. And then you're like, okay, I'm done with that virus. I can go back to working out again. And it really doesn't work well, you know, then you crash. And then you you feel bad for months and years. Oftentimes, people have suffered before they come to see us. So

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This is all the work that we do. You know, we're focused on helping people with long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome. And so if you haven't had success with some of these other practitioners, it's basically because they just, they just don't have the experience. They all mean well, but it's just a different paradigm. You know, if you're not focused on the toxic five, you're just not going to get better. In fact, I've actually never met anybody who has addressed their toxic five completely and hasn't gotten completely better. It's that significant.

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All right, so I hope this was helpful for you. If you're interested in learning more about the work that we do, come check us out. There are links below. Have an amazing day!