How Parents of NeuroDiverse Children Can Increase and Maintain Their Energy with Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP - #152

How Parents of NeuroDiverse Children Can Increase and Maintain Their Energy with Dr. Sam Shay, DC, IFMCP - #152

00:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome by getting to the real root causes, the toxic, what I call the toxic five, which is a combination of heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction so that you can get back to living your best life. So I'm really excited today because we're gonna be talking with my good friend, Dr. Sam Shay.

00:30

all about neurodivergence and parents and how parents can maintain and increase their energy and why they may have exhaustion when dealing with neurodiverse children. So let's learn a little bit about Dr. Sam. So Dr. Sam Shay, chiropractor and IFMCP certified, solves health puzzles for busy, health conscious parents, entrepreneurs and adults on the spectrum so they can exit survival mode and reenter community.

01:00

by improving resilience, energy, and brain health through personalized data-driven genetics and lab testing. Dr. Sam walked his own health journey from being chronically unwell from age six to 18, including severe fatigue, anxiety, digestive problems, chronic pain, severe insomnia, sugar addiction, video game addiction, excessive coffee, depression, and poor nutrition. He took control of his health starting as a teenager and dedicated his life to natural medicine.

01:27

Known as the friendly lab nerd, Dr. Sam specializes in functional lab and genetic analysis for data-driven results. He is also a standup comic who uses comedy as edutainment on his YouTube channel, along with his other functional testing techniques or teachings. His primary focus in comedy is to educate the public on what it's like to be on the spectrum, specifically Asperger's. Dr. Sam, thanks so much for joining me today.

01:54

Thank you, Dr. Hirsch. Do you wanna call Dr. Evan or Dr. Hirsch or? You can call me Evan. Evan, okay. So thanks for having me, Evan. I really appreciate the opportunity and I'm very, very passionate about helping people on the spectrum and also the parents of children on the spectrum. And I think your unique angle on focusing on fatigue actually dovetails quite nicely with...

02:20

a lot of the realities of people who suffer with fatigue from being on the spectrum, but also the parents of children who are on the spectrum. And I just wanna say upfront, I have a specific unique interest in helping the parents. I mean, not that I don't want to help and I also help people who are on the spectrum, but I think there's a missed group of people known as the parents of children on the spectrum.

02:49

because there's a unique set of challenges that they deal with. And also my own parents didn't understand what my particular neuro distinction was and it led to problems all around. And the level of frustration and fatigue and exhaustion because that the parents experience that then also affects a child. I mean, one of the most guaranteed ways to help

03:17

The family is to make sure the parents are getting the support and care and self-care that they need in order to live as optimally and most resiliently as possible, as opposed to just completely focusing on the child who has the air quotes problem. And my own parents were very negligent about their own health despite them both being medical doctors.

03:43

dealing with chronic pain, chronic insomnia, a terrible diet with sugar dysglycemia and being hangry and very high stress. And they didn't take care of themselves properly. And by their own admission, they made some pretty terrible decisions on my behalf because they were not in the best mindset or physical state to make the best decisions because they did not attend or prioritize their own health and wellbeing. So I have a personal mission.

04:12

to support the parents, which will automatically help whatever situation the child is in. Thank you for that. So then where does this exhaustion come from for these parents of neurodivergent? Or what's the term that we're going to use today? You said reverse or neurodivergent. There's a couple of terms that are thrown into this little sociological soup. So we've got...

04:39

There's three terms that I don't like and there's three terms I do like. So the three terms I don't like are neuro-atypical, neuro-divergent, and neuro-disordered. I don't like those. They have a negative valence attached to them. The one that's kind of sneakily negative is neuro-divergent. That means that you're divergent. That means like you're off to the side somewhere away from normality. I don't like that.

05:05

The three other words I prefer are neurodiverse, neurodistinct, and my favorite, neuro-spicy. And in fact, I did a full one-hour comedy show, which is available for free on YouTube called Neuro-Spicy Love Life and Comedy on the Spectrum. So that, people can just Google that. I'll go give you the link to put in the show notes. It's a full one-hour show called Neuro-Spicy. And to define the terms, neuro-

05:31

Neurodiverse is, neurodiversity is the entire pie. So you've got Asperger's, ADD, ADHD, sensory integration issues, full on nonverbal autism. There's OCD, other processing disorders, air quotes disorders. There's

05:55

there's all these different diagnostics that are within that pie called neurodiversity. Neurodistinct is what slice of the pie an individual occupies. So I am in the neurodiverse pie, my slice of neurodiversity occupy the neuro distinction, the neuro is Asperger syndrome. And no, there's gonna be some people who are listening who's like, oh no, you shouldn't use the term Asperger syndrome because that's a negative, terrible word because doctor.

06:23

Hans Asperger has some really dubious connections to the Nazis, which is all true. It's unclear his involvement. He was the one who identified the syndrome. Then the Nazis co-opted his work to mark the children for sterilization, extermination. But whether or not Dr. Asperger was complicit, to me is irrelevant because ironically it was

06:51

people with Asperger's syndrome that brought the Nazis down. And I can prove it with three names, Oppenheimer, Einstein, and Turing. All three of them had Asperger's, all three. So I actually don't care if Dr. Asperger's was a secret Nazi or not, because I'm happy to be, you know, Dr. Frankenstein's little monster, because his monsters took him down. So I'm quite fine with it. I'm proud to call myself an Asperger's, truly I am. And I think that the term should be reclaimed as a matter of pride.

07:20

not as a matter of shame. So, and I go into much more detail on that in the comedy show, but, so my neuro-distinct slice is Asperger's syndrome. And the, so I'm gonna refer to neuro-diversity, neuro-distinct and neuro-spicy. So going back to your question around where does the fatigue come from? So I'll talk about two separate categories. There's the individual who has

07:49

neuro-distinction, and then there's the parents who may or may not have neuro-distinction also. And the reason why I say may or may not is because even Dr. Asperger, back in like the 40s and 50s, saw that there was a 25% chance that a first-order relative also had Asperger's. Now, meaning that it's one generation away in some direction. Now, my...

08:16

I figured out I had Asperger's syndrome because I figured out my father has Asperger's syndrome. That's how I found out. I only found out about this like six years ago. So, and I'm in my mid forties. So, I say like I'm on the spectrum. My father is the bookend. He's farther down the spectrum for me than I am from normies. And in this case, normies are the term for neuro-typicals.

08:46

people who are not on the spectrum. So he's actually way further down than I am. And so I was caught growing up in this really odd no man's land of not being able to relate to my father and not being able to relate to the normal world also. So for people that, for anyone, whether you're a parent with a neuro-distinct child or you have a neuro-distinct parent and you're not or whatever, I actually understand both sides of this because I know how difficult it is to relate sometimes to people on the spectrum.

09:16

vis-a-vis my father, and I also know what it's like to not be related to as someone on the spectrum. So this all dovetails into the fatigue. So I'll speak first to the fatigue that the person on the spectrum experiences, and then I'll speak to what the parents experience fatigue. So as someone on the spectrum, we process data differently. We process sensory input differently. So in

09:44

And which means that we're like, for someone like me who was Asperger's, I'm not born with social software, which means I have to construct from scratch all the human interactive dynamics from first principles and learning it the hard way. Oh, when people like facial expressions are not a natural thing, I had to learn not through, I didn't know it through instinct, I had to learn it through algorithm. You know, if people are smiling in a particular way, like there's like,

10:13

you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of ways people smile and I had to learn, figure out what they all mean. Is it a sinister smile? Is it a kind smile? Is it a friendly smile? Is it a smile with like of irony? Is it, et cetera, et cetera. So the exhaustion is, you've heard the term signal to noise ratio. Like you get all this data and like, you just try to find what's signal and what's noise. You try to filter out the noise. So that's social software. Social software is

10:40

you already know what's extraneous information and what is the actual important stuff. To people like me on the spectrum, it's all signal. So I have to consciously, everything is equally important. So I have to consciously like, and that could ever figure out what's a priority to focus on, and that's exhausting. Sound sensitivity is exhausting. So I have three minutes of my 60 minute show, fully 5% of the show is just on hypersensitivity to sound.

11:08

People on the spectrum can have sensitivity to light, to sound, to smell, to taste, to different textures. And having to constantly navigate this sensory bombardment and being kind of constantly on edge. I'll give you an example with sound. Like a screeching break from a bus can feel like a kidney stone in my brain. Like a clattering of silverware at a restaurant, a shrill sound from a small child

11:37

a loud bark from a dog, feels like a kidney stone just went off in my skull. And you don't know when this is going to happen. No one else reacts to this, but I do. So there's this hypervigilance of trying to contain and control one's sensory experience. Someone's not overwhelmed. It's exhausting. And then there's all the ambient anxiety of not fitting in and trying to figure out...

12:05

how to make friends and being constantly rebuffed and humiliated and attacked and ignored because there's no instruction manual that I was born with and no one handed it to me on how to interact with people in an ongoing mutual reciprocal friendly way. And so there's also a very high risk of people on the spectrum being predated upon by aversive personalities, narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, and so on. And I actually a whole section on my show

12:36

you know, how to identify a verse of personalities because I had to the hard way. So there's all this anxiety, which is exhausting. There's social isolation exhausting. There's a fear of humiliation exhausting. There's trying to control all the sensory input exhausting. There's, and then with all of the fatigue and the anxiety creates also chronic health issues.

13:04

which is also exhausting to navigate. And then there's navigating the expectations of society, one's parents, school systems, et cetera. And it's all just exhausting. And then from the parent's side, parents thought they were gonna have, they expected this experience of having a child, like they were gonna go to Disneyland.

13:33

And then instead they aren't going to Disneyland, they're going to some super obscure puzzle shop that their kid is just obsessed with puzzles or whatever the unique specialized interest is or special interest is of the child. And so there's, the parents can get exhausted and fatigued from...

13:59

having to radically shift their expectations of how their child behaves and navigates the world. A lot of the special needs that the child has in terms of their...

14:14

helping a child navigate socially. Seemingly simple things, self-care, social navigation, navigating personal space and personal distances, the child being so overwhelmed with light, sound, taste, smell, texture. Some people on the spectrum, neurodiverse, can get like oppositionally and defiant because everything is so overwhelming.

14:41

and they feel so out of control, the only way that one can exert control is to just say, no. And I exerted control by drowning myself in video game addiction and sugar addiction. That was the only way that I knew how to create some set of personal agency and personal power in an otherwise powerless environment. So, and the parents are now dealing with their own,

15:09

their own, they don't like to admit this, but they admitted to me privately, that there can be some element of grief and disappointment more than some elements that I thought I was going to have this experience with being a parent and now I have this experience, which is much, much harder. And harder relative to the, you know, the society's built to support normative children, not

15:39

what their friend group, their social group, their religious group, their extended family of like every, like just the kind of odd looks and deep size and maybe you should just discipline them more. Like whatever like the common, you know, suggestions, some less kind than others of try dictating to the parents of like this.

16:07

The parents are basically failures because their child is, air quotes, different. And it's just kind of exhausting all around. And my hope is that by naming it explicitly and just that everyone can understand that it's not necessarily anyone's individual fault, it's just...

16:36

child is born with a different way of processing information that has massive effects on how they move in the world and how one parents them. And then if we can start from a place of acceptance that, okay, this is a different flight plan, then when I was getting on board to be a parent, I was getting, the flight plan changed, it's changed. It's not, you can't turn the plane around. It's just, it's going a different direction. You mean start there.

17:05

And yes, it's okay to grieve, it's okay to feel the disappointment, but then like move through it, and then we move to acceptance, and then we now can go to strategy of what do we do to support the genuine gifts that child has, that people on the spectrum have a set of superpowers, and a buffet of kryptonites, a buffet. So just have.

17:34

having some reality and ownership that this is just how it is, and then we can navigate from there.

17:44

Yeah, I mean, regardless of where people are at, oftentimes having acceptance for where they're at and then they can create a plan for the future. So it sounds like that there's a big mindset component to getting these parents to- I'd say that the most important, getting the minds... Look, lab testing is great. Supplements are great. Changing sleep hygiene, all this stuff is great. But the platform...

18:13

The platform is accepting reality. That's it. Everything else is just, maybe if we shift this, then everything will, the whole situation will change. That's not gonna happen. There's, you start with acceptance first, and you're not treating this like a disease that has to be cured. That's not the way, that's how my parents treated me. They treated me like I was a broken thing.

18:44

that needed to be fixed and that I was the problem and that there was no understanding, no compassion, no resources. And people may be shocked that I talk about my own parents this way, but I'm into reality and my way is, I'm not trying to get revenge on them. I'm actually trying to prevent, to make, my way, I can't say, I can't, I couldn't reverse what my parents did to me. But what I can do is help

19:13

other parents not make the same mistakes my parents made. And that's my way of healing, my way of making the world a better place because of what, I don't want people to go through what I went through. And my parents admit that they really made some bad mistakes, but they're not going to teach forward to other parents what to do better. And I'm just taking that responsibility.

19:44

Yeah, thank you for doing so. So then the process that you take parents through, it sounds like the first step is acceptance. And then what's the next step? So the next step is having a really clear audit of what is actually going on in the parents' lives from two angles. There's looking at their life from the outside in, because the intention is,

20:11

If we can improve the health and wellbeing and resilience and internal resource of the parents, automatically the kid's gonna have a better life, automatically the parents are gonna have a better life. So there's two focuses on this. One is looking from the outside in, that means looking at lifestyle. So I have a model called the Neural Harmony Method, which is looking at the body, looking at the mind, and there's 10 specific factors that go into analyzing

20:40

how the lifestyle affects your physiology, your resilience, your constitution. And then there's looking at labs, which is looking from the inside out. So we look from the outside in for lifestyle, we look with labs at the physiology and the biochemistry from the inside out and you combine those, now you have a complete truly holistic plan. And so the internal audit is looking at, for example,

21:10

brain and hormones. We look at digestion and bowel function. We look at history of physical injuries, particularly head trauma, bad dental work, poor posture, chronic pain. We look at exercise and movement patterns. We look at toxic exposure and inflammation. We look at diet, nutrition, and supplements. We look at routines, particularly morning and evening routine.

21:39

We look at stressors and unresolved traumas. We look at sources of hidden infections and mold. We look at sleep hygiene. So we're looking at all these different categories of lifestyle. And I would say if people were wanting to start somewhere, the most important places people can start would be their morning and evening routines. So looking at solid breakfast, looking at a solid evening routine.

22:08

and making sure that the bookends of the day are scripted and organized and set people up to win. The second most important thing that parents can do is to change the attitude and ethos around sleep in the whole family and become a sleep-centered family. If everyone was a sleep-centered member of a sleep-centered family and everyone prioritized sleep above

22:37

doom scrolling, above cat memes, above, you know, anything else, then everyone's life is better. Everybody's life is better. And my father, for all of his flaws, which are many, he was a famous psychiatrist who wrote two books and even got a MacArthur Genius Award for his work.

23:02

on defining the term moral injury. He worked for the Boston VA for over 20 years, and he wrote two books on PTSD and moral injury. And he worked with all branches of the military, from common soldiers all the way up to multi-star generals to try to change the culture of the military to prevent moral injury and PTSD. And the one thing he said, and I think-

23:30

nearly every single lecture he's ever given is give people back their sleep. Give people back their sleep. He says, there's no such thing as a panacea, but the closest thing we have to it is better sleep. That's the closest thing we got. And we're talking about a deeply high stress environment. Let's talk about war trauma and soldiers in battle. So if...

23:59

if you just kind of extrapolate that down, I think my father said that every single symptom listed under PTSD is improved with better sleep, every single one. So like he said, there's no such thing as a panacea, but sleep is in the front runner. So if you become a sleep-centered family, so much, so much improves. And of course we could spend hours talking about sleep hygiene. I have a couple master classes on sleep.

24:28

There's plenty of lab tests to explore sleep, but just like we mentioned before, the number one shift to do is attitude and approach and mindset. So if we start with the attitude and mindset of I'm gonna really dial in the morning and evening routines and we're gonna be a sleep-centered family, all the other stuff like what to do and how to do it and how to test for it and all that, that's just all detail. But if you have the top mindset first,

24:57

That's half the battle.

25:03

those would be the outside in the lifestyle. In terms of labs, actually, let me pause there if you wanna comment or ask some questions on the lifestyle stuff before we dig in, jump into the whole other section on labs. Yeah, thank you. So I have a 16 year old who is not very happy about us being a sleep-centered family.

25:32

And so I'm curious if you have a way to talk about this that might be potentially more convincing than how I've spoken about it with her before. Did you want to share any detail without- Well, sure, I mean, just saying, the research indicates that the earlier that you go to bed, the better off you're gonna be. Screens should be off at least an hour before bed, preferably two.

26:00

You know, so there's kind of some battles around those. She tells me that all of her friends are going to bed at midnight and 1 a.m. and they're doing fine. And I'm like, yeah, but that's not healthy, you know, that sort of thing. So I'm just curious if you have any other way to kind of spin this to help convey the message about how important it is. Sure, so we'll go back to my thing on acceptance. So hormones are a thing and being a teenager is a thing.

26:29

And so there's a level of, this is always the fine line any parent has to walk, is what happens in the teenage years where, I believe from an evolutionary biology perspective, teenagers are just simply genetically wired to be defiant because that's how the human animal was able to migrate and basically get across all the continents of the world.

26:57

And I do feel like you're fighting against a couple million years of evolution, fighting over bedtime. So we're just kind of acknowledge that. And there is no silver bullet here, but what can be done is figuring out what are, what are the actual needs being, so I've studied on violent communication quite a lot. My emotion,

27:26

intelligence coach has taught nonviolent communication alongside the founder, Marshall Rosenberg for five years. And he's kind of furthered the process and refined it even better. His name is Charles M. Jones, if you're interested. He's got a wonderful system on emotional intelligence and emotion-centered leadership. But he took Marshall's work and improved it. And the thing that we can look at is what are the needs being met? So there's

27:55

There's like autonomy, there's sovereignty, there's asserting one's rights, there's a need for consideration, there's protecting one's territory, there's achieving goals. And negative emotions are signals from the subconscious that we're not meeting a specific need. So for example, frustration is a signal from the subconscious that one feels one is not on track to achieve a goal. So frustration is the not on trackiness.

28:25

towards achieving a goal. Angers, I'm not on track to assert a right. You've got resentment, I'm not on track to receive a consideration. Boredom, I'm not on track to experiencing a stimulation. And there's a list of about 20 major ones like that. So if you can find out what the need is that your teenager is meeting by staying up late,

28:55

And then what needs of yours as a parent are not being met by her staying up late. And then if instead of fighting about tactics, which is go to bed earlier, you talk about needs. And needs are universal. So what I'm hearing as a parent, like you have a need for your child's safety. You have a need for their safety.

29:24

for the long-term health that, and for her, I'm hearing that she's wanting sovereignty, autonomy, stimulation. She just doesn't wanna feel alone. She wants to have social connection. And I think there's also an element that there's a fear of social ostracization if she doesn't do the thing all her friends are doing it to the very end of the hour in which they're all doing it. And...

29:53

I'm not trying to distill that down to a need agilely, but I'm sure it's there. So if you talk to your teenager from the needs perspective, then once the needs are acknowledged and agreed upon, then you can strategize. And if you don't know what the needs are, you can figure out what the emotions you're experiencing, because this is the key insight that...

30:20

Charles has, as Marshall said, any need can be attached to any emotion. That is wrong. That is flat out wrong. It is one emotion for one need. Because you look at animals and the way that they posture and the way they make utter noises, there's very specific emotional states leading to this very specific need. So if you can get down to the need, if you don't know, you find out what the emotion is, you can decode the emotion to what need is not being met.

30:49

And so that's kind of the metaphysical idea of what to do, because you can throw as much science as you want at a teenager and she's like, yeah, don't care. I wanna go hang with my friends.

31:05

you know, what are you gonna do? Keep throwing more science? Like, how's that working for you? You know, Dr. Hirsch with your book, you know, like it's not gonna, it's like, I'm your father. I wrote a book. Read my book, see, I'll read it. Worst bedtime story ever, chapter 17, on sleep. Like, right? Not gonna work. That's good. Great advice focusing on the need. So yeah, so let's go into labs then. Okay.

31:35

So when we're looking at fatigue as it relates to people who are neuro-distinct and the parents of people who are neuro-distinct, there's a couple of considerations. Number one, there's genetics. And the reason I start on genetics and functional genetics, I'm not talking about like what percentage Irish you are.

32:02

or determining paternity. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what is your genetic relationship to inflammation? What is your genetic relationship to specific food triggers like gluten, dairy, histamines, food allergens in general? Are you genetically sensitive to caffeine? What is your genetic relationship to exercise and recovery? What is your genetic relationship to...

32:32

burning fats for energy, fats for heat? What is your genetic relationship to liver detoxification? And then if you understand your unique genetics, then you can create a very specified plan, unique to your genetics of lifestyle, diet, nutrition, that you can optimize your unique genetics so you feel healthier, more resilient, less fatigued. And the reason I love genetics is because you do the test once,

33:01

and the dividends pay out for decades. I am not against doing gut testing, thyroid testing, adrenal testing, mitochondria testing. I mean, we did a whole podcast last time on mitochondria testing. I love mitochondria testing. And those tests you have to redo every year or so, whereas genetics you do once and you're done. So I'm talking about the highest value per dollar by far with not even a close second is genetics.

33:29

Not even close. That is the number one highest investment, highest value investment you can do. So from, so I would say, if people wanted to start somewhere, I would start with genetics. You can genetically determine your optimal diet using genetics now. There's a whole new way to look at genetics where you configure it, are you keto, paleo, Mediterranean, high carb, or some shade of gray in between? That technology exists now. And...

33:55

And you combine that with your relationship to trigger foods, to genetics and eating behaviors, to are you a hyper-inflammator genetically? They're free to add like a strong anti-inflammatory component. Are you genetically vulnerable to histamines? And then you're modifying your diet according to that. Like there's genetics can reveal so much. That's where I would start. Cause if you're more inflamed than you should, if you can't detox well, then you should.

34:24

if you're not exercising and recovering correctly, if you're eating incorrectly, what is the common experience people will have is fatigue. So that's why I start with genetics. And then there's other lab tests to look at, mitochondria. So for people who want the super nerdy deep dive where it was super top heavy on all the science and the analytes, you can go back and listen to the last conversation that we had.

34:53

on energy. We talked, went super deep into mitochondria. It was just kind of like a master class on lab analysis. But in short, the mitochondria is the electricity factory that provides the literal energy. And if you want to understand what that means is that your body weights roughly 10% mitochondria. So imagine a single cell as a micro city. Now, imagine 10% of the footprint of the city is the electrical grid. Imagine New York City.

35:21

The footprint of Manhattan, 10% of it was just the electrical grid. That is the mitochondria. Now the electricity factory metaphor is almost perfect. So to have a factory, you have to have like, there's like 50 plus nutrients that go into making a mitochondria. So you've got walls of a factory. Those are specialized fats. Inside the factory, you've got machines that do the things. Those machines are called vitamins.

35:49

The machines require computer chips to run. Those computer chips are called minerals. You've got the conveyor belts doing the running thing from station to station. That conveyor belt is called CoQ10. CoQ10 is an enormous molecule, it's enormous. It looks like the meat in the sandwich. It's the conveyor belt. You've got to have janitors that will quickly put out the sparks from you burning fuel in the factory to make electricity.

36:18

Those are called antioxidants. You've got to have an immune system or security system to protect the mitochondria from vandals and thieves. You've got to have delivery of raw materials to the factory. So number one is oxygen. And so you've got all the nutrients that are involved in making red blood cells and iron and delivery and proper rib excursion to get much enough air to get the oxygen. Then you've got, you burn oxygen, you got a fuel source.

36:48

So you burn carbs, fats, and amino acids, but you've got three different truckers unions that deliver the amino acids, the carbs, and the fats. And the truckers unions are paid in different currencies. So the fatty acid truckers union is paid in carnitine, glycine, magnesium, and B2. And if you don't pay them, the fat's set on the docks. So that's where nutritional deficiency, you've heard of the carnitine shuttle, and well, that's the truckers union.

37:17

You don't pay them currency, they ain't moving the pack. The amino acids truckers union, they're paid mostly in B6. The carb truckers union is paid in lipoic acid, other B vitamins, chromium, and some other stuff. So this is where all the nutrients are getting very, very complicated. And if you have low energy, mitochondria is a really great place to start because it is literally generating the energy.

37:47

Then you've got thyroid testing. Now the thyroid and the mitochondria, the mitochondria is the business end of the thyroid. The thyroid sends T4, which is like the four wheel car that drives in the motor system known as the bloodstream. And then it pulls into the mitochondria parking lot. And then it makes that transformer noise from the movie, do, do, do, do, do. And like one door opens and becomes an arm. So it's now not a four wheel drive,

38:17

engineered, that's T3. So now just imagine one wheel is like removed and now it's like this arm that's button mashing on the control panel of the mitochondria and turning the dials to turn up the rate of activity of the mitochondria to make more energy. So T3 is the end, is the three limbs, is a three wheel thing that turns the mitochondria on. So that's the connection between thyroid and mitochondria. And I'm sure you've seen this, because I've seen this a lot.

38:47

People have air quotes normal thyroid hormones, not just TSH, but T3, T4, reverse T3, like all of them. They're normal, but they show all the signs of hypothyroidism. It ain't the thyroid, it's the mitochondria that's broken. So the engineer doesn't fix the thyroid, it just merely tells the, sorry, the engineer doesn't fix the mitochondria, the engineer just dials up the mitochondria.

39:15

If the mitochondria is broken, you can button mash on that control panel all you want, and nothing's gonna change. So that's the connection of thyroid. You've heard the term basal metabolic rate. That literally means how much energy you're generating for the mitochondria. But no one ever says the word mitochondria and thyroid in the same sentence, but they're intimately connected. So then you've got other lab tests to look at, like gut. So...

39:43

Gut and energy is massive. If you can't absorb your nutrients, you can't deliver the materials to repair and run the mitochondria because there ain't no materials getting into the bloodstream. So gut, we have a mutual colleague who does mitochondria summits, but all she does practically with her group programs is gut programs. She doesn't even do mitochondria programs. It's just all gut programs. And she's not wrong to start there.

40:12

Like that's not a off base place to start. It's not always the case the place to start, but it's not wrong. Like it's not a bad place. So gut testing, you can have low energy. Like if you've got hidden infections in your gut that are only picked up by these more advanced functional gut tests, the problem with hidden infections is that they eat your food and nutrients on your behalf. They can burrow in and damage the intestines.

40:39

poop and create excrement of their own and also shed toxic chemicals that screw up your gut so that you can't absorb anything and you're creating this immune system dysregulation, it's one of your five that you mentioned, I believe, that make it harder to absorb the nutrients you need to make energy. Then there's adrenal testing, which is how well you actually navigate stress.

41:08

I have years of adrenal labs. And when I first did my adrenal labs, I was flatlined. I was below, there was no cortisol awakening response. There was no spiking. It was flat, well under. And it was like a slog to basically turn around several decades of adrenal dysfunction. The term, by the way, the term adrenal fatigue,

41:34

coined by Dr. Wilson. He didn't coin it for the scientific papers. He was coining it for his clients who came to him fatigued. And that term is blackballed in the scientific literature. You can only find papers in the European journals that say the word adrenal fatigue, but don't look up the word adrenal fatigue. Look up hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access dysfunction and you will find thousands of articles on PubMed.

42:04

thousands. So it's just this, it's just this name game. And it's just what people like, they don't, like I was, I don't know about you, but I was supposed to be on this really big podcast. And this guy's like, there's no such thing as adrenal fatigue. You're not scientific, go away. And I was like, hypothalamic pituitary, he didn't wanna hear it. He was just so stuck on the negative.

42:30

associated with adrenal fatigue. So anyway, I'm just throwing that out because it's a personal little beef I have with people pooping on the term adrenal fatigue. Anyway, soap box removed. Anyway, so we've covered genetics, we covered mitochondria, we covered thyroid, we covered adrenals, we covered gut. Other tests to look at are the weird and wonderful area of like toxic stuff. So there's mold testing.

43:00

There's lime testing, there's heavy metals, there's environmental toxins. And if you were on a first name basis with every species of mold, toxin, metal and lime, you would win every Scrabble tournament imaginable. These things are complex and frustrating and they usually cluster together because you usually get like one massive weakening from some sort of toxic exposure or some weird infection.

43:30

Mold is this weird thing where it's both a toxin and an infection. It's both. It's kind of the worst of the worst. Would you agree with that assessment? It's like both an infection and a toxin. Yeah. So like, and I personally deal with mold poisoning right now. Like as we're recording this, I am literally moving out of my apartment this weekend because it turns out I have ironically and tragically enough dealing with mold poisoning plus endotoxins plus actinol.

43:58

Back to hold the conversation, don't need to go there. I've been living in a mold soup for a couple of years here, which has vastly affected me. So there's testing. The way I found out is I actually spent the money on a home mold endotoxin and actinobacteria testing and it came back just loads of red.

44:25

really horrible scores and then finally explain what was going on, why I was not able to get better despite doing all the other labs. It's because if you can do all the nutrition and lifestyle and supplements you want, but if you're continually exposed to toxins and mold and endote and all this other stuff, you're bailing out a ship that has giant holes in it. So it's such a critical piece and it's very emotional and confronting.

44:54

to test one's living space to see if it's damaging you with a capital D. It is very confronting and very, very hard to... The risk of seeing those results, I'm like, wow, I literally have to completely upend my life right now. And I just want to acknowledge that some people resist testing their home. And I was one of them, stupidly enough, I

45:25

And I've suffered the consequences of it. So those are the major testings out there. Genetics, hormones, gut, mitochondria, and all the weird stuff. There are other ones, like you can do blood sugars for energy regulation, anemia, I put those in with the mitochondria because those are all related to delivering oxygen and fuel and stuff.

45:54

But those are the major categories of lab testing. And I would say that if anyone wants to do lab testing, please, please, please find a functional, an experienced functional practitioner that has an outside in system to analyze your lifestyle and an inside out system of labs to select from that they can combine together. You want both.

46:20

You want a practitioner that will look at your lifestyle and your labs, both, as opposed to just nitpicking one and versus the other. That's the fastest way, I didn't say least expensive, I said the fastest way to address the underlying causes of fatigue.

46:43

Thank you, Sam. So we're just about out of time, but where can people go to learn more about you, to work with you? Sure, my website's drsamshay.com, D-R- At the time of this recording, people can schedule a free 15 minute chat with me or my team, depending on how busy I get, and to see if this particular model is a good fit for your situation.

47:11

I also have a very extensive YouTube channel of other interviews. I think I got like two interviews of yours on there that we did before on there. I've also got my comedy stuff on there. I have several free resources, like a three-day nutrition and lifestyle guide. I'm also on Instagram, just DrSamChe on Instagram. But the best place to connect is my website.

47:42

Wonderful. Well, Sam, I really appreciate the work that you're doing in the world. Thank you so much for coming on today.