Evan H. Hirsch, MD interviews Eleanor Stein, MD about how sunlight, red light, and hormesis can support mitochondrial energy and recovery in long COVID and ME/CFS.

How to Use the Sun to Increase Energy and Health with Eleanor Stein, MD

February 18, 202633 min read

EnergyMD

How to Use the Sun to Increase Energy and Health with Eleanor Stein, MD

00:03

Hey everybody, 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. So I'm really excited today because we're going to be talking with my friend, Dr. Ellie Stein, all about hormesis. So let's learn a little bit about her. And if you're not sure what hormesis is, stick around cause you're going to want to learn all about it. So Dr. Eleanor 'Ellie' Stein,

00:30

Uh, is a medical doctor and psychiatrist with 36 years personal and clinical experience with several complex complex, sorry, several complex chronic diseases through extensive study and experimentation. has helped thousands improve health and function. Her focus is on simple, accessible, no to low cost science based tools drawn from neuroplasticity, hormesis mindset, and quantum biology.

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She has published a number of peer reviewed papers and currently co-leads a clinical trial of a mind body therapy in myalgic encephalomyelitis and long COVID. Dr. Stein has a big improvement in her own health or had a big improvement in her own health in 2017 and now knows recovery is possible even after decades of unremitting illness. She retired from medical practice in 2022 to share education, empowerment and hope.

01:25

through self-study courses and her membership live with Dr. Stein. She does this while traveling in nature in her camper van. Dr. Stein, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much, Evan. It's a pleasure. Just smiling, because I just, just for those who are not in the know, so I'm not in my camper van at the moment. I'm actually in Ecuador. And one minute before this podcast, the power went out.

01:53

So just to say travel is amazing most of the time. So true, so true. Yeah, I'm really glad that you're with us today. Thanks. So let's talk about hormesis. So for those who don't know, can you define hormesis for us? Yes. So it turns out that our body really needs stress. Now let me just define that because half your audience

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is on the verge of tuning out right now, because they don't want any stress whatsoever. But at a cellular level, our body needs like a really in quotation marks with capital letters needs to be intermittently exposed to very low levels of stressors in order to maintain all of the repair and metabolic and beneficial processes of our cells.

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um effect every single day. So I to kind of um explain it in a way that most people can understand. If you think of exercise, so exercise is a hermetic stress, you do the exercise and you feel tired and you actually um when you exercise your cells, your muscle cells actually get little bits of damage.

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That little bit of damage is the trigger or the signal for the cells that they need to repair. So that activates all of the genes that are necessary for cellular repair. And now the next time you exercise, the cells are ready for you.

03:30

Excellent. so, um, and a lot of people can, may understand this concept from, mean, obviously the more that you work out, the stronger you get for most part. Um, obviously for our population of people with long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome, can be a little bit challenging to find those low level stressors because, you know, when you exert yourself, you feel worse, you get post-exertional malaise. So how do people who are already kind of stressed?

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from the toxins and infections and whatever is in their body ah that is causing their ME-CFS and long COVID. How did they get? What sort of hormetic stressors work for them? I'm really glad you brought that up, Evan, because of course by leading with exercise, again, several people listening are going to go, no, no, she's telling us to exercise. So just for clarity, I'm using that as an example. So in healthy people, exercise is probably the most familiar example of how

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You do a little bit of damage, it signals the cells to repair and then you become stronger as a result. In ME-CFS, I do not recommend exercise other than trying to stay carefully in your energy envelope. know, monitoring your activity level and your energy. And if you do something and you can see the early warning signs,

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that energy is starting to drop to back off and rest. So just for clarity. But what's really cool for people with ME-CFS is that you don't have to exercise to get the benefits of hormesis. You can do other things that have similar benefits without exercise. And those are the ones that I mostly talk about and teach. So for example, the way we schedule our food intake over the 24 hour period.

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So having, being a little bit hungry, having low nutrient levels in our body, because we've fasted for say 12 hours, is just that modest intermittent stress, because we're not doing it constantly, we're eating and then we're fasting and hopefully, if we're lucky, we're eating again and fasting. And so when we fast, we activate a whole bunch of

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pathways that are called nutrient signaling or nutrient sensing pathways. Things like that people may have heard of things like mTOR, insulin signaling, AMPK, sirtuins. So these are pathways that sense different types of nutrients. And when the levels go down, they upregulate again, genetic expression turns on, the genes are activated, they make the proteins that are needed.

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to function in this slightly deficient state. So for example, when we fast, our cells learn how to use energy more efficiently.

06:35

What other examples of hormesis can people do who will have long COVID chronic fatigue syndrome? So another one, and this one is pretty surprising is the choices of the foods that we eat. So we all know that fruits and vegetables are theoretically healthy. That's if we don't have lectin intolerance, et cetera. But, and I always used to think it was because when we eat,

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colorful fruits and vegetables, we're getting lots of nutrients, minerals, vitamins, et cetera. That is true. In addition, however, we're getting something called phytochemicals. Those are the chemicals that give the fruits and vegetables their bright color. And it's the bright color that entices other animals to eat them and spread their seed, right? So it's kind of a evolutionary strategy. But when we eat phytonutrients,

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believe it or not, they're a little bit toxic to cells. So again, the cells sense something's a bit off and they have to fire up their protective and repair mechanisms in order to continue functioning well. So even I'll say lying on your couch, but eating a healthy meal of, you know, colorful fruits and vegetables would be another way to activate those hermetic pathways. Excellent.

08:02

Are there any other ones that you'd like to talk about? There's a few more. So one of them is light. Specifically, people have been learning about red and infrared light, and all you know, it's like all over the internet. When I first started reading about it, it was in 2015. So just over 10 years ago, and I was like, really, we can benefit from light, like I have to admit, I was

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uh pretty unaware back then. So I started looking at the papers, because it was specifically red and infrared light. And the claim that was made was it was that those frequencies of light act directly on the mitochondria to enable them to produce more energy from the same amount of, you know, fuel like glucose or fat. I thought, how could this be? But I did a ton of research. And it's true.

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appears to me to be true, that just by going out in sunlight, we upregulate our mitochondria. So 10 years ago, you know, the research was in its infancy. Now there's some pretty impressive studies um showing that when when you expose someone to red light, so say on the back or the arm for 15 minutes, their carbon dioxide breathed off in the

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exhaled air goes up. So this is really objective proof. The only way cells can make carbon dioxide is if they're burning fuel and producing energy. So the fact that the carbon dioxide goes up is very strong evidence that red and infrared light increase metabolism. Conversely, it's now being shown that exposure to blue light

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And again, just for clarity, this does not mean all blue light is bad, but kind of the monotonal LED blue light that most of us have in our houses is bad and it shuts down metabolism. And if you do these tests on people that are pre-diabetic or diabetic, literally within 15 minutes of red or blue light exposure, you can see changes in their blood sugar levels. Fascinating.

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And so it seems like that those are so light as a, as a stressor as well. So it's not just stimulating mitochondrial function. It's actually a stressor. Yeah. So the two are really connected. So when you stimulate mitochondrial function, as soon as the mitochondria start working more, they produce free radicals or oxidative, uh, reactive oxygen species, ROS, and that is a stressor. So every time

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we do anything, fasting, exercising, light exposure that increases metabolism and increases therefore oxidative stress that activates a whole pathway of systems that is built into us to help us manage that oxidative stress. And if we don't activate it intermittently, we lose it. You know, it's really a use it or lose it. So if we want to be able

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to manage, if we want to be able to manage oxidative stress, we actually have to stress ourselves on a regular basis. Yeah. And there's been some conflict or some differing opinions about this over the years where it was all about, you know, take all these antioxidants that you possibly can because they're going to be supportive and you absolutely do not want reactive oxygen species. That's changed in the last several years based on what you're saying, correct?

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it has and you know, I was I'm older. So I was at those conferences, say 20 years ago, where it was all about taking antioxidants and, you know, expensive, complicated formulations that would have just the right characteristics. And I recommended it to my patients. You know, you go to conferences or you read papers and you think, Oh, okay, that makes sense. But we didn't really like

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There was just a little mention of hormesis back then. I didn't really understand it till probably the last 10 years, realizing that it's better for us to stress our body and allow our own innate mechanisms to be activated to help us um kind of restore and heal than it is to take something externally. And this doesn't mean the antioxidants aren't helpful.

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It just means that we have to bring them in balance or do you disagree? you know, there's some recent studies showing they're actually not helpful. So for example, uh I can't tell you the author, but there's a study of vitamin E showing that people with heart disease or is it smokers are more likely to develop heart disease if they take vitamin E supplementation. So I wouldn't say it's across the board helpful or not helpful, but it

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know, if you went to conferences or read papers, you know, 20 years ago, was all about antioxidants. And I would say, most people, um, kind of like us who are in the integrative space are now realizing we have to moderate that advice. And I myself don't take any. Yeah. And I think, I think that research was on alpha to cough for all. the vitamin D that specifically alpha. And so

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You know, I think that there have been, that's, I think there has also been research to show that mixed to cough rolls can potentially be more supportive. Right? So it's like, you're, know, like as close to nature as you can get and essentially like in combination, oftentimes with these, with the other antioxidants can be more beneficial. But I absolutely agree. I think that they're, um, you know, I don't find that antioxidants are the biggest bang for the buck when people come to see me and they say, I'm taking all this vitamin C.

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And I don't know if it's helping me or not. that'll be, mean, vitamin C is generally low cost, but it's like, you know, I'm going to give you plenty of supplements in my program. That's not one that you necessarily need to take, right? Or oftentimes we can have them take a one a day, higher quality multivitamin that has a little bit of vitamin C and some of these other antioxidants to kind of fill in the gaps, you know, if we're not getting the food that we need.

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The other thing I wanted to mention, go ahead. I was just going to say from my, you know, knowledge of your program, my sense is that you're using supplements that are assisting the body to do things. You're not taking over from the body, right? You're activating, say, the anti toxin pathways or the anti infection pathways. So I think that's a little bit different than the example would be maybe antibiotics that kill the bug versus

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maybe strategies that help our own immune system work better. Correct. Yeah, I would agree. And we also replace deficiencies in the program. So, you know, when people are deficient in adrenals and mitochondria and thyroid and vitamins and minerals, et cetera, we do replace them because, you know, things just work better and people are more resilient when I found when they optimize those things. Yeah. Yeah. So

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The other thing I was going to mention was, yeah, so I consider a lot of these, these hormetic devices to, to require what I call a Goldilocks dose. Yes. Which is kind of like that, you know, you want to ride that edge where you, where you're stressing the body, but you don't, if people feel worse from doing so, have they gone too far? Is it too much stress?

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Yes, so you're bringing up a really important point that the goal of hormesis, like one of my kind of mantra, endless, ceaseless mantras is baby steps. So let's just take cold exposure, because that's a cold and heat exposure or other examples of hormetic stress. So obviously, if you go out into the desert and it's 40 degrees, that's like way over 100 in Fahrenheit,

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and you don't have enough water and you bake in the sun, it's like, could be life threatening, right? So that's not what we're talking, but we're talking maybe taking a sauna at a specific temperature for a short amount of time, just enough for the body to start sweating. So sweating is the body's sign that it's recognizing the stressor and it's responding to it. And you stay in there maybe for another 10 minutes and then you get out. um Similarly with cold exposure,

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You want to stay in ideally if you can tolerate it until you start shivering. Because again, that's the body's natural signal. Okay, I think you've had enough time to get out. And obviously, if you stay in the cold, you know, I live in Canada. So if you stay outside in the middle of winter, you risk hypothermia or even death. um So the Goldilocks zone is really well said, you want to take just enough that the body, there's some signal that the body recognizes it.

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and then you stop and you then you need to give time. Usually that's like 12 to 24 hours for all of those cellular processes to kick in and upregulate and strengthen before you do your next exposure. Excellent. Yeah, you know, I like to say start low and go slow. Absolutely. Yeah, especially if it's a therapy that you haven't done before.

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I mean, I have seen people feel worse with six minutes of red light therapy instead of five minutes or six minutes of sauna instead of five minutes. Yeah. And I'm glad that you mentioned the temperature because those are other ones that are really accessible and easy for people to do. You don't have to have a sauna. You can have a shower. You know, I still find it very helpful for to turn the shower to cold at the end.

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And I do the front of my body and they do the back of my body and they do the top of my head. Um, and generally I try to do it until it hurts, you know? Um, and then actually for, this is kind of a neat trick for people who are cold all the time is that when you take a cold shower, when you end your shower with cold, I find that, uh, I'm warm for the first half of the day, um, for several hours, because I think it causes

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blood vessels to constrict and all the heat to get concentrated internally. And I think part of these illnesses is that you're leaking, you're leaking, um you're leaking heat oftentimes. So many people are cold. So that makes sense. Yeah. I leak a lot of heat out of my head anyway. So I have to, I have to wear a hat oftentimes. But this is great. So I'm glad that we're giving people all these practical tools of hermesis and giving them a little bit of a guide about

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starting low and going slow. And if you find that you feel worse afterwards or the next day, it means you've probably done too much and then wait till you're back to baseline and then try it again at a lower dose. You know, and when we talk about dose, we're talking about the amount of time, the temperature, if we're, if you're looking at temperature, the frequency or how frequently you're doing it, are those all good guides to use for determining like what somebody's ideal dose or Goldilocks dose would be of these therapies?

19:58

Yeah, and I would say don't even be shy to go to one minute, you know, some people in our community are so ill and so we'll just say fragile, they can not tolerate very much. um So I've literally had people that have worked up, you know, I'm a psychiatrist. So back in the day, when I was working and prescribing medications, it was frequently the case that I'd have put someone on an antidepressant.

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or clarity for depression, not for any or any other physical symptom, and they couldn't tolerate it. And so I would literally get them a liquid and then dilute that liquid to such a tiny amount that it may be a hundredth of the regular dose that's given to people. And then they would slowly build up. And in most cases, it might take several months, they were able to build up to a therapeutic dose.

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Wow, you're giving them homeopathic SSRIs. much. That's brilliant. uh Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I like using tinctures is because it just allows you that flexibility and you can even put it on topically. You know, I'll say, well, if you can't tolerate that, let's just rub it into your hands and you'll absorb about 20 % of it. You know, so you got to start somewhere and even just taking a very small amount of something is still going to provide some benefit. It sounds like that's what you're saying.

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Yes. Yeah. Excellent. You know, in most cases, can I just say, because people are so fragile, so there's no absolutes. Like my, my good friend goes out, she has a horse trough in Canada in the winter, it's frozen. She like picks the ice away and gets in. I do not do that. And there may be some people that are that's just never going to be the right choice for them. So I would say that's why uh

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Like I have a handout actually, which hopefully we can make available to some of the listeners, which just outlines the protocols for I think four of the options. But, the reason you need multiple options is because there may be some that just aren't right for you. And like, don't feel bad. It's not your fault. Our bodies are all different and try a different one. No, no, that's very well said. And then this kind of dovetails a little into pacing.

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which has been kind of a bad word in the community where because people have heard it so many times when they go to see their conventional practitioner where they say, well, just pace or don't do as much. Right. um So how does pacing relate to and exercise hormesis? Yeah. So I would say I explain pacing using the metaphor of money.

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So we wake up every morning and just as we have a certain amount of money in our bank account every morning, we have a certain amount of, maybe I'll call it ATP or energy dollars in our energy savings account. And for the most severely ill people, we use a hundred point scale often to rate energy. So a hundred percent is like, wow, I can do anything I want. 10 % is, you know, literally bed bound, needing a bed pan. um

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30 % is mostly, you know, better couch found, but able to maybe get yourself to the toilet and so forth. And if you do anything, including listening to this podcast or including any type of activity or any hormone or medic stress, and you start feeling your energy dropping. for me, I go like this, because for me, I feel it usually in my head, but sometimes also in my limbs, like,

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thinking back, you know, they would just get so heavy. I just had to go sit or lie down. Everybody has different early warning signs. It could be getting cold. You mentioned temperature. It could be fatigue. It could be brain fog. So each person could become aware of what their early warning signs are. And no matter what you're doing as you're going through the day at the first notice of those signs, my advice would be to back off.

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if you're someone who experiences post-exertional malaise. I cannot think of an instance where pushing through is a good idea. Absolutely agree. And unfortunately, conventional docs are still recommending exercise tolerance, increasing your exercise tolerance, which is really good. It just doesn't work. I I tried it myself for decades. I just can attest it did not work. What worked is actually the reverse. So as I got

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a better handle on my sleep and my diet and my exercise and started using red light therapy and started working on my stress and my mindset, all of those things, I started feeling better. And when I felt better, guess what? I could go do more stuff, but doing more stuff does not make you better. Right. Yeah. And it's, and it's hard when you're being told that you need to rest, whether by your body or by your practitioner.

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um when there's so much that you want to do in life. And so that's really where the mindset work comes into play to remind yourself about why you're doing things and have gratitude for where you're at and realize that you're on the right path. And are there any other mindset tricks that you recommend to people when they're in that situation? I would say um I'm a big kind of fan of, of evidence, right? And

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If I hear it's like when I read those papers on red light, and I realized it was a legitimate strategy. And you know, the papers were in decent journals. And one of the world leaders is at Harvard, I thought, oh, this seems really valid and legitimate, then I kind of bought in. But up until then, I was like, this kind of sounds like snake oil. um What was your question? It was, oh, mindset. So

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The data shows there's a very famous study in the field. You're probably familiar with it by Dr. Leonard Jason, and it's all about the energy envelope. And what he found is that if people stay mostly, none of us are perfect, but you stay most days within your energy envelope, that means you keep 10 or 20 % of your energy dollars for a rainy day. never, you this is another tip. You never spend all your energy.

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Because you don't know when you know your kid is going to get sick, your dog needs dog needs to go to the vet, you get that late night phone call, you always need to save some energy. So for people that did that after six months, they overall reported a slow improvement in their daily energy compared to the people that continually did what we call the push crash cycle where they put try to push through and then crash, those people got worse after six months.

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So I find that for me really helps my mind, you know, back in the day, I don't really have to limit myself now, but helped my mindset. just say, okay, I can't tell the difference from one day to the next because it's so imperceptible. But the research by a reputable researcher who believes, who totally understands PEM, he did most of the seminal work on PEM. So someone who I really trust and respect, when he says,

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pacing will get you further ahead. It's not just that it's gonna be like this forever. Because I think one of the things, I'm sure this is familiar to you, Evan, when we're having a bad day, we think it's never gonna change. So just remember maintaining insight that yes, it is gonna change. Yeah, that's one of the hardest things. can change.

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That's one of the hardest things that people struggle with in the program is that the bad days are just as bad. You know, and that success is not linear. You don't just gradually get better. I tell people you end up having more good days. So maybe this month you have seven bad days and then next month you have six bad days and one day is a little bit better. But then when you start to get more good days, all of a sudden the bad days may be just as bad as they were before, but they feel worse.

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because of that disparity. And then you feel really hopeless that you're going backwards because you feel like you're feeling worse. It's like a cruel trick of nature or something like that. yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. That's one of the most challenging parts of this disease. It's so fluctuate and the on the bad and the same happens on the good days. So I don't know if you noticed this. So on the bad days, people think they're never going to get better and they lose hope. On the good days,

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They think they weren't really sick and they don't actually need to pace and they do way too much and then they crash. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The human condition. It's so interesting. And so what we've tried to do in our community is start to wins when people are having them and start to post testimonials, you know, just as kind of like a reminder, especially when they have those bad days, you know, that, you know, it's common, you know, like you will get there.

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um But that is also funny about yes, because generally, yeah, it's the same thing with kind of like ramping up on the tinctures. I can tell people till I'm blue in the face that you have to increase by a drop at a time. Otherwise you're to get really bad die off and you'll end up in bed. And inevitably there's somebody on the call who says, yes, that was me. I knew I was supposed to increase by a drop and I increased by five at a time and I ended up in bed.

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And still people have, they have, know, like patience is not something that's really easy for humans to come by. Couldn't agree more. Yeah. I'm just, I got a smile because you know, you hear these stories so often and I'm guilty of it myself so many times. Absolutely. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to, you know, go so slow when you want to get better yesterday. Yeah, I agree.

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So we talked about exercise and temperature and light, choice of foods, fasting, any other hormetic stressors that you like to talk about that are easily accessible? I think the only other one, and I don't think it's so easily accessible. So it's not in the handout is uh out, know, mimicking altitude, right? Or oxygen concentration. So again,

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We all know, because the Olympics are on right now at the time of recording, that a lot of athletes train at altitude and they do this because their cells go, oh my gosh, we don't have enough oxygen. We've got to produce more hemoglobin so that we can uh store and distribute more oxygen to the body. So a lot of people are using that as a hormetic stress. I haven't been so inclined because you generally need some kind of

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device, you know, to decrease the amount of oxygen or breathing techniques to temporarily stress yourself. So I guess the easiest way to do that would be some of the breath holding exercises to hang on just, you know, one or two seconds longer when you feel you absolutely have to take a breath that I mean, that does a bunch of things in addition to hormesis, but one of them is it increases carbon dioxide, which actually

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vasodilates and we get more blood to the brain. So it has a lot of these hormetic strategies are kind of what I call two first, they do things directly. And then there's the hormetic aspect as well. Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that. You know, it's one of the things that I learned when I did my yoga teacher training back 22 uh years ago now. um But yeah, and it's, you know,

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Breath holdings are so easy and so accessible. can, you know, I'm a big fan of them for helping people fall back asleep. You know, they can stimulate the vagus nerve, stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. But I forgot about the hormetic benefits. So this is, this is really great. It's a wonderful reminder. And some of the, there was a certain, you know, it's not just, it's not just holding like breathing in and holding your breath for as long as you can.

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There's also the exhalations. Yeah. And going to that point of discomfort. And you know, the more I do this work and the more that I work on myself, the more I realize that I am a lot healthier and happier, the easier it is for me to sit in discomfort or the more comfortable I am with, with discomfort. And my wife is a trauma informed mindfulness coach. And she talks about uh part of her, her tagline is making the uncomfortable meaningful.

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And it really is when we can kind of sit in those moments of discomfort and not flip out that really teaches our nervous system. Our nervous system begins to believe that we are safe, that we are loved, that we are enough, even in times of discomfort. And then I would add the hormetic part to that, that it's actually beneficial. So not only are we safe and nothing bad will happen, but we're actually promoting health.

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That's been a real game changer for me. I'm not a big fan of discomfort. So the way you said that is just like, yes, that is so true. Yeah. So yeah, the next time you, you know, you want to experiment with some of the breath holds, definitely go slow, you know, one at a time, you know, don't do multiple long holds, you know, to do one, you know, hold your breath in for as long as you can.

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and then release it slowly and just see how you feel. You might get a little bit lightheaded. So once again, you have to find your Goldilocks dose of how many, you know, how many breaths are you, how long are you gonna hold it for? And then how long are you gonna release it for? And then how often are you gonna do that? And then the same thing goes also for the exhalations.

34:27

Thanks. Cause that's when I'm still, I'm still working on that's a learning curve, learning edge for me. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a, there's a more advanced, um, breathing technique that I learned in, um, in my yoga teacher training. went to Kripalu in Western Massachusetts and they called this Agni Surah or breath of fire. And they said, if you do this every single day for the rest of your life, you'll be happy and healthy and everything will work out for you.

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But part of it is that you have like you exhale out fully, you hold the out breath, you do stomach pumps where you're pulling the energy up and then you breathe in and then you breathe out the nose with, you know, forceful exhalation. So there's a lot of different ways. If you want to go down this, this path, you can definitely find things on YouTube, um, that can, you know, that are all hormetic.

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in nature and they're moving the energy kind of like in the body. But like I said, start low, go slow and get comfortable with discomfort. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. This has been really wonderful. You know, in terms of, is there anything else you want to say about hormesis? We'll get that document from you and we can share that with our population. I love how practical this is. Anything else you want to add?

35:51

I would just say like big picture. Our ancestral life involved a lot of discomfort, right? Sometimes, well, usually at night, it was cold, it was hard, we didn't have central heating, we didn't have cushy beds, maybe someone had to keep guard all night so that predators didn't come in the area. Food was not always easily available. Sometimes people had to walk or run.

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you know, for long periods of time to get together and procure food. So I kind of think in our modern lifestyle, we've taken out the natural hormetic stressors that are actually our body evolved to need. And I think part of, you know, what I put in the handout and what we talked about today is encouraging people to tolerate discomfort and

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put some of those stressors back, like don't try to solve everything with our superhuman brains. Go, oh, I'm a little bit hungry. Okay, do I need to eat right this minute? No, I could wait half an hour or something. I'm tired. Okay, I could stop but maybe I could keep going a little bit not if you have PEM I'm talking now about healthy people push a little bit harder to increase my capacity. um

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being out in light, all of those things are part of our natural evolved way of being. And I think the more I'm learning about this area, the more I'm, you know, here in Ecuador, maybe you can see I'm kind of pretty hot and sweating. So this is my hormetic stress for the day. Lovely. And then you have a wonderful membership community, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about that and where people can learn more about that?

37:46

Sure, thank you. um So I call it Live with Dr. Stein. So I started my online, I retired three years ago, which means people cannot come in, work with me one-on-one, you know, or with a team the way they can with you. And I created some self-study courses and of course I got a lot of feedback, like we want more. So my online community, Live with Dr. Stein, I meet every other Thursday, live online. I have a different topic every week.

38:15

mostly in this space of neuroplasticity, mindset, hormesis, quantum biology, all of these things that most people can implement themselves. There's always lots of time for Q &A. There's usually pretty robust discussion. We've got like really experienced, know, thoughtful people in the community who ask great questions. And

38:42

And then I have monthly webinars and people in that community also get uh free access to the expert webinars. Nice. And to find it, if you go to my webpage, I think there's something right near the top of the page, live with Dr. Stein. But if you don't see it, because I got lots of other stuff going on, um you can click on my store and then right at the top is live groups. And it's right at the top of that drop down.

39:12

Excellent. Yeah. And we will drop that link in the show notes so that people can get access to that. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks so much for being with me today, Dr. Stein. It was really a pleasure. Safe travels to you and to those listening. If this was helpful for you, please like and subscribe and share with somebody you love. Be well. See you in the next episode. Bye bye. So if you have chronic fatigue,

39:39

whether it's from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome, go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest masterclass, where I go deep into our four step process that has helped thousands of others resolve their symptoms naturally. After you watch that video, if you're interested in seeing if we're a good fit to work together, you can then get on a free call with me. All right, thanks so much. I'll see you over there.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD, (also known as the EnergyMD) is a world-renowned Energy expert, best-selling author and professional speaker. 

He is the creator of the EnergyMD Method, the science-backed and clinically proven 4 step process to increase energy naturally. 

Through his best-selling book, podcast, and international online telehealth programs that can be accessed from everywhere, he has helped thousands of people around the world increase their energy and happiness. 

He has been featured on TV, podcasts, and summits, and when he’s not at the office, you can find him singing musicals, dancing hip-hop, and playing basketball with his family.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Evan H. Hirsch, MD, (also known as the EnergyMD) is a world-renowned Energy expert, best-selling author and professional speaker. He is the creator of the EnergyMD Method, the science-backed and clinically proven 4 step process to increase energy naturally. Through his best-selling book, podcast, and international online telehealth programs that can be accessed from everywhere, he has helped thousands of people around the world increase their energy and happiness. He has been featured on TV, podcasts, and summits, and when he’s not at the office, you can find him singing musicals, dancing hip-hop, and playing basketball with his family.

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