Because of chronic fatigue, you will always feel exhausted and will be unable to perform at your best. Learn how to overcome this inner battle by identifying and addressing its real root causes once and for all. Zach Gurick is joined by Dr. Evan Hirsch, who shares his mission to help people resolve their exhaustion and optimize their energy. He breaks down the five root causes of chronic fatigue and presents actionable steps to decrease exposure to such toxic elements. Dr. Evan also explains how to know if you have contracted the so-called Long COVID and the recommended lifestyle changes to make to optimize your deficiencies.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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Addressing The Root Causes Of Chronic Fatigue With Dr. Evan Hirsch
In this episode, we’re diving into a topic that affects far more people than most of us realize. Fatigue. It is not the, “I stayed up too late,” kind of fatigue, but the kind that quietly drains your energy, steals your focus, affects your relationships, and can even derail your purpose. Most people never realize that there is a path back to vibrancy.
Our guest has made that path his life’s mission. Dr. Evan Hirsch, known around the world as the EnergyMD, is a bestselling author, speaker, and one of the leading experts in resolving chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID. After his own five-year battle with chronic fatigue and watching his wife struggle with it as well, he uncovered what he calls the Toxic 5, which are heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction. These are the real root causes that keep people stuck in the cycle of exhaustion.
Dr. Evan Hirsch has spent years developing a clinically tested four-step method that has helped thousands of people across the globe reclaim their energy and get back to living their best lives. His EnergyMD program weaves together functional medicine, nervous system retraining, and deep root cause work. In this episode, he’s sharing that wisdom with us. If you’ve ever wondered why you’re tired, why sleep doesn’t fix it, or why you’ve tried everything but still don’t feel like yourself, then this conversation is for you. Let’s jump into my conversation with Dr. Evan Hirsch.
Evan, aka Dr. Hirsch, thank you so much for being with us. I’m excited to learn from you. I think that you have a unique expertise, experience, and wisdom to share with all of us. I’m excited to learn myself. I’m excited for our audience to get to learn from you as well. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Thanks so much for having me on.
Looking Back To Dr. Evan’s Career Journey
I’m always curious and fascinated by people’s stories and where their passions came from. You are a medical doctor, but you became a patient yourself. Can you walk us through your journey and what led you to where you are and the work that you’re doing?
Yeah. I graduated from medical school, and I went out to Western Washington in order to be able to start my family medicine residency program at the University of Washington. I met my wife, and we fell in love. Three months later, she couldn’t get out of bed with chronic fatigue. That lasted the better part of three years. That was hard on our relationship.
I felt disempowered and powerless because I was going through my residency, and I was asking my attendings and my other physicians, who were teaching me all about fatigue. I was trying to do research while I was working 80 hours a week to support her. There wasn’t much in conventional medicine, so she went and saw a naturopath. That was helpful, but she had to piece things together on her own in order to get mostly better in about three years.
Then, I graduated from residency. We got married and had a kid. I started my own practice. At that point, I was practicing functional medicine straight out of my residency. I got board-certified in holistic medicine during residency, so I was already on the path of looking for other options. I was practicing functional medicine, and I could help a lot of people, but my energy never recovered from residency. It started to get worse.
In 2010, I got chronic fatigue syndrome. I was napping under my desk every single day. I locked my door because I had so much shame around the fact that I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep hiring people. At that point, I had 4,000 square feet of office space, 10 employees, and a very successful functional medicine practice, and I had to keep hiring people to do my job because I couldn’t function well.
I would come home, and my wife, who’s coming out of her fatigue, is like, “Can you do the dishes?” I couldn’t, so that made it even harder on our relationship. I’m lying on the couch, and we’ve got this newborn child that I couldn’t help out with. It was a hard time for me. I felt lots of shame, lots of guilt, and lots of stress.
Finally, when I was napping underneath my desk for what felt like the thousandth day in a row, I was like, “F this. I know what I need to do. I need to find all of the causes, and I can fix this.” I had never prioritized my health. I was taking vitamins and minerals and replacing my deficiencies. I was gluten-free and dairy-free. I had a good diet and all that sort of stuff, and I still couldn’t get myself better. I was like, “There’s got to be other causes out there.”
I went on this journey of finding all the causes that I could potentially find. I got more into environmental medicine. I learned more about different kinds of infections and discovered the Toxic 5 that we’re going to talk about. One by one, I went through it, got rid of my toxins and infections, and got better. I wrote a book about it. That became my mission. My mess became my mission.
I’m on a mission to help a million people resolve their chronic fatigue and long COVID as well. We were uniquely positioned to help people with long COVID because it’s the same as chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a new player in the game. It has a couple of other nuances. The reality is that by addressing the Toxic 5, these people get better as well.
Thank you so much for sharing that. I love that, “My mess became my mission.” Now, you have this amazing, beautiful mission to serve and transform the lives of a million people. Some of those tuning in may be a part of that million, or all of us could be. I want to make a distinction here. Anyone who’s tuning in to this who has chronic fatigue or long COVID or suffers from those types of symptoms is going to benefit a lot from this, but all of us could optimize. All of us are swimming in toxins all the time. The Toxic 5 and things that you’ll talk about can help even those of us who aren’t suffering from some sort of fatigue or chronic fatigue. It can be optimized by eliminating these things, right?
Exactly. Energy is the other side of the fatigue coin, and it is a gamut. If you ask a room full of people who would like to have more energy, pretty much every hand would go up if they’re over the age of 30. We have a lot of stressors and a lot of reasons why we are more tired than we should be. As we talk throughout this, you don’t have to have significant fatigue in order to benefit from all the things we’re going to talk about.
Energy is the other side of the fatigue coin.
How long ago was it that you went through this transformation or this journey? How many years ago?
I had my chronic fatigue syndrome from 2010 to 2015, when I got over it. That’s how long I’ve been doing this work, working with people with chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID for the last couple of years.
Here we are, 10, almost 11 years later, you’re vibrant, full of energy, and in good health.
I feel incredibly blessed that I’ve been able to get to this point.
Toxic 5: The Real Root Causes Of Fatigue
That’s amazing. Congrats. Thank you for sharing that bit of your story. Maybe we could dive in. I’d love to learn about the Toxic 5 and the real root causes of fatigue. Can you walk us through those and how we can resolve those issues?
Absolutely. The Toxic 5 are a combination of heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction that are accumulated in our bodies over time. At some point in that process, in that accumulation, the body calls it quits. The body says, “I’m overwhelmed by all of these things, and I need to relax. I need to rest. I need to rejuvenate. I need a sabbatical. I need a break. I need to take a nap.”
A lot of people tuning in might be like, “I don’t think I have these toxins and infections,” but there is research to support that over 300 different chemicals are found in babies’ cord blood. Basically, the umbilical cord. We come out of the womb already with at least 300 different chemicals. That research was done long ago, so there’s even more now.
We start to accumulate throughout our lives. If you have silver or mercury fillings in your mouth, every time you bite down, you release mercury vapor, and you swallow it. When you’re consuming anything that comes out of our oceans, all of it has mercury in it. The smaller fish have less, but the bigger the fish, like the tuna, the swordfish, the bigger salmon, and the king salmon, the more mercury there is.
Lead gasoline is no longer a thing, but oftentimes, we can get lead from mom through the placenta because that gasoline used to be a thing in the past. Lead paint. If you’ve got a home, oftentimes, we paint over that lead paint. Those are some of the heavy metals. Any sort of exposure to firsthand smoking, whether you were smoking in the past, secondhand smoking, or somebody else was. In the ‘80s, with the windows closed and you had a parent or somebody smoking, that could build up cadmium in your system.
With the chemicals, we’re talking about pesticides and herbicides. We didn’t know about organic food back in the ‘80s, the ‘90s, and before. We have all these accumulations of glyphosate and Roundup. How often was somebody spraying around your house? All these things accumulate in our bodies over time. I can go more into the specifics if you’d like.
I don’t want to scare people, but the reality is that we have a lot of these toxins and infections in our bodies that end up putting another stressor on our bodies. We already have mental and emotional stressors with our jobs, our kids, running our lives, and our relationships, and then we have this other stressor, too. It’s a reminder that there is a big picture, and we do want to remove these. You can do them in a stepwise fashion and move forward one by one.
It does seem a little bit overwhelming at times to think about how all of this stuff is bombarding us in our water, our food, the air that we breathe, the rooms that we’re sitting in, our mattresses, and our laundry detergents. It’s like, “How do we begin to eliminate these things?” I’m glad that you have a step-by-step process that can help. Even if we eliminate some, it can still make a significant difference, or do we have to do it all the way there?
No, it’s the former. It’s about doing what you can at a rate that works for you. This can be a part-time job. Nobody wants another part-time job. Maybe on vacation, if that’s something that you want to do, have a plan. You can ask AI and be like, “I heard Evan Hirsch talk about the Toxic 5. Give me a plan for how I can remove these things from my life at a rate that works for me.”
The first step is to decrease ongoing exposure. You can look in your pantry. You can look at your chemical supplies. You can look at your water and get a water filter. I have all the things that I recommend for technologies and equipment on my Recommended page on my website. You can start to implement these things every month. It’s all about taking baby steps. Otherwise, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed.
If you have Google Tasks or some sort of task list that you can use, you can take that list from AI and stick it into that task list. Do it one by one, at a rate that works for you, so it’s not more stressful. You can address each one of those things. I tried to make it easy for you on that Recommended page. It has the air filter that is the most economical, which does the best job. It is so you don’t have to do your research. It’s about how you can make this easier.
How To Decrease Ongoing Exposure To Toxic 5
Thank you for the work to put that together. It can get expensive, too, as we start trying to only buy certain things or not buy certain things, and then adding these expenses as well. That’ll be extremely helpful to check out your Recommended page. I would love to have you walk us through in detail how we begin to decrease ongoing exposure from each of those Toxic 5. What are some of the steps that we could take?
We talked about heavy metals. We talked about chemicals to make people aware of some of those exposures. In terms of molds, unfortunately, over half of the buildings in the world have water damage in their history of the building’s health or the building’s life. Pretty much, if you’ve had a roof leak, a busted pipe, or a flood in the basement at any point in the history of a home, potentially, you can have mold in that home. Mold is a neurotoxin. It can cause brain fog. It’s a major reason why people end up getting long COVID or persistent symptoms after they get COVID or some sort of virus since 2020. It is important to identify and realize if mold is a potential issue.
In terms of infections, there are viruses, bacteria, yeast, parasites, spirochetes, and basically curved bacteria like Lyme disease, that people can acquire when you’ve had the immune system gets distracted by heavy metals, chemicals, and molds. The more of these toxins that build up in the body, unfortunately, the more likely you are to have infections. This is another major reason why people end up getting these persistent symptoms of COVID. Those are all the toxins and the infections.
There’s the nervous system component. This one’s probably the easiest to remedy. Pay attention to this. It takes the longest to do, but it doesn’t cost you anything. You can start today with a daily practice. This improves your quality of life long-term. I know everybody who’s tuning in to this doesn’t just want longevity. You don’t want your life to be longer. You want to have better quality. Much of that has to do with your mindset.
You do not just want your life to be longer. You want to have better quality of living as well, and it starts with your mindset.
When I talk about nervous system dysfunction, the other toxic form will cause nervous system damage. I’m also talking about trauma, whether it’s big T trauma, like having significant abuse, like physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse in our lives, or little T trauma, which is more minor trauma. That may be rejection of a peer group, which is something that I had, or being surrounded by imperfect humans and not getting my needs met. I love my parents. They’re imperfect humans. I love my siblings. They’re imperfect humans. We’re all trying to get our needs met and navigate this world.
Inevitably, we don’t get our needs met, and then we compensate in order to make sure that our relationships are stable. That ends up changing our physiology and our nervous system function. We are trying to get our needs met with our peers. We hurt people. Imperfect humans can cause pain to other people, and then they cause pain to other people. All those bullies at school were hurt. That’s why they were bullying other people.
We all have trauma. We all have nervous system dysfunction. We take people through a process of mindset, which is considered top-down support. We have a four-step mindset practice that we can get into. Then, there are some of the vagus nerve stimulation and nervous system regulation techniques, which are more bottom-up. It is changing the physiology of the body in order to change the nervous system. The top-down is mindset work to change the nervous system, and then there’s the bottom-up work, which is changing the body.
Those are at the core of this EnergyMD Method? Is that what you’re getting into?
The EnergyMD Method is a four-step process that I take people through to figure out what causes they have. We then replace deficiencies, which are things that are not in the body that are supposed to be there. Step three is opening up the exit pathways, which are the liver, the kidney, the lymph nodes, etc. We open up those pathways so that when we get into step four, which is to remove the Toxic 5, they have a place to go. That’s the EnergyMD Method four-step process. We’re focused on removing the Toxic 5, but we can flush that out as well.
Recommended Tests To Reduce Toxic Exposure
That’s the next level. Let’s stick with removing the Toxic 5. Are there tests that you do at the beginning to see how much of this I have or how much of that I have? Do I need to get a mold test in my home or those kinds of things? What kind of testing do you do at the beginning?
For the people that I work with who have long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome, it may be a little bit different. I’ll discuss the nuances for somebody who’s like, “I could optimize my energy, but I’m not at that point of having significant symptoms that are compromising the quality of my life.” We will talk about both things.
There are two tests that I recommend for people that are most important. One is a mold test to determine whether or not there is mold in their home. This is because it’s such a prevalent issue. It’s very hard to get people all the way better when they are living in a moldy environment. If you know that part of your history of symptoms is that you felt worse moving into a new place or starting a new job that you go into, potentially, there might be some mold in that place.
We want to do a test, which is called an EMMA test, an Environmental Mycotoxin and Moldiness Assessment. People can get that through my website in the laboratory page or the laboratory store. It’s basically looking at mold spores that are produced, and then also mycotoxins, which are toxins produced by molds. It’s like a Swiffer test or a dust test, where you’re taking a cloth, and you’re checking for dust in different parts of the house to determine whether or not there’s mold that’s present. That’s the first one.
The second test is a little bit more advanced. It’s looking at whether or not you have any hidden infections in your mouth. This is seeing a biologic dentist, getting a cone beam CT, and taking a look to see if you have what are called cavitations. If you’ve had a root canal or if you’ve had any teeth removed, like wisdom teeth removal, it’s possible to get a chronic infection in your jaw. Much like the mold, it’s very hard for me to get people all the way better if they have a chronic infection in the jaw. Those are like nails at the bottom of the feet that need to be removed. Those are big-picture toxins, sort of stuff.
There are some other laboratory tests that I like to look at, whether it’s a thyroid test, vitamin D, B12, and looking at some of the deficiencies. That’s some of those. For the people that I work with, we don’t do a lot of testing on the Toxic 5. We just treat. You can’t get to having long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome without having all of the heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction. We save a ton of time, a ton of money, and a ton of energy by moving through a process of addressing those.
I also want to make sure that I leave no stone unturned. I know that if we’re addressing 99% of all the potential causes, my program is going to be the last one that they need. For people who are tuning in to this and want to be thorough, you can also do this. You can go ahead and treat. Make sure you’re working with somebody who knows what they’re doing and that they’re able to address all these things. Detoxify at a rate that your body can tolerate so that you don’t feel worse. That’s an important part of this process.
For those who want to go one test at a time, a lot of these tests are imperfect, so you have to take that with a grain of salt. There are urine tests to look at mycotoxins or mold toxins, heavy metals, and chemicals in your body. The infections oftentimes are going to be done with what’s called the serology test, which looks at the immune system’s reaction to the infections, or a PCR test, which looks at the DNA of the infection. There can be some tests that you might want to consider if you don’t want to go ahead and treat all of these as part of a process.
That’s super helpful. Most of those are available, or at least you have links to some of those on your website on the labs page.
Correct. You can go to Shop, and then you go to Lab Tests. You’ll be able to find those.
How To Determine If You Have Long COVID
That’s super helpful. I want to shift gears and understand from your perspective, and help people understand, too. You mentioned before we started recording that 30% to 40 % of people who had COVID probably have long COVID or are still suffering from long COVID. How would someone know that that’s them? What kind of things should people be on the lookout for?
The stats are unfortunate. 30% to 40% of everybody who’s had COVID, which is most of the planet at this point in time, potentially have persistent symptoms of COVID. That means that if you have had a viral illness since 2020 and you have new or weird symptoms, it is likely that COVID is potentially playing a role, even if the COVID test was negative. The COVID testing is not great.
Everybody who has had COVID is potentially experiencing persistent symptoms.
Pretty much, if you had a viral illness since 2020, and you ended up with persistent symptoms. There are over 250 different symptoms that you could possibly get. It could be fatigue, exhaustion, or post-exertional malaise, where you exert yourself and feel worse. You can have body pain. You can have sleep issues. You can have brain fog. Cognitively, you’re not where you used to be.
Unfortunately, there was a study that showed that every time you get COVID, your IQ decreases by five points, which is scary to think about. There’s a loss of taste and smell. You get muscle cramps, body pain, rashes, and atrial fibrillation. Cancers have increased. Alzheimer’s has increased. There’s a whole bunch of symptoms and disease states that have increased since 2020 because of people’s exposure to COVID virus and spike protein. If you believe that’s you, then you want to pay attention to, “What can I do about this? How do I address long COVID?”
The actual definition is a viral illness since 2020 that has caused persistent symptoms that have lasted for longer than three months. For some people, those persistent symptoms happened right after they got the virus. You get the virus, the symptoms come, and then they don’t go away. For other people, the symptoms went away, and then they came back 3 or 6 months later. You get all sorts of weird symptoms that you don’t know what to do with, and they last for longer than three months.
As you said, almost everybody in the world has had COVID at least once. We all either have or know someone who’s probably suffering from long COVID because it’s 30% to 40% of people. If someone lost their sense of smell ever since COVID, that means they have long COVID.
Correct.
If that’s the case, they need to go through your program. What do you recommend to start? We’ve got to get to those root causes first. You would do a couple of these tests first.
For them, I would make sure that we’re leaving no stone unturned. We were going to address the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, and the nervous system dysfunction, the Toxic 5. What’s important to note is that the reason why 30% to 40% of people end up getting long COVID, and the other people don’t, is because of the Toxic 5. The Toxic 5 are the predisposing factors that cause the immune system to be off and left-field when you get the virus.
Interestingly enough, you are more likely to get long COVID when you have five mild symptoms. Basically, if you got a virus, but it was mild, like maybe a little bit of a runny nose, a little bit of a cough that only lasted for a day or so, and a little bit of a headache. You’re more likely to end up getting long COVID. That is because the virus or the spike protein is skirting around the immune system.
When you have a strong reaction to a virus, where you have fevers and chills, you’re in bed, and you feel like crap, the immune system is doing its job. It’s kicking the crap out of this virus, and it’s getting it out of your body. When you’re getting these mild symptoms, the immune system is seeing it, but it’s distracted by the Toxic 5 over in left field.
The COVID virus can come into the body, and it can take up residence. The reason why there are over 250 different symptoms that you can get is that it depends on where it takes up residence, which determines your symptoms. If it goes into the muscles, you can get muscle pain or muscle cramping. If it goes into the nerves, you can get numbness and tingling in your fingers and toes, brain fog, and cognitive issues. It’s important to understand that these Toxic 5 are predisposing factors and how they relate to the immune system.
Unfortunately, a lot of the treatments are like, “How do we address the immune system’s dysfunction?” They’re using immune system modulators, which is a nice idea, but it’s too downstream. What we want to look at is why the immune system is dysfunctional in the first place. That’s the Toxic 5 and the spike protein. A lot of people have probably seen providers who are like, “You’ve got long COVID. We’re going to address the spike protein. We’re going to give you ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, or a number of these other things that potentially can help.” Maybe that helps a little bit, but if it doesn’t get you to your goal, it’s because the Toxic 5 are overwhelming the system. You can’t just go after the spike protein.
Lifestyle Changes To Help Address And Optimize Deficiencies
That’s super helpful. For the people who are struggling with long COVID, it’s because of the Toxic 5. It all goes back to the Toxic 5. If we can get rid of those things and treat those things, then we’re going to be able to recover from long COVID or chronic fatigue or optimize our health by eliminating those things. Can we maybe go into the deficiencies a little bit? That’s step 2 of the 4-step EnergyMD Method there. Are you looking at blood biomarkers or doing regular blood work to determine what the deficiencies are and then supplementing or changing diets? What do you normally do to look for those?
Ninety percent of these causes can be determined by symptoms alone. I’ve been doing this work for a decade. When I started off, I was like every other functional medicine doctor. I did a lot of testing. I would test people every three months or so to see where they’re at. What I learned is what I learned in medical school, which is that 90% of a diagnosis is based on history and symptoms.
90% of a medical diagnosis is based on a person’s history and symptoms.
I can determine people’s hormones and mitochondrial health, which is found in every cell in the body and produces about 70% to 90% of our energy. Adrenals, thyroid, sex hormones, vitamins, and minerals. There are some, as I mentioned previously, like thyroid, vitamin D, B12, and iron. Those would be helpful in a blood lab, but lifestyle habits, like sleep, movement, food, water intake, and mindset. A lot of those deficiencies we can determine based on asking somebody questions and seeing what their symptoms are.
Is it possible to change those deficiencies mostly through changes in diet? Is it mostly supplementation or a combination of both?
It is a combination. For some people, you can get them to drink more water. Two liters a day of filtered water is wonderful. With people who are going through a detox, like in my program, we want three liters of water a day. Optimizing movement. A lot of people who have fatigue, we tell them that we want them to have their Goldilocks dose of movement. If you feel worse, you’re doing too much, but we want you doing something.
In terms of food, it’s more about what you’re not eating than what you are eating in many cases. Ideally, organic foods. You’re avoiding pesticides as much as you can, and then avoiding gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, and processed foods. I know you’ve had other people talk about how important that is with longevity and improving overall health.
I tell people, “You can eat whatever you want that doesn’t fit into those categories.” Mainly, you’re consuming protein, vegetables, and, ideally, maybe a little bit of grains. Gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, alcohol-free, and processed food-free is the goal. Depending on where your energy is and where your health conditions are at, determine how much you can play with that, how much you can fudge, and whether you react to those things or not. That’s food.
We talked about movement, water, and then sleep. Seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Pay attention to your sleep cycle. Do you feel better when you sleep for 6 hours, 7 hours, 7 and a half hours, 8 hours, 9 hours? Figure out the ideal amount of sleep that you have. Make sure that everything that you’re doing after dinner is preparing you for good sleep. Go to bed earlier than you think you should. When you’re yawning, you probably should have been in bed already. Make sure that your sleep environment is quality, dark, and cool. There are some nuances around that.
All of those things, if you can optimize those, and your symptoms go away, that’s wonderful. I consider that a level one problem. If you are not better at that point, then start to replace those deficiencies and optimize your adrenals, mitochondria, and thyroid. I call those the big three. It is going through the rest of those deficiencies and optimizing those as well with supplements. We introduce supplements one at a time as people are moving through this process, so that we can see exactly how they’re reacting to each one.
It is a synergy. Oftentimes, you don’t notice a difference until you get to a certain point in the process when you’ve replaced the deficiencies and removed a significant amount of the Toxic 5. You add in one thing at a time and replace those deficiencies. That’s a level two problem. If replacing the deficiencies with supplements ends up fixing your symptoms, that’s what I consider a level two problem.
If you’re still having your symptoms, that’s where people come to see me because they need to address the Toxic 5 at that point. You can see a functional medicine doc, an integrative medicine, or a naturopath, and they’re all going to do a pretty darn good job of replacing those deficiencies, the lifestyle habits, vitamins, minerals, and hormones. They can get 90% of the people they see better by doing that. The people that they can’t get better and that they’re not specialized in, it’s the Toxic 5.
They might dabble a little bit and be like, “Maybe I’ll order some heavy metals or whatever.” It’s like if you want to learn how to play piano. You go to see a piano teacher. You don’t ask your mechanic. You ask your mechanic if you want to fix your car. The same thing is true for any health condition you have. If you want to compress time and get better faster, you go to see somebody who specializes in your problem. That’s why people come to see me for long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s because they want to get better faster.
You’re doing that online. You’re accessible to anyone who’s tuning in to us, right?
Exactly. I operate as a health coach online so that I can practice across state lines and national lines. We have about 10% of people outside of the US. We have supplement stores in all different parts of the world, so that we can help people. Everything is done online through Zoom. We’ve got an online community. We have one-on-ones, group calls, and all the support that people need in order to be able to get better.
A Day In The Life Of Dr. Evan
I’m curious if you’re willing to share what a day in your life looks like. Both you and your wife have had chronic fatigue issues. Now, you’re the master of this and teaching, hopefully, a million people worldwide how to live this way. How is your home set up? What kinds of mattresses, sheets, laundry detergents, and things like that do you guys use? What does a day in your life look like in terms of protocols that you follow, supplement stacks, or things that you do to eliminate toxins, remove toxins, and stay away from those toxic thoughts?
That could be a five-hour lecture on its own, but I’ll do my best. We wake up in the morning. What kind of mattress do we have? It’s non-toxic. I’m not going to remember. I’ll have to let you know later. We try to make conscious decisions about every aspect of our lives. We have organic sheets. We have organic duvet covers, individual ones, because we traveled to Europe. They have his and hers, which is fun. We ended up getting those and having those shipped over here, which is nice. Those are non-toxic and organic.
When I wake up, I have an eye mask that I wear. I tape my mouth closed, so that I’m breathing out of my nose, which puts me more into my parasympathetic. I also wear earplugs. I look funny, but that’s what I have found to help me provide the greatest sleep environment. Sometimes, I set an alarm, but most of the time, I don’t. We do go to bed relatively early. We start getting ready for bed around 8:00 PM. We’re in bed somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00. Ideally, around 9:30. That seems to work best for my wife and me. We have a fan going. It’s a dark room. It’s cool.
I wake up and start my day. I start off by drinking a liter of water. Initially. We’ve got filtered water throughout the whole house. I use an Aquasana Rhino filter, which is a carbon-based filtration that’s the biggest bang for the buck for a whole-house water filter. I start off by drinking that water. Sometimes, I’ll put some sea salt in there to support my adrenals a little bit. I take some supplements initially to support adrenals, mitochondria, and some that stimulate acetylcholine, which is the parasympathetic nervous system’s main neurotransmitter.
Big picture, when you have health issues or when you’re stressed, you’re in your sympathetic nervous system. Its counterpart is the parasympathetic. We want to be in our parasympathetic as much as we can. This is when people say, “Take deep breaths. Relax. Enjoy life.” That’s all in your parasympathetic. The more we can be in there, the better. One of the ways we can do this is by taking things that increase acetylcholine, which is the main neurotransmitter for the parasympathetic nervous system. I do that.
When you have health issues, you have a sympathetic nervous system. You want to be in your parasympathetic state as much as you can.
I take some fibrolytic enzymes, which basically digest microclots in my body. I have a family history. Based on my labs, I am also at an increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke earlier because of these different markers and because of my family history. I take these fibrolytic enzymes that help to digest clots to decrease my chance of having a heart attack or stroke.
At that point, I’ll take a shower. I’ll do some dry skin brushing before I take my shower to increase my lymph flow. When I take a shower, the water’s all filtered because I’ve got the whole house water filtered. I sing in the shower. I hum in the shower. I’m a singer. I sing lots of musicals and stuff like that. Singing is my happy place. It’s nice to sing in the shower. Everybody sounds good in the shower. Humming is also good for toning the vagus nerve as part of nervous system retraining.
At the end of the shower, I turn it to cold. By turning it to cold, it’s like jumping into a cold plunge. I put it on the front of my body, the back of my body, and the top of my head for 30 seconds to 1 minute. What that does is that it increases mitochondria. It also increases my internal core body temperature. I do that, and then I come out, and then I get dressed enough to do my exercises.
I do my yoga. I don’t spend too much time doing it. I spent about 5 to 10 minutes. I do the yoga postures that are most important to me. Sun Salutation. There are different parts of my body that I hold tension in. I’m doing pigeon pose because I hold tension in my iliotibial band. I do some yoga postures. I’ll do some squats. I’ll do some pushups.
I did yoga teacher training in 2004 at Kripalu in Western Massachusetts. I learned some Pranayama, which is some yoga breathing. I do a practice called Agni Sara, where I’m expelling breath. I’m doing some breath pumps and expelling breath out the sinuses. That helps to wake me up. It’s a good nervous system retraining practice.
Then, I get my day started. I grab my water. Sometimes, I’ll have some cacao with some stevia in it, which is heart-opening. I like that. I like to have my water by me at my desk so that I can make sure that I’m getting my 2 and a half to 3 liters of water a day, and then I start my day. I’ve got a standing desk. I try to stand for part of it and try to sit for part of it. I try to move around as much as I can. I try to take breaks.
I work from home, so I have an hour in the morning and in the afternoon, where I support my daughter with her homework. I take a break at noon for lunch, and then I go for a walk with my wife around the block. She also works from home. Into the evening, we’re cooking healthy meals. We take turns cooking. We’re spending family time together.
Sometimes, we’re watching something. After dinner, you want everything to be focused on getting ready for bed and having a good sleep. If we’re watching something, it’s nothing that’s scary. It’s relatively relaxing. We’re spending quality time together, doing some journaling potentially, and then transitioning into going to sleep.
We’re flossing. I like to use a toothpaste called Dentalcidin, which comes from a company called Biocidin, which is an anti-microbial in the mouth. There’s a lot of research on the health of our oral cavity as being related to heart attack, heart disease, etc. If we can decrease or basically introduce good probiotics and decrease any pathogens in the mouth, that could be helpful. They have a product called Dentalcidin and then one called Dentalmin. I’ll utilize those.
I do use colloidal silver nasal spray first thing in the morning and then at night before bed because that’s been shown to decrease the chance of getting COVID and other viral illnesses. That’s a lot. There are other products that I use. In terms of shampoos, I use Dr. Bronner’s. I’m trying to be conscious of using non-toxic products throughout the day.
Knowing Your Own Fixable Fatigue Score
Thanks for walking us through that. I’m sure that people are going to want to dive into it a little bit more. That’s great. That’s super helpful. It’s the routine of a master of avoiding toxins. That’s fantastic. We’re running out of time. Where can people find you? How can we take the next steps if someone is struggling with long COVID or chronic fatigue or wants to optimize their energy? Obviously, we can come to your website, but can you tell us a little bit about the books that you’ve written, the website, the four-step EnergyMD Method, and how we can get access to all of those things?
The best next step would be to get somebody’s fixable fatigue score. I put together an assessment. You can go through it. It’s very short. You can see how likely your fatigue is to be fixable. This is at MyFatigueScore.com. That’ll direct you there. You can take that little assessment and get a score that you have. That’ll direct you to watching either my latest masterclass. If you want to learn more about the work that I do and get on a free call with me, you can do that as well, where I’ll do an assessment to see whether or not I can help you. There’s lots of other information on my website, but that’s probably the best next step for folks.
Thank you for putting that together. MyFatigueScore.com is simple enough. That’s a great next step. Before we go, I have one last question that came to my mind as you were talking there. How do you determine? Are there people that you can’t help?
Absolutely. It’s a combination of whether you have addressed the Toxic 5. If you haven’t, then it’s possible that I can help you. There are also certain personality characteristics that we’re looking for. I only want somebody to join my program when I know I can get them all the way. Are you willing to work on your mental and emotional health? If you’re not, then our program is not for you.
Are you willing to have the patients work through this process, which takes a while? I tell people it takes at least twelve months. It is hard for people to hear, but when they’ve been struggling for years, and they want to get to the finish line, address all of the Toxic 5, and leave no stone unturned, it makes a lot of sense. People have to be ready for that. I take them through an assessment to make sure we’re a good fit.
It’s more about the mindset and willingness than something physical.
Correct. You could have your issues for 30 years, or you could have them for 5. You can get better regardless of who you are.
This has been so enlightening and helpful. I’d love your mission to help a million people with their fatigue and optimize their energy. There are many of them out there. I hope that we’ll send more of them your way. They can go to MyFatigueScore.com to get connected and take the next step. Thank you so much for the amazing work you’re doing to transform people’s lives. You’ve done it for yourself and are living proof. Thank you for being a guide for the rest of us.
Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate you.
Have an amazing day. Thank you.
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What a fascinating conversation with Dr. Evan Hirsch, the EnergyMD. We covered the Toxic 5, the beginning stages of how to begin to avoid those things, and what to do if you’re struggling with long COVID or chronic fatigue. As he said, 30% to 40% of all people who’ve ever had COVID are struggling with long COVID. Many people around the world are struggling with fatigue and chronic fatigue. All of us want to optimize our energy. There’s something in there for everybody.
You can go to MyFatigueScore.com to take that free assessment and find out a little bit more there, or go to his website, EnergyMDMethod.com. There are all kinds of other resources and articles on there, as well as recommended products that he mentioned. Check that out for a little bit further reading and a deeper dive into research. Thanks so much for tuning in. We look forward to seeing you back here next time. Have a fantastic day.