Uncovering the Roots of Exhaustion—and How to Feel Like Yourself Again

23:02My issues with fatigue actually started with my first year in college. And I went from this like really bubbly and bright eyed and bushy tailed person that started college to all of a sudden sleeping through my exams. Right. So I slept through one of my final exams. As you can imagine, like being a Taipei person, I was like, oh, my gosh, why did I sleep through my exam? And I had laid down the day before at like 3 to 4 p.m. to just take a nap. And then following morning, my exam was supposed to start at 7 a.m. And I ran into the exam room at 8 a.m. because I had just woken up. And I was on this journey of like, you're always so tired.

23:45Why are you so lazy, right? I had to eventually like come up with accommodations to make up for my fatigue so I could study. And I kind of figured out during my second year in undergrad and by pharmacy school, I just really had a system where I just really learned how to be very efficient in studying and getting things done and very productive in the time with the little energy that I did have. But I did require like 12 hours of sleep a night. And I was just like, you know, I'd wake up tired. I'd be tired all day. And I had to drink like six cups of caffeine to get myself get like, you know, get my brain working and get myself through the day.

24:28Finally, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's after becoming a pharmacist. And I went to some conference and it was like, oh, you're not supposed to sleep 12 hours a night. And I was like, huh, is that interesting? Finally pursued additional testing. The Hashimoto's diagnosis came. I was like, this is amazing. finally going to get on some medications to help me. The medications helped a little bit. So I went from sleeping like 12 hours a night to 11 hours a night. I was grateful for that, right? That helped. And then also, but I still had the fatigue and I still had all these like digestive symptoms and acid reflux and IBS.

25:06And so I went through a process of really discovering how to get back my own health. And part of that was the gluten-free dairy-free diet that your books were life-changing for me. I was reading them when I was listening to audiobooks on my way to work and getting off of those foods helped me get rid of the acid reflux. But then I still had the brain fog and the fatigue and somebody brought up adrenal fatigue. And I was like, well, this, I Googled it and this was 10 plus years ago. I'm like, that doesn't exist. It's like, you know, clearly this, this reputable site that says it's not a thing. So I just kind of went on and looked for other things.

25:44And finally, the 15th person brought up adrenal fatigue. And I was like, oh, OK, well, maybe this is a thing because I have all the symptoms. And I tried the interventions and I got better. Holy cow, my brain works. I'm waking up early in the morning. I don't need 11 hours of sleep. I'm sleeping eight to nine hours waking up refreshed. I don't have that anxiety. I don't have the panic attacks. I'm not hangry anymore. I'm sleeping and it's a refreshing type of sleep. And so that was over 10 years ago and that was part of my healing journey where I was like, wow, I feel like myself again. Turns out I'm actually a calm and relaxed and happy person.

26:22I'm not like anxious and exhausted all the time, right? So the adrenal system, it has an adaptive response. So it doesn't just fail all at once or doesn't just kind of get dysfunctional at once. What are the stages that people go through? and how do people recognize that so they can actually avert the kind of final thing which I had which was chronic fatigue usually people start off with that heightened stress response where they'll release a lot of cortisol throughout the day and typically I think of like you know rock stars in a hotel room like you just have all this energy and you feel like you just drink a whole bunch of red bull and you're you can't sleep you're wired you're like on the go you're doing tons of things, everybody around you is too slow, not smart enough.

27:09Like they just don't get it. And so this is how people usually feel in the high cortisol state, very like irritable. And they're kind of jumpy, right? If time goes on long enough, then they'll get on what I call the cortisol roller coaster, where they might start off with high cortisol in the morning. So they kind of jump out of bed and they're ready to go. But then they'll have a dip in cortisol levels, maybe in the afternoon. Sometimes that's irritability. Sometimes that feels like anxiety. Sometimes that feels like getting really hungry or, you know, maybe they need to take a nap at 3 p.m. And then as the day goes on, they'll have another spike of cortisol where they can't sleep at night.

27:50They get to bed and they're like, oh, I have a million things to do. Like I need to do them. Um, if this goes on long enough, then they'll go into, um, more of the, more of the reversed cortisol curve where their total output of cortisol throughout the day will be lower. And most of the cortisol will be low early in the morning. So they'll have trouble waking up in the morning. There'll be like a person that was an early bird and a early riser will say, holy cow, I just woke up at nine 30. I like I used to wake up at 6 a.m. and go running. What is going on with me? And then throughout the day, they'll feel tired.

28:29But finally, in the evening, they will get that surge of energy where they'll be like, oh, well, I finally feel alive now and it's time to sleep. Right. And they'll have a hard time falling asleep. And then if this progresses long enough is where most of my clients that I've worked with end up with the chronic fatigue, with the Hashimoto's, with the autoimmune conditions, is they'll have flatlined adrenals. So these are people that are waking up tired and they're going to bed tired. And they're sleeping like I was, you know, 11, 12 hours a night in some cases and feeling unrefreshed. And they're like, well, people tell me to exercise, but I feel worse when I exercise.

29:11People tell me to fast, but if I fast, I feel awful. If I, you know, if I get more sleep, I just, you know, I'll try to sleep for 12 hours and I'm still tired. I sleep less and I'm still tired. And they are just, you know, they're really stuck in that state where their body, just every little stressor can be so overwhelming. Like even things, positive stressors can be too much for them. Yeah. I mean, I think that's true. You know, I think the, the, the sense of being exhausted in the morning is, it's really a big deal. It's a rush for the coffee, a sign of, of, you know, just being constantly irritated.

29:50It's like, it's like, think about, you know, if you haven't slept for, you know, a while, you become more cranky and irritable. It's not because you're a jerk. It's just because your nervous system is just fried. And so, you know, we see this. And the question is, symptomatically we can diagnose it, but are there tests that we can do to actually help figure out what's really going on? I love recommending tests. I do a lot of them myself. And if I had my way, I would have everybody do various functional medicine tests. The adrenal saliva test can be incredibly helpful for figuring out what your cortisol pattern looks like.

30:30Then there's also the Dutch profile, which goes a little bit deeper. It's a urine test and it can look at how your body metabolizes the various stress hormones and how much it's putting out. The tricky part is I've been recommending this for 10 years now. And then people will say, I went to my doctor and I asked my doctor to test my adrenals. They said I don't have Addison's. And I'm like, okay, well, you've got to go to a doctor that has integrative might, that is an integrative practitioner. And they're like, oh, well, I found one, but they're very expensive. And these tests I have to pay out of pocket for.

31:06So it's kind of another barrier to getting the help. And then they get the tests, they get them home. And then they're like, but it's been sitting on my shelf for three months. Right. And then, and then finally they do the test and they get the results, you know, a few weeks later, sometimes a couple of months. and it's like six months have gone by where, you know, I could have told you based on your symptoms that you are, you know, if you're chronically fatigued, there's a good chance that you're in that stress response. If you are, if you're in that fight or flight mode and you're feeling really irritable all throughout the day and you can't sleep, I'm pretty sure you have too much cortisol.

31:39So I do love tests and I recommend them, but I wanted to create a program and a protocol that was entirely based on symptoms and how to reverse and address the symptoms. so people could work with their doctors and get the tests that they need, or they can really be empowered to take charge of their own health. I don't know if you've had the same experience, too. Yes, I think it's so true because I think most of the time people walk in and they come with their symptoms, I can tell them what's going on, and then the test will confirm it. And I think we do see stages of the test where we'll see, for example, high cortisol at night and low in the morning, or high cortisol all day initially, then it kind of drops in the morning, and then it ends up being low all the time, kind of flat lining.

32:22And I think that, you know, that's something that is sort of an end stage process. And, you know, in terms of the sort of treatments and the diagnosis of it, you know, you sort of challenge some of the traditional view of this. You know, you say this is sort of, you know, doctors talk about this as a bogus diagnosis and dismiss it. And, you know, why do you think that is? I think, you know, unfortunately, I think it has to do a lot with the nomenclature where the term adrenal fatigue, it was initially coined where the person that and the brilliant people that coined the term and started educating the world about it, the initial understanding of the mechanism of action behind of what was going on was kind of like a mild Addison's or that the adrenals were not capable of producing cortisol, where we know it's more of an adaptive system, where the adrenals are capable of producing cortisol.

33:23They're just not releasing the cortisol at the right times throughout the day. And so that's what ends up, I think, kind of boggling a lot of people. And some practitioners argue about the terminology. So they'll say adrenal fatigue doesn't exist, but then you'll look at HPA axis dysfunction or hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction. And that is a real thing. And there's public literature around it. And same with like leaky gut 10 years ago, it was like, it doesn't exist. And then it's like, you go to PubMed and there's like intestinal permeability. So basically, you know, you just have to use the right terminology, I think for them to get it, but it's, it's, you could call it burnout.

34:02You can call it adrenal fatigue. I call it adrenal dysfunction because I feel like it rolls off the tongue a little bit easier than hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction. And it's a little bit more of an updated term to reflect the mechanism of what's going on as far as we understand it these days. Yeah, amazing. So in your book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, you talk about, you know, just chronic stress being a huge cause of this and how it creates that demand for high cortisol and adrenaline. But you talk about four different kinds of stress. I think this is important because it's not just psychological stress that can cause adrenal burnout, as it was for me, it was something else.

34:46I mean, it was physical stresses and some psychological stresses, but it was a combination of things. So I wondered for the audience, would you just sort of unpack the four types of chronic stress that can sabotage our adrenals? So it could be psychological stress. So you're going through graduate school and you are waking up three times, you know, throughout the week at 5 a.m. to go to your exams, that can be incredibly stressful. You have a really annoying boss who's just a jerk. That could be incredibly stressful. You have a lot of family drama. That's currently stressful. And people recognize these kinds of stressors.

35:23I know one of my books, somebody wrote a review that was like, I didn't need to do anything that she recommended. I just quit my, you know, job and my whole life got better. I didn't have, you know, autoimmunity anymore. And I was like, amazing. Like if you could recognize there's this like one thing in your life that's causing you stress and get rid of it, that can be a big game changer. But there's also like positive stressors. So you have a beautiful baby and that beautiful baby doesn't sleep, right? So I know that was a stressor for me five years ago when I got into adrenal dysfunction another time in my life.

35:57You got married and you moved across the country or you got a job promotion. These are positive things in your life, but they can be a bit overwhelming. Then there are kind of like hidden psychological stressors. So maybe you had a history of adverse childhood events, something you happen in your childhood that was traumatic. You probably don't even have a recollection of it, or maybe you do, but it has shifted your HPA axis to be more on high alert and kind of put you in that survival mode. And you've got that on your plate. So that could be something that people aren't necessarily aware of because it's not present day stress.

36:39Their present life might be perfectly peaceful. Then we think about like the physiological stressors. So I'm always like, what is in your life right now that could be causing your ancient genes to think that you're under stress. Let's like unpack modern life. If you are not sleeping a lot, if you are skipping meals, if you are exercising, over-exercising, right? If you're eating foods that are inflammatory to you, your caveman or cavewoman brain is gonna say, holy cow, we must be in a war and a famine or being chased by like a herd of bears or something because why on earth would you be eating stuff that's inflammatory?

37:23Why would you be starving yourself? You must be in a famine. So let me help you out from an evolutionary perspective and let me shift you into this adrenal fatigue state so that we can conserve your energy, we can conserve your metabolism. So these are some of the modern-day stressors and sleep deprivation is probably the fastest way to get into this adrenal dysfunction. Yeah. You know what's interesting is that people don't realize that actually their diet can be a stress. That actually sugar and starch when you eat it causes a flood of adrenaline and cortisol in your system. Even if it's oatmeal.

38:03David literally showed this. It was really shocking years ago in a study of obese kids. Where he gave them oatmeal or eggs for breakfast. And the kids who ate the oatmeal had high levels of cortisol and adrenaline. Because of the glycemic load of the oatmeal. Which we think is a healthy breakfast. and cereals even worse. And that drives, you know, higher levels of stress hormones. And that makes you hungrier, it makes you crave sugar, it causes high blood pressure, just all kinds of issues. So I think it's important to sort of highlight that. Oh, my gosh, absolutely. One of one of the key stressors is blood sugar imbalances.

38:39So just eating too many carbs and too much sugar and then not enough protein and fat, this is a really, really big stressor for many people and being micronutrient deficient. That's actually one of the key transformations as we focus on blood sugar balance. And people will say, I thought I had anxiety. Turns out my blood sugar just needed to get balanced. And I thought I had insomnia. I was waking up at 3 a.m. And I wasn't sleeping through the night. It turns out that it was actually my blood sugar. So this is such a really, really important stressor. And I thank you for bringing that up because this is a core part of transforming your adrenals and transforming your stress response is like the nutritional signals, right?

39:24Figuring out how to get yourself in balance. And then there's also like the hidden stressors where people might not realize them. They're not in their lifestyle. Their lifestyle might be like spot on and perfect, right? But they might have an H. pylori infection or they might have a toxic exposure, perhaps mold exposure or some other kind of toxin that could just be sending their system haywire and sending them into that survival mode. Even though they're like, I'm doing everything right. I'm doing all the things. I'm sleeping well. I'm like, I have a good marriage and I love my job. And all of a sudden I just feel terrible.

40:04And usually in that case, it could be a hidden source of inflammation in your body. Totally. And I think that what's interesting is when I had chronic fatigue, it was because I had mercury poisoning. And that screwed up my adrenals. So it was some external thing or Lyme disease or mold or whatever it is. It can be anything that drives inflammation, as you said, can cause adrenal dysfunction independent of what your stress levels are psychologically. So that's really, really important. And also rhythm. We talked about sleep, but having regular wake and sleep cycles is important. Eating at their same times is important.

40:43Your body is a biological clock. And there's a whole system of medicine called chronobiology, which is a science. I mean, how to, for example, treat cancer with certain chemo drugs given at certain times of day. And I think we kind of lose track of that. and we just think we can go kind of buffing about our body with all sorts of irregular schedules, and that is really not good for us. And it really requires sort of a discipline of a repeated state of circadian rhythm and of reducing the things that cause adrenal dysfunction to kind of help you fix that. The 20 to 30 percent of patients who come into their primary care doctor's office come in with the chief complaint of fatigue.

41:27I'm tired. I'm tired. And, you know, so it's a lot of us. It's a lot of people that we see, a lot of people we see here at the Ultra Wellness Center. One of their main reasons they want to come in is, I'm tired and I want to feel better. So I think functional medicine is really well, you know, I think it's great for whatever we're working on, but I think it works really well with fatigue. You know, in conventional medicine, you know, all of our training, we were really focused a lot on acute care medicine and not enough on chronic conditions. And definitely we're not often given, physicians aren't often given enough time to really delve into a topic like fatigue, which can be so complex.

42:08So one of the great things in functional medicine is we really focus on getting that timeline of the patient's history, which is so important because it really helps us determine what's going on with that patient. Why do they have that fatigue? And I think that's really critical. And one of the great things about functional medicine is we talk about their timeline, which just means, you know, their whole life story. You know, what was their life like as a child, even when they were a fetus? You know, what kind of illnesses did they have when they were younger? How did they feel when they were in their 20s?

42:41All of that really influences what's going on now and how we work with them when they come in saying, I have fatigue, I'm tired. You're right. I think this is something that I had the insight about decades ago with functional medicine, that when we were trained in medical school, we were trained to create an exclusive history. In other words, focus on the problem. If it doesn't seem like it's related to that problem, then you just ignore it. So if someone comes in with heartburn and they also have a rash and a headache, you go, well, you go to the headache doctor, you go to the skin doctor, I'm going to take care of your heartburn.

43:16And we don't connect the dots. Functional medicine is an inclusive history where we look at every possible symptom, every possible exposure, where you were born, when you were born, whether you were breastfed, whether you took antibiotics, whatever it is. and we try to connect the dots and see what you call the timeline of how this all leads to the person being sick in this moment. And when you do that, you often get to see the answer. And the patient goes, oh, yeah, when this happened, when I was 23, then I got, oh, yeah, I was in Thailand and I got sick and I never been the same. And so we begin to hear these stories and you begin to connect the dots.

43:55But when you go to a traditional doctor with fatigue, what do they do? Yeah, right. They get a battery of tests. Maybe they'll do a quick physical exam, do some of the basic tests. And then a lot of times those basic tests look normal. I mean, that's what patients come to me all the time with. Yeah, my tests were normal. And they said, maybe there's maybe had some depression. Right. And I don't blame. I don't blame. So Prozac is the treatment for depression. I mean, for fatigue, right? Maybe you've had a little depression. It's not that we're, you know, they don't blame physicians for that. they're given a very short amount of time to deal with this very complex symptom.

44:31You're basically anemic. You have low thyroid. Yeah. Or you are depressed or maybe you have cancer that we have to look for. But there's a short list. And if those things don't pan out, there's not a lot to offer. Yeah. Or they got you Ritalin. Right. Or maybe they give you Provigil. Right. You know. Right. There's drugs, but they often don't work. So, I mean, I think what's great with functional medicine is we really, as I talked about, take that really detailed timeline and history and look to connect the dots. And we're wondering, okay, what's going on, of course, with that person's lifestyle?

45:06You know, of course, we're paying attention to sleep and diet and exercise and stress. But we're also thinking about all the different systems in the body and how they're influencing somebody's energy level. So everything from, is that person dealing with a chronic infection, right? So chronic infections, we've got to think about and delve through. Like Lyme disease or a virus. Absolutely, right? Yeah. And they're not acute infections. They're these things that are lingering, smoldering things that don't make you acutely ill, but that are staying there, affecting your overall health. That can happen a lot of times, right?

45:41And sometimes acute infections turn into chronic infections. And sometimes people just have these smoldering infections in like the digestive system that can really wear their body down, you know, an overgrowth of yeast or some bacteria. and the body's just chronically having to fight that and it's exhausting. So your microbiome can make you tired if it's not healthy. Absolutely, if it's not healthy. We see that all the time, right? And then, of course, we're paying attention to the mitochondria, you know, that's the powerhouse of those cells that take your food and turn it into ATP or energy.

46:13And so there can be many reasons why those organelles aren't working well. And so we're thinking about that. Toxins. Sugar. Yes. infections um just genetic variations and i think that's another thing that's really important that we pay attention to is is you know do does this person have some variations in their in their genetics that are influencing their energy and their requirement for certain nutrients um we of course pay attention to hormones you know the thyroid hormone the adrenal hormones the female and male hormones yeah we want it we take it we really are looking at all aspects of somebody's health.

46:51And, and that I think is really helpful to determine, okay, what is the cause for this individual person? Yeah. Cause fatigue doesn't really mean a whole lot of them. I'm tired and it could be caused by so many things for me. It was mercury. Yes. It was mold. Uh, and then it was my gut. And then, you know, I, you know, I, I, like, I think I've, I've become an expert in fatigue because I had chronic fatigue syndrome, which is like the most extreme version of it, where you can barely drag yourself out of bed and barely function your brain fog. I mean, That's the extreme version of it. But it's really a continuum.

47:21And we can really drive people to a solution by being these medical detectives that look at all these variables that people really don't look at. It's so important to ask those questions, right, of how long has this been going on? Did it just start? Has it been your lifelong? You know, have you been life, your whole life been a little more tired than, you know, somebody, you know, other people that you know? You know, you're always feeling a little tired. or is it some acute change that happened? When did it happen? Are you tired all the time? Are you tired certain times of the day? Are you tired in certain locations, right?

47:54And not in others, when you think about things like toxins and molds, right? So there's so many interesting questions that we have to ask. And so one of the things, you know, at the Ultra Wellness Center that we do is, you know, we've got one of our PAs will take a really detailed history before you even see the doctor that helps us, right? So, you know, like 40 minutes or even more getting your whole story. Well, first you fill out a whole patient packet, which is long and extensive. Then the PA gets a long history from you. And then we get a lot of time with you as well. And all of that really helps to put together your individual story, which is really what's helpful.

48:35You see the whole patterns, right? You see all these patterns, you connect the dots, You see how things are linked up. And then you can decide to dive into different areas of testing, right? You say, well, you know, I had a tick bite when I was, you know, five years ago. And I've never been right since. Or, you know, like I love tuna fish. And I live in Martha's Vineyard, I like swordfish every other week. And, you know, you go, maybe it's mercury. Or, you know, you ask other questions related to their, for example, hormones. Well, you know, how's your libido and sex life? And if you're a guy, your testosterone goes down.

49:03That could be it. Or maybe your thyroid is not working. Or maybe, you know, we look at their nutritional status. because vitamin D can cause fatigue if you're low in vitamin D. So we kind of really do a comprehensive map based on your story, and that directs us to exactly what to test. And what are the kinds of things that you found are the common drivers of fatigue for patients? Oh, you know, there's so many, and we can go through a few cases, but nutritional deficiencies, huge. You'd think that we had adequate nutritional status, but so many of us don't, whether it's because of digestive issues and we're not absorbing well, or just inadequate intake, or we're dealing with some sort of chronic toxin exposure that's wearing down our body.

49:48So we're eating processed food or the soil is depleted. Oh my goodness. Right. I mean, the average apple you eat has been stored for a year. Yeah. Right. Go pick an apple from a tree and go eat one that's been in a warehouse for a very, very different experience. Yeah. So, I mean, of course we're seeing nutritional deficiencies. I see a lot of genetic variations that influence somebody's energy level. We see digestive issues that influence energy level. We see chronic infections and, of course, toxins. Heavy metals. Heavy metals. You know, and I think it's really great. Some patients even come in with their timeline, you know, and sometimes that's so helpful because they write down, you know, over the years when certain things happened in their health history.

50:27And then you can look at that and, again, you start to see some of these patterns. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so when, when I, uh, you know, remember when I had chronic fatigue, I, you know, went to doctor after doctor after doctor and they're like, well, there's nothing wrong or your testosterone or this is a little off or that's a little off, but nothing really. And yeah, you know, it takes some Prozac, you know, here's something for sleep. Right. You know, and it's just, it's so frustrating as a patient to go through this litany of doctors and not really getting an answer. And, you know, and I think that the fatigue you don't often treat directly because, you know, you, yeah, you can take ProVigil, which will sort of make you more awake or you can take Ritalin or Adderall, which is like a stimulant to help you have more energy.

51:08But those are sort of like beating a dead horse. You have to figure out what's really going on. And I think when I first sort of discovered what happened with me was the mercury was the thing that was driving it. And it created a whole cascade of problems. So it affected my gut. It affected my immune system. So I was critically inflamed. I started developing all these rashes and all these sores and all these things where my eyes would look like a raccoon if I ate certain foods, I'd get bloating. And I also developed real cognitive issues and real trouble thinking and focusing and fatigue. And I realized that these insults that happen affect all the different systems in your body.

51:49So when you're diagnosed with someone with fatigue, it's all the other symptoms and all the other pieces that gave you the clues about what's really going on for this person. So it's not like one treatment for fatigue. There's dozens and dozens, depending on what you find with that story. Right. And that mercury for you just depleted your glutathione stores and that then influenced all these other aspects of your health. Yeah. Right. Poisoned my mitochondria. Right. And, you know, it turned out I had a gene that affects my muscle and my energy cycle and my mitochondria. Yep. And at least to have an easier ability to be damaged by it, which is why I had this elevated thing called CPK, which is a muscle enzyme.

52:32And it was this abnormal test, but it wasn't really so severe that it was a disease, but it wasn't normal. And they're like, well, I don't know what's wrong. You know, like we can figure that out using the roadmap of functional medicine. I think it's so interesting how some people just need more support than others in certain areas. and you know we talked about this on another podcast about supplements and I think that's what the key is is when you figure out for that individual person where they need that extra support in a personalized way it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah I remember I was giving a lecture at Canyon Ranch one year and I'm like this guy's like you know I'm always tired I don't know what you do I said how many hours you sleep he's like six I'm like sleep eight that'll be$500, please.

53:16Sometimes it's just that simple, right? I was like sleep. So yeah, quality of sleep also matters. You know, sleep apnea is another cause is often very undiagnosed in patients. Often undiagnosed and something we have to look for. You know, we look for the signs of sleep apnea from, from somebody snoring, not remembering their dreams, their blood pressure being elevated. They're not having a heart gaining weight, right? Because it causes the weight gain. It causes you to gain weight around your belly, signs of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, that high fasting insulin, the high waist to hip ratio, you know, all those things make us think, okay, we got to think about sleep apnea.

53:53And then when we examine them, sometimes you can see clues on exam. And it's critical that we diagnose it and treat it because it makes a huge difference in not only how somebody feels, but their risk for all sorts of diseases, right? If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr.

54:23Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.

54:57If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible.

55:27Thanks so much again for listening.