Are You Sick & Tired Of Being Sick & Tired?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Thank you so much, Jenn. It is just so fun to be here with you. I love what you are doing, and I thank you for that beautiful introduction and heartfelt words that brought tears to my eyes. Thank you. Yes, you are right. I ended up getting an infection last summer, and it tipped it up to my chronic fatigue that I had 20 years ago and reactivated it. I went into a long COVID session that has been intense. 

Professionally, I have been working with people with chronic fatigue for a couple of decades, and it was part of my story. I had a complete night of the soul and came out of that by working with these tools and figuring out there are five root causes of chronic fatigue. As the pandemic had, I knew we were going to have a second pandemic in another realm of chronic fatigue. I did not know at the time that it was going to be called long-term COVID. I knew that was going to happen because.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I want to hear more about that. Why did you know that we were going to have a new epidemic of chronic fatigue?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Because there are five root causes of chronic fatigue, one of them is a chronic viral infection. Every time throughout history we have had an uptake in viral infections anywhere in the world, more people struggle with ongoing chronic fatigue afterward. It is not new. It is a known phenomenon. That can be because either that virus stays in the body or the stress of having that virus reactivates other infections, or that infection can trigger the body to go into a smoldering, low-grade infection place where it never has the opportunity to completely clear it. You have this ongoing chronic piece going on. Yes, go ahead.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is so obvious.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Right.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yet the world seems surprised.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Well, the magnitude is not.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Why is the world so surprised?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I know when it is so obvious. then, of course, one of the other root causes of chronic fatigue, and this relates to people who get cancer, is stress, and having a deep, just vibrating body stress. I am looking at the potential of death stress can trigger your vagus system, and your autonomic nervous system, and get you into this vicious cycle where it alters your immune function and can make you susceptible to staying in this fatigued or pain-ridden state. The pandemic was bringing up both. It just seemed, as you stand, a no-brainer that this was going to be the second pandemic. Sure, here it is. As I was going through the pandemic, I was doing great and doing lots of teaching and sharing this information with people. I wonder theoretically now: are the things that I have always done with chronic fatigue going to apply to this chronic long COVID or not? It seems they were; I got it. so I got to test myself.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It works in some strange ways, doesn’t it?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Oddly, it has been interesting to be in it and to see what it is in a granular way and the little nuances within it. Honestly, I feel it is here so that I can serve more people. That is how I see it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Our diagnoses are often our messages. 

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Absolutely. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You talked about chronic viral infections. You talked about stress. I was questioning our mortality. I wonder, and I do not know if you know the answer to this is yes or not. Are we going to see an uptick of cancer? Because cancer is so common, everyone makes cancer cells. Young, old, and everyone in between. The thing that keeps cancer at bay is our immune system. Our immune system took a huge hit during the pandemic. Huge. If you got it and recovered, those people were probably the best off. The ones who got it and recovered without incident. But the people who got it and got long COVID and are under this chronic stress, and therefore their immunity is driven down. 

Also, our immunity took a huge hit with the vaccines because we only learned to be more immunologically intelligent when we were challenged. The vaccine as much as it may have decreased the effects of the original alpha variant, the subsequent variants did not have much effect, and it was not educating our immune system. We came out of that immune-challenged. On top of it, people are sanitizing their world. Everyone’s walking around with spray and gel, and there is soap everywhere and antibacterial everywhere. We are in this sterile world where our immune system is getting dumber and dumber. Because it is a muscle, not anything else. If you do not use it, you lose it. What effect do you think that is going to have on the cancer world? Because it is our immune system that keeps breast cancer in check.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes, it is a broken immune system that leads to cancer. There is no doubt about it. When patients come to me, and this is going to alarm some of you listening to this. But when patients come to me and say, I have never been sick a day of my life, I think,

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Looking honest comes the Whopper.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I don’t know if you have had this in your clinic, but I have known clinically that I have had people who show up with advanced cancer say, I have never been sick a day in my life. I am. Well, that is part of the problem. Your immune system needs to exercise. It needs to have a cold every once in a while. Now, what happens when you have a chronic virus like, long COVID? People who go into a chronic fatigue state do not have their immune system in their system. They are stuck in the stage-two dominant type of state.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Explain to people what that is. Well, there is there is that is it. That is our language. But it is not everyone’s language.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

You are stuck in a state where your body has different types without going deep into immunology. Your body has different illogical states that it needs to be able to respond to. It is a teeter-teeter; you need to have some of your immune systems respond to allergies and things like that. The other part of your immune system needs to respond to infections and that thing. It is this teeter-totter that goes back and forth. People who are dealing with long-term chronic fatigue have all their immune systems stuck in what is called the state of stage 2, and they cannot appropriately mount a response to the infection that is going on.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

They are almost too tolerant.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

They are too tolerant. Exactly. What does that do to cancer? Honestly, I would put that back to you, because I believe you probably understand that better than I do. I would love to hear your answer, because, honestly, I have the same question. I was like, What is this going to do? 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. It is twofold there. When we are in that Th2 stage, we are too tolerant. We should let things go. We should be responding, but we are not. That is, for lack of a better word, an immunocompromised state. That is an immunosuppressed state. There is going to be allowance for the expansion of a cancer population if you are in one of its Th2 dominant states. That is one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that we are just not mounting enough response because our immune systems are exhausted. Because when you are in that sympathetic fight or flight state for too long, when you have been on high alert for too long, think about an army that is fighting a war and they are on guard.

If they are on guard for one night, okay, they can get through it the second night. They are not doing so well. By the third night, your army is asleep. You just cannot be on guard constantly. That is what happening. We are constantly on guard because of the environment that we are living in and because that was a tremendously stressful time. These people have something that they do not know and do not understand, which is the basis of their fear. That is the basis of the sympathetic drive. Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear there is. I talked about it in the context of when the Jews were slaves in Egypt and had the opportunity to leave. They are freed by Pharaoh. Moses brings them out of the 3 million Jews. Do you know how many left?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

No, I do not.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

20 percent. 

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Wow!

Jennifer Simmons, MD

20% of Jews stayed in Egypt under deplorable conditions, and slavery because of the fear of the unknown was so much greater than staying, the devil may know. That is one of the major reasons why the virus, of course, millions of people died. I am not discounting that. We can talk about the fact that millions of people who would have died of heart disease died of covid. It is confusing to me whether or not all those diagnoses and assignments of cause of death are correct. But that aside, millions of people died. I do not want to diminish that. But the effect of the fear of not knowing what it is or what is going to happen—I think that ripple effect is tremendous.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Absolutely. It was a huge time on the planet, and the whole planet experienced it at the same time. I think the other piece that adds extreme stress is not being able to have any effect or control over it, which brings us back to the cancer diagnosis because I think that is what a lot of people feel when they get that cancer diagnosis: that, I have no power over this. There is nothing I can do. This thing has come into my body, and it may end my life or severely alter the dreams and visions that I had for who I am and what my life is going to contain. That gets halted when you get that diagnosis. It is that same sense of powerlessness that can be very challenging to deal with, and that is where I want to step in. I think when I think what I love about you, Jenn, is that you are in the same place I am, which is, let us step in, let us accept our feelings, and process our feelings because we need to process our anger, our fear, and all of that stuff. Then let us step into the power that we do have. What is it that we can do to impact the health of this thing that we are walking around in this lifetime? There is so much that we can do every single day that impacts how our immune system functions, how we can detoxify the toxicity in the world, and how we can set ourselves up for success no matter what is facing us at this time. If you have a cancer diagnosis, which I truly believe is just any other intense diagnosis, this can be an opportunity for you to, in a sense, make a wake-up call. It is, wow, what do I want to do with my life, what do I want to do with my health, and how much am I willing to own this? It can be scary at times to change how you live just because of that story that you told. It is easier to be in the uncomfortable box than it is to go out and try something else. But man, it is worth it to get out there and live life differently.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. To have the opportunity to live life differently. Because, without question, change is scary. The truth is that people do not change until the fear of staying the same.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Is worse than the fear of change. That is what it comes down to: staying where you are has to become utterly unacceptable to walk into the unknown.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Absolutely. Your back is against the wall. That can be the gift of challenging health situations because it can get you to be willing to make that change and to have the reason to make that change.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, absolutely. Okay. We talked about five root causes of chronic fatigue, and we got to one, which is a chronic viral infection. Two; which is stress. Let us have the other three. 

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes. Two are limbic dysfunction, which alters the vagal tone in your limbic brain, which is a little bit of a deeper issue than just stress. The third one is what I call the gateway cause, which is that the hormone triangle is off—your hypothalamic pituitary access, your adrenals, your thyroid, your ovaries—that whole system that needs to work and symphony and harmony together is off.  

Usually, the hypothalamic-pituitary axis is what we are supposed to call it. It is known as adrenal fatigue, or, easier to say, adrenal fatigue, and that is the one that so many of us experience over and over and over again as having that system out of whack. I call it the gateway root cause because a lot of us are running on the Stress Express and pushing work. We are working, and we have kids. We have some of us with aging parents. We are going all the time, juggling lots of balls, and hoping we do not drop one, as we usually do.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Undoubtedly.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

This one can throw off the system. It can begin to throw off that immune system from functioning normally. I think that is often the case when we look back to see why this cancer diagnosis was made. Maybe you were at higher risk of getting this cancer diagnosis, or why did you get chronic fatigue? This is often one of the gateway pieces. That is the key one. The other one is looking at toxicity. Too many toxins; metals and mycotoxins from mold exposure that maybe you had when you lived in that college dormitory with the black mold on the walls. That was me. Maybe it wasn’t you, but.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is so ubiquitous. Mold, truly, is everywhere. You make an excellent point, which is that it could have been years ago. Because once mold comes in, 25% of us have an HLA haplotype-a, a genetic predisposition that we do not code for the enzymes to break down mold. I know that I am in that 25%, and I can walk into any place anywhere and immediately tell you if there is mold there. Because my head is exploding. It is instantaneous. For those people, I am putting myself in those people. I am not it; it is not accusatory in any way, shape, or form. You have to be super hyper-vigilant about your environment, checking and doing an ERMI test to check it. You have to make sure that it is not coming in, then undergo detoxification procedures and filter your air. Unfortunately, it is an active process. You talked about doing some of the limbic work because it does affect your limbic system. Many people who have mold illnesses get told that it is in their heads.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I know. They are making it up because, 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Well, it kind of is. It is affecting their limbic system. It is affecting their autonomic system. It kind of is, it is in their heads, but it is not imaginary.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Right. They did not make it up.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

They did not make it up.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

It is a physiological response.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. 

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes. it is physiological. Yes, it is in your head, but it is physiological. That is a huge one. That one is a lot. A lot of it is the awareness that is rising around the mold issue, which is great, but that is very common. I am also in that group, and that is a huge part of why I was at a higher risk of getting long-term COVID once I got the infection, for sure.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. There are just a few people who cannot mount an adequate response to a lot of toxins.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

That is the same thing that we are talking about, but we just cannot. Yes. then and then the first root cause is mitochondrial dysfunction, and all of these root causes can interact with each other. I find that when I am working with people who have chronic fatigue or long COVID, they have one, two, or maybe even all five of them. It depends on how much work they have already done or how sick they are as to which one ends. The important thing is to figure out which root cause is impacting your health.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Before you go on, you and I know what mitochondrial dysfunction is, but I do not know if that is a very well-accepted or understood term. I know that it is a long explanation, but can you try to explain it? I know you are very good at talking to people and helping them understand what is happening. Can you break down what mitochondria are, what they do, and what this mitochondrial dysfunction is that you are referring to?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Mitochondria are so cool; I love them. They are these little, tiny things inside your cells. Let me back up this way. You have a body inside your body. You have organs—your liver, your heart, and your brain. Inside each one of these organs, you have a cell. Maybe you remember back in high school biology looking at the cells inside the cell. Inside these are things called organelles, which are little, tiny pieces inside the cell that make the cell function. One of those things that is inside that cell is something called the mitochondria. Mitochondria are literally what create energy in your body. They create ATP so that you have the energy to move your body. You have heard that you can go 10 days without food. Was it three days without water? You can go.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You can go 40 days without food, I am pretty sure. Two maybe, three days without water.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes. I always have another story that I could tell you about that time around those numbers, they depend. What is going on with you for sure?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

But you cannot live if all of your mitochondria go away; you are only going to live for four seconds. When you look at those comic books where people come in with poison and everybody instantly dies, that is poison. That is poisoning the mitochondria. You have to have your mitochondria to live; the organs that need more energy—your heart, your brain, and your liver—have more mitochondria in their cells than other cells do. The mitochondria are amazing because they are always adapting to what is going on inside your body. When you start working out more and start stressing your muscles in a good way and getting good stress, or if you do intermittent fasting and get good stress, your body adapts to that and cleans up mitochondria that are not working, gets rid of them, and builds up new mitochondria that communicate with each other to support your system. But these amazing, beautiful things are also super delicate and very vulnerable to all kinds of damage that can come in from our environment. They have two different layers in them, and they have this inner membrane that has to get nutrients back and forth. Unfortunately, that pathway gets easily blocked by metals such as lead, mercury, and thallium, and things like this can go in and block that mitochondrial function and make it so the mitochondria do not work as well.

Some people are born with a genetic defect, so their mitochondria may not work as well. That is not that common. But a lot of us have mitochondrial dysfunction from toxins, from stress, and also from chronic viruses. Viruses can go into the mitochondria and alter the sugar production, and the energy production in there, and take the energy for themselves and hide out there and alter which is another reason people feel so tired when they have a chronic virus. When we start talking about cancer and the chronic fatigue that comes post-cancer for people who have done chemotherapy, those chemotherapy agents are destroying the mitochondria. We’ve got study after study after study showing how the mitochondria are. They cannot do energy production properly. They cannot process sugar properly. They are malformed. They cannot just figure out if they are so sick that they should die or if they should hang out. You have got a lot of broken, garbage, junk stuff in your cells, which is a lot of why people feel exhausted post-chemo.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Absolutely. Not only the fatigue, because the fatigue is very real now. That is why fatigue is associated with chemotherapy. But think about the effects on the brain. The brain is such a mitochondrial-rich organ. I do not know anyone who has gotten through chemotherapy without brain fog.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes, exactly.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Why?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes, exactly. It is the same reason why we have so much brain fog with long COVID, and all of that is the same process that is happening inside the brain where you have mitochondrial dysfunction happening in the brain. You also end up getting this chronic inflammatory process in the brain. The brain, unlike when you sprain your ankle, has a natural inflammatory cycle.

It is a 72-hour inflammatory cycle where it gets worse and then starts to come down naturally unless you re-injure it. Once the brain is inflamed and gets inflamed easily from these toxic insults, infections, or hitting your head, it has a hard time stopping that inflammatory process, and you end up having the immune system start to eat its neurons. The immune system in the brain starts to eat the neurons, which does not help the brain fog.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, it does not. That is why people with head injuries take so long to recover because they are fighting against the body, which is trying to protect itself. That is what happens. It does not want the damaged tissue to hang around. Exactly. But that is why it takes so long to heal. Which is not to say that you cannot. You and I see stories of healing and regeneration all the time. At times, you have to be patient.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes. It does take time. I want to say that there are many things that we are capable of doing. We are finding that a lot of the wisdom that comes from practitioners who have been treating traumatic brain injuries in functional medicine and naturopathic approach applies well to people who are struggling with brain fog for other reasons, such as chemotherapy or chronic infection, and that those same therapies work. Because you can use things like turmeric to help bring down the inflammation. The tumor oil helps grow new neurons together. You can use essential frankincense, which decreases inflammation. You can use progesterone as long as it is in an oil base, male or female, and that can be used as a way of decreasing inflammation in the brain.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Sorry, I had to go to mute because my dogs are barking crazy. I do not want to hear them now.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I could not hear them at all.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Well, that is good to know. I will not tell them so. I love talking about these solutions. What we are talking about are things that improve mitochondrial health. Even though people do not think of these things as the same on a cellular level, on a molecular level, the process is the same. We are talking about a chronic inflammatory state that is caused by either trauma or exposure to toxins, metals, plastics, viruses, yeast, mold, and all of these things. Or, it could be trauma stress, acute stress from the death of a family member, or chronic stress from having to care for a family member as a caregiver. All of these things are just contributing to this low-lying, inflammatory state, which, when it goes on for long enough, hits the point of no return. I know that is where you were last year, so I would love it. I know that people do not think about breast cancer and chronic fatigue being the same thing, but they, on a cellular level, look very similar. They do look for mitochondrial dysfunction.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes, they do look like mitochondrial dysfunction. I was just reading something the other day where somebody said cancer does not occur in a vacuum. I say chronic fatigue does not occur in a vacuum either.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I appreciate you bringing this point together where they are the same on a cellular level. I also think that I want to call out to those of you out there who are dealing with cancer and may be going into chemotherapy or have been dealing with chemotherapy, or if you are a practitioner listening to this, to pay attention to what it is that you are feeling in terms of your energy, or if you are your practitioner, listen to your patients when they are talking about being tired. Do not just dismiss their fatigue as just post-cancer fatigue. There is nothing we can do about it except wait for time. My question is, when does cancer-related fatigue become chronic fatigue? When is that? 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Well, what you are talking about is chemotherapy-related fatigue or radiation, because radiation just creates free radicals. That is the same thing. But it does not happen often with breast cancer. But there is such a thing as cancer-related fatigue, and it is not due to treatment. Many times, it is induced by people with early cancers. We treat them, and then we induce cancer-related fatigue. But if cancer is advanced or causes cancer-related fatigue, that is due to the cancer, and that is because the cancer or what caused the cancer is not doing it. Cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment. It is whatever induced the cancer that is causing mitochondrial damage. That is cancer-related fatigue. You and I both know that the answer is addressing the costs.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Exactly.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Can you start to talk about how you can reverse this mitochondrial damage and mitochondrial fatigue? How does one go about addressing that?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

The first thing you need to look at is, if you need to figure out if you can figure out what is going on, what is the cause, what is it? Is it mold mycotoxins? Do you have that in your environment? You need to get that out of your environment. It is very hard to heal your mitochondria if you are still in an environment that you are reacting to. Same thing if you have metals; if you have mercury fillings in your mouth or other things where you are getting a constant flow of mercury, it is very hard for the mitochondria to completely heal if they are constantly getting a flow of this. Doing and going and working with somebody who can help you uncover what impact your body is having from these toxic influences is important once you do the best you can with that. We just, frankly, live in a toxic world, and not in a way that I do not want to say that in a way to make people scared, but more of it just is. What can we do every single day? Well, the body knows how to detoxify if it is supported. I believe in supporting what is called the arteries, which are all the organs of elimination; your stool, your urine, your skin, your lungs—all these are the ways that we get rid of toxins every single day. Just bringing in a ritual every single day to just detoxify.

Then, one of the powerful things about this is that you are doing something every single day. That sense of powerlessness begins to go away when you are taking proactive steps every single day that support your body. Make sure you are eating vegetables that help your liver detoxify, eating brassica vegetables to help your liver pathways, and eating a lot of different rainbows of fruits and vegetables every single day. Making sure you have enough fiber means that you are eliminating your bowels so that your toxins and excess hormones are getting out of your body. I like to do dry skin brushing before I go to bed because it moves my lymphatic system and helps my body detoxify. I drink a ton of purified water to get things and toxins flushed out. There is a solution to pollution: dilution is enhanced.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Those are the basics. As a surgeon, it is always said before, that in every case, the solution to pollution is dilution.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Right.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Irrigate, irrigate, irrigate.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

These are just basic things that I honestly think every single person on the planet should be doing every single day just to bring their level up and help things detoxify. When you start talking about mitochondria, the mitochondria need certain nutrients for them to function well. A lot of these are antioxidants, things like lipoic acid, resveratrol, and CoQ10. These are necessary for the mitochondria to function. You also need B vitamins for them to function, and you can support your mitochondria with people who are dealing with fatigue. This is something that I needed to do. I needed to boost my mitochondria with some supplements such as NMN and NAD and things like that to give it a jumpstart so that it would have the energy to start cleaning out and functioning more normally as well.

I love it if you are curious if your mitochondria are impacted. I often have my patients do what I call a mitochondrial challenge for a week, which is where they take five grams of D ribose, which is the sugar that mitochondria need for energy, take five grams of it three times a day for a week, along with a few of the other supplements I talked about a little bit of CoQ10, some lipoic acid, and some resveratrol, sometimes you can get that all-in-one supplement and see how it feels.

If your mitochondria are dysfunctional. For some people, it is a miracle. It feels like all of a sudden they have energy, and they will come back for that derived post at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon in the clinic, saying, I need more of this before you shut down over the weekend. For people, if it does not work. It may mean that your mitochondria are too gummed up and cannot receive the nutrients, which is why what I do with my patients at that time is always run a heavy metal test next.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

When I am taking vigorous notes, I want to know what your stance is on fasting and where fasting fits into detoxification.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes, I think fasting can be a great way to get the mitochondria to start normalizing their function. It is what is called good stress in the sense of the body. It sets off this stress signal. Oh wow, there is no food. We need to clean up our act to become more efficient, and we need to get rid of the mitochondria that are not working so well. We need to break them down. We need to bring up new ones. It can be a very healthy stress, and I think it is awesome for the mitochondria if and only if the person’s body is ready for that stress. A lot of people I work with, and a lot of you out there listening to this are not ready to do intermittent fasting because that whole stress response, that hypoxia long pituitary axis adrenal fatigue piece, yours is trashed. If yours is trashed and then you try to intermittently fast, your body cannot handle that stress.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

How do you know if you are ready?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

To know if you are ready, that is a good question. You can experiment and see how it feels. You can do a 12-hour fast and see how that feels. If you are not crashing, if you are not getting super hungry, if you are not getting emotional, if your energy is not crashing, and if you still feel pretty good, then you can experiment with extending a bit.

Yes. I honestly find that with women, especially, you may not be the same every day and every week, and you certainly are not the same before your period. I do not think women should fast before or during their menses; their body, progesterone, and estrogen are stress buffers. They are great hormones to help buffer the stress, and they drop before your menses. It is not a good time to put yourself under extra stress.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is so interesting. I do not know if you read the book Fast Like A Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz, but she talks exactly about this: there are times in your cycle when you should not be fasting. where your nutrient needs are different. It astounds me that we are not universally talking about this, but we are not universally talking about a lot of things that are very clear and even somewhat obvious in the literature, such as operating during certain times of the month, not wanting to operate during a growth phase, and then exactly and yet there is no thought put into the cyclic timing of surgery.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes. I had an intense personal experience, not with surgery but with my menstrual cycle, when I was dealing with chronic fatigue years ago. I was well enough to go back and visit my relatives in Britain. I am one of those geeky people who buy Scientific American before I fly. I bought Scientific American at the airport, have you ever done that?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

No.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I bought Scientific American. I was on the plane. I did not read it. I flew. I had just gotten my period. No, it is premenstrual. I got to where my in-laws lived and went into a severe, deep depression. I could not believe how depressed I was. It freaked me out. I remember sitting in my room and I happened to pull that Scientific American, and there happened to be an article in that magazine about women’s menstrual cycles and mood and how you were more susceptible if you had stress before your period to depression and mood stuff. I know that flying internationally, and PMS threw me into the cycle and ever. I want to give my advice to my patients who are dealing with any health issue: book your long-term flights when you are ovulating, not when you are not. It means you can schedule your life to support your body. If your body does not have all the bandwidth you need yet.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, well, and depending on how long you are traveling, you might want to wait until your menses start before you fly back. It is so funny that you say that because I have a dear friend who rented a house in Italy for all of us to celebrate her 50th birthday, and she is several years older than I am. I was still menstruating at the time, and I am rarely depressed. We got on the plane, and I was fine.  We landed in Italy, and someone took the shades down, and I felt like crying the entire week. I was sleeping through everything. It was crazy. I did not realize it until years later, because that was the time when I was deep into traditional medicine and I was not thinking about things like this at all. I did not realize until years later that this was what had happened to me on that trip.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

That is interesting. That is exactly my experience, too. It is just, what is this? To fly, you think about that X that triangle is that has to work together. If you are blowing out your circadian rhythm because you are flying halfway around the world, you lose a night’s sleep. Your body cannot handle that at the same time.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I am glad you brought up the circadian rhythm because we are beings that are very tied to the rhythm of the sun. When we think about the whole HPA axis and hormone balance, the best and easiest way to disturb your hormonal balance is to not abide by the circadian rhythm. That is why we see so much disease in people who are night workers and shift workers, I am not picking on them at all, but I am going to go on a limb and make the bold statement that it is nearly impossible to maintain your health while you are working shift work at night. It is just that our bodies are designed to be awake during the day and sleep at night.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I agree. It is very challenging. I would say that as challenging as it is to have your schedule blown off, I would also say that working with you to get back on a good schedule is one of the most powerful ways we can impact our health, especially if your adrenal system is off, your circadian rhythm is off, and if you are feeling tired or stressed out, the number one easiest thing you can do is just get up at about the same time every morning, go to bed at about the same time every morning, eat at about the same amount every day, and get exercise about summit time every day.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, we are creatures of habit, and we need to respect that. Okay, so let us sum up what we talked about today because it was so much and so good, but where we started is gold. There are five root causes of chronic disease. There are chronic viral infections. There is stress but stress is the way that you are questioning your mortality and it has a significant sympathetic drive and impact, and it alters your immune function. It is not a little stressor. It is a big stressor that is altering your immune system.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Life-threatening. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. then it is a gateway root cause. things that are driving what we call adrenal fatigue—dysfunction of the HPA axis that results in hormone imbalance. At the end of the day, that is what we are talking about. We are talking about the symphony, which is beautiful when it is working together, and when that symphony is off, it can be quite disturbing. That is where we are. We are exposed to too many toxins, molds, metals, plastics, all the hormone disruptors, and all the endocrine disruptors. I do want to say that there are lots of things that concern us as toxins that we do not necessarily think of as toxins. Foods. Processed foods can be toxic. Franken foods. Exactly. 

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I love that term. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

My favorite. Relationships can be toxic.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

If you are working a job with a toxic boss, a toxic partner, or a toxic coworker, and you are doing that day in and day out, believe me, that is having a significant effect on your health.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Can I also say that you can have a toxic relationship with yourself? That is the primary relationship to work on. I invite you, if you feel you deal with negative self-talk if you do not feel you can look inside that, look at the mirror, and feel you can say, I love you to that person you see in the mirror, to reach out and get some support and help, because that is your primary relationship, and how you vibrate that energy inside yourself is going to impact every single one of your cells and it is going to impact everything else in your life. That is your number-one relationship deal.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, words matter, and the way that you talk to yourself matters, and it is going to affect who and how you are. Then, finally, we talked about mitochondrial dysfunction. In that vein, we all have so much more power than we think. A cancer diagnosis does not have to be a punishment. Instead, it can be an opportunity. As scary as it is to change, it is so utterly worth it. When we talk about chronic fatigue, other chronic diseases, and breast cancer, we talk about them in the same sentence. We do so because it is the same thing at the root of all of this. All these dysfunctions and all these inflammation-generating things are essentially the same. It is so important to help uncover your why. You are asking that question, to take a deep breath, and to take a look because you know that your why is there, and at the same time, you do know how to heal. Your body knows how to heal. Sometimes we need to give it what it needs, and sometimes we need to take away what it does not need.

There are so many things that you can do to support your body, to support your detoxification systems, and to just do something every day. I had a great conversation with Anika Baca, who was talking about how there are so many things to do. Your to-do list seems to be infinite and goes on forever. She said; All you have to do is do one thing today that drives the needle forward. I think that is an important message. I hope that everyone hears that. I hope that they can look at you as the vibrant, shining person that you are and know that healing can happen. We do have so much more power than we think. Did I leave anything out?

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

I think you said it all. You did a beautiful job, and I appreciate you and all that you are doing, including bringing so much more awareness to everybody who is dealing with breast cancer. It just means so much to see you out here doing this with all the women that you serve. I would just encourage those of you who are struggling with this diagnosis to follow what Jenn is saying because she is going to offer you the tools that you need so that you can keep yourself in your healthiest state.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Now, at the end of the day, I say breast health is health, for the same factor. Dr. Jenny, thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to many, many more conversations between us.

Jenny Tufenkian, ND

Thank you. I look forward to that as well.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, it is Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.