The #1 Root Cause of Brain Fatigue and How to Fix It

Dr. Titus Chiu

Hey, Laura. So thankful and grateful to be here and joining you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m glad to have you here too. You know, I wanted to bring you on this summit because you are really a specialist in neurological health. You’re a functional neurologist in brain, mitochondria. They go hand in hand. You really specialize in helping people understand what is brain fatigue. I know a lot of people listening are experiencing that right now, so we’re gonna jump into it but first, you’re a number one best-selling author, award-winning international speaker and a functional neurologist and you help high achieving women supercharge their brains and their lives naturally through online brain healing programs, workshops and in-person brain health retreats. So you serve in a lot of different ways, really glad to have you here. Can you jump in and just start talking to us about why this? How did you create this journey? What was the path to you becoming a functional neurologist?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Sure, so unfortunately, my path started with a car accident over 20 years ago that nearly took my life. I survived that car accident but I ended up with chronic pain and a concussion and all the fallout symptoms, brain symptoms and one of them being brain fatigue from that concussion. I tried everything I could within conventional medicine but unfortunately, nothing worked so I decided to go outside the box. I got a postdoc in clinical neurology, a master’s in nutrition. I studied functional and integrated medicine. Anything I could get my hands on, even chiropractic and acupuncture to figure it out and I’m so glad that I did because along the way when I went through all that schooling, I experimented, I tinkered with my own brain and I found these things to really take back control of my health and my life. Through that whole process, I was, even though it was some of the darkest times of my life, I feel blessed because now I can share it with millions of people around the world.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I love how you said you tinkered with your own brain. You literally and you know-

Dr. Titus Chiu

I took it out, I brought it. I removed it for us for this conversation, so yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, it’s so good. There is this story, this underlying theme that I hear from a lot of the people that I bring on to this summit that the challenge was their own health problem. They figured it out and now they’re sharing it with the world at large and you’re no exception to that. Can you break down for us, what is brain fatigue versus physical fatigue and lace in there, why do we care about mitochondria along the way?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Absolutely, so typically, when we think about fatigue, we define it as this experience of constant tiredness and weakness and many times, it’s a body experience. When we talk about brain fatigue, though, it’s actually tiredness that’s triggered with brain activities. So the most common types of brain activities are cognitive mental ones like thinking or reading or even engaging in conversations but the interesting thing is, in addition to those brain activities, most people when we think of brain activities, what do we think of? Those mental cognitive things that we use our brains for throughout the day but the interesting thing is, most people don’t realize that our brains are in charge of so many other activities like for example, there’s an area of our nervous system, our brain buried deep within our nervous system called the limbic system that deals with emotional processing and how we handle our emotions. 

There’s an area of our brain called the brainstem that deals with gut function as well as sleep cycles and our perception of pain. There’s an area of our nervous system called the cerebellum that deals with balance and core stability, so on and so forth. So the interesting thing is in addition to brain fatigue when we’re talking about brain fatigue people experience, they might have brain fog or trouble concentrating or they forget things. In addition to those higher mental activities, you can also have brain fatigue and it shows up as dizziness or headaches or chronic gut symptoms that no matter what you do, diets you try or supplements you take, your gut doesn’t heal. It goes a lot deeper than that but the most common form of brain fatigue I think most people are queued into is that cognitive, like brain fog. They get triggered with thinking or reading or even in conversations.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Or decision fatigue or you just can’t stay focused and stay on track.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yeah, absolutely. The cool thing is, the reason why I love neurology is ’cause it really gives us this kind of window into why we experience these things, whether good or bad, right? What you just described, this decision fatigue, it’s actually located in this area of our brain called the prefrontal cortex and specifically, the inside portion of the prefrontal cortex has been associated with decision. I find that when, yeah, depending, and that’s the cool thing when I talk to my patients or clients or even these quizzes that I’ve developed. when they take the quiz, they can quickly identify which area of their nervous system is at the root cause for their brain symptoms, whether it’s indecision, like it’s the prefrontal cortex, then there’s things we can do to strengthen those areas.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm, okay. So this is gonna be a fun talk because I know everybody’s gonna wanna know, how do I solve that problem? How do I do it? You’ve just outlined brain fatigue versus physical fatigue. Can you bring in mitochondria now. Tell us, what’s so important about mitochondria in the brain anyway?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Absolutely, and as you know and as most of our audience knows, when it comes to energy, it’s all about the mitochondria. Up to 95% of the energy that our body produces is through the mitochondria, probably even higher but especially when it comes to metabolically demanding organs like our brain. Our brain consumes so much energy, even though it’s not very big compared to the rest of our body, it burns about 20% of our energy supplies, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, that’s a lot.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yeah, when it comes to brain health, mitochondria and brain just go hand in hand. Without a healthy mitochondria, your brain just can’t function. Whether it’s, if you’re just trying to focus and make decisions, if it’s this prefrontal cortex or this area of your nervous system called the brainstem in charge of handling your stress, putting in the brakes on the fight or flight response. If that area doesn’t have energy by way of the mitochondria, it’s gonna be an uphill battle. And so what I’ve learned though, one of the number one causes, root causes for brain fatigue is actually inflammation and brain inflammation ’cause those mitochondria, those precious little organelles, kinda like these bacteria that evolved over the course of many years to provide us energy, they’re very sensitive. Years ago, they negotiated this deal with our cells to be housed like, hey, if you house me and protect me, I’m gonna make energy for you so you can continue rebuilding your house.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’ve never heard it describe like that but I could just imagine, yes.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yes, it’s interesting. I see it’s almost like this yin yang, kind of feminine, masculine energy, where you have this mitochondria that’s very nurturing and because it struck a deal with your cell, which is like the protector or whatever, it’s like, okay, I’ll provide you energy but you gotta protect me, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Titus Chiu

I’m speaking energetics. That being said, because of that, they relinquish a lot of their defense capabilities like their antioxidant capabilities, their detoxification so they’re very sensitive. So one of the things that can really damage your mitochondria, especially the mitochondria that exists in your brain is inflammation.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm-hmm, yeah, that’s a big one. We’re gonna dig into inflammation here and other causes of brain fatigue but what I’m hearing you say really is you’ve got a lot of great ways to help people fix their brain fatigue and really be highly cognitive functioning but at a foundational level, if mitochondria are flatlined and not working, if they’re under stress, duress, it’s gonna be really hard to get where you wanna be and that’s really what I like to teach is everybody coming on this summit has a specialty and underneath that, what we all share in common is we’ve gotta support mitochondrial health to get where you wanna be.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Crucial, yes. Especially when it comes to brain health, so very important.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so you just started talking about inflammation. We can go down that and talk deeper about inflammation or you can share some other causes of brain fatigue. Which direction do you wanna go right now?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Sure, yeah. I mean, in addition to when we’re talking about mitochondria health and brain health, inflammation is a big one and what ends up happening I see so often, there’s what I call the brain fatigue vicious cycle, where you have some type of stressor, whether physical, chemical or emotional. So physical stressors, for example, what happened to me. A car accident many years ago but that physical stressor could be something like a minor stressor, physical stressor where we find ourselves sitting a lot. So there’s a physical stressor or a chemical stressor like exposure to toxin or highly processed foods or some type of food trigger. That can trigger stress or mental emotional stressors, which we all know about. 

I don’t need to elaborate on that. Regardless, some type of stressor which can trigger this inflammatory reaction within your brain and nervous system leading to inflammation and then from there, we have a damage to those mitochondrias, those sensitive, really precious powerhouses of our cells. Once you have that, you have less energy, not only just to, for example, when we’re talking about decision making, not only for making decisions but less energy for that healing and it becomes this vicious cycle. So you have a stressor, you have inflammation, you have damage to your mitochondria, less energy for the healing and then it goes on and on and on.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s the cycle, the hamster wheel. It just keeps repeating.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yeah, exactly because you have this energy healing crisis because in order, and I really experienced this in my journey healing my brain because most people, if they experience some type of trauma or chronic stress, what ends up happening, we have this energy crisis where a lot of the energy that was used to again, run our brain, whether it’s decision making, focus, planning ahead, organizing our lives, all that energy then becomes, not all but the majority gets shunted towards the healing response in order for us to heal. So a lot of the time we end up, especially if our mitochondria aren’t taken care of, we end up not having enough energy again, to not only be able to do what we need to do in our lives and to show up but also for the healing response.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so that healing response, what needs to be in place for people to be able to really heal? How do we fix this?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yeah, that’s a great question. What I’ve found, in order to break that vicious cycle, we really need to get to the number one root cause of that brain fatigue and vicious cycle, which if you get this right, you can break that cycle and heal your mitochondria and your brain and get your life back. If you get this wrong, then you stay stuck in that vicious cycle and you end up experiencing all the effects of sick mitochondria and these areas of your brain that are just stressed, worn out and fatigued. What I found as the number one root cause that perpetuates that vicious cycle is what’s known as leaky brain or a breach of the blood brain barrier. Like I mentioned before, I talked about all these different regions of your nervous system like the prefrontal cortex. It allows us to have a good focus, concentration, follow through and motivation as an example. There’s these other areas that we called the brainstem that’s in charge of gut health and putting the brakes on stress. 

My point is all these different brain cells, they’re protected by what we call the blood brain barrier. It’s this really thin layer of tissues that allows things that should come into our nervous system to come in like nutrients, oxygen, so on and so forth and it also acts as a filter to prevent things that shouldn’t be in there like toxins, inflammatory chemicals we call cytokines or antibodies. It prevents those things from coming into the nervous system. Now the thing is either through a physical stressor, like I mentioned like trauma, like a concussion or even a whiplash, you can actually damage your blood brain barrier but you can also have chemical stressors like toxins can actually cause damage to your blood brain barrier. 

In fact, even the physical reaction to mental emotional stressors AKA the HPA axis, where you have a triggering of stress hormones, cortisol. That has been shown to also damage the blood brain barrier. So from there, what I’ve found is if you don’t heal leaky brain, then that vicious inflammatory cycle that damages the mitochondria leading to poor energy and energy for healing and just doing what you need to do in your life, you’re never gonna break that. I’ve actually found that that’s the number one thing. If that’s not addressed, then healing will either be an uphill battle or honestly might not even happen at all and that’s what the research shows too. Leaky brain, really when you look at it, it’s kind of like the gateway for all these serious neurodegenerative diseases like dementia or Alzheimer’s. Even if people never develop those serious diseases, they end up having these chronic nagging brain symptoms like brain fog and brain fatigue, anxiety, depression, just feeling stressed and so on and so forth.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It sounds like there’s a lot of causes of leaky brain.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yes, absolutely. Most people think that it’s just trauma, I mean that learn about leaky brain, which is actually one of the most common causes of it but there are so many different causes for leaky brain as well and that’s the thing. That’s why people get stuck in this vicious cycle. You don’t need to have had a concussion or a physical trauma to end up having leaky brain. You can just have chronic stressors. I mean, research shows that even one acute stressor can lead to a leaky brain. I’ve seen research of, for example, binge alcohol drinking, also just going on a bender with your friends, bam, can actually cause leaky brain. 

I can’t tell me how many times I’ve worked with patients and clients who, for example, maybe have had a concussion and then they didn’t have one for, maybe it was like three or five years ago and they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know what happened but I just had this really stressful event and I feel like I have another concussion,” but they didn’t actually have a physical trauma and the reason for that was that leaky brain but again, it does even have to be this physical trauma. A lot of the symptoms of leaky brain are everything we talked about. That brain fatigue, that brain fog and just that fuzzy feeling and depending on again, which area of the nervous system is being impacted, you can have things like anxiety, depression, chronic stress, maybe even chronic gut symptoms that aren’t resolving because it’s actually a problem, not with the gut like leaky gut but actually with the other barrier that’s known as the blood brain barrier, leaky brain.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m assuming leaky brain can also be caused by things like mycotoxins, low grade infections in the body, toxins being secreted by parasites and bacteria.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Toxic metals, environmental toxins. So those all go into the bucket of all the-

Dr. Titus Chiu

Oh, yeah, there’s so many causes for leaky brain like what you talk about with the infections like lipopolysaccharides, these compounds found on the outside of certain types of bacteria. When they’re released into the bloodstream and they cross the blood brain barrier or they even get up to that blood brain barrier, they can damage. There’s so much research looking at how LPS can lead to damage of your blood brain barrier and speaking of which, gut dysfunction. The gut barrier is made up of a lot of different cells and proteins we call tight junctions. 

Those tight junctions are actually very similar in structure to your blood brain barrier. So many times if you have a leaky gut, that can trigger an inflammatory response, an autoimmune or an immune response that not only damages the gut but actually can lead to leaky brain. So it becomes again this vicious cycle but what I’ve found, especially when it comes to brain symptoms and we kind of expanded the definition of what those brain symptoms might look like, I’ve found that if leaky brain isn’t addressed, it doesn’t matter what you do on the outside. If you don’t get that leaky brain addressed and healed, it becomes this uphill battle, especially when it comes to brain symptoms.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so let’s talk about what people can do to fix leaky brain ’cause clearly that’s a big problem. Where do people go from here?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yes, the great news is, I’m not just the harbinger of bad news. I want to paint the picture so people understand the importance of it but the great news is there’s actually simple, natural ways that you can heal a leaky brain and the beautiful thing is, my philosophy is that our brains and our bodies have a wisdom, that we have this innate healing ability and research shows that many times, leaky brain can heal on its own but sometimes there’s these obstacles that block that. So what I’ve found is there’s some simple ways to just support that and accelerate the healing response. I’ll share with you three. The first one is fish oils. Fish oils have been shown to decrease inflammation and those fish oils are embedded into our cell membranes and under states of inflammation, those fish oils can actually be used or not even just fish oils but Omega-3 fatty acids like EPA and DHA, eicosapentaenoic acid and docosapentaenoic acid. 

Those Omega-3 fats in states of brain inflammation can actually be brought out of the cell membranes and converted into these powerful anti-inflammatory compounds called specialized pro-resolving mediators. That’s why I think fish oils again, or Omega-3 fatty acids, especially EPA and DHA, number one when it comes to healing a leaky brain. Number two, research has shown that also exercise. When you exercise, there’s actually research showing that exercise just simple, aerobic exercise. When you exercise, that can also help strengthen a leaky brain and also prevent it from getting leakier later on in the future. So not only can it heal it but it can also boost your blood brain barrier’s resilience, it strengthens that barrier.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How much exercise are we talking here? What do people need to do?

Dr. Titus Chiu

It really depends. Exercise needs to be personalized to a person’s ability but it doesn’t have to be that intensive. I usually tell my clients or patients to start with three times a week, maybe 15 to 20 minutes of simple walking. Really depends on where they’re at. There’s different target zones. I usually recommend people hit cardio two, which means that you’re able to still have a talk or have a conversation if you’re talking to someone but it’s a bit more labored. You can still talk but it’s kinda harder to breathe but it’s not like you’re sprinting or running a marathon and you can’t speak at all. That’s where I recommend people start with. I’ve found that especially people who have had concussions though, their exercise tolerance typically or honestly, a lot of people who have mitochondrial issues, their exercise tolerance usually is a bit more tanked. So it’s about finding that right amount for you but I usually recommend just as a starting point, trying three times a week, 15 to 20 minutes of light exercise and then tailoring it to what you need based on your tolerance and your capabilities.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, great, and you were gonna give us a third thing. So what’s the third fixer?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yeah, the third thing is activating your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, I actually mentioned this earlier is this key structure. It’s located in this area of the nervous system I mentioned earlier called your brainstem. It’s this area that’s all about your autonomic functions meaning breathing, your heart rate, even your gut motility, the release of digestive enzymes. It’s controlled by your brainstem and your vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is housed, so this is your brainstem. I just popped it out for you guys. Your brainstem is housed between your brain and your spinal cord and then the bottom part of your brainstem, that’s where your vagus nerve lives and it pops out. The vagus is Latin for the wanderer. It comes from the same root as a vagabond because it wanders all over. 

It’s the longest cranial nerve in your body. It starts all the way up here. It goes to your lungs, your heart. It even goes all the way down into parts of your digestive system. So my point is one of the functions it does in addition to heart rate and breathing and digestion, it powerfully puts the brakes on your stress response and there’s a lot of simple, natural ways, low tech ways you can activate your vagus nerve. Anywhere from breathing exercises could activate your vagus nerve. Believe it or not, enemas can also activate your vagus nerve ’cause of the stretch receptors in your colon. A simpler way without as much gear is one of my favorites, what I call the palming exercise or you put gentle pressure on your eyeballs but yeah. The point is there’s all these different ways of triggering that parasympathetic, what we call this rest, digest and heal response, putting the brakes on the stress response. 

The cool thing is, again, research. There’s research out there showing that activation of your vagus nerve, not only can help accelerate the healing of leaky brain, research subjects that have actually experienced things like concussion as an example, it can help protect against furthering of leaky brain as well. So yeah, there, you have it. Three natural ways. The fish oils or Omega-3 fatty acids, EPA, DHA, simple exercise routine and then last but not least, these low tech ways of activating your vagus nerve.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I know you’ve got a whole probably protocol that you use to help people fix their leaky brain and I think you’re doing this without pharmaceuticals. You’re doing this with lifestyle, supplements, natural ways to just reverse this brain fatigue, right?

Dr. Titus Chiu

Absolutely, yeah. A lot of, again, and this is stuff that I’ve developed over the 15 years that I’ve been in practice like experimenting and tinkering with my own brain like I said, but then bringing those discoveries I made to my patients and clients and then it’s also supported by the research. It’s all science based but yeah, there’s so many natural ways, through specific diet. There’s actually really healthy foods that can damage your blood brain barrier that we might be eating every single day. There’s specific supplements like one of the most powerful ones I mentioned but there’s other ones, too like ginkgo for example or liposomal glutathione and there’s exercise but one of the biggest things I’ve seen as well is actually ways of activating the vagus nerve through these simple physical exercises that you can do but there’s also the high tech ways of activating the vagus nerve as well through the use of electroceuticals.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Electroceuticals.

Dr. Titus Chiu

But yeah, that’s what I found is… Yeah, electroceuticals. That’s like the future of a lot of brain health is this exploration of these really cool, noninvasive ways. Using technologies to hack your nervous system and there’s a lot of research looking into the vagus nerve right now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, so good. Okay, so where and how can people work with you, find you? I know you have some great support for our viewers.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Yeah, absolutely. So really, for those of you out there who can resonate with what I’m talking about, the first step is to identify, do you have a leaky brain? Is that creating that vicious cycle of brain fatigue for you in your life? I actually put together a quiz that could help you simply and quickly identify if you’re at risk for leaky brain. Low, intermediate or high risk. So you can go to that quiz. It’s a free quiz, leakybrainquiz.com, all one word. That’s where I would start. If you’re interested in learning more about leaky brain and to find out more about me, my website is brainsave.com and you can find me on Instagram as well as Facebook.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, amazing. I love how you break all this down so simply. I think the brain can be such a confusing, complex… It’s a complex organ, let’s face it and it’s a confusing complex system in the body as well and you make it so easy. So I really appreciate how simple you make this for everyone in practitioners and consumers of healthcare combined. I just wanna honor you for what you do in the world as well. I have the pleasure of being able to meet with you a couple times a year in person and you are so much fun and truly a pleasure to spend time with. So I really encourage the viewers today to look into what Dr. Titus Chiu has for you because he’s the real deal. He’s authentic and loving and doing great things in the world.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Thank you, Laura, ditto.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, all right. Well, Titus, until next time, you take good care, have a great day.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Awesome, thank you so much.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Bye.

Dr. Titus Chiu

Bye.