The EnergyMD Method to Increase Your Energy Naturally

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Hey, Laura, thanks so much for having me on.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, I’m super excited to have this talk, because you are known as the EnergyMD. You’re actually a medical doctor and you are really well-known in the energy space. You’re a best selling author, you’re a professional speaker, and you’re the creator of the EnergyMD method. And this is really a science back and clinically proven four-step process to increase your energy naturally. And I know our viewers really wanna know about that. So we’re gonna talk about that today. And you have a bestselling book, a podcast, you have an international online telehealth program. People can access you from all over the world and you’ve helped, literally thousands of people increase their energy and happiness. So we’re gonna jump into this today. We’re gonna talk about mitochondria and energy. And I wanna touch on infections today, because this is a really big topic. There’s a really big infection that’s been plaguing the planet the last couple of years. So we’re gonna get into infections and I know this is a really hot topic and something you’re really expert in. Yeah. Okay.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Let’s do it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

All right, so first before we get into that, tell us why this, I mean, obviously you’re an MD. You came from the Western traditional world and here you are this functional medicine energy expert. So how did you transition into that?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

So I had always been more holistic. I actually became board certified in holistic medicine when I was in residency. I think I’m the first person, maybe the only person to do that, but I kind of came in with that, but I was already practicing functional medicine when I got hit with chronic fatigue and it just about destroyed my life. I had a successful brick-and-mortar, functional medicine practice. I had 10 employees, I had 4,000 square feet of office space. We were doing very well, and it just kind of snuck up on me and I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t prioritizing myself. I knew a lot about functional medicine, but I didn’t know enough about environmental medicine. 

So when I finally turned around after napping for the hundredth day underneath my desk looking up at it, being like, “Yo, dude, you gotta start prioritizing yourself,” and I finally did. I went through this process of doing everything that I knew with functional medicine, where I was replacing the deficiencies and hormones and nutrients and lifestyle habits, and yet I still wasn’t better. So then I went on this quest to figure out what else I was missing and those were all the environmental causes, the heavy metals and the chemicals and the molds and the infections and the allergies and the negative emotional patterns and the electromagnetic fields. And I found that there were 33 different causes of low energy and fatigue, and I had 30 of those causes. 

And what I found is that everybody who has low energy has 20 plus causes and everybody’s causes are different. And so that’s why oftentimes it’s really challenging. ‘Cause you got these nails in the bottom of the foot, like these causes, right, and you just have to pull them out one at a time. So I went through that process, I got better, wrote the book. Now, as you mentioned, have been able to help a lot of people. And so that’s become my mission as the EnergyMD to help people increase their energy, ’cause energy is very much a currency of happiness and what you can achieve in life, right. If you wanna achieve more, if you’ve got a big vision, if you wanna work on your personal, your professional life, like you need more energy to be able to do that. So it’s my honor and privilege to help people with that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is extraordinary. So your book, I’m assuming, outlines all those 33 things.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

It is.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, good. What’s the name of the book? I know people are wanting to know what it is right now.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

It is “Fix your fatigue”.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. So everybody, find “Fix your Fatigue”. I’m like ready to go get that book right now. I’m like 33. This is extraordinary. So we’re here on the Mitochondria Summit. We are talking about energy. We’re talking about fixing your health and fix your energy, fix your health, basically boost your energy, fix your health. So tell us real quick, I mean, just the connection between energy, mitochondria, infection, mitochondria, and then we’re gonna dig deep into this topic.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Absolutely. So when I always look at causes, these 33 different causes, I divide them up into deficiencies, which are things that are not in the body that are supposed to be in the body or supposed to be happening. And then toxicities, which are things that are not supposed to be in the body that are present. Now all of these toxicities damage the mitochondria. And so the mitochondria is supposed to be making 80 to 90% of our energy. And consequently, when you have any of these toxicities, you’re going to end up with mitochondrial dysfunction. And that is going to contribute to the interplay between a number of the other deficiencies, but consequently, you end up with less energy.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

There. So that’s the simple connection. And I think people are getting it at interview after interview that we’re talking about this mitochondria making the majority of energy in the body. So you kind of touched on causes of low energy. Do you wanna go a little deeper there? And then we’ll talk about, one of those causes is infections, so I really wanna spend some time talking about infections today, but give us some other, you kind of touched on toxins, negative emotions. You wanna get a little more granular on that?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Sure. So when we’re looking at the deficiencies, we’re looking at deficiencies in hormones. So the adrenal gland is a little triangular gland sits on top of the kidneys and produces cortisol and other stress management hormones, where it is managing your stress. It’s managing your sleep-wake cycle. It’s managing your blood sugars. It’s managing cortisol. It’s managing your immune system. It’s our main anti-inflammatory. So you can see how, if you have chronic stress of some sort, it ends up compromising the adrenals and consequently the other hormones as well. So the other hormones are like thyroid and sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. And those hormones are like a three-legged stool where if somebody steps out of the dance, then the stool kind of collapses, right. 

So consequently, when people have adrenal gland dysfunction because of chronic stress from these toxins, then you end up with thyroid dysfunction, you end up with sex hormone dysfunction. And then when we look at mitochondrial function, like we talked about, the energy center of every cell in the body except for red blood cells, produces 80 to 90% of our energy and gets damaged by these toxins. Mitochondria also, I’m sure other speakers have talked about, increases the absorption of hormones and the function of hormones and increases detoxification. So it’s just so incredibly important. I’m so glad that you’re doing this summit. So that’s hormones, mitochondria, nutrients; when we’re looking at vitamins, vitamins and minerals; vitamin D, vitamin B12 and other B vitamins, minerals like iron, magnesium. 

Those are kind of the big ones that we see that are most indicated or complicit with low energy states. And then there’s neurotransmitters. So these are things like serotonin and dopamine and GABA that end up being decreased over time. And then lifestyle habits. Now, before I go into lifestyle habits, all those causes that I mentioned, the hormones and mitochondria and nutrients and neurotransmitters, the majority of those are all going to be caused by the toxicities. So when we talk about the four-step process that we recommend, you’re gonna find out that we actually replace the deficiencies before we do anything with the toxicities. But the reality is that this process is all about the toxins and how they compromise all those deficiencies that we talked about. And then there’s the lifestyle habit. So not enough good food, not enough good water, not enough sleep, not enough movement. Though, a lot of people, if you’re too tired, you’re not gonna be able to do the movement you wanna do. So it’s kind of like finding the Goldilocks dose of movement so that you don’t feel worse, but those are the deficiencies. Any questions on those before I jump to the toxins?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, something I think really important that I just wanna highlight what you said is it sounds like you identified nutrient deficiencies, you support those nutrient deficiencies, and if you’re reading between the lines, if you don’t address the toxins, you’re gonna be on a never ending cycle of replacing nutrients. Like when does it ever end if you don’t handle toxins? So I just wanna really highlight that because it’s so key. People start to feel better after you start replacing some nutrients, but it’s just a bandaid because the real problem is the toxins. Toxins cause nutrient deficiencies. So thank you for just bringing that up. I think it’s really important for people to understand.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Well, and you said it perfectly, it is a bandaid, but it’s a natural bandaid, you know, with the stuff that we use, but it’s still a band aid.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. I mean, you and I both agree. We gotta get people feeling better when they’re going through protocols. We gotta get them having some wins right away, because the toxin removal process is the long game. But you’ve gotta have some wins right up front. So I’m so glad that you’re doing that with your patients. Really, really fantastic. So, all right. Let’s talk about infections, ’cause this is a big one and this is a really huge cause of mitochondrial dysfunction, low energy, immune system dysfunction, dysregulation of hormones, all of it. So go there.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yeah, so when we’re talking about infections, I mean, one of the things I like to, I think is helpful for people to hear is that a lot of these infections are clinical diagnoses, which basically means that based off of your symptoms, you can determine which infections you have, which is always really exciting to people. So I’m gonna throw out a couple of infections with some of the associated symptoms and then we’ll talk about how they relate to mitochondria and stuff like that. Does that work?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Okay, cool. So let’s start off with COVID. So we’ve got this pandemic, we’ve got this virus and now a lot of people that we’re seeing now have long COVID, or long-haulers, or Post-Acute Sequelae to SARS CoV-2, PASC, right. And so what’s actually happening here is that you get the virus into your body. Well, actually let’s do this. So then in terms of the symptoms that you get from the virus is that it can go almost anywhere in the body, which means that you can have over 200 plus different symptoms have now been recorded caused by the COVID virus. And it can be anything from loss of taste and smell to fatigue, which is the number one; I think it’s like 81% of people in one study, brain fog, muscle pain, sleep issues, joint issues, neuropathies, numbness, and tingling, et cetera, right. So there’s a lot of different symptoms. 

So then how do you know if you have it? Well, if you started having weird symptoms after November 2019, and you had a cold that had five different symptoms, even if they were really mild, it’s highly likely that it is from this particular infection from the virus. So you don’t actually need a test. The other way to know is that if you start going after it by using antivirals and antimicrobials and you’re having success and your symptoms are getting better, then you know, basically it’s a test of cure where basically you’re treating something that is more specific for virus and consequently you are having success. The other important thing to note is that the virus is also operating as a biofilm disruptor. So it breaks up bugs, other infections from hiding places, and consequently, some of these weird symptoms can also be from those infections. And we’ll talk more about those symptoms in a second.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s a really big point, Evan. So let me break this down. So what you just said was, if you have COVID,, you’ve got dormant, kind of hidden other infections in your body that now can come out and play, because they were protected or hidden or sequestered behind a biofilm. So think of it like a little force field there that was holding it back, your immune system wasn’t playing with it, now all of a sudden it’s coming out, now you’re sick from that too.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Exactly.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, that’s huge.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yeah. And sometimes it’s hard to know whether or not it’s from long-haulers or long COVID, whether it’s from that virus itself, or whether it’s from something else. So let’s talk about Borrelia, otherwise known as Lyme. So you can’t really have Borrelia unless you have symptoms that come and go where some days are better than others. Oftentimes people don’t wanna make plans with their best friend, because they don’t know how they’re gonna feel on that particular day. And then you have to have symptoms that move around the body. So maybe this week or today you have shoulder pain and it can be joint pain, muscle pain, or nerve pain that’s one place today. And then tomorrow, or the next week, or the next month, it’s some other place, like maybe it’s in your foot, or it’s in your knee, or something like that. So if symptoms are moving around the body and they come and go, there really isn’t much else that does that besides Borellia. But you have to always take it into context, because if you also have Bartonella, where people will have pain on the bottom of the feet or on the feet, sometimes it’s just sensitive feet. Sometimes it’s burning feet. 

Sometimes they don’t want to get out of bed in the morning without putting on slippers because the feet are more sensitive. Sometimes they have muscle cramps usually in the calves, usually at night. Oftentimes there’ll be sleep issues, hard time falling asleep, or staying asleep. Sometimes there’s anxiety. Sometimes there’s depression. Sometimes there’s Bartonella rash or rubra striae or basically looks like a cat scratch. Sometimes there’s thyroid issues. Sometimes they’re really cold. So if you have those symptoms and those symptoms come and go and they rotate around the body, then you probably have both, the Borrelia and the Bartonella. And you don’t have to have all those symptoms. If you have a couple like pain on the bottom of the feet, muscle cramp in the calves, and a hard time sleeping, it’s highly likely that you have Bartonella. And I’m not speaking out of turn, ’cause even the Centers for Disease Control believe that these infections are clinical diagnoses. A Western blot test and ELISA test are considered appropriate for epidemiologic studies. They’re not appropriate for diagnosis. So looking at these symptoms is a really important part of all this.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, and I think something really important also to mention is a lot of people will automatically discount Lyme, because they say, “I never got bit by a tick. I don’t live on the east coast. I don’t…” So I mean, that’s a myth, right. So I mean, talk about that for a second, because I know people are just thinking, “Oh, that’s not me.”

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Absolutely. Yeah. And there’s lots of different ways to get these infections. You can kiss the wrong person or the right person. You can get it from mom through the placenta. That’s a really common way. You can get it from anything that takes a blood meal. That’s passing blood back and forth from animal to animals. So that could be a mosquito. It could be a chigger, it could be a tick, it could be a biting fly. So there’s a number of different ways that you can get this. It doesn’t have to just be from a tick. And what’s really interesting too, is oftentimes people will start a relationship with someone and then they will feel worse. And oftentimes that’s because you’re swapping infections back and forth. And when somebody gives you, and it doesn’t have to just be with intimacy, it can just be with kissing. But when somebody gives you an infection that your body is not prepared for and you feel worse, sometimes they feel worse because of what they got from you and sometimes they don’t, it’s hard to say, but that’s always an important part of this history where when you get into a relationship with somebody and you feel worse, gotta pay attention to that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yep. Okay, so any other infections you wanna highlight?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yeah, so in terms of Babesia, that’s another one that kind of plays around with these. So it’s considered the North American malaria. Oftentimes people are usually the hottest person in the room where they’re like, “Hey, can you turn down the AC?” And everybody else is like, “What? Are you crazy?” Where they’re outside shoveling snow in a t-shirt . And they often have shortness of breath, air hunger. That hotness also can switch over into sweating. So they may have spontaneous sweating every couple of days, every couple weeks, every couple months. Sometimes during the day, sometimes at night. 

Their sleep is usually awful, really hard time falling asleep and/or staying asleep. And they have really bad mood issues. So sometimes this is anxiety to the point of panic attacks, or the depression to the point of suicidal thoughts. Now what’s interesting is that if you think about COVID and long COVID, there was one study that was recently done. They looked at 265,000 people who in a six-month period after they got COVID, 30% of those people had a new mental health diagnosis. So that’s basically anxiety or depression, could be schizophrenia or something else, right. And so the question is, is that from COVID or is that from COVID being a biofilm disruptor distracting the immune system and allowing things like Bartonella and Babesia to come out that end up causing these symptoms? 

Some people who have long COVID are talking about spontaneous sweating, right. Is that from Babesia? And we don’t really know until we start treating and figuring it out. So those are a lot of the infections that we look at and then there’s Epstein-Barr virus, sore throat, enlarged lymphadenopathy, so enlarged lymph nodes. I could remember the technical word, but not the layman’s term, right. And that sometimes is more subtle in terms of its presentation. There’s some laboratory values that go with these, but those are kind of the big things that we see in terms of the symptoms related to some of these infections that people need to pay attention to.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. I think this is huge. What about parasites, got anything to say about those?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Oh yeah, parasites. And parasites are definitely more nebulous. You’re definitely more of an expert on this than I am. But in terms, sometimes there’s skin rashes, sometimes there’s abdominal stuff, sometimes there isn’t, but my knowledge is that parasites can cause almost anything. So that’s another one that we have to pay attention to. And then also bacteria and yeast. We’ve got itchy ears, itchy anus, more skin rashes, more itching, more sinus stuff, mold and yeast oftentimes are gonna cause a lot of sinus stuff. So there’s so much that you can determine by symptoms, but there definitely are some things. When we look at those 33 different causes, 75% of those can be determined by symptoms alone and then 25% really need the labs. And so there’s so much that you can do just by looking at your symptoms.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Totally, totally. Okay. So lots of infections causing a lot of problem with the immune system, causing mitochondrial decline, causing low energy. I mean, you are the fatigue and energy guy. So if you’re not handling these infections, it’s not likely you’re gonna get better. So something I would love for you to touch on, if you can, low energy fatigue being one of the hallmark symptoms of COVID and one of the most common, can you speak a little bit on how much of that is cell danger response and shutting down energy on purpose so that the virus doesn’t have ATP energy versus it’s just destroying colonies of mitochondria?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

That’s a great question, and I think it’s both. So in terms of the cell danger response, for those who don’t know, when the body is under chronic stress, it basically shuts itself down. So it’s saying, and it’s trying to protect itself. Everything that the body does generally is trying to protect itself. And so oftentimes these infections are getting inside these cells and they’re taking over the machinery and they’re getting into the mitochondrial DNA in addition to the nuclear DNA and whatnot. And so consequently, the body’s like, hey, I don’t want you guys to keep replicating. I’m just gonna shut everything down so that you can’t get in or whatever. Consequently, then guess what? You’re not making enough energy. So I think that it’s a combinations of things. 

So the infections are operating in a number of different ways where they attach onto the cell, they inject their DNA or RNA into the cell, then they’re going to get into these different components of the cell. And so when we’re going into, we are looking at each one of those different components and trying to mitigate the damage as we go through this process. But you’re absolutely right. It is cell danger response. It is destroying mitochondria. It’s taking over mitochondrial DNA. It’s causing chronic inflammatory responses by the immune system that is just trying to get rid of it. 

The immune system, when we talk about inflammation, inflammation is a normal process, right. You scratch your leg, you break your leg, you want all of these wonderful cells in the body to go and to fix it. But what ends up happening is that if you have a problem that the immune system cannot fix, because the cell is hiding in joints, or in the muscle, or in the skin, or whatever, it has to go after that infection. And consequently, if you can’t get rid of it, you’re stuck in this inflammatory state, right. And so that’s generally what’s happening. And that inflammatory state then in turn ends up damaging the mitochondria and shutting down things even further. So part of this process is recreating normal. What does normal look like and how do we remove the things that aren’t supposed to be there and how do we build up the things that are deficient.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, and I think one of those things that I think can help people is if you have fatigue lasting beyond a couple of weeks from your initial infection, then you’re beyond the cell danger response at this point. Your body’s done what it needed to do to shut down energy production, to kind of starve out the virus. If you’re low energy months out, then you’re beyond that point and this is a problem. Mitochondria are suffering. So you have a four-step process to fix all this. And I mean, there’s so much more. I mean, we could talk a whole hour on the 33 things, right. But let’s give people some hope here and talk about what you do for your four-step process, ’cause I know everybody wants to know that.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yeah, and so the first step, if you haven’t guessed it already, is finding the causes, right. So you gotta figure out which of the 33 you have. And like I said, everybody that I see who has low energy has 20 plus of these causes. And you may have a different causes than somebody over here. You might have causes 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, whatever. And somebody else has causes 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, which means that then you need different treatments. So, if you’ve got a buddy who got a B12 shot and they feel great, and you get a B12 shot and you don’t feel great and you wonder what’s wrong with you, it’s just that you don’t have that cause, right. And fortunately, 75% of those causes can be determined by symptoms alone. 

So when people join our program, they go through workbook and step one, and they’re gonna be able to figure out their causes before they get any labs, which always makes people feel good. So that’s step one. And then step two is to replace those deficiencies. So we talked about deficiencies and toxicities and how this process is all about the toxins, but we have to replace those deficiencies first. We have to make you stronger so that you can tolerate the stress of going after the toxins, because it is stressful. Plus also, we want you to get some quick wins. We want to increase your energy. 

We wanna boost the mitochondria. We wanna boost the adrenals. We wanna do the subjective ramp up of the thyroid, ’cause 95% of the people who I see who have low thyroid aren’t on enough thyroid or their dose is not correct. We wanna make sure that vitamins and minerals, lifestyle habits, neurotransmitters are all appropriately replaced. Now, if you notice, I don’t talk about lifestyle habits early in this process. And a lot of that goes from… Is because when you first start this problem and you are tired, the last thing you wanna do is change your diet. And most of the people that I see have already changed their diets, are trying to sleep better, are trying to do all the things that they are seeing online that they know that they need to do, but they’re not having success. And a lot of that is because you need to step into taking the supplements. You need to start replacing the deficiencies, because you also need to recreate your circadian rhythm if you wanna sleep better and you need to have more energy if you wanna have the conversation with your family about going more paleo and actually preparing and ordering the right groceries and making those changes, right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

So that’s step two. And then step three is opening up the detoxification pathways in preparation for step four. So detoxification has a lot of meetings for folks, but in lay terms, we’re basically just talking about opening up these pathways that are in the body that get clogged with the number of toxins that you have that have to be open. So this is the intestines. You gotta be pooping at least once a day, hopefully twice a day. Liver and kidney, those are filters, right, which gets clogged with toxins. And we have different phases in the liver. Then there’s the lymph, which is the garbage system in the body, which gets clogged up. Then there’s the neural lymph, which is the garbage system in the brain. 

And so all those pathways have to be open. I kind of think of step three as like this funnel where if the bottom of the funnel is clogged, you’re not gonna be able to get the toxins out. You’re gonna basically dump them in and guess what? They’re gonna go right back into a different compartment in the body. So you gotta open this up so that when you dump things in, then they’re able to go out of the body and that’s when you’re gonna have more success. And that’s why people say, “I started going after infections or heavy metals or chemicals and I felt worse.” Well, yeah, ’cause you didn’t spend enough time in step three. You gotta make sure that that funnel is open. And then basically the rate at which you can dump things into that funnel is determined by how wide that funnel is at the bottom, right. And that’s so important in preparation for step four. Go ahead.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is so important. I wanna highlight that you’re saying this, because this is missing in a lot of, quite frankly, in a lot of functional medicine protocols is this piece of opening the funnel, opening the drainage system. I like to think of it like pouring Drano down a pipe, right. You’ve gotta open that pipe to allow the bathtub to drain, to allow the sink to drain, whatever it is. If not, it’s just gonna back up and you’re gonna end up with water, dirty water, where you don’t want it and in your body. It’s gonna end up in places you don’t want it like your brain. And so I just wanna highlight that you do this. This is really important for people watching, when you are choosing a practitioner to work with, you wanna make sure that they do this step critical. And so many people are quick starts, right. They want, “I just wanna start pulling toxins out now. I just wanna start killing now.” Like, “Let’s just kill it.” And you can’t do that, because people will hate you if you just go straight to killing, ’cause you’ll make them feel like crap.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Right. Yeah. I’m so glad you said that. And part of this is really a spiritual practice in terms of your body is telling you to slow down. The body likes small changes and slow and steady wins the race, right. So yes, we all wanna get there yesterday, but if you just commit to it and go slow and steady, you’re gonna learn a ton and you’re gonna get there actually faster than hijacking the whole process by being like, “I’m just gonna take a ton of antimicrobial and then we gotta pick up the pieces,” for two or three months, because you feel like crap.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh yeah. And you know, here’s the thing too. If you really focus on that drainage funnel, it’s quite therapeutic. You are going to start just by opening that funnel up, you’re gonna start passing toxins. You’re gonna start passing infections naturally, because your immune system is like, “Finally, I can start getting some of this stuff out,” and then you’re gonna have assistance with all the good stuff we’ve got on the other side to get rid of infections and toxins, but so good, Evan. Okay. So anything else on your four steps? This is brilliant.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Well, I was just gonna add on as an aside, a lot of people, once they, like if they initially do their testing, like let’s say you’re in testing to look at heavy metals, chemicals, molds, sometimes you won’t find that much, but then you go ahead and you start opening up the pathways in step three, you start mobilizing things out of the tissues and then all of a sudden you’ve just got a ton. And so people are like, “Oh my gosh, why do I have so many more toxins in my urine than I did before?” Or they do a repeat test six months later. And all of a sudden, some things are better and some things are worse. And it just has to do with the fact that now you are dumping more toxins and it’s actually a good sign so-

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, it is. It is. Yes, I don’t even do toxin testing on people until they’ve been opening their drainage system for a month, at least, there’s no point. Yeah. Let’s save your money and just do it after. We know there’s toxins there. I mean, seriously, Evan, can you escape planet earth without a toxic load?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

You cannot.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Right. We all have one. I have one, you have one. Granted yours and mine is lower, because we’ve got all the tricks and tools to keep it low. But people always ask me like, “How long do I need to do this for?” It’s like, well, we’re gonna get you to a point where you restore your function and your energy. And then if you plan on living on earth for the rest of your life, we should probably have you on some kind of maintenance, because you’re gonna be exposed to toxins, right.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yep. I still use my sauna every other day. My wife still uses it every single day, right. And I’m still taking binders every day. So it’s just… Exactly, if you’re gonna be on planet earth, you’re gonna need to be working on some of this stuff. But your symptoms are better, but now you’re just preventing things like Alzheimer’s and heart attacks and a heart disease and strokes and cancer, because all of those things are related to these environmental toxins that we’re gonna talk about now in step four.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And you and I are slowing down aging by doing this. So this is something really important to know, like we’re taught kind of in the Western world, let me think of a good one. Now, vitamin D is really widely accepted in the Western world. So just take a vitamin D for the rest of your life, right. Or fish oil. There’s another one that’s widely accepted. So your regular doctor might tell you, “It’s a good idea you take fish oil for the rest of your life.” Well, Evan and I are here to say, it’s probably a good idea that you take a binder for the rest of your life, right.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Right. Amen.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And we know the good ones, so yeah. All right. So anything else on step four, or?

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yeah, so then step four, we’re talking about heavy metals. We’re talking about chemicals, we’re talking about molds. I mean, this is a whole ‘nother topic in itself. But I think just touch really quickly, like you said, we all have these things. The question is just how much, right. And by decreasing our overall body load, we’re gonna be decreasing all of these things. When we are talking about chemicals, there’s 86,000 different chemicals that we’re exposed to on a regular basis. Most of those haven’t been appropriately evaluated by government and scientific bodies. In one study, there’s 500 chemicals that we’re exposed to before you even leave the house in the morning. Do not get overwhelmed by this process. 

Like I said, slow and steady wins the race, right. You make small changes. But part of this is also just getting more familiar with the exposures that you have. What is the dish soap that you’re using? What is the shampoo that you’re using? Anything that has a fragrance, that’s not from an essential oil is a problem, right. If you’ve ever lived in a home that had any sort of water damage, whether it’s a leaky roof, flood in the basement, or a busted pipe, and that could have been in the history of that home. I live in a 1926 home, right. If that happened and that has happened in this home before, there is going to be mold, and it’s not gonna cost you an arm and a leg to remediate all the time, but you do have to be aware because you do wanna get to the finish line and you wanna make sure that you’re addressing all those causes. 

So heavy metals, chemicals, molds, then the infections that we talked about, huge problem, because if you have heavy metals, chemicals, molds, they’ve hijacked the immune system and you need a intact or somewhat intact immune system present and accounted for in order to be able to manage these infections. ‘Cause a lot of us have these infections, but they’re not necessarily a problem until you have some sort of stressful event or you have enough of a toxic burden that ends up causing the immune system to become dysfunctional. So that’s heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, allergies to food and inhalants, negative emotional patterns, anything less than nurturing that’s happened in your life that changed the way that you see the world, whether it’s really significant abuse or whether it’s, what I had, which was rejection from a peer group several times in my life, that changed the way that I saw the world, those things need to be reeded through neuroplasticity. 

We have a nervous system retraining coach on staff for us who kind of helps people going through our program do this. And then there’s electromagnetic fields. So anything that has a battery or is plugged into the wall can emit wavelengths and frequencies that can damage DNA as well as your immune system and increase inflammation. So it sounds overwhelming. But the reality is, is that this is just a process that if you want to improve every aspect of your life, your mental, your physical, your emotional, your spiritual, you go through it. And every single day you ask yourself an empowering question like, what can I do today to love myself even more? Or, what can I do today to take another step forward in order to be able to improve my health? And guess what? You are gonna get there, but you don’t get there if you don’t take a step every single, well, doesn’t have to be every day, but just taking steps on a regular basis.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh yeah, totally. I think this highlights, this is not a short game. This is a long game. If you are having energy issues and you’re looking ahead at your life and you’re thinking, I got more big things to do. I have a legacy to leave. I’ve gotta be a role model for my family, my community, this isn’t, like you don’t hire Evan or me to fix you in a month, right. I mean, in a month we can get your drainage pathways open so we can do that big work, right. And yeah, so this is a long game. You lived into this, you’re gonna live out of this.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Yeah. And it’s an investment. It’s gonna be an investment of your time and your money, but so was graduate school. So was college, right. So was residency for me. I came out of medical school and I was like, do I really wanna do a residency? ‘Cause I knew I didn’t really wanna do conventional medicine at that time, but I was like, you know what, there’s gonna be more opportunities to me if I do this and I’m gonna know more, I’m gonna be able to help more people. So I made that investment of three years and with us and these programs. We’re talking about 6, 12, 18, 24 months, generally, that’s kind of the… Most of the time we can get you where you wanna be by then. But you think about you invest some time like that now and then you have the rest of your year or rest of your life rather in order to benefit from that experience.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Incredible. And I’m sure people are just tired of trying to piecemeal this together and figure it out by reading Dr. Google. There’s . It’s like you have a full protocol blueprint, a plan that works remarkable, Evan. Thank you so much for being here for sharing all of this. This has been an extraordinary interview. I know people are gonna get so much out of it. Tell people how they can find you, get a hold of you, work with you.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

So you can find us at energyforleaders.com and you can find us at EnergyMD. We’ve got a Facebook group. So there’s pretty much anywhere on social media. And I do love YouTube and I’m getting into TikTok. So I’m really excited about that, ’cause I like to sing and I like to dance. And so we’ll see how that goes, but yeah, reach out and love to. We do offer free consultations if you’re interested, but we have a lot of free stuff going on as well to support you along the way.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much, Evan.

Evan H. Hirsch, MD

Thanks for having me on.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Bye.