Transcription
So, if you're dealing with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, I know that you're frustrated with the lack of answers that you're finding out there. And I know that you're asking yourself like, "I just had a nap. How could I be tired? I just slept." And people are probably telling you, you know, "It's just in your head. And if you just get up and move a little bit more, you would probably have more energy."
And when I was dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome, this was a long time ago, but when I left my doctor's office, I just felt like he was saying, "Well, since this is all in your head and I've already spent way more than the seven minutes that I have allotted to you, I really need to move on to my next patient." And, "No, we don't validate parking anymore. But you can look at the picture of my new speedboat on the wall on your way out. Take care. Bye-bye."
Now, and you know, this is not what every doctor is going to present, but even today, 20 years later, I'm really surprised at the number of people that I hear from that tell me that their doctor either dismissed this or told them that it's just in their head, even with all of the information that we have now. But when I was dealing with this chronic fatigue, I knew that it wasn't just in my head. At the time, I lived in an apartment that had three steps up to that apartment. And halfway up those steps, I would have to stop and take a break. Really? Three steps? That's more than I could fit into one sitting at a time now. Three steps. And I was 34 years old and working as a personal trainer and in amazing shape. So I knew that this was not something that could possibly be in my head. I knew that I should be able to tackle more than three steps at a time. So I really wanted to find some answers.
So, just keep in mind that I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving you any type of medical advice. This is just going to be like an informational type of video because I'm just a comic turned nutrition author because 23 different doctors couldn't help me get my voice back when I lost my voice for eight years. So, I had to dig for my own answers. So, I'm basically just you 20 years later. During this process of trying to get my voice back is when this chronic fatigue set in for me. So, in this video, I'm going to help you understand what actually caused it for me and the steps I took to correct that situation.
But I really want you to get three things out of this video. Number one, this problem is not in your head. I'm going to show you science and I'm going to share some studies and some scientific facts that we know in our scientific world today that show that this is just not going on in your head. The second thing I want you to understand is that the medical world is never going to have a solution for this. The medical world is looking for there to be one cause so that they can have one solution that will work for everybody. But by the end of this video, you're going to understand there's a number of things that can create this problem. So, how could there ever be one solution that's going to fix it for everybody? It's never going to happen. So, if you're waiting for somebody to save you, nobody's coming. We're really going to have to dig into this and understand what's going on to have the ability to change what we're doing in our life to create any type of improvement. The third thing I want you to get out of this video is that your chronic fatigue makes sense. I know that this is going to be a shocking situation to you, but when I explain some of the science behind this, you're going to be saying, "Well, yeah, how why would I have any energy? How can I possibly have energy if this is going on with me?" Your chronic fatigue makes sense. And when it makes sense to you, now you have a place to start. Now you can understand, well, now I have steps that I can take to see if I can create some improvement. So, let's jump into the Smartboard and dig into some of this science so we can find you some answers.
Now, since there is no known cause for chronic fatigue syndrome and there is no solution for chronic fatigue syndrome, that's not what we're going to do in this video. We're just going to look through some possible underlying causes. I'm going to share some science and some studies with you. It's okay if I stand in front of this. I'll make them big when you need to see them. And I'll also put the links to all of these studies and papers in the description below this video so that you can dig a little bit deeper. But your goal here is just to get an idea. Is one of these causes really make sense for me? Oh yeah, that see that I know that's a problem for me. Maybe that's the issue. And if that's the case, then you can just take steps to improve that issue and see, do you have more energy? Wouldn't that really be something? And at the very least, the information that you understand here should allow you to ask your doctor better questions to really get some more insights into what you need to do to get some energy back. The fact is you can get your life back. I know that it feels like you can't. I was there, but I hear from people all the time that do. I've helped hundreds of clients improve this scenario. So, know that you can do it, too.
So when we're looking at chronic fatigue, we need to understand that the body has different ways that it can create energy. What it really wants to do is it wants to use cellular respiration. That's the way that it likes to make energy. But to do that, it needs to have oxygen. And if oxygen is not available at that tissue level where it needs to be so that the body can utilize it, then the body has this backup mechanism. It can create energy through fermentation and it can do that without oxygen. So the body has different mechanisms that it can use. The situation is that it's really about the oxygen utilization. So you're breathing oxygen. You're not living in a fish tank. We know that oxygen is coming into this system. The problem is there's issues that can restrict the body from utilizing that oxygen. Then it has to go over to this fermentation situation. If it didn't, then we would have no energy. We would just fall over on the floor. But this fermentation is really meant to be used just for short bursts. It's not meant to be used long term.
Another thing to think about is that the exhaust or the byproduct that comes from creating energy the way that the body wants to is CO2 or carbon dioxide. And we know that when we exhale, we just breathe out carbon dioxide and then we got rid of that exhaust from creating energy this way. But the exhaust from creating energy through fermentation is lactic acid. Now, we can turn that lactic acid into glucose and then burn that for fuel. But for a lot of people, they may start to accumulate too much lactic acid in that tissue level, which can acidify that tissue and kind of fry those nerve endings and create a lot of pain. This is why you hear so much about fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome both taking place in the same person. So, if you're dealing with fibromyalgia, I'm not going to dig too far into how all that happens, but I'll put a link in the description below for my video on deep dive into fibromyalgia and some real solutions you can look at. And a lot of the stuff that we'll cover here, I also covered in that video, but I go into more about how that pain is coming about. But this is common to see with this chronic fatigue issue.
So the other thing that we want to understand is that this process of creating energy through fermentation is less efficient. Doing this way the way the body wants to do it with this cellular respiration, the body can make up to 19 times more energy. So here's where we start to understand the problem. If somebody's body is not able to create energy the way that it wants to because the body can't access and utilize oxygen correctly, then they're going to be making their energy through fermentation most of the time. Well, if that's the case, why would you have as much energy as the other people in your house? The other people, the way they're making energy, if they're making 20 times the energy that you're making, wouldn't it make sense that you would not have as much energy as they would? So we want to understand why does a person get stuck making energy this way.
So to dig into this we need to understand blood pH and something called the Bohr effect. So the Bohr effect tells us that the pH of that blood is very important. It's a very narrow range that it stays between. And when the blood starts to lean a little bit too far on that alkaline side, what happens is oxygen will get trapped in the blood. The oxygen can't leave the blood and get down to the tissues so that the body can utilize it to create energy through this cellular respiration. So it's very important for that pH to stay in the right range. But if the blood is leaning too far alkaline, you can see that's going to be a big problem for this. The body is going to have no choice but to go to this route. Now if that blood is leaning too far on the acidic side, now the Bohr effect tells us, well, this makes it difficult for the blood to pick up that oxygen and transport it where it really needs to go. So, if the blood is leaning too acidic, also oxygen is not where it's supposed to be. Now, I got no choice. I'm going to use this fermentation. So, there's two different ways there that somebody could really be stuck making most of their energy this way. And you can see why if they're doing all the time, they could have a lot of pain from fibromyalgia issues with all that lactic acid accumulating. But even if that's not the case for them, how are they going to have any energy if doing it the wrong way is making almost 20 times less energy than they normally would if the body was able to work the way that it wants to.
So we look at this study here on cardiopulmonary, metabolic and perceptual responses during exercise and ME and chronic fatigue syndrome. And this study showed us that wow, when we're looking at these chronic fatigue patients, it appears that their breath is irregular. It's much slower and deeper. And yet this other study here on a hierarchical logistic regression predicting rapid respiratory rates from post-exertional malaise and PEM they also call that is people that just get totally fatigued after they do any type of exercise and this goes hand in hand with chronic fatigue syndrome. Some people will see a touch of either of these issues going on but in this study they showed that the people that were dealing with this issue had a faster breath rate. So you can see the confusion that comes about when one study shows that wow these people really have a slower breath rate when they're dealing with chronic fatigue type issues, but this other study shows that oh no, these people have a a rapid breath rate. So when they're trying to figure out an answer, they want this one answer. Well, all look at all the people that have this issue going on. Well, it wasn't all the people, so that's not it. And yeah, a lot of people had this, but it wasn't everybody. So we'll just keep searching until we find everything that lines up right for us. Well, it's never going to line up cuz some people their blood is going to be leaning too far on the alkaline side and some are going to have it leaning too far on that acidic side. But you can see that either of them can force the body into using this method that is not as efficient for creating energy.
So to get an idea of if this is an issue for you, we can look at our breath rate. Let's look at this study here on cerebral vascular control is associated with skeletal muscle pH in chronic fatigue syndrome patients both at rest and during dynamic stimulation. And they say it has been shown that CFS patients often experience hyperventilation indicating acidic pressure on the blood pH since blood pH modulates breathing activity. So it's known in the medical literature that the pH of the blood can dictate how the body is going to breathe. So what we want to understand is that when the body is trying to deliver this oxygen, it's all about the body's ability to get the oxygen where it needs to go. But CO2 is a big player here. CO2 is this acidic stuff that the body makes and then we huff it off and we exhale. So CO2 is acidic. Now, if the blood is leaning too far on the alkaline side, the body says, "Well, this isn't going to work. I can't get oxygen where I need it to go. I'm going to slow the rate at which I breathe in an effort to hold on to more of this acidic CO2." When I hold on to more CO2, now I'm going to balance out the pH of the blood. Oxygen will be able to leave the blood and get down to the tissues so I can create energy the way that I want to create it. So the body will adjust that breath rate in an effort to balance out the pH. If somebody's blood is leaning too far on the acidic side, well now the body's going to say, "Well, I can't pick up enough oxygen when it's acidic like this. So I'm going to increase the rate at which I breathe so I can huff off more of this CO2, make the blood less acidic, balance it out, and allow the body to pick up oxygen and take it to the places where it needs to go." So, the body has the ability to try to fix this issue, but with some of the malfunctions I'm going to explain here in a minute, you're going to see that it makes it very difficult for the body to keep up. But what it does do is it gives us a sign of what may be going wrong.
So, what we can do is we can check our breath rate. And this is easy to do. You just get like a timer on your phone, set it for a minute or something. Just try to relax, breathe normal, set the timer so it goes off, and then just count your number of inhales in that 60-second period. Don't count inhale one, exhale two, just count the inhales. So, you're really looking for your breath rate to be between 14 and 18 is really optimal. But if it's like 13 or below, well, that's a sign that your blood is leaning a little bit too far on that alkaline side. This is not a diagnostic thing. You're just trying to get a picture of how the body is operating. So, if you do your breath rate and it's like eight, well, you know, that's way lower than 14. When I was having these chronic fatigue issues, my breath rate was six. Well, that's hardly even human. So, I knew that, oh, this is a big problem for me. And if I can address this and improve it, then I bet that I'm going to feel a whole lot better. And that's kind of what happened. So, we want to be able to just look at that breath rate. If it's faster than 18, then we can say, okay, well, it's likely that my blood's leaning a little bit too far on the acidic side. So, if I can balance it out in the other direction, now I'm going to be able to get oxygen to where it needs to go and create energy the way that the body wants to.
So, where some of the confusion comes in is that if your blood's leaning too alkaline and now the oxygen can't get down to the tissues where it needs to be, your doctor's going to pull put like a pulse oximeter on you and be like, "Oh man, you got plenty of oxygen. Way to go. Good job. Everything's great there." The problem is the oxygen is stuck in the blood. It can't get down to the tissues where it needs to be. And I know that you're going to be mad that you're learning from a standup comic about the Bohr effect. But in defense of the medical community, they just discovered this Bohr effect in 1904. So, it's only been around about 120 years. And sometimes it can take some time for people to catch up. I don't know. But this is science. All these things about the breath rate adjusting according to the pH of the blood. This is all in the medical literature. I didn't get this out of a Paw Patrol coloring book. This is known things that have to do with human physiology.
So, we want to start to understand, well, why would it be leaning too alkaline? That's going to be the most common situation is someone's going to have a lower breath rate. And that's what I usually see when I'm looking at this chronic fatigue syndrome. But we want to understand that it's usually about calcium being displaced. It's not about, oh, I need more calcium or I'm supplementing with too much calcium. It's usually just that calcium is being put into the wrong place. This usually has to do with someone consuming too many carbohydrates or sugars because calcium will follow sugar just like you followed the ice cream truck when you were eight. Calcium follows the sugar. So if someone's eating a lot of carbohydrates and sugars and their blood sugar is going up, calcium is going to leave the tissues where it's supposed to be and go to the blood to follow that sugar. Now calcium is just happens to be one of the most alkaline substances on the planet. So now that calcium is going to alkalize that bloodstream. Now the oxygen is going to be trapped there and it can't get down to the tissues. So, what's really common to see with this chronic fatigue syndrome is high blood sugar and insulin resistance. In that fibromyalgia video, I also shared a lot of studies that showed correlations between insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and fibromyalgia type pain. And when you understand what's happening with calcium, then it makes a lot of sense. I go into that more in the other video, but we want to look at basically our fasting glucose.
So, this is something another step that you can take is just check your blood sugar first thing in the morning. You can pick up a glucometer at any pharmacy for $40 and just look at your fasting blood sugar first thing in the morning. If it's over 100, this is a sign that you're probably leaning a little bit more on that insulin resistance side and blood sugar is going a little bit higher than it should all day long, which means it's going to be attracting that calcium to the blood all day long. And where this can get magnified is if somebody becomes insulin resistant or even type two diabetic. Now they're not processing that glucose correctly. Right? We know that insulin resistance means that the insulin is not getting the glucose into the cells and being utilized and the blood sugar goes higher. We all understand that. But what we don't understand is when we don't have the ability to process glucose correctly, now we're not creating as much CO2. CO2 is a byproduct of processing carbohydrates. It's not a byproduct of eating carbohydrates. It's a byproduct of properly processing carbohydrates. So, if someone's become insulin resistant and they're not processing carbohydrates correctly, now they're not creating as much CO2 and now the blood is going to lean more on that alkaline side. On the other side of that, if someone is processing carbohydrates very efficiently, but they're eating too many, now they could be creating too much of this CO2 and causing that blood to lean a little bit more on the acidic side. Now, there's other factors that affect the pH of the blood. This thing with carbohydrates and what's happening with CO2 and where is it pushing calcium, these are just the most common things that are going to create trouble in that area. And when we look at this study here on chronic fatigue syndrome is associated with metabolic syndrome. And we understand that metabolic syndrome is when someone's leaning insulin resistant. They usually have some other things going wrong too, you know, like high blood pressure or things like that. Um, but this helps us understand that this is common with this scenario.
So the solution would be to lower your blood sugar if it's going too high. Again, this is not going to be the case for everybody, but if someone's leaning insulin resistant because they've been eating too many carbs and sugars for too long. Now, what we understand is that if they can't process glucose correctly, that's also a restriction of fuel for the body to use to create energy. It doesn't matter if it can use cellular respiration correctly or not if there's no glucose that's able to be used. So this inability to process glucose correctly can be another factor that restricts a person's ability to create energy. So the solution becomes lowering that blood sugar. And we'll look at this study here on non-ketogenic low carbohydrate diet predicts lower effective distress, higher energy levels, and decreased fibromyalgia symptoms in middle-aged females with fibromyalgia. So, in that other video, I talked about this a little bit, but they say a non-keto diet because we really want to lower the carbohydrates, but keto has the ability to magnify these issues for some people. Keto has the ability to really restrict the amount of CO2 you're going to produce because you're not really eating any carbohydrates. So, that could push a person's blood more alkaline and that may already be the problem for them. So, if someone looked at their breath rate and it was really fast, it was like, you know, 21 or 22 or something, then a keto option may be more, you know, beneficial for them. But for most clients, I just like to have them use a low carb, non-ketogenic diet. And the problem that most people run into is that they may have a lot of cravings if they try to reduce too many carbs. And when that's the case, when there's cravings, I like for people to check their blood pressure. And if a person looks at their blood pressure and their systolic number or that top number is below 112, that can be a sign that a person is not getting enough nutrients and minerals into the system. So this is not a diagnostic thing again, but if a person's having cravings and their blood pressure is low, those cravings make sense. So this is usually due to digestive malfunctions and an inability to break your food down correctly to get all the nutrients out of that food.
So, we're seeing another issue here that seems to line up with this issue a lot, just digestive malfunctions. And if we think about that, well, if we can't digest correctly, we're not breaking our food down correctly to get all the fuel and all the nutrients out of that food to allow the body to operate correctly. So, why would we have loads of energy if we can't really get energy from the food that we're eating? So we'll look at this study here on prevalence of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome among individuals with irritable bowel syndrome. And this saw that there was a lot of people that dealt with irritable bowel syndrome that also had chronic fatigue issues. So we want to look at are you experiencing any digestive symptoms at all? Any burping or bloating or acid reflux or constipation or diarrhea or nausea or you know, maybe food just kind of sits there like a rock in your stomach for six hours, some type of indigestion or even skin or acne issues. All of these or any of these are signs that the digestive process is not working correctly. And one of the more common problems is low hydrochloric acid production or HCl. This is that acid that the stomach makes so that we can break down our food correctly. But it's really common for a wide variety of reasons for someone not to be able to make enough hydrochloric acid. So a big problem with that is that in order for the body to access iron or B12, we need stomach acid there to break down those proteins correctly. If we can't break them down, we can't access those nutrients. And those nutrients are really important in carrying oxygen to the right place. So if those nutrients are low and oxygen can't get to the right place, "I got it. Don't worry, I'll just do this. I'll do this all the time. You won't want to get off the couch, but at least I can function. I'm going to do this." So, we really want that iron and that B12 in there.
Another thing to think about is sometimes people can't make enough hydrochloric acid because they don't have enough minerals and these nutrients that are needed like chloride to make this hydrochloric acid. So now the body is going to pull all the chloride that it can out of the blood to try to make this hydrochloric acid. And chloride is acidic. So pulling it all out of the blood is going to push the blood more alkaline. And then this Bohr effect kicks in and now the body can't get oxygen down to the tissues. And so that can be another factor. You can see it's not always just one thing. There can be different levels creating or really magnifying the problem that the person is dealing with. So we also look at this study here on gastric emptying is slow in chronic fatigue syndrome. And I'm not going to get too far into this, but I'll put a link in the description below for our video on gastric emptying and gastroparesis. And we understand that in a lot of cases that's because the food is not being acidified correctly in the stomach. It's supposed to be acidified in the stomach and then it leaves the stomach. So if it's not being acidified, why would it empty? It's not supposed to empty. It hasn't done its job yet. So of course it's going to be delayed. So that video goes into that. But that helps us understand why this slow gastric emptying is seen so often with chronic fatigue syndrome. We need that stomach acid working correctly.
Another thing that we need to think about is that that stomach acid doesn't just help us acidify and break down our food. It's the barrier to the whole digestive tract. So, if someone's not making enough stomach acid now, these bacteria and all these varmints come in on the food that we eat and they don't die in an acid bath like they're supposed to. They come in and they set up camp and they have a cake party and they raise their kids and it's a great time for them. And when you have some type of digestive overgrowth, maybe like a SIBO issue, like a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or some type of overgrowth in the stomach, but when you have an overgrowth, not only can it restrict your ability to break your food down and get all the nutrients out of that food, nutrients that are needed to get oxygen to the right place, but now you're also competing against all these varmints for nutrients and for energy. They're using up all of your nutrients instead of letting you have access to them. So, we really don't want an overgrowth there and we want to correct any digestive malfunctions. And when we can do that and we can break our food down correctly, now we're not going to get crazy cravings when we go on a lower carb diet. A lot of people gravitate towards the carbohydrates because they don't have enough HCL to break down proteins correctly. Maybe their bile is not flowing correctly. This is very common for bile to become too thick and sticky and not flow out of the gallbladder correctly. So now we can't emulsify our dietary fats. We can't access fat-soluble vitamins like A, E, D, and K. Those are kind of a big deal. So we really want digestion working correctly so that the body's getting the nutrients it needs from proteins and fat sources. We can still eat some carbohydrates, but the body's not screaming for carbohydrates since that was a lot easier for it to break down. If you can't break down proteins and fats, the body's going to be like, "Hey, give me, give me a ding-dong. What about those Nilla wafers? I could I could break those down. Go get me some of those." So, if we can correct these, the cravings are not going to derail our efforts to lower our carbohydrates so that we can bring this high blood sugar down, stop pulling all this calcium into the bloodstream, making everything too alkaline, and pushing us towards this fermentation issue.
Okay, did I get ahead of you yet? Remember, alls we're looking to see is what jumps out. So, so far, we're looking at our breath rate to see is it in range or is it way too high or way too low. If it is, then we can take steps to fix that direction. We're looking at our blood pressure just to make sure it's not too low if we're needing to go on a lower carb diet. We're checking our blood sugar to make sure that it's not high first thing fasting in the morning. And we're just looking for the things that jump out. Not everything is going to jump out. Not everybody's going to be dealing with all of these issues. Some people will have three or four of them going on and need to do work for all of them, but that's not going to be the case for everybody.
The next common thing I see is what's called an anabolic imbalance. And it was Dr. Emanuel VC that helps us to understand that the body has this natural circadian rhythm at the cellular level. And during the day, we should be in this catabolic state. And then at night, we should move into this anabolic state where the body's really good at resting and and rebuilding and repairing. And so both of these states are really good. And the problem is that someone can get stuck in one of these states most of the time. And if someone's stuck in this anabolic nighttime state most of the time, the problem that's important here for us to understand is that in a severe anabolic state, the body prefers to make energy through that fermentation. So if a person's stuck in that anabolic state and they're making most of their energy through this way, of course, we know they're going to have less energy. So this is another possible issue that needs to be corrected. And you can remember that they used to tell us, oh, you know, if you're tired, you just need to get more exercise. Go get up and do something. Move around. You're going to create more energy. But this study here on replicated blood-based biomarkers for ME is not explicable by inactivity. And they showed that this was not accurate. It's not, you know, a lot of times these people don't have hardly any resources. You're going to tell them to go use them all up on a treadmill and they can't even they got nothing left. So, it's just not the right step. But the reason it was effective for some people is because if they're stuck in this anabolic state, exercise and working out can be a pro-catabolic activity. So, it can push their body a little bit more into that daytime state where they're not stuck in the nighttime state all the time. And if they were able to push through and exercise enough and correct this imbalance, then they saw some improvement. So, they're like, "Oh, it worked for this guy. We should be doing this for everybody." But we need to understand that it's really about looking at the person. It's not about looking at the symptom. If we're just looking at the symptom, then we're looking for one cause and one solution. It ain't happening. We need to look at the person. I like the person. Let's help the person.
So another interesting thing is if someone is stuck in this anabolic state most of the time we'll see a lot of constipation because the body will send more of the water through the kidneys and less to the bowels and the bowels become hard and dry and we also see a lot more anxiety and we'll look at this study here on anxiety and depression in chronic fatigue syndrome and ME. Um, and so they found that this was really common to see either anxiety or depression with chronic fatigue. So what we want to understand is that if someone is stuck in this anabolic state and they're creating all this energy through fermentation, well remember the byproduct is lactic acid. Well, you can create a panic attack by injecting lactic acid into somebody. They do this for clinical trials sometimes to see what's going to help a panic attack. Well, we're going to create a panic attack by injecting them with lactic acid and then we'll see does this work to get them out of that panic attack. But nobody stops to think, well, if a lot of lactic acid creates a panic attack, would an elevated level of lactic acid create anxiety? And that's what we see all the time. Now, this is not the only cause of anxiety. There are other issues that can cause anxiety, but one of the other more common causes is a lack of minerals, which we see with this low blood pressure thing that we were just talking about. So you can see a lot of things are are lining up. When we look at this study on the uh fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue with the IBS, they said that the IBS with constipation was more common to see with chronic fatigue than IBS with diarrhea. Now certainly diarrhea is possible because if all the nutrients are screaming through the system and nothing's really getting assimilated, then that can be a problem like we talked about over here with low nutrient levels. But when we're seeing it more commonly with constipation, well, if this anabolic imbalance is involved, that would make sense. If a person can't make enough hydrochloric acid, like we talked about, that's another factor that can create constipation. So, it makes sense that the constipation is seen a little bit more often with this since so many things line up with constipation problems as well.
Another thing you might hear about is vitamin B1 deficiencies. And one issue with this is that B1 is really necessary for this cellular respiration process. It's it's one of the co-factors that's needed. I talk a little bit more about that in the fibromyalgia video. But because if it's deficient now, we can't create energy this way and the body's going to go in this direction. So there is a study here on a randomized clinical trial high dose oral thiamine versus placebo for chronic fatigue in patients and they saw that they saw some improvement with higher dose vitamin B1. This is not something I usually use with clients, but I'm okay with doing this just to see does it create some improvement. If somebody's going to supplement with a B1, I really like them to use some natural form of thiamine, even like, you know, nutritional yeast or something that has a lot of B1 in it. Uh, but they'll probably also need to use a B complex and maybe just, you know, two or three times a week or something just because if you're going to supplement with a specific B vitamin, uh, the body needs all those other B vitamin co-factors to really make it work. So, they seem to do better if they use a B complex, too. But again, this is going to be more common when we're looking at these different types of digestive malfunctions and digestive symptoms that can really come come along with this kind of stuff. So vitamin and nutrient deficiencies are common when we don't have digestion working correctly. That makes sense. We need to break the food down to access those vitamins and those nutrients.
And the last possible cause I want to talk about are viral issues. And we'll look at this study here on persistent viral infections and the development and severity of ME and chronic fatigue syndrome. And they found that the it was not only more common to see more significant viral uh situations going on, but also viral activity like those viruses were just more active in the people with chronic fatigue. And they're saying, well, the body's dealing with this invader. A lot of resources are going towards dealing with this invader. So, it makes sense that the person would have less energy for themselves. And I buy into that. I say like, yeah, that's true. I can get that. But another thing that we need to understand is that we learned from a lecture from Dr. Mark Anderson. It was called the triad. And he helped us understand that in order for the immune system to work correctly, there has to be enough calcium at the tissue level and then the body can trigger the immune system say, "Hey, there's a problem. Come take care of this." But if something happens when we pull too much calcium out of the tissues, now the immune system isn't even told that there's a problem. They're like, "Hey, I'm taking a break right now." And then that virus that was dormant becomes operational and it flowers and it creates trouble. So, we see this a lot with like people who have herpes cold sore type things. It's very popular to use an amino acid called lysine for herpes. And the reason that that is effective is because lysine helps to push calcium back down to the tissue levels. And what we're looking at here, why this makes sense is remember all these things that we looked at, these problems that are common with chronic fatigue that pull the calcium out of the tissue levels, they're displacing that calcium. So when you're pulling all the calcium out of the tissue levels, making the blood too alkaline, now the body can't use cellular respiration. Of course, the person is tired, but also with all the calcium out of the tissue levels now, any virus that's in the system is going to flower and be more active. It's going to be more significant in that person. And this study here said, yeah, that's exactly what happens with chronic fatigue. We see more viral activity. But now, guess what? It makes sense.
So when we're looking at steps that can help you feel and function better like a human being, first we want to get an idea of what are the issues that are creating this trouble for you. So we might have to look at these things that we talked about to understand that with this anabolic imbalance. There's some simple physiological tests that you can run at home using tools you can pick up like at a pharmacy or a health food store. I'm not going to get into all those here, but we'll put a link in the description below for our totally free digestion course and that walks you through how to run those tests. If you've never looked at your breath rate or your glucose or your blood pressure, it shows you how to do these things at home on your own just to get an idea of what's going on. So, that free course will help you understand if those numbers are showing that you're leaning too far on that anabolic side and steps that you can take to improve that scenario as well. I'll also put a link in the description below for our video on understanding an anabolic imbalance if you want to dig into that a little bit. So, you can see that you're you're probably going to have some homework. But the goal here is for you to finish this video and think, "Wow, this this makes sense that I wouldn't have energy if these things are making me use energy through this way." Yeah, I could see where I would be a little bit tired.
So the first thing we want to look at the steps is if our blood is leaning too far on that alkaline side and oxygen can't get down to the tissues then we would see a lower breath rate would be below 13 or so and if that's the case one thing that can help us called Betco breathing and the method that they use that I find most beneficial in this scenario is just to go for a walk if you can if you have enough energy to walk this can really magnify its effectiveness but do that walk with your mouth closed and just breathe through your nose. So you're not talking to your friend. You're not walking so fast that you can't do that with your mouth closed. If you need to open your mouth to breathe, you're walking too aggressively. You want to slow down. Now, if you can't walk, you're just too tired to do that. You can do this just sitting down, too. But just breathing through your nose has the ability to kind of adjust that CO2 set point and help acidify the blood just a little bit. Just keep in mind that manually changing the way that you're breathing or doing breathing exercises is not really fixing the problem. We really want to fix the underlying cause that's causing the body to change the way it's breathing.
Another thing that a person could do there is they could drink some carbonated water uh away from food is really best to do that. But that carbonation, that CO2 can help acidify the blood a little bit. But one of the best things is really fixing any insulin resistance issue. So you can process your carbohydrates better and then create more CO2 when you're processing those carbs. That helps to acidify the blood a little bit. So we really want to bring down blood sugar with that diet that we talked about. We got to fix any digestive malfunctions. That free course really walks you through looking at your digestion and figuring out which aspects are not working correctly and steps you can take to correct those. So that's really crucial. If you have any digestive symptoms, you have to fix that or a lot of these other things are not going to work correctly. If you're not accessing those nutrients, you're not going to be able to carry the oxygen in the right place even if the pH of your blood is in the right range. So we really need to fix any digestive problems. So, you want to track those symptoms and make sure that they're improving until you correct them all. If you have some type of overgrowth, that needs to be wiped out. That free course shows you how to do that, too. I also talk about this more in the fibromyalgia video because there's some other aspects of an overgrowth, a digestive overgrowth that usually got in because of this lack of HCL. But an overgrowth has the ability to really magnify those fibromyalgia problems as well. If you have some type of anabolic imbalance, you have to create cellular balance. You need to be in the catabolic state during the day where the body's better at creating energy that way and then move into the anabolic state at night. So, you'll have to check your physiology to understand if that's going to be an important thing for you. If there's any deficiencies, a lot of these steps are going to help improve those deficiencies. Improving any digestive malfunctions. Now you'll be able to access B1 better when you correct an overgrowth and you get good gut flora in there with some probiotics and stuff after you've fixed digestive malfunctions. Now that good gut flora makes a lot of our B vitamins for us. But there's also, you know, B1 in a lot of the foods that we eat normally. So if we can just digest them, then we can improve these deficiencies that are going on with things like iron, B12, you know, B1. Now, we fix those deficiencies so that we can correct those issues.
Now, if your blood is leaning too far on the acidic side and your breath rate is too fast, I'll let you know that choline is a supplement that can really benefit that. Choline really alkalizes the bloodstream. So, a person can supplement with some choline and just watch how their breath rate does. Does it come down to a range between, you know, 14 and 18, allowing the body to carry oxygen where it really needs to go? And the last thing I want you to get is, man, that guy sure can yammer on a lot. So, don't let me talking fast about all of this stuff overwhelm you. Yes, you might need to watch this video 12 times, who knows, to really allow some of these things to sink in. But what you can do is you can just run some of these simple tests on yourself to see if something really jumps out. If something really jumps out as, "Wow, that's really wrong. That's not anywhere near where he said it should be." then you know that's probably an area that you want to learn more about and dig into and work to improve. If you can improve it, does your energy improve? That's really all we want to do. We don't need to fix the world. Let's just improve your scenario. So, I hope that helps you find some answers. And if you are dealing with fibromyalgia type issues, you can jump over right now and check out our video on fibromyalgia deep dive. I can't wait to hear about your results.