How to Prevent and Heal Chronic Fatigue and Post Viral Illness with Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian, ND

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi, and welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m excited for you guys. Today I am introducing you to Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian. She is a natural physician who has been working in Chronic Fatigue syndrome, MI, chronic illness in general, and deep chronic illness. She will tell her story of how she has experienced deep chronic illness, including that chronic fatigue, that post exertional malaise, everything that really goes along with whether it’s viral activation or chronic stressors or triggered by gut dysbiosis.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:41 She’s been there in that whole of literally being bedridden a couple of times now, unfortunately for her. And we talk about why, why like why some of us who are so, so healthy struggle with things like long Covid or Me, CFS, or other related chronic illnesses that are either post-viral or triggered by some other significant stressor, and how this can start in childhood. What some of the genetic vulnerabilities are, what some of the life vulnerabilities are, what some of the hormone vulnerabilities are. And she’s offering and has put together a really important summit on this topic that brings in voices and perspectives of people who are actually practicing clinicians and practicing wellness practitioners, who are working with people recovering from complex chronic illness. Her story in mind are so aligned in so many ways. We do a lot of the same kind of work with our clients who are really struggling, and so it’s been fun to meet her, fun to be a part of this summit. And I wanted you to get to really know her and understand her story.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:02:57 And then I strongly encourage you to go listen to the full summit, because she brings on 50 plus experts who look at this illness from a lot of different angles and have that hands on experience. So enjoy this interview. She’s a 20 year plus practicing naturopathy physician. She’s been in this whole you’ll hear more than twice. And so I’ll let you hear her story straight from her own mouth. And then let’s chat on the other side about how you’re going to implement what you learned here today in your own practice. See you there. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I’m here with Doctor Jenny to Fennekin. She is leading an upcoming summit that I’m really excited about. I was a speaker sharing my story about my experience with long Covid that many of you have heard about, and you are going to hear probably the deepest dive interview on that I’ve ever done in this four plus years that I’ve been navigating this. Jenny, welcome. I’m really excited to talk to you about some of the other golden clinical pearls.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:16 But first, I would love to hear your story and why this summit around chronic fatigue, chronic illness, long Covid in particular was such an important piece of work for you. Yeah. Thank you for.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:04:31 Having me here. It’s just a pleasure to be with you. And it was so much fun interviewing you. It’s great to have you interviewing me at this point. Like you and like so many of us who are in the summit, it was a personal experience. This condition chose me. And looking back now, I probably had myalgic encephalitis as a teenager. I had that experience of being really exhausted going into Kaiser. Big deal that my dad took me to. The doctor took me in, and they said, oh, you don’t have mono and you don’t have strep. Clearly you’re just trying to skip school, get back to school, kid. And that was it. And it was awful experience and I remember that. But really the big moment for me was when I was a second year medical student, and I was literally felt like I was on top of the world.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:05:14 I just aced my boards. My child was about 4 or 5 years old. We decided to have another child, and I ended up having a series of miscarriages. And the second one was at 17 weeks. And so it was a well formed fetus. And I ended up having that experience where I hemorrhaged and passed out and would have died if it hadn’t been for modern medical care, was rushed to the hospital, got a DNC, and I came home and my body crashed. I remember my blood pressure just tanked, and I kind of crawled up the stairs and went to bed, and I stayed there for months. I ended up throwing me into what I call a dark night of the soul, where not just my physical body, but my emotion, my energy body were down flat. In another time, I would have been called insane and locked up because I couldn’t function. I had severe anxiety and I had suicidal ideation. I couldn’t handle the energy of anybody else in the room. I couldn’t sleep.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:06:10 Every time I shut my eyes, I would see these dark shapes around me and I’d wake up in terror. I couldn’t eat like there was nothing that I could get into my body. I had to have IVs in my arm for nutrition, and I had to be walked to the bathroom. It was one of those very, very intense times, and I was blessed to have all of my fellow students and my teachers come by my bedside and feed my child and take care of everybody, and I ended up having a couple of really powerful experiences. One was with a subconscious healer that came in and worked with me, and we did hypnosis, and she came and worked with me twice a week. And that was the first time I got where I really needed to go. And I understood the power of that subconscious mind. And this is back in the early 90s, before we had that Stanford study showing that indeed, yes, we do have generational trauma that is stuck in our bodies and we do have memories of it.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:06:59 But back then I was doing what is this stuff? Like all this generational stuff was coming up and I could see it and feel it and knew it was going on. And so we were processing all these things, and I got out of the anxiety, I got out of the depression, and I was able to move from the bed to the couch, and I felt much better. But I was exhausted and I could not go back to school for a whole year. Sure enough, that horrible label of chronic fatigue syndrome got slapped on me, which I hated. It was the yuppie flu back then, but it was actually exactly what was going on with me. And so I did everything I could as a student. And then as I went back to school, I was doing all the stuff for the adrenals and all the detox and all the things, and I figured it was like a puzzle and I needed all these different puzzle pieces. And I finally broke through. Halfway through my residency, I got all 20 of my Mercury amalgams out and had an incredible amount of energy Full of life.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:07:51 Like 150% better. No energy crashes. Ended up opening clinics. Was teaching at the college. Ended up eventually, nine years later, having another kid like at secondary infertility for a long time, but was able to do all those things and knew I would never get sick again until I did. And when I hit perimenopause, I had a series of injuries hurt my knee, got frozen shoulder, couldn’t sleep from the pain, and all of a sudden I went down that slide so fast that I’m looking at that looming hole going, oh no! Except this time I had overhead in my clinic. I was the one that was responsible financially for my family. If I went back to bed, we went bankrupt. I had no choice but to figure out what was going on here. And it was a really important lesson just in that moment, too, of realizing that I was going into relapse, because I realized that it’s easy for the body to go into relapse. And I don’t want to say that as a fear thing.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:08:45 For those of you who are listening to this, who have this, it’s really an empowerment thing because when you understand what your root causes are and what your body needs to get better, what are the tools in your toolkit that work for you? Then, when you’re at risk for relapse, you can use those tools and either stop that relapse at all or shorten the course or make it not as deep. So I think it’s just one of those things to be aware of is a truism, so that you can keep those tools in. I ended up I couldn’t sleep, so I just got up and researched, and this is back when they thought that all chronic fatigue was just from one thing they’re fighting. Like, is it parvovirus? Is it Epstein-Barr virus? Is it this I don’t know if you remember those days. Maybe I don’t know if you’re in the literature back at that time, but that’s what they were doing. And I was like, I was like, no, I think it’s more than that.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:09:27 I think it’s a couple different things, all interconnected. And I had this crazy experience where all these patients came in and I was able to really figure out that there are five different root causes to chronic fatigue. So that was really my chronic kind of fatigue story. And then the pandemic hit and my health is great. I again got 100% out of that situation, 150%.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:46 How long before your Covid infection was that last relapse?

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:09:52 It was about ten years.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:09:53 Oh, okay. Okay. So you had like enough time to really recover, stay stable financially, all of that.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:09:59 During the pandemic. You know, we were in lockdown, all that kind of stuff. When we started traveling again, that’s I can’t remember which summer that was. I was like, I mean, you know, I went to London by myself, had an amazing time, met up with some friends, had so much fun getting lost in London, walked for 12 hours with my feet bleeding and was happy as a clam, you know, was kayaking and hiking every single day.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:10:21 You know, just out doing everything. No glass ceiling, no energy, no worry about energy budgeting, none of that. And it was two months after that that I got Covid and it crashed me into long Covid. And I always say there’s a setup in terms of why this kind of happens. I had severe, severe amount of emotional stress that happened that year. Like, I remember sitting here at this desk actually going, this is cancer level causing stress. I need to shift this and I knew that. But it was that kind of like really deep stress that everybody had during the pandemic in one way or the other. And I also had a low grade gastrointestinal infection with pylori. And the day that I got exposed to Covid, I had a gastrointestinal illness from food poisoning when I was traveling in the Dominican Republic. So my microbiome was shot and I got Covid, and I think that Covid landed in my microbiome. And because my stress response was already jacked up, I didn’t have the ability.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:11:15 My immune system was overrun.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:17 So, yeah. Yeah. So many things.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:11:21 I know it’s a long story.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:22 Yeah, that’s a great. But you know, what’s so important about that story is it’s so common. This is exactly the path that people have, right? They have some genetic vulnerabilities. They have some maybe subconscious or traumatic vulnerabilities. Sometimes it’s really just a luck thing in the sense that they’re hit at the wrong time. Like you said, like I’ve had many clients who now have their first two Covid infections they were able to fully recover from pretty easily. And then the third one is the one that takes them down because they happen to be in luteal phase, or they happen to have a cold the week before or something like that. And so what’s so important about that is that this is why I think we have to be so much more disability aware, if you will, because people think like, this is never going to happen to me, you know, because I was exactly like you, like, not the week before, but about a month before.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:12:23 I was hiking in, in Vermont on ski mountains. You know, I wasn’t thinking about my energy whatsoever. But you can be in very, very good shape and have a couple of timing issues or whatever, and this can hit you. And it’s not always Covid. There are a lot of other triggering factors. One of the things that I really wanted to ask you about related to your story, but maybe you’ve learned some things from some of the other speakers on the summit as well. What are some of the intersections that you’re seeing between perimenopause or low estrogen times? I’m really seeing clinically that luteal phase, postpartum perimenopause are like huge red flags. Anytime someone is slightly low estrogen compared to if they’re already on HRT. We know that protective things like that. So what are you seeing there and your speakers seeing there?

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:13:20 I totally agree. And Betty Murray came in and spoke. We did a deep dive into the hormone piece. And it was really interesting because often when I tell that story, I talk about that second relapses and there was perimenopause sprinkled on top.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:13:33 And really, after talking to Betty Murray, I was like, oh, I gotta take that up. That was not a freaking sprinkle. That was part of the foundation. That was what was going on. Because that estrogen is such a powerful anti-inflammatory. You know, they call frozen shoulder 50 year old women’s disease in Chinese medicine. I had a really bad case of frozen shoulder because I was so fit and I was working out so much, and I injured my knee. I was like, I wasn’t going to give up my workout. So I was doing all this upper body core, and then my shoulder hurt a bed and I’m like, no, I’ll just work through this one. I’m 24 years old. No problem. I’ll keep lifting. Yes, swim. You know, I’ll just.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:09 Yeah. Well, and that’s exactly what cured me to it, because I was like, she said she had frozen shoulder and so ding ding ding ding because.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:14:17 Yeah, as.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:17 A physical therapist, we’ve seen that for decades.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:20 We’re like, of course, every time, you know, you’re in perimenopause that triggers frozen shoulder.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:14:25 Yeah. And it’s interesting because energetically that frozen shoulder goes to the solar plexus, which is around self-worth. And it’s really interesting when you’re in perimenopause from that emotional, energetic thing. That’s part of what you’re coming into is your own power in a new way, where you’re not in this tendon of a befriend estrogen state. You know you’re kind of stepping into who am I if I’m not making sandwiches for everybody all the time. Like, you know, if I don’t need to worry about that so much, if I’m kind of moving into this next phase of my life, who am I in that? So it’s kind of interesting from that perspective as well. But yes, perimenopause is huge and I agree with the luteal phase thing as well. One of the times when I was I had chronic fatigue when we were traveling to Britain where my husband’s family lives, and I arrived there and I went into this deep, dark depression that I had not experienced and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:15:13 I’m one of those women that the magazine I buy before I get on the plane is actually Scientific American. And yeah, anyone out there listening, I love you if you’re like me. I’m just like, that was what I bought happened to be an article on hormones and what happens during that luteal phase. And that was the first time I’d read an art. This is again decades ago. This is reading an article and realizing how that impacts your mood, which impacts your neurotransmitters. And I was sitting there in this in our bedroom going, oh, this is what’s going on. I flew during luteal phase. Totally jet lag. Small child up at night. You know, they’re jet lagged. I’m jet lagged. This is what happened to my brain. It’s like this is the thing. So I think realizing the impact of that is huge. And I think it’s important to not be in fear around this. I’m like, oh no, I’m in my luteal phase. I can’t do anything or I’m going through perimenopause, I’m going to get sick and get Covid.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:16:09 That’s not it at all. It’s having more compassion for ourselves, I think, going through these different times. And when we hear that really checking in with ourselves, what am I up for right now? Or if you are going out to a high risk situation, you know you’re going to a concert or something, then boost yourself in some way, whether that’s an energetic thing where you’re kind of putting an energy bubble around you, whether it’s taking a immune support of herbs before you go, and when you come back or you’re sniffing something, you know, doing some nasal lavage. You know what I mean? It’s like kind of. What is it that you can protect yourself so that you can support yourself? But I do agree that these are higher risk times for sure.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:16:47 Yeah. And you were also in a phase of secondary infertility, which is related often to HPA axis dysregulation. Also low progesterone. Low estrogen. So you had like ultra luteal phase if you will, you know at some level.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:17:03 Yeah. And it’s kind of interesting because of course the more the literature comes out and you kind of think about different things, there’s been some interesting papers around infertility and myalgic encephalitis in the combine there. So I actually kind of going back and thinking maybe some of that infertility was actually whatever that thing is that you were sort of talking about. You know, I think some people with myalgic encephalitis and who have a tendency to long Covid, I actually think we’re going to find something is genetic. I know genes can be turned on and turned off. So I don’t see that as a destiny thing. But my mom had this. My brother went through a phase of this. My mom’s cousin had this. It’s in our family as a thing. And you can kind of look at what is that. And then from the summit, you know, to your point of what’s come up in the summit is did some really great interviews with two doctors who do a lot of genetic testing, which is not something I’ve done for a while.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:17:56 And it was interesting. And they ran a test on me. I’m very strong in lots of things, like doing great, but in inflammation. I’m challenged, and it made me realize that I’ll bet a lot of people who get stuck in these chronic conditions probably have that marker. And it’s instructive because clinically it makes you think, okay, well then let’s focus the treatment there. You know, you have that supplement your own personal medicinally of 100 supplements, like, you know, which ones do you really need? When you sort of have that blueprint, it can be helpful to go like, well, my body actually detoxes pretty well. Actually. It is the anti-inflammatories that we really need to focus on.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:35 Yes, I completely agree. I think there’s this genetic predisposition to some of these things, and the knowledge of the vulnerable times is when we need to step up the protection, you know, whether it’s preventative medications or masking, you know, air filtration, thinking about when you’re willing to do different things, because when you have this genetic vulnerability and you might be in a vulnerable time, I think the reality is we have to recognize that we’re all going to be navigating a more complex environment from now on.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:19:12 And so when you know you are a more vulnerable person genetically, it gives a lot of strength to when to deploy the tools of increased resilience without having to kind of be always in fear. I think the knowledge is a lot more empowering. And so I think it was really interesting that you were very gaslit as a kid. And that’s one of the things we’re seeing in long Covid kids. I think it’s about 20% of children have long Covid at this point, and we’re seeing a lot of teenagers. The kids are really being gaslit. Anything that you either learned from the summit or you would say to our practitioners out there who might work with kids or teens, like, let’s help them, because I think that initial gaslighting really is long term traumatic.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:20:04 I would agree. I mean, this is one of those where I can get onto my soapbox and it makes me angry. I mean, it just really does because I have seen those kids and we were in New Zealand last month, had dinner with my husband’s friend.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:20:16 They brought their 20 year old and they’re like, hey, what are you doing? Going to college? She’s like, no, I had some health issues. I’m not in college. I’m like, ding, ding, ding. Ends up, of course. She was diagnosed a couple of years ago with mild. I don’t know if you have me or if you have long Covid. We’re not sure. Told three years ago, there’s nothing you can do for this. There’s nothing you can do. You have to get used to it. She’s 17 and now she’s 20, and she’s been on her parent’s couch for three years. It makes me mad because there’s so much you can do. That’s the wrong thing to say. You can say, I’m not sure how to treat this. This is out of my scope. Let me connect you with somebody who does. Let me find some resources. Let me spend an hour online googling this and find some resources for you if you’ve never heard about it before.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:20:58 I know nobody listening is there, but it’s like it’s ridiculous. I think to your point of the damage and the trauma. I think it’s terrible to say that to anyone at any age, but when you’re just at that peak, you’re supposed to have all this vitality and energy. You’re supposed to be out there connecting and expressing yourself, learning who you are to be told when you’re just coming out of your egg in a way to be told no, you can’t live that life. They don’t have enough wisdom and experience to bring any perspective or to question anything that you’re telling them. So be really conscious. There’s a thing in Buddhism about right speech, right action, right? And so what is really the right thing to say to this person in front of you? It’s so important that we stay connected with our patients. And if you’re talking to a teenager, how would you have wanted to be treated as a teenager when you were there? If that’s really a question for you as a practitioner, and for those of you who know teenagers and people in their 20s who have this condition, there are so many things you can do.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:21:56 I’d say the ones that I’ve seen are kind of in two groups. The first group is because they’re so much younger. They actually shift out really quickly once you get figure out what it is. Did they reactivate a chronic virus? Did they have a TBI. And this is triggering severe brain inflammation. Need to address that. Like what is it in them. Is there mold in their house that wasn’t an issue until they got Covid and now it’s flaring them up. There’s something there that needs to be uncovered, like what’s going on in their body. It’s going to be different for everybody. So that’s the one group. And once you figure out what that is and they get their lifestyle. I mean, they do get the bonus of needing to realize that lifestyle matters at an earlier age, and so they get to eat better than their friends and they get to sleep more than their friends. But that will pay off for them when they’re in their 40s. They can thank us later. But then the other group, I’d say, are more severely ill, and I think those are when I’m seeing genetic propensities that would have triggered in their 30s, 40s and 50s being turned on in these teenagers or early 20s.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:22:53 And you’re seeing people and you’re seeing and those are the ones with the rheumatoid factors that are elevated, the Ana that, you know, these autoimmune things that are flaring and they got kicked on by the Covid. And so those are the kind of the two groups that I’m seeing. So obviously they are the more sick ones and they are going to take more time because their body is in a much more severe, dysregulated state. Yet it does not mean that there’s not an answer for these people. And yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:23:16 Agree, agree. I 100% agree. I almost feel like one of the things you and I should do is like almost start a group for teens because it’s very difficult because you have to take ownership of this healing, which is difficult before you really know how to, like, take ownership of yourself. You know, it’s difficult, but I think the hopeful message is that as long as they’re believed by their team and then the team works with them, and that ideally it depends on how old they are.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:23:52 You know, if someone’s 12 versus if someone’s 17, there can be big differences in what they can own. But as much as they can own that healing, it’s so hard. But that seems to be the most success I’m seeing. And then the other thing I wanted to ask is, before we wrap up, give me a couple of shiny clinical pearls. Like, what were some of the most interesting things you learned in doing this summit with all of the interviews that you did?

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:24:21 You know, there are about 50 speakers, so there’s so many clinical pearls. So like the top ones, I would say that the conversation with Leo Golan was such a lovely, deep, geeky dive into the mitochondria and really discussing what might be happening deep inside the mitochondria with electron transport system in the challenging cases, and how some people are keto resistant. And why is that? You know, is there sort of this reverse process within the energy system? So for those of you who are really interested in those deep dives, and either you yourself or you’re working with people who are complex cases that are somewhat resistant to what you would think he feels like their metabolism is really off.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:24:59 That talk was great. It was really enjoyable. Other really great clinical pearls. I love my talk with Doctor Rajani, which again was very geeky in terms of lab interpretation, but looking at the connection, he’s such a research person. You know, you put his name into PubMed and it’s six pages of research papers that are behind his name, and he really drew that connection between what’s happening inside the cells and turning on this autoimmune process, and also how it is that we can do a better job interpreting labs for chronic virus reactivation, which is one of those things that a lot of doctors don’t want to look at because they’re like, well, basically, the truth is they don’t know how to interpret them because we don’t have great testing for it. But we did go into that, and that was fantastic. I mean, there’s so many great ones. Some of the on the really inspiring ones. So many people have a hard time getting movement in because of the malaise. So I brought in Julie Tom, who does trauma informed movement using HRV.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:25:56 And she’s incredible. Really, really, completely different look than you’ve ever heard before. So she was fantastic.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:26:02 That sounds like a really key one for all the physical therapists in our community, because that’s what they’re trying to do is really navigate the balance between pacing and not losing all of the strength and resilience and bone structure and, you know. Right.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:26:17 Yeah, right. So there’s 2 or 3 talks in there for all of you physical therapists that I would highly recommend, Deborah Atkinsons as well. And Julie Tom for sure. And then a couple of the bone folks were really great, Doctor Newstead and Margie Bissinger.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:26:30 So excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for putting together this summit, which I know is always a lot of work, but this is something that’s going to be with us from now on. So having those tools of prevention, those tools of mitigation, those tools of recognizing when people are in higher risk states and then the hope and the specific actionable tools that people can use to fully recover is so important.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:27:02 Because when you’re stuck in the deep tunnel of me in particular, it can feel very hopeless. So this summit is giving people a lot of hope. Thank you.

Dr. Jennifer Tufenkian 00:27:14 You’re so welcome. Thank you for having me here. I’m looking forward to talking soon.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:27:22 I hope you enjoyed meeting Doctor Jenny as much as I have enjoyed getting to know her. Chronic, complex illness is so difficult because we don’t have a very clear, simple way to like test. Do you have this viral activation? Is it a mold issue? Is it a gut issue? Is it a neuroinflammation issue? What are your particular genetic predispositions? Right. There are some things we can gather. As you heard from the story, and I think as clinicians, our first step because unfortunately, a lot of the useful, the most useful deep dive testing is very expensive. It’s difficult to access. And most practitioners do not have the skill set to really utilize it to its best and highest use. And so it becomes kind of like more data that was just expensive to get and isn’t necessarily going to change your next steps with your client.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:16 So what I want you to do in this landscape of long Covid, look, right now, Covid rates are quite high yet again. This is an illness that is unfortunately going to be with us. You are going to have to learn to navigate this in a way that’s personally protective, that’s protective of your community. In an environment where the vast majority of people don’t think it’s a problem. Don’t have any idea when the Covid rates are high or we don’t have any institutionalized community protections in terms of air filtration, things like that, which we absolutely should. It’s a soapbox I could stand on for days, but I’m also a realist. So if you are an individual who has some of these, both genetic and lifestyle and life predispositions and or you just happen to get unlucky, here’s some of the things you can do to help yourself mitigate that risk. You know, masking of course. Antiviral herbs and immune supportive supplementation, nasal lavage, you know, things like red light therapy, and you’re going to learn a lot of the particular prevention tools that we currently do have.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:26 And I am very well versed in these. You can see them in the blog post that will link to this episode, because I did a deep dive in prevention about a year ago last year when everyone started traveling for the summer. Very similar tools and strategies at this point. So I’m going to share that blog post with you. But we have a lot of tools to mitigate risk, and for some people, that includes vaccines. Vaccines can be a little bit tricky in this population because some of the genetic issues that predispose people to long Covid can also be some of the ones that can predispose people to kind of lung vaccine injury post vaccine illness, which we are seeing in Covid. And I think one of the important things is to have a nuanced, truthful conversation about this. This does not mean that vaccines are bad in general. This does not mean that the Covid vaccine is bad for everyone. It’s a complicated and nuanced conversation that we have to get more comfortable having if we’re going to survive in an environment of long term chronic exposure.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:30:35 So when you have low estrogen, for example, that’s a higher risk time. So how can people mitigate then post acute infection. We want to have people really intervening more aggressively to mitigate that risk. And then third, as a practitioner, how can you really listen to the stories of people fully believe what they’re telling you and then meet them where they are, no matter how old they are? But especially important if you’re working with kids and teenagers. Long Covid affects children in some studies to even more than adults. So these kids who are saying they’re tired and they’re wiped out and they’re depressed and anxious and have chronic pain and headaches. They do. And it is tricky because there can be a feedforward cycle of fear of going to school, feeling worse, getting more nauseous, getting more disordered, more reactive to foods and other things, allergens in the environment. So especially for kids and teenagers, this is a very difficult thing to navigate. And as practitioners, we can be that safe, nourishing, supportive part of the team where we really believe what they’re saying and we help them get stronger in their resilience towards recovery because this can be a very difficult thing to recover from me.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:32:05 CFS can be very severe, keeping people bedridden for years, or it can be much less severe, which is Not, you know, worse necessarily, but it’s a little bit more difficult sometimes to navigate because people can feel okay some days, not great other days. And it’s hard to have any predictability around that. So they get a lot of that. Oh, you’re just faking it. Da da da da. You know this can’t be that bad. You were okay yesterday. How come you could do this and can’t do that? It’s a very shame ridden place to live, especially if you’re a teenager or a young adult. And you’re supposed to have all the energy in the world. So tune in to the summit. Thank you for listening to this episode, and look for these chronic illness signs, both to help your clients and patients have a more preventive approach and to help them recover more quickly. And the first step is really deeply listening to that story, using your skill set of coaching. And you’ll often figure out and understand what some of their risks and triggers are without having to do as much complex, expensive, difficult to access testing and still be able to help people recover.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:27 It’s a challenging thing, but you’re on the front lines and your community needs you. Thank you so much for doing the work that you do. I’ll see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.