Addressing the Root Causes: Fatigue and Brain Fog in Pharmacists

Dr. Tamar: 0:00

If you have a Ferrari or if you have a nice channel purse, are you gonna leave it in the floor? No, you're gonna put that channel purse very nicely in the bag that it came and you're gonna put it in your closet or you're gonna put it on display. That's a special item that you're gonna take care of it. You buy that Ferrari, that Lamborghini. You're not gonna put regular gas, you're gonna put the best gas. So we have to think that we are that special and that what we put inside of us is the best that we can afford, that we have close to that, we can have access, so we can be that right. What we put in is that it's gonna come out.

Dr. Rutecki: 0:41

Welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. Part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network, a must-have resource for pharmacist entrepreneurs seeking to enhance patient care while enjoying career and life. Join us as we pivot into Nutrigenomics, using pharmacy and nutrition for true patient-focused care. Explore how to improve chronic conditions rather than just manage them. Celebrate entrepreneurial triumphs and receive priceless advice. Align your values with a career that profoundly impacts patients. Together, we'll raise a script on health and pivot into a brighter future. Before you listen in, I want to thank our listener of the week, dr Sheila Carroll, who says Great podcast. Tamara is a great host. She asked awful questions, leads a natural conversation and it's fun and easy to listen to. Dr Carroll, thank you. My primary aim is to provide value, engage and truly reach out to listeners like you. Knowing that you're finding the podcast enjoyable and easy to follow is a sort of feedback that not only validates the work we're doing here, but truly keeps us going. So a big thank you to you for tuning in. So remember, when you leave us a five-star review, you'll get the chance to be featured as our next listener of the week and I'll give you a shout out right here on the show. Hello and welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with NutriGenomics. I'm Dr Tamara, lawful Doctor of Pharmacy and Certified Nutritional Genomic Specialist. I don't know if you've noticed by now, but I don't interview many pharmacists. I'm a pharmacist but I don't talk to many pharmacists on this show, and there's a reason for that because my audience is primarily pharmacists. I want to expose you to trailblazers in the health and wellness space with diverse professional backgrounds as a way to inspire you, to make you stop and think, hey, if they can do it, then why can't I? Friend, you are a pharmacist, okay, you have been put through the pressure and the grind of pharmacy school, taking a naplex, studying for those pharmacy law exams and taking those tests to get your licensure. And it's time to shine bright like the diamond you are and put your phenomenal skills to use Now. With that being said, today's guest is a pharmacist. We're going to dive deep with Dr Rosemary Rutecki. Dr Rutecki's philosophy is all about digging beneath the surface and getting to the root cause of the matter. She's a visionary pharmacist with a passion for health and wellness. With a doctor pharmacy degree and board certification in functional medicine from the Institute of Functional Medicine, Dr. Rutecki is dedicated to uncovering the root cause of imbalances in your body. Her approach to care goes beyond the surface symptoms and delts into the complex interplay of nutrition, digestion, detoxification, immune function, even hormones and metabolism. By analyzing these critical areas,  Dr. Rutecki  empowers her clients to achieve optimal health and peak performance. Are you ready? Because I sure am so. Dr Rosemary, thank you for joining us today on Pivoting Pharmacy with NutriGenomics. I want to kick it off by diving into your story. What exciting journey led to where you are now.

Dr. Tamar: 4:04

Yes, yes. So thank you so much for having me here today. I'm so excited to share my story with other pharmacists that we can do so many things beyond medications or drugs. We can do so much for our patients. So what led me to functional medicine was actually my daughter. She was experiencing some anxiety something that is called selective mutism when she was a little girl and then back then there was not that much information about it, so we thought that she was shy to talk to strangers, to talk at school, and then that prolonged for more time and then I started researching and then I found like something that is called selective mutism and then, when I found that I was very scared, I'm like, wow, you know, I want my daughter to become an adult that can have a normal life, that can have conversations with others, I want her to be able to learn how to read and I want her to have friends, you know, having a normal life. So I ventured into that learning and taking seminars and I was able to help her to overcome the anxiety of talking. When I talked to her, she said why are you so afraid of talking? She said I think something's going to happen when people hear my voice. So a lot of these kids, they become adults, right, and then they don't speak to, they stay at home, they don't have any social interactions and I don't want that for her. So I got very determined to help her to talk and we did that. She was able to talk and she now it's very normal, no issues. But I didn't want that to come back right. I wanted to find the root cause why she was having anxiety, why this coming from when at home we had a great environment, tons of love, tons of support, nothing that would create anxiety on her. So she let me to find functional medicine. So I learned about genetics, I learned about MPHFR, I learned about so many things and I also learned a lot about the gut microbiome connection and the brain connection and anxiety. So my focus for her has been always having great nutrition, focusing on feeding the gut microbiome, and so far she's just thriving, doing really good. And by helping her she helped me because I was also suffering from some issues too A lot of fatigue, a lot of brain fog, hormone issues, digestive issues. I was so tired that I couldn't even drive. I would fall asleep driving. So I was really tired of fatigue and you know, when you go to doctors they check you and they say, oh, you're fine, or your lab work is normal. It's just part of I don't know they kind of call you just told me it's part of her menopause and I'm like, well, I'm in my 30s, I should not be feeling this way. I should be energetic, enjoying my children, running around, working and by me helping her. She helped me with my health by discovering functional medicine and now I give that gift back to people and I help them to recover their health Right. We have the power of healing, of feeling energetic, of balancing our hormones to have great digestion, and I teach people the importance of having a good, healthy gut microbiome, as so many of our systems are connected to our gut.

Dr. Rutecki: 7:22

Wow, that is an interesting story. From where it started to where you are now All linked to your daughter, right? Yes, you being that parent as all parents should be that want to help their kids get better and be able to thrive in life, and now it's led to you really being able to help other people thrive in their health as well.

Dr. Tamar: 7:40

Yes, that's our mission, right. When God put us things in our path right, we have to be able to be open to the signs, and that was a sign for me, right? Like you know, I'm giving you this gift of you know. You help your daughter, you help yourself. Now you go ahead and help other people.

Dr. Rutecki: 8:00

That's right. We just have to embrace it, and that's another thing. Same thing with trials that come into our lives. We just embrace it, write it and look on the positive side and see what can come from it. That's beneficial to you and others, and that's exactly what you did. Now, dr Rosemary, you, given your resume, you can probably do anything in pharmacy. So can you first explain to our audience what functional medicine is, and at what point did you actually decide to just pivot into that and devote your career to whole body health?

Dr. Tamar: 8:32

So functional medicine studies the whole system. Right, it's a whole system biology. We don't look at the body as one organ or just one system, like, for example, when you go to traditional medicine, your traditional doctor, you go to your internist, and then that doctor might refer you to a gastroenterologist or an endocrinologist. So everything is like compartmental, you know, like in a square box, right? Like you have different, you have. Sometimes people have like five doctors and they're not communicating with each other.

Dr. Rutecki: 9:01

Not at all.

Dr. Tamar: 9:02

Right. And then the polypharmacy. They have tons of medications, a lot of medication interactions and sometimes they don't even know what they're taking. So with functional medicine we take all that out and then we see the person as one, as a whole system, and when you start healing the body and bringing back the balance and putting what the body needs, the body's going to start working and healing. So that's what functional medicine is. We look for the root cause and they wouldn't create balance back into the body so the body can do what it does best Take care of itself, regenerate and we can feel good, that's right Now.

Dr. Rutecki: 9:38

Could you elaborate more on how these imbalances you mentioned actually can contribute to fatigue and brain fog among healthcare professionals or just people in general?

Dr. Tamar: 9:50

Yes, that's a great question. So sometimes, you know, we feel fatigue and brain fog and we might be thinking, okay, why are these things happening? And then we don't connect the dots of so many things like, for example, our nutrition, the way that ourselves feel better and, you know, do the job that they're doing and get all the nutrients, the cofactors, is through the food that we're eating. So if we eat a good, healthy, balanced diet with good proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and we avoid eating things like our highly processes that don't have fiber right, because most of the American diet is very processed foods so if we eat things that are processed, we're not giving the information that ourselves need to thrive. So ourselves are going to be hungry, right? So they're going to look for the nutrients inside of our body. So if we need more minerals, where are our bodies going to go for it? They're going to go for our bones to look for the minerals that we don't have. If we need amino acids because we're not getting them through the food, then our body's going to okay, we're going to get them through your muscles and then we're going to start feeling tired and fatigued. Another thing that I explained my clients is we have mitochondria all over our body, in all ourselves, and mitochondria it's the energy, the battery, what makes us move, and organs that have a lot of mitochondria is your brain, your liver, your heart, your kidneys. And this is something fascinating that I learned when I did my training in functional medicine the brain is the organ that use the most amount of energy, that needs the most amount of mitochondria, but it has less amount of mitochondria compared to the liver. So when someone is feeling fatigued or brain fog or anxious or having some type of neurological condition, we have to think about mitochondria and the brain. That's the first signal of mitochondria damage. It's when we started having brain fog as fatigue. So if we're working a lot, if we're not taking breaks, if we're not sleeping, if we're not eating the right foods, if we're not putting fuel that we need, then our body is going to be okay. Well, let me look inside of you what I can grab so we can continue to function, but then at the same time you're going to be very tired, very fatigued. So, bringing back to the basic a good nutrition, balanced nutrition, super important movement, because the body, the mitochondria, also need movement, exercise, drinking clean water, being surrounded by the right, people right, because that relationships can also affect our health and sleep is so important for our brain and for our body to regenerate.

Dr. Rutecki: 12:34

Yeah, that is so true. And what you just said you describe the life of most healthcare workers. They're busy, they're. You know it's a high stress, environment, demand and roles. They don't have time. It's easier to just grab the processed foods. There's going to be a lot more intentionality that's needed to prepare those healthier meals ahead of time, but it's so much easier to just to grab those processed foods, order out some fast food, and that it's a continuous cycle that they can end up in with their health of eating bad and being in this high stress environment. And, yeah, eventually this low energy, brain fog and fatigue and those strategies that you shared with the exercise and nutrition, something that will definitely benefit from incorporating in our day to day life. And you know, I'm sure you've heard prevention is cure is something is better than cure, right? Yes, and it's something as healthcare professionals that we know very well. In your view, how can we anticipate and be prepared preemptively to manage or mitigate this fatigue and fog so that it doesn't negatively affect us when we're working?

Dr. Tamar: 13:45

to prevent it. Our body will give us signs right Signs of they were getting tired. Either we can start with having some digestive issues or a sign that we might not be sleeping well. Another sign might be that we don't not that patient anymore. We are snapping very quickly. But those are signs that our body is not feeling healthy or our health might going down the hill. For females, we might start having some issues with our menstrual cycles irregularities. We might be gaining some weight. We might not be handle stress the way that we were handling before. So those are early signs and our body will give us those signals. I remember when I was a pharmacist working at a resident. You know you don't sleep, you're like working long hours. Back then I didn't know anything about nutrition because it's not part of our curriculum. They don't teach us nutrition. We don't know the importance about food. And yeah, you're eating bagels. You know high sugar, corn, fruit to syrup. Drinking tons of coffee. You know donuts in the break room, right Like. The environment is also not suitable for us to thrive because we didn't learn the connection between food and health. You know you're hungry, you eat whatever. That's the way it was the cafeteria. Now, looking back I'm like, oh my god, I used to eat that, but that thing, I thought that was great, I thought that was the best food that I was eating. Right, I thought that I was healthy. And that's where we have to be mindful, when we talk to other our fellow pharmacists and our clients, our patients that we were also there one time and we can't expect people to make changes real quickly. But if we can at least understand that we can reduce the amount of things that are processed and increase the amount of things that are real food, that's going to start making us feel better. And also be mindful of what is happening in our body. Right, some people might start having rashes in their skin. Some people might start losing some hair, gaining or losing weight. Right, or increasing the appetite or not having appetite, having migraines. Our body is wonderful at giving us signals. We just have to pay attention to it. And then don't wait too long for when something worse happened. Right, if you're feeling tired, if you're feeling fatigued, those are signs that you're might having some mitochondrial deficiency. It could be that you might have adrenal issues. So either your cortisol is elevated and your DHEA is low. There are different stages of adrenal dysfunction, where you might be sobering out that your cortisol is super low and your DHEA is super low, and then to rebalance that takes time.

Dr. Rutecki: 16:39

But we can get better, they can get there. While we're on that topic of hormones and hormonal balance, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit more on how does the hormonal balance and the metabolic system interact to influence fatigue and brain fog, especially for those health care workers who work overnight or rotating shifts where their schedules are not the same For me, I've worked as an overnight pharmacist in a hospital setting most of my career and I know that that affects cortisol and the hormones, so could you speak a little bit more about that? Yeah, let's talk about that.

Dr. Tamar: 17:13

I love talking about the circadian rhythm. Yes, so the circadian rhythm is the internal clock that we have that pretty much tells our organs what to do at different times of the day. So some organs have work to do at night and some organs work really hard during the day, and especially people that work night shift. They have the circadian rhythm all over the place, especially nurses that works at night, doctors, firemen, firemen, fire fighters that's the word. Sorry, that change in our cycle and other rhythm will create also a lot of spikes in cortisol, especially when you're working, let's say a firefighter. They're sleeping because it's the night and all the sudden they get an alarm that they got to wake up. That's a super increased spiking cortisol. So they're always running on high cortisol. And that what that does. When we cannot create a healthy stress response, when we're all the time on high stress, high cortisol, then we share the same pathway to make hormones. So we need pregnerolone to make cortisol and we also need pregnerolone to make estrogen, testosterone, dhea. And if we are all the time in a high stress response or if we think that we're relaxed but our body's not, so we're going to be here making cortisol and then testosterone, estrogen, dhea progesterone. I'm going to be like they're going to be talking to pregnerolone, like, hey, pregnerolone, we're hungry. What's happening? Send us something. Like, well, you know, cortisol down there she's like going crazy. She needs me. I need to send her cortisol, she needs it, right? So when that happened, our sex hormones, our menstrual cycle, all of those things are going to get affected, right, our libido is going to get affected and that happened to a lot of my females when they are like perimenopause. You know, I love my husband, I'm so connected to him, or my partner, right, but I just don't have any libido, I don't have any energy. And then we start talking about OK, how's your stress level? So I am super stressed, I check their adrenals, they're all over the place. And when we start rebalancing that, then the period rebalance, your libido comes back up, right. So, going back to the circuitero, I kind of like move a little bit, having a good night's schedule. So trying to go to sleep at the same time and waking up at the same time will balance also the rhythm of our cortisol. So when you wake up in the morning, I recommend to my clients and to everyone go outside, get some sun. That sun exposure is going to tell your body OK, it's time to lower melatonin and increase the healthy cortisol levels. A lot of people have issues having a healthy cortisol awakening response. That means the natural rise of your cortisol levels. So people don't have that. So, being exposed to the sun especially if you're a night worker and the days that you're not working trying to get sun so it signals your brain Because we have the receptors in our eyes they're called the melanopsin receptors, and if we're using glasses we are pretty much blocking the receptors. Our brain thinks oh, it's night. So another thing I told people don't wear glasses because glasses affect our circadian rhythm. And when it's nighttime, if you're having issues going to bed, go outside, get some sun, see the sun set. So it helps your brain say OK, now it's time to lower cortisol and let's increase melatonin to help you have a good night's sleep. So the circadian rhythm is so important because when melatonin is a hormone, cortisol is a hormone. If we balance those two we can create good sleep. We have good sex hormones. It also affects our thyroid because adrenals impact your thyroid and your sex hormone. It goes on that order and sometimes people have issues with their estrogen or testosterone or issues with their thyroid. And then doctors, what they do they don't know. Right, they were not trained to learn more about the adrenals. They go directly to the thyroid or directly to the sex hormones, but then they forget about the adrenals. And if you steal and that's a root cause, right, if you don't attend the root cause first, it's kind of like patching People will feel better, right, when you get some estrogen or if you need more testosterone, you're going to get more energy. But if your main issue is your adrenals because the high stress, the burnout of your career and you went through a past trauma, you lost a family member that you love Like we all have tons of issues. I haven't test anyone yet that doesn't have issues with their adrenals, especially after coming after the pandemic and everything that we went through. And with our careers especially us, our health care professionals we're burnt out. We burnt out because it's not part of our training. I remember when I was as a resident I felt bad taking days off if I was sick. I would go to work with the flu like really sick, like back then, right, like now we know we don't do that, but that was the culture back then. You work no matter what right. And I remember I was so burnt out that I finished I almost finished in the hospital of how bad I was Right. So I was not taking care of myself. I moved from Puerto Rico, a country that had a lot of sun exposure. I was always, you know, surrounded with my vitamin D. Devils probably were really good, but I back then I didn't do right. So then I moved to Illinois Well, there's no sun. And then I was not supplementing myself, I was not eating well, I was sick all the time. I was so burnt out I was thinking they have to think I'm the worst resident because I was always so sick, right, I was so fatigued. But now I know that I changed my environment. I didn't have sun exposure, I was not supplementing myself, I was overworking, I was taking Benadryl to sleep. So the things that we do, like looking back, everything that I did. Of course I was feeling so bad, Of course I was fatigued. Of course I was so sick. I was not tending my microbiome, I was not resting, I was high stress. You know I was not part of the culture of take care of yourself. Now I know that if I don't take care of myself, I can't take care of people. So it's not being selfish, right? Because sometimes, especially those females, we get the guilty of flirting with the mothers, right? Like no, I can't, my kids come first, the word come first, and then you're so burnt out that you cannot give, and that happened to me.

Dr. Rutecki: 24:04

Yeah, you shared some very helpful tips, especially for night shift workers just having that regular schedule right and exposure to sun. Who would think that after working you want to be in the sunlight?

Dr. Tamar: 24:17

Yes, thank you for explaining how that works.

Dr. Rutecki: 24:20

Now, going back to that, though, what are your thoughts on taking melatonin supplements?

Dr. Tamar: 24:25

Melatonin supplements work for people that I mean. It's very individualized. That's what I like about functional medicine that is personalized. Some people, melatonin make them very groggy during the day. You know that I'm one of those. For some people they help them go to sleep. So if that helps, you go for it. But we also have to look. You know what is the root cause, right, or what is what you're having issues with sleep? Of course we want to prioritize sleep and there's other things that we can do that will help us sleep, like magnesium, for example. A lot of people is deficient in magnesium and if we are deficient in magnesium we're not going to sleep well. That's going to affect our hormones too. Magnesium is needed for over 300 and somatic processes in the body. So if we don't have enough magnesium, you might have to have some issues with like cramps or muscle pains you know different or migraines, headache, pachycardia, you know the list goes on. So magnesium is a great supplement that I recommend people to do, doing some mindfulness meditation too, because if you have a lot of cortisol, very stress, that might be affecting your sleep. If you're drinking too much caffeine past noon, that might be affecting your sleep. If you're drinking, that might be affecting your sleep. I recommend people to stop eating at least two hours before they go to bed, because that's part of managing your circadian rhythm, Because it takes about two to three hours to digest the food. So if you eat especially night workers, you know you usually eat when they get home and then they go to bed then they can go to bed right, because your body is digesting the food. So, instead of using sleep as regeneration, your body is using three of those eight hours to digest the food.

Dr. Rutecki: 26:14

Right, and you're not going to get restful sleep. And you're not going to get restful sleep Because one of the things I used to do when I started Night Shift 20 years ago, I would carb load, because I realized that if I had pancakes before I went to bed in the daytime I would fall asleep and I felt like I was sleeping so well. But actually that sleep was not restful sleep because my body is digesting On top of that. I just had carbs before I lay down and went to bed. But it's become a long way and learned.

Dr. Tamar: 26:43

It's so good when we learn right, because we can acknowledge the things that we did, and if you're doing things, there's no right or wrong, because you do the things based on the information that you have at the moment, and so the first thing is to be very mindful of what is happening, be very gentle and kind with yourself and always learn something new and add a new habit that will help you get even better and that's make it take in those small steps, right, exactly.

Dr. Rutecki: 27:13

Yeah, for those changes. Thank you, and there's a lot of. I want to switch modes a little bit and talk about detoxification. Yes, de-toxification, because there's a lot of hearsay in the wellness industry today when it comes to that. So can you share with us what does a legitimate, effective detox look like and is it actually able to combat fatigue and fog and brain fog?

Dr. Tamar: 27:38

If the root cause of the fatigue is coming from excess toxins in your body, of course are going to feel really good, because heavy metals like lead, mercury have shown, arsenic have shown on studies that they can impact your brain function right. They accumulate in our brain, they accumulate in our organs and a lot of these chemicals not only heavy metals, but also the chemicals that were exposed they're classified as obesogens. They get stored in our fat tissue and then they can make people even lose weight more difficult. Also, they're endocrine disruptors, so they're going to go into our estrogen receptors and because they mimic estrogen molecule, they go into that estrogen receptor and they stay there and then our real estrogen. It's like well, I don't have the receptor to go in, so we create excess estrogen in our body. So that creates other issues down the road too. So when I test people, I test them also for toxins and then I ask them their exposure. And pretty much we all have a lot of toxins, especially if we have some genetics that make us a little slower into detoxification. Some people are great at detoxing right, they have, you know, amazing detoxification pathways. But some people need a little bit more help and usually those are the ones that get more sensitive to medications. They're more sensitive to perfumes. They're more sensitive to the environment because their body needs a little bit of help, like cofactors, to get those toxins out of the body. So I always tell people watch the water that you're drinking, because that's usually the number one source of chemicals. So filter water. It's important to have a good water filter. Avoid using plastics, because everything is in plastic now. Bpa also is an endocrine disruptor. It accumulates in our body and it can create a lot of autoimmune issues and licking gut. So there's so many things that we have to look into. But if we can help our body to detox constantly, I'm a fan of doing infrared sauna or dry sauna, heat sauna. It's a great way to allow our body to sweat exercising, drinking clean water and then, depending what the person needs, some people might need some liver support. Some people might need to work on their step 3 detoxification, which is going to the bathroom. A lot of people are constipated. If you're constipated, you're accumulating toxins. So we want to have all that. You know bowel movements, that you have at least one or two good, healthy bowel movements every day. Eating fiber helps to grab toxins and eliminate it through the body Different things you know, like for a field people like seaweed, you know things like that. You know we can detox through food like cilantro, parsley, that a lot of. There's a lot of vegetables that optimize our detoxification pathways and there's supplements too, right? So depending what the person needs.

Dr. Rutecki: 30:46

Yeah, I like that and it's amazing that with the functional medicine being able to find that root cause, you can identify what they need as well, to identify the right routes of detoxification, which area of detoxification they are limited in, and boost that for them. So can you give us an experience, an instance where you were able to help someone suffer from this persistent fatigue and brain fog using functional medicine?

Dr. Tamar: 31:13

Yes, well, I have many success stories with my clients. I pride myself of guaranteeing that in 30 days are going to get better because it works right. So I most of the clients that come and work with me. They come with fatigue, they come with weight gain, they come very tired, problems with their hormones. I also have a lot of people that come with anxiety, depression and panic attacks and it's all connected with the gut microbiome. So when I do testing I check all their mitochondria, I check with their detoxification pathways, I check their cortisol, I check their sex hormones, I check their gut and you know I found all the answers there right. When I see them I kind of like know what's happening when they fill out their forms. I'm like they know. And then when I see that, I'm like I knew it.

Dr. Rutecki: 32:06

You start to know already before you run the test.

Dr. Tamar: 32:10

Yeah, you kind of know and one of my clients that I work with. She came to me very fatigued and she also was having some autoimmune issues like that. They put her in a latent autoimmune condition because she was in between lupus and between rheumatoid arthritis, so she was not making the cut of one of them specific. So they diagnosed her as a latent autoimmune condition Tons of pain in her body, very fatigued, very tired, tons of digestive issues. So we started just working, you know, based on the things that we found, and then in 30 days, in a month, she lost 10 pounds, All her fatigue went away. She discontinued the metrotrexate, the medication for how to immunity. She discontinued the prelocec for reflux and then four months later she was already 40 pounds lower. So we work on lowering the inflammation in the body. A lot of people they think like this is key. So it's not I don't talk about it, it's not that you are not like you're fat, it's that you are inflamed. You are inflamed, your body's swollen, You're retaining all these liquids, all these toxins. You have so much inflammation. Foods that you're eating might not be working for you right now. Right, and we need to lower the inflammation. And then when that happened, the body magically, kind of like whoo, it releases all that fat and it releases all that fat, because that's where we're holding all these toxins and all this stuff. And if we allow our body to open the channels to say, okay, let's move these things out, let's put it nutrients, then the body does what it does best, which is, you know, correcting things and starting to work the way it was. I love her transformation because she really did the work and that's what works. You know, when the client comes to me ready to do whatever it takes and to put their health into a priority and we don't do anything extreme like juicing or eating chicken and broccoli and that's it right. No, we add variety. We add things that nourish the microbiome. There is a study that found that my fermented foods decrease inflammatory markers and increase your commensal flora. Right, so eating fermented foods? I am Puerto Rican. We don't eat fermented foods in Puerto Rico, something that I learned to eat. At the beginning I didn't like it, but I read the studies and I'm like well, I better like this or else.

Dr. Rutecki: 34:45

I don't know often.

Dr. Tamar: 34:47

So my kids are the same. They don't like it. But I'm like it's in the plate. You have to eat it. It's good for you, it's good for your gut microbiome, it's good for you, that's right.

Dr. Rutecki: 35:00

Thank you for sharing that experience with us. Now to wrap up from your wealth of experience, Dr Rosemary, how would you advise our listeners to combat fatigue and brain fog in a practical way? If you had to just give them three pointers, what would it be?

Dr. Tamar: 35:15

Yes, so to take action now it's to go to your kitchen and get rid of everything that is not serving you the chips, all the things that are high in sugar. So a clue to help you is look at the fiber content Of what you have in your kitchen. Right, if there's zero fiber, toss it, because what they got microbiome needs is fiber to thrive. So we have to think about nutrients. So it's not that you can have like a little cake, a little cookie right there, right. But if that is not going to help, you just get rid of it and what you have in your kitchen. If it's all good, then that's the only thing you're going to eat. I don't buy things I don't want to eat. So I already told my husband don't buy those things, don't buy those stuff for the kids, because then there's a fight oh, don't eat it. Well then we have it there for them, right, right. So we have tons of fruit. There's like bananas, pears, apples, pineapples, watermelon, strawberries. I mean the amount of fruit that we buy in this house is crazy. Like every couple of days we got to buy fruit. They have their healthy snacks too. I get them like organic gluten free stuff. I look at the fiber content and lean protein. You know chicken, turkey and beef salmon. You know different type of proteins and then different type of vegetables. Right, have different varieties by your fermented foods. And if you start eating more of that and less of the processed food because they said that you eat processed food when you're not at home then you're already decreasing the amount of the processed food that you were eating. Maybe you went out one day and you want to have dessert, or you went to out and they offer you something like OK, fine, you know, but it's not the majority of the foods that you're eating anymore. Now, maybe 80 percent of what you're eating is really healthy and then 20 percent is OK. I'm not a fan of gluten because gluten has tons of issues. It creates a lot of inflammation in the body, especially because we are spraying gluten with so much glyphosate and that creates a lot of leaky gut, a lot of inflammation. So I always tell people let's stay out of gluten, and gluten is products that contain wheat. So your crackers, your bread, your pasta, things like that. There's a big correlation with the amount of glyphosate that we have been spraying and the increase of autoimmune conditions, cancers, add, autism and stuff like that, and the listeners want to learn more about it. Dr Zach Bush is great and he's made a many kind of like documentary video explaining the relationship with our environment, the God and the introduction of gluten into the ecosystem. In a lot of countries Gluten is banned. I mean, I'm looking sorry, glyphosate, right, glyphosate is banned. So when people eat bread or when they say I go to Europe and I have bread and I'm fine, but then when they come here to the US, they feel terrible, their ideas get worse, they are silly, they're like super sick, right. So it's not that gluten is bad, it's just the way that is processed here in the US. So we're pretty much eating blanched, you know, wheat that has no nutrients, that is highly processed, and then on top of that they spray it with that herbicide that in order for you to spray it you have to wear a half-man suit.

Dr. Rutecki: 38:46

Yeah, we can eat it without the half-man, and we can eat it. We can eat it. Make it make sense. Make it make sense.

Dr. Tamar: 38:54

Right. So first we talk about the food. Right. That's the number one goal, because our cell membranes, our mitochondria, need nutrition to function and if you want to function at your best, you have to give yourself the best. And this is an example that I give to my clients If you have a Ferrari or if you have a nice channel purse, are you going to leave it in the floor? No, you're going to put that channel purse very nicely in the bag that it came and you're going to put it in your closet or you're going to put it, like you know, on display. Right, that's a special item that you're going to take care of it. You buy that Ferrari, that Lamborghini. You're not going to put regular gas, you're going to put the best gas right, you're going to clean it. So we have to think that we are that special and that what we put inside of us is the best that we can afford. That we have, you know, close to that, we have access, so we can be that right. What we put in is that was going to come out. Also, prioritizing sleep. We talk about circadian rhythm, going outside, getting sun. You know we live in an indoor lifestyle, we don't have electronics. Our kids are constantly in electronics, watching TV. They're not running, they're not getting sun, they're not exercising, and when that happened, then we see a lot of anxiety in kids. We are seeing a lot of obesity in kids, that we're also seeing that almost adults, right? So cut Netflix at seven or eight an hour before you go to bed. Cut electronics so you can sleep good and feel your brain feels good the next day. Right, that's another way to help with with the fatigue, and exercising Exercise is one of the best medicines for fatigue. In fact, they recommend with cancer patients to walk because that helps with the fatigue. But those we start with those three things that are accessible for all of us, which is making better food choices or increasing the amount of good food. Maybe that sounds better, right, because instead of saying better, let's just add more good stuff. Right, because when we add good stuff, we're full of food. We're full and we might want less of the things that don't serve us. Sleeping, prioritizing sleep, wake up at the same time every day and going to bed at the same time every day helps, even on the weekends. I I read a book from Dr Sachi Panda. It's called the circadian code. Yeah, he talks a lot about it. I love that book. And then when I read that book and I'm like, wow, so that means that I can't sleep on the weekends. So I try it. I try it because I want to work on my circadian rhythm and now my body naturally wants to go to bed at the same time and wants to wake up at the same time, because I created a whole circadian rhythm. Before I was going to bed at any time, I was waking up whenever I want and I was feeling groggy. And now it's like my body's in sync, kind of like kids. Kids they go to bed at the same time and they wake up at the same time. They have a solid circadian rhythm. So it's going to work on sleep and then we're going to work on movement. Right, if you have never exercised before, start walking at least five minutes, right Something. And then as you get better, you get more energy. Then increase the amount of exercise you do. But if you're very fatigued especially for females, they love to do a lot of cardio and if you're fatigued, that's not the best thing to do at that time, right, we got to listen to our body. Maybe walking, maybe some yoga, working on your adrenals, working your stress, cortisol response, all those things that when you get strong enough, then you can go back to your very heavy exercises. But if we are burning out, we're burnt out and then we add more things that will also make our cortisol even higher and lower our DHEA, we're not going to be able to heal.

Dr. Rutecki: 42:53

Counterproductive, counterproductive, yeah, yeah Well, dr Rosemary Rotecki, thank you so much for your wealth of knowledge and sharing your insight with us today. It was a pleasure having you.

Dr. Tamar: 43:05

Thank you so much. Had a great time and I hope this information sparked curiosity, and sometimes we need that kick right. Let's get to action. Let's get people yeah to do it, because our health is our biggest asset. There's no money in the world that is going to give us health when we're sick, and when people are sick, the only thing that they want is health. So let's work on preventing to get sick.

Dr. Rutecki: 43:34

That's all I have for you today. Friends, If any part of this conversation interested or resonated with you, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Your five star review and comments can guide others on a similar journey. So subscribe, rate and download this episode to ensure you're always in the loop. Coming up next week on the show, we're delving into the roots of chronic illness and the astonishing capacity of our bodies to heal, so you can tap into your body's natural healing potential without feeling overwhelmed by disease. And we're going to touch a little bit on Nutrigenomics next week as well. Talk to you next Friday. Until then, always remember in your journey as a healthcare professional, always raise the script on health, because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.