Fatigue Fix -- In-Depth Doctor's Interview

Ivanhoe Broadcast News Transcript with
Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D., Internist,
Center for Effective CFS/Fibromyalgia Therapies in Annapolis, Maryland,
TOPIC: Fatigue Fix

What is chronic fatigue syndrome?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Chronic fatigue syndrome is an attempt on your body’s part to protect itself from harm in the face of overloading stress just like when you blow a fuse. You have too many heaters on, off goes the fuse, and the same thing happens in your body. The hypothalamus decreases function so that you go to ground and do not burn out.

What is fibromyalgia?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Fibromyalgia is the same thing as CFS in most people. It is kind of a painful cousin. Most people who have CFS also have fibromyalgia and vice-versa. If you look at it clinically, you can tell that you have these illnesses because you have a paradox of being exhausted and can not sleep. If you are exhausted you should sleep all day. Well when you are exhausted and can not sleep you are blowing that fuse called the hypothalamus which is also the sleep center. And with fibromyalgia you also have widespread achiness, but basically they are the same thing in most people.

So people with chronic fatigue syndrome are not achy?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Most people with chronic fatigue syndrome also have the achiness as well, but about 25 percent of them do not.

But with fibromyalgia, nearly all patients have achiness?

Dr. Teitelbaum: By definition they do.

How do chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia impact somebody’s life?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Jacob: It devastates them. Picture having the average 32-pound weight gain, total exhaustion, brain fog with no energy, widespread pain, and basically feeling miserable. The doctors are clueless about what is going on so they tell you you are depressed or whatever, but they do not know. And you are miserable because you think that there is not hope. Your husband or wife thinks that he/she is going crazy and it is just a miserable way to live. It is really devastating for people.

Who is the most at risk for it?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Mostly women. About three-quarters of people are women as is the case with most immune diseases, and largely it will effect people between 20 and 50 years old, but I have treated children as young as 7. One mother in England refused to let me leave the country until I treated her 7-year-old daughter, who is now healthy and back in college. She has done fine with treatment, and I have treated people in their 80s.

Do you have patients come in for treatment from all over the place?

Dr. Teitelbaum: We have people from all over the world. Last week we had one patient from England and one from Belgium. So they come and not just from all over the country, but from all over the world.

A patient of yours told me she knew she was in the right place when there was a physician from Germany in your office to see you. How does that make you feel?

Dr. Teitelbaum: It makes me feel like I need to get out there and teach more doctors so they do not have to fly here form Germany.

What do you really like about your teaching ability?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Well, I only see patients five days a month because the rest of the time I am lecturing all over the world. Last week I was in Chicago lecturing to about 1000 doctors, and my job is to train as many people as I can. Every doctor I teach can reach 500 to thousands of patients and get them well because we now have a 91-percent success rate with treatments. This is no longer an untreatable disease, and it is insane for people to be sick if they do not have to be.

Where do you give these lectures? What doctors are you speaking to?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Medical conferences basically. They can be from any of a number of different specialties and backgrounds. You can treat this disease naturally. I like to use prescriptions because they can be very powerful as tools, but you can do it without prescriptions as well. So I will teach people anyway I can how to help people to get their lives back.

Explain the different components of the therapy you do.

Dr. Teitelbaum: Well, as mentioned this is when you blow a fuse from over-stress and the way to turn that fuse back on is you need to treat sleep, hormonal deficiencies, infections and nutritional deficiencies. You do those four things and the fuse comes back on, the energy starts to work, the lights go on, and people feel great. It is really a remarkable thing to watch.

Talk to me about how you treat sleep deprivation and why that is so important.

Dr. Teitelbaum: Because the circuit that you blow, the hypothalamus, controls sleep, people have horrible insomnia despite being exhausted. That is where you recharge your batteries at nighttime and also where your muscles heal. So if you do not sleep you are going to be exhausted and in pain. So you need to give treatments that help promote sleep. You can do it naturally. You can do it by prescription, but most sleep medications are lousy. They actually worsen the quality of sleep. At least the ones that are in the diazepam (Valium) family. You want to use things like Ambien or trazodone (Desyrel) for sleep and also natural herbals for sleep like the revitalizing sleep formula.

How many hours a sleep are people getting these days?

Dr. Teitelbaum: The average American 100 years ago was getting nine hours of sleep a night. Now we are down to less than seven.

Over the last 100 years has there been an increase in chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Absolutely. As stress increases on our society more people are blowing fuses. There is more sleep deficiency. There are more problems with nutritional deficiency. There are all these things that are contributing to the stress levels.

Why does treating hormone deficiencies help treat CFS?

Dr. Teitelbaum: The major hormone deficiency would be low thyroid. Blood tests are notoriously unreliable and, I think, miss the majority of people with an under-active thyroid. Estrogen deficiency, testosterone deficiency in men and women, any of these hormones can, when they are deficient can cause fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

So your suggestion is that people who have these symptoms should go to somebody who will test them for these hormonal deficiencies?

Dr. Teitelbaum: And if they clinically have symptoms of low thyroid.

What are two or three main hormone deficiencies and their symptoms?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Thyroid deficiency is characterized by weight gain, fatigue, achiness, and cold intolerance. If you get hypoglycemic, those feed me now or I will kill you kind of things, that is your adrenal hormone being low, and adrenal support is called for. Certainly low testosterone will result in a loss of libido. Testosterone is critical in men and women. The estrogen would just be for the women.

What infections do you look for in patients who present with CFS?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Because the immune system is poorly functioning people get all kinds of what are called opportunist or unusual infections, chronic sinusitis, prostatitis, and spastic colon, which is actually a bowel infection in most people. Our study showed when you look for and treat those infections, as most doctors do not, they go away. So there are all kinds of different infections people get.

Would somebody get tested for these infections, or do they know when they have them?

Dr. Teitelbaum: They know that they have a lot of the infections, but unfortunately most doctors are not trained to look for the infections that go on in this disease because they are infections that healthy people will not keep. Because of that they just do not know how to look for it. That is why I am out there teaching. My book “From Fatigue to Fantastic” will give you the information to figure out what is going on in your case, and the computer program on my Web site as well.

How does nutrition figure into the treatment?
 
Dr. Teitelbaum: The American diet is awful. The acronym for a standard American Diet is SAD, which fits. We are getting 150 pounds of sugar added to our diet. The nutritional losses are horrible. Because of that, nutritional deficiencies are widespread and there is no one tablet that is going to replace them all. Because of that we made a vitamin powder where one drink replaces 35 tablets of supplements a day and with a good taste. To make it easy for everybody who wants nutritional support, my policy is I never take money from any company whose products I recommend, and 100 percent of my royalties go to charity because otherwise people do not know if they are just being hawked stuff or whether it is really made for them to get well.

What are the results of the study where you looked at these four therapies?

Dr. Teitelbaum: It was wonderful. This is a gold standard study that showed a 91-percent improvement rate. Ninety-one percent of people with this disease got significant improvement. On average, there is a doubling in quality of life making this a very treatable disease. In the placebo group, there was very little effect.

So, the patients had improved sleep and pain relief?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Most people no longer have fibromyalgia by the end of the study because their pain was gone. Their energy came up. Their sleep was great. Their brain fog went away, and they felt like they got their life back. This is a very treatable disease, and people can see the study on our Web site.

Why are you so passionate about this?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Jacob: Well I had this disease back in 1975 it knocked me out of medical school for a year and I basically asked god to use me to make an effective treatment available for everybody. It is OK for doctors to believe in god too and I feel really blessed. I had the opportunity to do this.

What it was like in school when this happened to you?

Dr. Teitelbaum: This is an illness of megatape A overachievers and I was one. I finished college in about two and a half years, and my dad was dead so I was paying my own way. I drove through med school in a couple of years, and I got what I call the drop-dead flu. It never went away and six months later I was still non-functional. I had to drop out of medical school for the year.

So you dropped out but then came back?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Yes. I was one of the lucky ones that got better, and I was able to go back to school and finish with honors and do the whole thing, but like I said it sure got my attention.

How did you get better?

Dr. Teitelbaum: In my case it was caused by fungal overgrowth adenomas of antibiotics as a child for some life-threatening infections. Then add my nutritional deficiency. Paying my own way I was living on hot dogs all the way through college, and my nutritional status was horrible. So I was lucky enough that people had introduced me to these concepts when I was homeless with the disease. I was sleeping in parks because I had no money, my scholarship was gone because I was out of school, and people taught me a lot on the way and helped me to get better.

How long did you sleep in parks for?

Dr. Teitelbaum: About nine months, maybe a little less than that.

Wow. That is amazing. Now, tell me about the products that you use.

Dr. Teitelbaum: My job is to make this as easy as possible for everyone because it is a complex disease. For nutritional support there is a vitamin powder called the energy revitalization system by Enzymatic therapy. Any health food store will have it. One scoop makes a good-tasting drink, replacing 35 tablets of supplements a day. It is easy, outstanding energy and nutritional support for everybody. Then for sleep, we have the revitalizing sleep formula, a mix of six herbs for anybody with insomnia. I want this to be easy for everybody to get their vitality back.

So, those are the two products and then it is up to the patient himself to see if he has infections and hormone deficiencies?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Right. My book will teach people how to do it or they can go on my Web site and do the computer program. It will tailor a treatment protocol to their exact case. Tell them exactly what to take, how to take it or people can just come to the Web site, and look at the treatment protocol to see over 270 treatments that have been shown to be helpful in this disease.

How much do these products cost?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Well, the products are not expensive. You could get it for 90 cents a day for the vitamin powder by just using a half a scoop a day which is plenty for most people. The herbal sleep formula is cheap, maybe 15 cents a capsule or something.

They are in health stores across the country?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Any health food store will carry it. It is the Revitalizing Sleep Formula and the Energy Revitalization System both by Enzymatic Therapy, which is a wonderful company.

Are you collaborating with Enzymatic Therapy?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Having worked in this field for 28 years I know who is good, and I wanted them to make my products because they are the best. Like I said I have a very simple thing. I do not take money from the company, and 100 percent of my royalties go to charity. It is an integrity thing. So if people go to the health food store and buy it, I do not make a penny, but the foundation does.

What is the charity?

Dr. Teitelbaum: We give to many different things. We just gave a $100,000 grant for a study on a new treatment that we found can be effective for autism. It is called NAEP. We give grants for children in poverty to get the vitamins they need, for education, and for a host of different charities.

So what is your advice to patients who have this?

Dr. Teitelbaum: If you are exhausted and you can not sleep, you have got this process. You blew a fuse. Get your sleep, hormonal, infection and nutrition issues under control. My Web site or the book will teach you how to get your life back because it is time to do what feels good and have a life you love and you can, you do not have to be sick anymore.

Have you had any kind of relapse ever and used this stuff?

Dr. Teitelbaum: I use the products myself because I think once somebody has had CFS and fibromyalgia, he should take the vitamin power and the sleep formula forever because it is just good insurance to help maintain the body. If you look at my travel and lecture schedule it would make you tired just looking at it, and I can tell if I am pushing too much. My sleep goes down and that is my body’s way of saying OK time to take a break for a day or two, and I think that is a healthy thing.

How is this type of approach helpful for pain?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Now an interesting thing is a lot of pain is muscle pain or nerve pain, and it is from the same problem, not enough energy. If you think about it, you will think if you did not have energy your muscles would go loose, but what happens when somebody dies? Go through rigor mortis they are as rigid as a board. So if your muscles do not have energy, they become very tight and they hurt. The way to make energy is to get eight to nine hours of sleep for tissue repair, optimize hormonal levels, treat the infections, and support with nutrition.

Did you all measure the effect of pain in your study?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Yes. In our study we also looked at pain, and over 50 percent of people at the end of 100 days were pain-free.

What kind of pain was it and where?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Achiness. People just have back pain, achiness, widespread muscle pain, any muscle pain, most headaches tend to be muscular. The biggest area of pain that is poorly treated would be muscle and sometimes nerve pain, and a lot of nerve pain comes because the muscles are pinching the nerves. So these principles apply for many kinds of pain.

Can these therapies be used for the millions of people who have chronic back pain, headaches, ect.?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Absolutely. We ignore the obvious, you need to feed the muscles. Remember SHIN -- sleep, hormone, infection, nutrition. Pain is kind of a warning light on a dashboard saying that something wants attention, and usually it is either structural, you need to make sure there is no cancers or things like that, but most likely metabolic, you do not have the sleep. If you are in pain take what you need to get nine hours of sleep a night and take the vitamin popper and see what happens to your pain. Just those two things and then look to see if you need to add the nutritional support, the hormonal support or treat any underlying infections.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Mary Groom
Dr. Teitelbaum's Office
(410) 266-6958
http://www.vitality101.com

[email protected]
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