Vesna: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna Hrsto Today, I want to speak to you if you're feeling overworked and overtired, and I want to show you what's really going on and how it may have nothing to do with your workload. When I run workshops, the first thing I ask is, do you feel like your workload is draining your energy? And so I work with a lot of women who are [00:01:00] driven and ambitious and work very hard either running their own businesses or in their careers or juggling both like family and career and business. And they feel tired and exhausted, they can't sleep through the night, they have high levels of stress, and it starts to affect their mood and mental well being.
And they would put it down to their schedule, right? They put it down to their workload. And before you do that, I really want to explain how it may have nothing to do with your workload
and I'll explain why. So, The truth is the more you do the more you can do when you're vital and what I mean by that is that we have women coming to our programs completely exhausted, burnt out, struggling to do their normal day to day responsibilities and when we repair internal imbalances, what they find is that they're like waking up at 5am to exercise, they're working a full day, they're coming home to their kids.
Some women are like, I have to stop myself from doing too much. I want to clean the windows in [00:02:00] my house, which is so unusual for me. there are women who come in burnt out and they leave without changing anything about their schedule. And they feel like completely transformed women. So what is going on there?
Soit's not your workload that's causing you exhaustion. It's how your body is managing energy production and stress
we have cells in our body that. create an enormous amount of energy for us. And if we were looking at energy production in the body, we would be looking at the mitochondria. So they're tiny little, cells, organisms within ourselves that, really are like batteries, right? They produce so much energy.
And we have quadrillions of them, which means it's almost like a superpower. And I was reading that in the Star Wars series, which I haven't watched, but I understand the idea behind the force and the force, which gives you superpowers the director said was the idea behind that was based on human beings.
And we have mitochondria, which produce an enormous amount of energy, which is like our superpower. And so. When [00:03:00] we do more, what should actually happen? It's a process in the body called mitochondrial biogenesisand what that means is that the more that we do, the more mitochondria we create, which creates more energy.
Which means we do more, okay? And so this idea that we're burning off so much energy that can't be replenished and that's why we're so tired is actually not true Okay Our body should be always creating and generating more energy due to the rebuilding or the creation of mitochondria our batteries, our energy powerhouse Also, within the mitochondria, we have our metabolic flexibility.
So inside the mitochondria is where glucose and fat are burned, and it's where our metabolism switches between those two energy sources. So that's called metabolic flexibility. So whether you burn, carbohydrates or, glucose, or you burn fat. And so when you have excess fat on the body, so excess fuel that your body can't tap into, you're also looking at mitochondrial health for that because it's kind of like the ground zero for our metabolic [00:04:00] health.
And that's why, again, people come into our program, our buh bye burnout program. We're really focusing on energy, mood, and metabolism. It's not a weight loss program, but people lose a lot of weight because of this impact on the mitochondria.
So how do you know if you have an issue with your mitochondria, if that's what's causing your tiredness? And it's really simple. You experience constant tiredness. That is your symptom, your sign, your signal that you have mitochondrial dysfunction. It doesn't get any more complicated than that. Because they are the main energy powerhouses, if your energy is low, there's something wrong with energy production, so we need to look at the mitochondria.
So what causes this? So this was discovered back in 2013, a groundbreaking piece of research by, Dr. Robert Navio. He found that there are three things. That deplete our batteries is always these three things, which then creates inflammation. And he said, these three things make us tired and make us sick.
Okay. And the first one [00:05:00] was chemical like pollution in our air, food and water, GMO, air pollution, toxicity, all of that builds up, but we should have healthy detox pathways that deal with that. The second one was microbial infections or infestations. So any kind of bugs or gut bugs or infections, which creates a lot of inflammation, but we should have a robust immune system and microbiome to be able to deal with that effectively without it getting out of control.
And the third one, and he said, this is the linchpin, which means this one affected, you know, our detox systems, our immune system, right? So it actually was a linchpin taking the others offline. And the number one reason why our batteries or our mitochondria becomes depleted and we feel tired is due to psychological stress.
So we're looking at mental and emotional stress is the number one driver for fatigue.
And so when our cells go into this, what he called the cell danger response. So instead of the mitochondria producing an enormous amount of energy, [00:06:00] it actually goes into hibernation mode. Right, and it focuses on resting and defending itself, and it even releases substances to neighboring cells to tell them, hey, we're in danger, it's time to hibernate, right?
And so it's not a wonder that when we have this going on in the body that we feel tired, right? So even maybe we have the right number of mitochondria, but actually they're not performing as well and they're not healthy and they're not clean, right? And so therefore we're feeling very, very tired.
Quite often, I will have women say to me on social media, because I talk a lot about cortisol and we know cortisol is associated with chronic stress and therefore that affects mitochondria and causes mitochondrial dysfunction. And often they'll say to me, well, I don't have high cortisol. I've been tested and my cortisol is not high.
And the reason being it's a great thing, okay, that means that there's no cortisol dysregulation yet. That kind of happens later if nothing is addressed. But in the early stages, what you have is mitochondrial dysfunction, okay? So the chronic stress and the increases of hormones, [00:07:00] even though they're not dysregulated, meaning though there's still a natural curve, it's still higher than what it should be, but it's within the normal range in terms of the cortisol.
And the stress damages the mitochondria and making them less efficient in producing energy. And the longer that continues, obviously the longer the stress continues, we get high cortisol. And then we can start getting tested for that and we start to see it. So a lot of people say to me, well, I don't have the high cortisol.
Great, you're not in cortisol dysregulation, but if you're tired and you're feeling those symptoms, you do have mitochondrial dysfunction. So the mitochondria, because it produces so much energy, it has a huge impact on our hormones, our neurotransmitters, the chemicals in our brain. It helps with, longevity and health.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is linked to chronic disease. And in fact, Dr. Robert Navio said this is It's at the heart of every symptom and condition known to mankind, right? And so if we can restore mitochondrial health, you'll get your energy back and your body will be in a much healthier state to fight off infections, to [00:08:00] do the tidy up work that needs to happen in the body to keep you healthy for many years to come.
So the important thing to note is that stress doesn't just drain our energy. It disrupts the system responsible for creating it. Okay. So by improving how your body handles stress. And energy production, you'll have more energy even with your current responsibilities. And that's really key. And that's why women come, like again, they come into our program, they don't change anything about their schedule, but they have so much more energy and they find themselves doing even more than what they did before.
Okay. So it's really important for you to see that because you know, I see women who end up shrinking their life and. And becoming antisocial because they're too tired and I think if they go out, there'll be more tired. Um, they say no to opportunities cause they feel like they don't have the capacity to take more on.
Right. And it's really your internal capacity because of these internal imbalances. And the number one area, like I said, that we want to look at is restoring mitochondrial function. So you feel back at your peak energy.
So how are [00:09:00] you going to address this? Okay. So I'm going to use some tips and I've talked about this in other podcasts. So number one, we want to reduce stress hormones. So even if you don't have cortisol dysregulation, but if you're feeling stressed and rushed and anxious during the day and overwhelmed, right?
Like the sense of urgency, like you feel almost the adrenaline or you just go, go, go, go, go, right. Then you're going to have to address the stress hormones that are being released all day long. Okay. And some very simple things that you can do is making some changes to your diet. Which will have the quickest impact, right?
Like honestly, if you were to wake up in the morning and do breakfast, mid morning and lunch differently, you would already feel better for that day. That's how fast food can affect our mitochondria and affect our energy. And so some of the things that I always recommend is make sure you don't go too long before having breakfast.
I always recommend a window of 20 minutes, eating breakfast within 20 minutes of rising. So getting up and starting your day. Don't do things like caffeine on an empty stomach. That's just going to increase cortisol [00:10:00] secretion. You want to get some morning sunlight and you also want to get to bed at a good time, right?
So you're making sure that you get deep sleep, right? So all of these things help to regulate cortisol, reduce elevator cortisol, reduce stress, even though everything is the same in your lifestyle. Okay. I don't want you to think that. Your life has to dramatically change in order for you to feel better.
It's really the other way around. As you start to feel better, then you make different choices and changes in your life to align with the way that you feel. The second thing that you want to do is correct internal imbalances because as mitochondrial dysfunction sets in high cortisol, then we get gut breakdown, disrupts the microbiome, we get bloating, gut bugs, we get inflammation, and then it has a kick on effect to like the thyroid and the adrenals.
And so we get a lot of other hormonal imbalances, we get glucose dysregulation. And so there is an element of restoring or repairing those internal imbalances. So repairing the gut, repairing the liver detox pathways and [00:11:00] supporting the thyroid. And the third part, which is just as important as food I talked about in my last podcast is your mental health or a mind reset
because a lot of the time. when I look at people's stress levels and their schedule, it's not so much to do with their schedule, it's everything that they're carrying around in their head. They've got a very noisy, tannery mind, lots of negative thinking, lots of catastrophizing, lots of replaying events or dwelling on things, finding it hard to let go.
All of that stuff. is activating the fight or flight response and is activating cortisol all day long, which is causing further mitochondrial disruption, which is going to make you more tired. If anything, you think back to the times that you've achieved so much in a day. And you actually feel energized at the end of the day, right?
You look at your list and you're like, wow, I just did so much today. It's amazing. And there's other days where you don't do as much, but you feel extremely tired. And those will be the days that your mind has just gone at a million miles an hour. And it's just drained your energy [00:12:00] through those hormones, through the cortisol, through the mitochondrial dysfunction, making you very, very tired.
So just remember. If your energy is low, you want to look at improving mitochondrial health. If stress is a big factor, you want to look at reducing stress hormones. And there's many things that you can do. And there's some very simple things, as I mentioned earlier, that you could do to your day to day routine, which don't take long, which could start to help reverse those symptoms.
And so you feel your energy is back up. You can do more, you can take more on. That's not going to be a factor in determining, you know, where your energy is going to be.
So let me know in the comments below does this sound like you do you think yes, I think this is me I probably have mitochondria dysfunction because I'm tired and maybe I've also got the high cortisol or the high stress Let me know in the comments below .
