Adrenal Fatigue and Repair with Sage and Dan (EP#170)

Are you living a life of excess? Do you feel like your battery pack is running on empty; and in constant need of a recharge? It may be time to check in with your Adrenal Glands (aka. Adrenals) and see how they're holding up. 

We're just over halfway through 30 days of JING- the month where we give our Adrenals and Kidneys the nourishment and recharge they deserve. Today on the podcast, we're bringing one of favourite recordings out of the SuperFeast catalogue to keep you inspired and aligned for the remaining weeks of 30 Days of Jing and beyond.

Mason, naturopath Dan Sipple, and herbalist Sage Dammers go deep in delivering vital knowledge on Adrenal health, Adrenal fatigue, and why these relatively tiny glands that are the powerhouse of the endocrine system play such a critical role in our day-to-day function.

Each of them bringing their own unique wisdom and expertise to the conversation, Mason, Dan, and Sage lay out the foundations of Adrenal health, how they function, their role within the endocrine system, how they become fatigued, and the chronic illness that can set in when the symptoms of fatigue get ignored.

A massive part of this conversation is dedicated to herbs/supplements that support Adrenal gland function, how gut health supports our Endocrine system and how to revitalise the Adrenals and get them back functioning optimally after fatigue.
 

"Our ancestors worked 17 hours a week. Just stop and ponder that for a second. They worked 17 hours a week, and if it got dark at five o'clock at a particular time of year, that was it. They were in bed. They were true honourers of circadian rhythms. And humans were like that for how long? Thousands and thousands and thousands of years. It's imprinted in our DNA. What did we do in the last hundred years? We just went and totally screwed all that up. It's a good little reminder to say, "Your machinery does not support this lifestyle." I'm sorry, hence why it's breaking. These adrenal glands, which we term the battery pack to life, they're batteries. You've got to recharge them. What are you doing right now to recharge your batteries? 'Oh, I only get a few hour's sleep'. There we go, so that's where we need to start". 

- Dan Sipple  

Dan, Sage and Mason discuss:

• Adrenal Fatigue.
• Addison's disease.
• The Endocrine System.
• The role of the Adrenals.
• Inflammation leaks Jing.
• Mitochondrial dysfunction.
• Symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue.
• Adaptogens for Adrenal Fatigue.
• How trauma affects the Adrenals. 
• Neurofeedback sessions for trauma
• The emotion of fear and the Kidneys.
• Chronic stress and cortisol secretion.
• Herbs and Supplements for Adrenal Fatigue.
• How gut health affects the Endocrine System.
• Hormone production and the Endocrine System.

 

Click here to listen on apple podcast

Foods For Adrenal Fatigue

Root vegetables,  clean starches, good quality sea salt, sweet potatoes,  your taros, quinoa, buckwheat, black rice, black olives, black sesame seeds and oil, tamari or soya sauce, miso, capers, sea vegetables, jujube dates, blackberries, black beans, kidney beans, black tahini, mushrooms, seaweeds, dark kale.

Herbs that Support Adrenal Health:

JING blend  QI blend  SHEN blend  Cordyceps  

Deer Antler  Ashwaghanda  Eucommia Bark  Schisandra

"Schisandra is considered a Jing walking herb. So it almost functions in a way to stop you from stressing, stops you leaking that Jing- while helping to build it at the same time. It also works on the kidneys. It's working on the Qi, which is the active moment-to-moment energy, and it's working on the higher self. So the Shen, the spirit. So Schisandra is an incredible herb to incorporate for Adrenal health".

- Sage Dammers

 

Who is Dan Sipple? 

Dan Sipple also known as The Functional Naturopath is based on the south coast of NSW and has a special interest in gut health, immune dysfunction, pro-metabolic health, mineral rebalancing & hormones. 

Dan has been in the health and wellness arena for over a decade and blends traditional herbal medicine systems and knowledge with cutting-edge functional and integrative testing to best facilitate a patient's journey to peak wellness.

Who is Sage Dammers?

Fuelled by a passionate desire to help people live the ultimate life and create a better world, Sage studied raw and superfood nutrition and traditional herbal systems, especially Taoist tonic herbalism. He has worked with and trained under the world’s leading master herbalists and nutrition and longevity experts in Costa Rica, Australia, Bali, China, and America.

Sage has developed products internationally and given lectures on peak performance nutrition in Australia, Bali, America, and France. His years of experience in this unique arena have allowed him to cultivate an unparalleled combination of cutting edge nutritional and culinary expertise. Sage has started tonic elixir bars in 5 star luxury hotels in Paris and Sydney serving longevity elixirs disguised as gourmet treats, introducing the novel concept of healthy indulgences to the market of world travellers.

Resource guide

Dan Website

Dan Instagram

Sage's website

Sage's Instagram

Mantak Chia

Clearlight Infrared Saunas

Benny Fergusson- The movement monk

 

Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?

A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus we're on Spotify! 

 

Check Out The Transcript Here:

Mason: (00:00)

Good morning, boys. How you going?

 

Sage: (00:02)

Good.

 

Sage: (00:02)

Hey, doing good. How are you?

 

Mason: (00:03)

Yeah, very good. It's good to have the trio back together. Dan, Sage talking about the adrenals today. Adrenal fatigue. You ready to dive in?

 

Dan: (00:12)

Let's do it.

 

Mason: (00:14)

All right.

 

Sage: (00:14)

Absolutely. So honoured to be back here with you guys.

 

Mason: (00:16)

Yeah. It's rad to be on here. It was a fun way to talk about this stuff. We were just talking about in our preamble how we're looking at adrenal fatigue and we're going to get to the nitty gritty of making distinct what fatigue is and what exhaustion is and what the adrenals are actually doing. But if we had a syndrome that was the syndrome of our Western society, I think we're looking at adrenal fatigue, despite the fact that it gets bandied around a lot. And we've really seeing and under of this physiological deficiency or whatever, we end up landing and just making distinct what this is in Western society. And there's so many things that we can do about it.

 

Mason: (00:51)

So, first of all, we'll talk about the adrenals. They're about maybe a little bit smaller than a walnut. They weigh less than a grape and this gland, a huge part, a powerhouse in the endocrine system. It's relatively tiny compared to the rest of your body, but their effect is so massive. That's something we want to really hit home for everybody today is just how huge a role these adrenals play in your day-to-day function. And so we'll jump into that. But they're in shape of a little pyramid. If I was more of a conspiracy man, I'd kind of say that you can see an Illuminati eye sitting in there, you can on the American dollar bills and maybe they're attacking our adrenals, so that they can farm us more efficiently. But let's not go there.

 

Mason: (01:32)

Huge part endocrine system. They call it the gland of stress. Now we're going to blow out from just associating it from stress, but it does have a huge role to play in stress. It's job to hormonally assist the body, respond to stresses, changes alterations in your inner and outer environment. And that correlates your ability, your adaptability, and that's basically your longevity. So they're really tied in there. And you've heard us talk about Jing a lot obviously in the podcast. We'll talk about it again today, because this is tied in. So this is whether the stress is coming from physical stress, or it's injury, or it's disease, or it's emotional, something psychological is happening. Like you can't get rid of a memory of being bullied when you were a kid and that keeps on coming up. When you're moving house, you have a speech to make, you lose someone in your life, you have to get up in the morning. That's a change. Something you need to adapt to and travelling. All these kinds of things that are going on. So you can see that's outer and inner.

 

Mason: (02:27)

But basically, however, it's important to gain a wider viewpoint around the adrenals, besides it just correlating to this stress. So basically these two little glands, they mobilise, and they're the catalyst for responses. Every single change in your body. They contribute to the chemical response patterns that you form throughout your life. And ultimately they're really going to have a lot to do with your mental and emotional stability and adaptability. So the patterns and the efficacy of your adrenals, they're creating very minute, little secretions, but very specific secretions. You want your adrenals absolutely in tune, in tune to the symphony of your body, so they can make their precise secretions and their actions really hit that sweet spot, so that you stay in an adaptable space and that will lead, eventually, to you having a healthier mental outlook and emotional outlook.

 

Mason: (03:22)

Now, when they're unhealthy, when they're not respected, basically you're not going to have these responses being very healthy. It's going to reflect in your adrenals. When your adrenals get desperate overworked and stretched, you're not going to see these same results. Now this is a problem, because they have the ability and do affect every tissue, every organ, every gland in your body through their precise secretions. So let's go into a little bit of the physiological function. Sorry, I'm rambling on here guys. But before we jump in and jam, I just want to make sure everyone's really aware of what the adrenals are doing in the body. You need them, the adrenals and all of their secretions, to utilise carbohydrates and fats, to convert proteins into energy and fats into energy, really controlling where you're going to be storing fat in your body and including the waste, and in the face. Blood sugar regulation. We'll get into blood sugar and the correlation between low blood sugar and adrenal fatigue.

 

Mason: (04:16)

Gastrointestinal function. So yes, your gut. And I think we've talked about it in our gut podcast, how one of the things that people miss out on in treatment is treating the Jing and the adrenals when it comes to low gut function. And maybe in our candida podcast as well. Cardiovascular function, antioxidant and inflammatory hormone secretions and management. Huge part of our immune response. And basically after you get midlife menopause, andropause, these adrenal glands become the major source of circulating sex hormones through the body, which is massive and why every woman that's gone through menopause and has crazy symptoms. They're like, "All right, you're going to have tapped out adrenals and tapped out Jing. And that's what we're going to need to address."

 

Mason: (04:56)

And we are always aware that the adrenals in the Jing are the source of our potential for strength, stamina, power in the body. Why? Because they're steroid hormones emerging from them. Obviously they affect all aspects of the body. Athletes know that. Everyone knows that, guys. So Sage, your face is up. So let's go there. And those listening on the podcast, I just sidekicked Sage, his face was up. Anything you want to just throw in there just to give people a nice wide view of the adrenal glands, their function in the body?

 

Sage: (05:27)

Yeah. I think they play such an important role in the entire endocrine system. And one thing that's important to understand is that when your body is prioritising production/secretion of cortisol, it's going to prioritise that over any other hormones. So that, evolutionarily, was a good idea. Because when you were in a life or death situation, when Tuk Tuk was coming to kick you out of your cave and steal your woman, it was a good idea for your adrenals to produce a tonne of cortisol, so you could smash him over the head with this club and go about your life and then go back to normal, stress-free caveman living. But as all your listeners will be well aware, in the modern world we get so caught in this situation of chronic stress.

 

Sage: (06:12)

And when you're stressed, whether it's chronic stress or whether it's temporary stress that hit Tuk Tuk over the head, you're prioritising the secretion of cortisol and your body's basically going to say, "Okay, I need to survive. Most important thing is getting this fight or flight response going. I'm not going to worry about any of these other hormones. I'm not going to worry about testosterone or oestrogen or progesterone, any of these beauty, antiaging or longevity," your overall wellbeing hormones, "I'm just going to give you the rocket fuel to get us through this situation."But then when that becomes chronic, then you're never producing any of these other hormones and you're just running on the rocket fuel that's not a very sustainable fuel.

 

Sage: (06:47)

It really affects your overall endocrine system. So it's not just something that exists in its own little isolated world of your adrenals and cortisol itself. But as you said, it connects to all the other organs and tissues and has such an impact on the production of other hormones, which then the next logical step of that is those hormones have impact on every area of your health. So it has this cascading effect and it's so nice to address it as we are about to at the level of the adrenals. Because if you can get up at the top of the stream, you can have a beneficial effect downstream all the way.

 

Mason: (07:20)

Sing it, Sage. What do you reckon, Dan?

 

Dan: (07:22)

Yeah, bang on. I would just to, I guess, throw out there initially that a lot of people obviously are suffering from this, no doubt, in our fast paced, modern 21st century, crazy world that we're living in. And a lot of people are going to regular orthodox practitioners and getting shunned away and being told that "It doesn't exist," and, "It's all in your head," and "There's no research," and yada, yada, yada. So I think it'd be good initially to shed some light on that. And the first thing I want to say in that light is that the symptoms are definitely real. The symptoms are 100% exist. I, as a practitioner, see this day in day out and I would have to say that fatigue alone probably makes up the bulk of my practise. The bulk of people coming in are coming in with some sort of stress/fatigue based disorders.

 

Dan: (08:06)

In terms of adrenal fatigue, I think the name just to start off with is a little bit of a misnomer. Half of me does understand why the orthodox profession is a bit disgruntled about it. Because what we know now is it's not the actual adrenal glands themselves, the little grape size organ that we're talking about, it's not that starts to get tired and get sluggish. What we now know is that the signalling from the hypothalamus in the brain down to the pituitary, down to the adrenal, so that three-step process, that signalling of the endocrine system, that's what becomes sluggish when someone is in that far off flight state for a really prolonged period of time, exactly what Sage is talking about. So your cortisol hormones get prioritised and all your sex steroid hormones, all your reproductive hormones just get put on the back burner.

 

Dan: (08:53)

Like I say, people will go into an orthodox practitioner say, "Hey, I think I've got adrenal fatigue. I can't get out of bed. I've got a shot immune system. I can't recover from exercise. I've got no libido," yada, yada, yada, a doctor will do a screening for their cortisol and it'll come back normal. And it's like, "Well, obviously your adrenal glands are working, because your cortisol looks normal. Off you go. See you later." But what we now know is that through tissue testing and looking at the saliva levels, yes, you can have a blood cortisol level, which looks perfectly healthy. But if you look at that same person's tissue production of cortisol, which is the stress hormone, the anti-inflammatory hormone, that can look totally different. When we look at the saliva levels and often you'll see a perfectly normal cortisol level on bloods and a really bottomed out suboptimal level of tissue cortisol, which tells you, as the practitioner, that this person is having a hard time utilising that hormone.

 

Mason: (09:45)

So that's going to be classic hypoadrenia, we're talking about there. So this is something we would really going into. Hypoadrenia is classic what you'd call lowered adrenal function in the light of what everyone might be able to wrap their heads around in terms of what everyone understood, sluggish adrenals, tired, overworked adrenals, which I feel possibly still stands, but it's an isolating theory rather than are the adrenals remaining really within the pattern and in tune with the rest of the endocrine system, the rest of the body? And so is the actual, gosh, is it able to just hit the mark? Is it still be able to hit bullseye with what it's accruing? And at that point, that's when it is sluggish, it's basically it's when it's out of tune on that level. Is that right?

 

Dan: (10:29)

That's exactly right.

 

Mason: (10:30)

So that's basically, when we talk about adrenal fatigue in our culture, I think that's what we're sitting on. I think we all agree on that. Now that can also be seen as non-Addison's hypoadrenia, because this is important to understand as well, just always getting Addison's back into the picture. So Addison's disease. Do you want to go over that? The source of it? It's autoimmune connection?

 

Dan: (10:55)

Yeah, definitely. And that's probably what a lot of allopathic practitioners, that's what's coming up in their head when they've got a client in front of them saying, "My adrenals are shot," or, "My adrenals are not working." "Well, the only condition we know of where that actually is true is Addison's disease," which is entirely different condition to the one we're talking about today. Addison's disease is of an autoimmune origin, meaning that the immune system, for whatever reason, is attacking the adrenal glands. It's Hashimoto's, for example, where the immune system attacks the thyroid. So your production of cortisol, DHEA, adrenaline, testosterone, all of those hormones shut down and that condition can be really life threatening. And you often see a lot of totally different symptoms pigmented skin, weight loss, and a whole heap of other symptoms that you don't typically see with what we're terming hypoadrenia.

 

Dan: (11:41)

So two different conditions. So like I say, a lot of the practitioners, if they test for something like that and that's negative, then it's like, "Off you go. You're fine. You don't have an issue with your adrenal glands." And whilst that might be true, the deeper issue, as I said earlier, is more what we call HPA dysfunction, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal dysfunction. And that's what we do have a lot of literature supporting.

 

Mason: (12:01)

All right. So we'll jump into the HPA axis. So then we go a little bit further. So we're going to be mostly talking about this adrenal fatigue today and what we can do in terms of lifestyle, getting on top of it. But we've got a lot of new people listening to the podcast, SuperFeast. I'm sure you guys see this as well. You're in your bubble. And then all of a sudden the bubble extends. And we've got a lot of people here listening, who might even be at that point where just to hear that their symptoms, their brain fog, and they're overly feeling tired, not able to get up in the morning, not able to get through the day and going to the doctor and doctor banging you back and going, "Hey, no, there's absolutely no problem with you. There's nothing wrong with your adrenal glands." Despite the fact that we're talking about this, you go to the modern doctor, Sage, you threw it out there.

 

Sage: (12:42)

They might give you [inaudible 00:12:44]-

 

Sage: (12:44)

... antidepressants. That's pretty much all they're going to offer.

 

Mason: (12:45)

"Aw, you poor thing. You must be crazy," or, "But you're obviously depressed. So let's give you antidepressants." "Yeah. I'm depressed because I'm tired all the time." But there's no reason for you tired you find.

 

Sage: (12:55)

And then goes any sex drives you had left. I'm what funny man.

 

Mason: (13:00)

The non acknowledgement is quite funny, and we're talking about this as well, considering the fact that corticosteroids, Dan, is that what they're called?

 

Dan: (13:07)

Yes. Yeah. Prednisone. Yep.

 

Mason: (13:10)

And there's a specific one. Hydrocortisone.

 

Dan: (13:13)

Yeah.

 

Mason: (13:13)

One type. And they use that for so much respiratory issues, skin issues, of course. We all know skin issues, issues with the GI tract. This is the medical doctors. This is within their materia medica. For eyes, nervous system, for the blood. They're using basically these synthetic hormones that the adrenal glands would be secreting with efficacy and would be been uptaken by the endocrine system and by the body and by the tissue and by the organs, if it was healthy and not in a chronically stressed state. So they're just whacking even more in there. For the heart, they use these. And the best is always the joint mucus membrane, they're using these kinds of hydrocortical drugs for that instance.

 

Mason: (13:55)

So it's an absolute hypocrisy that they're going to then put someone, as you said, Sage, say, "All right, you're making this up." As you were saying, Dan, "We've tested. You've actually got cortisol in your system," which is what is understood. Your adrenal's in service... ask that again. Your adrenals are so exhausted, they can't actually secrete cortisol, but that's not necessarily the case. They're able to secrete cortisol. It's just that there's many things that are possibly deficient within your body, no longer actually to able to get that uptaken by the body effectively within the right receptors.

 

Dan: (14:27)

Correct. Yeah, that's right. And I think it's important just to back up a little bit. Sometimes with these fatigue cases, it is good to go and get the whole kit of test done, because sometimes the fatigue is coming from something iron deficiency anaemia, or it's come from B12 deficiency, or it's coming from undiagnosed celiac disease. You know what I mean? So sometimes it is good to rule those things out and correct those. And often obviously that can correct the underlying fatigue. But the people we're talking about today are the folks where they've done those tests and all those things have been ruled out and the doctors are looking at their bloods, looking them back in the face and going, "I can't find anything wrong with you. I've reached the end of my toolkit. It must be all in your head."

 

Mason: (15:03)

So one thing I want to throw out there at the beginning to you guys before we just clarify what happens when you actually get to a point of exhaustion and why. I feel we're all really cheering everyone on now to take on the creation of a lifestyle. So this is pure permaculture lifestyle design, which is absolutely necessary in this Western world to not get washed away with the official story of how you should live. And generally that's going to be burned at both ends and just go and flog yourself. To ensure that you design your lifestyle, we're going to talk a lot about this, so that you don't take your endocrine and adrenal function out of step to the extent where you start walking on eggshells.

 

Mason: (15:48)

And I think that's what you see a lot in clinic, Dan. I know you see that as well, Sage. You see that point where someone's taped themselves to that point of stress and maybe the alarm bells have gone off and they just haven't listened. Or maybe they're just not within their body enough to actually listen to them. But quite often with those eggshells, that's what we see. All of a sudden it's like something happens externally, bang, and it just cracks. And then that person's health will absolutely deteriorate. Now modern medicine's been really good for padding those people, making sure they can go a little bit longer, but is that good? Yeah. Short term. Absolutely. It's really helped a lot of people, of course. And I'll be grateful for that, but-

 

Sage: (16:27)

Yeah, just when someone dies generally not good for your health, right?

 

Mason: (16:31)

Probably not the best. And as well, [inaudible 00:16:33]-

 

Sage: (16:32)

If that's all you're doing, it's coming afterwards, but let's stretch this out if we can.

 

Mason: (16:36)

I agree. I've got my own inklings that I wouldn't ever put on anyone else about what's coming afterwards. I'm very excited about it, to an extent, but far out, I am wanting to stick around for as long as possible, because it is a lot of fun here. And I think the whole dying thing, I think you're right, because it's probably not the best if you die for the last 20 years of your life, right?

 

Sage: (16:56)

Right.

 

Mason: (16:58)

So basically we want to make sure that we're in that fatigue state and a lot of people get it. Like we just had someone write to us on SuperFeast. Tiny was doing emails at 9:00 PM last night. Oh. Own your own business, financial freedom, all the time of yourself.

 

Sage: (17:11)

Probably at 9:00 PM.

 

Mason: (17:12)

Well, then yeah. And then on the flip side, we were able to accept someone coming and doing a Wim Hof Method with our team this morning. So that's what I did this morning. Someone came down and we did breathing and then did an ice bath. And then I raced back up here for a 9:30 start. So yeah. That sounds pretty good. So basically a lot of people do it like no that email came through and it's just like, "So I'm doing my masters, and I'm full time there and I'm a tutor, and I work at a cafe, and I do Bikram yoga three times a week, and I'm really active, and I work a lot between studies, and I'm exhausted." I was like, "Yeah. I can definitely see that." And that's someone from what I could tell exhausted would not be the appropriate word there, but we're a very dramatic in the west. Sorry, Sage, but I think Americans are extra-dramatic when it comes to...

 

Sage: (18:00)

Are we?

 

Mason: (18:02)

"Oh my God. I'm so exhausted." That would definitely, there'd obviously be a dysfunction with the adrenals occurring. There'd be a beginning to walk on eggshells and that person is going, "Fuck, I better start turning my lifestyle around now." And everyone, the best thing about the rebuild process, when you start bringing your adrenals and your endocrine system back on track, I talk about this a lot with those adrenal herbs and those Jing herbs. Yeah. The treatment's awesome and the herbs are awesome, but the best thing is you start feeling your edges and because your kidneys and adrenal are associated with your hearing, you start to be able to hear, if you start walking on eggshells with your energy and you become susceptible to something when you stay in too much of a chronic stress state, there's something cracking and then something really going wrong with your endocrine system. And so basically we want to make sure that if you are hearing those crunches under your feet, you want to start getting onto it now, because the other side of what happens is actual exhaustion. Do you want to go into that, Dan?

 

Dan: (19:10)

Yeah, definitely. These are the sort of folks that if they keep pushing and pushing and pushing and their body's ability to secrete and utilise cortisol becomes diminished, then we end up with a scenario where the inflammatory process in the body can no longer be checked. So cortisol is definitely useful. People hear cortisol are like, " Oh, that's a stress hormone. Don't want that. That's evil." It's like, "No, no, no, you need cortisol. You need to be able to use cortisol. You don't want excess cortisol and you don't want diminished cortisol. You want healthy levels." Like pretty much every hormone. Where I was going with that is if you can no longer produce cortisol in the amounts required to be utilised, to check inflammation, so cortisol being anti-inflammatory, what you then end up with long term is this runaway inflammatory load basically.

 

Sage: (19:57)

And that is what's really tied into that chronic fatigue. That's when, if they keep pushing, pushing, pushing, and the adrenals can't keep up with that inflammatory load that's when folks do end up with more, what we term, chronic fatigue, which I would say is distinct from adrenal fatigue. I'd say it's more at that depleted end of the spectrum, where you do end up bedridden, just to make the distinction there.

 

Mason: (20:18)

And when you start to get to the bedridden state, at that point, clinically, you're getting a lot of research coming through that's talking not necessarily to the fact that... Normally would you say at that point, you've had chronic cortisol to the point where it cracks and then you have diminished cortisol. And then at that point, the narrative is you can't produce cortisol anymore, which actually isn't the case.

 

Dan: (20:40)

That's right. Exactly. What we usually see is when people enter that fight or flight mode where they're just smashing coffee, working around the clock, just thrashing their body, exercising through the roof, their cortisol is going to be higher usually. And typically the physiological response of the body, the adaptive response there is to store weight. So often we see people come in, they're like, "I don't know why I've put on this XX weight. I'm restricting calories. I'm doing keto. I'm running three or four times a week." It's like, 'Yeah, your cortisol's through the roof. Your body's under super amounts of stress." And it's preserving. That's what we see when the cortisol is high. On the other end of the spectrum, when that starts to burn out and the DHEA, which is another adrenal hormone we'll talk about later on, and cortisol both start to be diminished. That's when usually people start to break down. You see atrophy, you see the immune system crack, you see chronic sore throats and chronic viruses and flus and that sort of thing. And people actually become catabolic and they'll lose flesh. They'll lose muscle unintentionally.

 

Dan: (21:37)

So I think it's still important to say that the adrenals are still producing the hormones. It's just that their body's ability to use those two hormones, cortisone and DHEA, become really suboptimal. And then what you have then is this runaway inflammatory process, because those hormones are what's used to counteract that inflammation and come in after your body secreted a massive inflammatory response and go, "Okay, calm down now. Chill out. Go back to normal." When that can't happen, that's when we start running into autoimmune type presentations. So we have runaway inflammation. It can't be checked. There's not enough cortisone and DHEA present. People are heading more towards that chronic fatigue picture.

 

Dan: (22:16)

And that's how I see it play out. So often when I do people's case history. There'll be an initial threat. The Epstein-Barr virus is a classic one, which we've talked about a million times before, but sometimes it can be loss of a loved one. It can be loss of a job. It can be a million and one things. But once that light goes off and the body enters that survival mode, if that's not checked and corrected and they keep going, and keep going, and keep going, unfortunately, sometimes the end result can either be chronic fatigue syndrome where being bedridden is the consequence and the mitochondria of the cell, which is the powerhouse of the cell, they shut off as a defence mechanism. We know that now with a lot of the new research, which I think you mentioned earlier, Mason.

 

Mason: (22:56)

Yeah. Can you really repeat it, just so that everyone can really hit this for my benefit as well?

 

Dan: (23:00)

For sure. Yep. So your cells, every cell in your body has what's called a mitochondria, which actually evolved from bacteria way, way, way back.

 

Mason: (23:08)

Ancestors represent. Louis Pasteur hated his grandparents, hated his origins.

 

Dan: (23:17)

That's right. Yeah. So these little parts of the cell called mitochondria, all right? They evolved from bacteria, but they're essentially the powerhouse of our cell. They're what gives our cell energy. They're what charges up our cells, so that we produce ATP, which is energy. What we think with chronic fatigue syndrome and adrenal fatigue type presentations now, which a lot of new research is supporting, is that the body in reaction to some pathogenic threat, usually retroviruses, is actually turning off the mitochondria of the cell, like a stealth protection mechanism, so that the virus can't use your nutrients, can't use your B3 and your B2 and all these nutrients that give you energy in your cell. So just to repeat that, a threat comes along your body. If the threat goes unchecked and sustained, eventually-

 

Mason: (24:00)

Here's an example. So Epstein bar was an initiator, you said. Is that also a stealth that remains at this stage?

 

Dan: (24:06)

Exactly. A stealth infection that remains unchecked that is still grumbling away at a subclinical level. And that can happen for years. That can happen five to eight years, sometimes before people really, really tap out and end up with what's known as chronic fatigue. We're thinking that's really moreso what's happening than the cortisol-centric model, which is what we still do appreciate. But we know that there's more research supporting this concept now of mitochondrial dysfunction. So the cells switching off its mitochondria, basically to disable the virus from being able to tap into your nutrients, but unfortunately, in doing so, it puts you into hibernation mode.

 

Mason: (24:44)

So we've got the distinction there. Adrenal fatigue, we've talked about. Heavily lifestyle based. You really are on edge. Like the woman that emailed us yesterday, she's really tired, "And I'm doing heaps of hot yoga and I'm burning it at both ends, and smashing coffee," and all that kind of stuff. You're going to see adrenal fatigue. And especially that can be what's going to be a catalyst of-

 

Mason: (25:03)

... fatigue. And especially, what's going to be a catalyst often is either the fact that you are just working too hard and that you think you have to, and that you have the opportunity to bring yourself in check then. Or there's something triggers you, whether it's an infection or a loss of loved one or moving house or whatever it is, a trigger into that stress response. And if that remains unchecked, then you can look down the barrel of going to that place of exhaustion.

 

Mason: (25:25)

On that sage, I want to talk to you about that point where the trauma occurs or whether it's just been an accumulation of living in the West where it's been stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. What do you like to do in that phase? Because if we can get to the heart if it and stop people from going down this pattern of adrenal fatigue and then into exhaustion and stealth and pathogen infection, what do you like to do to break that cycle and get you back in the body and out of that stress response?

 

Sage: (25:52)

Yeah, a couple of things. I think it is worthwhile, of course, I love the Western and scientific perspective of looking at the situation as well, but also I think the Dallas perspective on it gives us a really nice mental framework to work with as well, where the adrenal vitality they look at as the Jing, as I'm sure a lot of your followers and customers are well aware of, given the great success of your Jing product.

 

Sage: (26:12)

It is something that you are essentially inheriting from your lineage. It's kind of like the epigenetic adrenal vitality that you're inheriting through your line of ancestors. And some people get to start with more of this than others. Some people just have more robust epigenetic expression than others. We've all known people who, even though they drink and they party and they do whatever they want, they eat whatever they want, they don't sleep enough, they are just full of energy. They seem somewhat limitless. They're at least functional in spite of doing things that would take most people down, but then they die at age 58 of a heart attack and then they're done.

 

Mason: (26:45)

Unless you're King Richard.

 

Sage: (26:46)

Yeah, there you go. He's just got this bank vault of adrenal vitality, Jing that who knows where the hell it comes from. But there's outliers in every situation, right?

 

Mason: (26:54)

Yeah.

 

Sage: (26:54)

And then we've all known people, and these are people often that we encounter even more in the health world, who started off with not that much. Their epigenetic expression is not that robust, and it could be related to their mitochondrial genetics as well. And interesting as a side note, you inherit your mitochondria from your mother, because the mitochondria coming from the male side is in the tail of the sperm, which drops off. So you have your mom's lineage to thank for whatever your mitochondrial situation is. So you can't blame pops. And if you start out with not much, you always have to be really careful as people who, even though they're always doing healthy stuff, they may be just kind of hanging on to a level of functional health. But on the other hand, these people become the real, we call them Jing masters, because they are walking on those eggshells and they learn how to do it with grace. They are really forced at a relatively young age to be aware of the things that will take them out or the ways that they're going to be depleting themselves excessively or at an accelerated rate.

 

Sage: (27:48)

So, you start maybe with more, maybe less, but you're going to be somewhere on the spectrum. And then you start to feel it. It creeps up on you little by little. Some people don't notice it until they just are too exhausted to get out of bed in the morning one day. But some people may be more sensitive, and they feel it coming up. They feel getting a little bit more tired every single day. I'm having to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock more times. My reactions aren't as quick. I can't handle stress in the same way. I kind of crumble under it maybe a little more now than I used to when something out of the ordinary happens.

 

Sage: (28:19)

So when you're getting into this state, of course, the first thing to do is stop what are called, in the Taoist system, the Jing leaks. It's the ways in which you are depleting yourself and causing yourself to be in a state of perpetual stress. So it could be a wide variety of things, and everyone kind of has to do a little bit of lifestyle self-analysis and see what it comes down to. It could be not getting quality sleep. Maybe you're sleeping eight hours, but it's all light sleeping. You're not getting either enough REM sleep or you're not getting enough non-REM sleep. There could be various things going on there. And then maybe during the day, you're just chronically stressed. Maybe you had a trauma when you were five years old and you've never broken out of that, and you're constantly living in a state of perpetual fear thinking that your demise is imminent. And the unfortunate thing is that as your adrenals become more depleted and they're more vulnerable, they become more fearful as well, because they are vulnerable. And that is a really negative cycle to be in, because when you're fearful, you're going to be stressing more, and then you're burning yourself out more. And it's just a negative downward path. Of course, if you turn it around it, you can go just as fast the opposite way. But it's something to be really mindful of.

 

Sage: (29:23)

So you want to cut these leaks, and maybe it's eating not a good diet. Maybe for a guy, too much ejaculation and depleting these essential fluids. It could be that you're drinking too much, doing drugs, relying heavily on stimulants of legal or illegal form to keep yourself going. There's so many things that are...

 

Sage: (29:39)

Basically, it's like borrowing from your future to pay for an unsustainable present lifestyle. You're not making enough money in your job and you don't have enough any savings to be paying for your lifestyle, but you're taking out loans from the bank and borrowing money from friends and all that stuff. You're running your little personal Ponzi scheme. It's going to catch up with you. When you're drinking coffee and taking these neutropics that are actually just making you feel good because they got lots of caffeine in them, you're running your little Ponzi scheme and it's going to get you.

 

Sage: (30:06)

So you want to address all these things, and bring as many of those into balance as possible. Find a way to moderate the stress. There's nothing worse for somebody who's dealing with stress than hearing, "You need to stop stressing." Right? It's not helpful just to tell somebody that, but to try to give them tools.

 

Sage: (30:19)

So there's many things. You can look at it from a nutritional perspective and take in something like magnesium glycinate, or even maybe better magnesium L-threonate, for its unique ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and really relax the nervous system. You could take things to help with mitochondria. You could look at CoQ10 ubiquinol or even maybe the more advanced form being PQQ, that are really going to enhance mitochondrial function and production of ATP.

 

Sage: (30:43)

You could incorporate more healthy fats into your diet, because burning fats, you're going to also make more ATP than when you're just burning glucose. And monitor your blood sugar, because that's going to be this roller coaster that goes up and down. If your blood sugar gets too low and you can't deal with it, you're going to have to secrete more cortisol and rely on the adrenals to keep you going there. And that's going to be another form of stress.

 

Sage: (31:04)

So you want to sort all these out as much as possible, and cut down these stressors. And maybe it's a lifestyle modification. Maybe it's cutting someone out of your life, switching your job, but also doing things within your power to enhance your adaptability to deal with these external things. Maybe it's meditation or spending more time in nature, or finding a form of exercise that de-stresses you but doesn't burn you out.

 

Sage: (31:25)

There's so many different ways to handle the stress, so don't feel too pressured to have to just magically make it disappear, but start looking for the tools that are going to work for you. Maybe you look at some adaptogenic herbs like reishi mushroom or rhodiola or holy basil or ashwagandha. There's so many tools. You just kind of explore them and see what seems functional to you. And then you start looking at what can you do to start rebuilding the adrenals. But I think that I may be jumping a little too far ahead of ourselves here into the next chapter of the discussion. The first thing is to address where you're burning the candle at both ends on all levels of mind, body, and spirit.

 

Mason: (31:58)

Yeah. I think those suggestions are magic. There are a couple of things I want to really address. But one thing that came up that you're talking about making very wise decisions. I think of all you were just saying there, there's all the mergers that goes. You're going to have to wise up and it's very appropriate. The kidney water meridian that encompasses the adrenals has that archetype of the sage. In looking at it from a Taoist perspective, we are looking at, "Yes, we're transforming fear and doubt into wisdom and trust." So the sage is someone who stops and will take in his environment and will make very mediated choices, very wise choices. They're going to take us towards the direction of, and manifesting what truly matters.

 

Mason: (32:41)

And there's a quote that I had that I wanted to talk about this, just in case it did come up. "The sage would adopt any life imposed on him without recrimination or remorse, without losing his good humour and contentment, because his intimate being possesses the means to communicate with the organisation of the world in such a way that wealth, honour, leisure, or their opposites, are incapable of affecting the power of his soul." And so that's from the Huainanzi. I'll put that quote, and the source, the book, the Power of the Five Elements.

 

Mason: (33:21)

So one thing that emerges in terms of making these life choices is that I think a lot of people have fear these days. A lot of people have FOMO these days, fear of missing out, and don't have the ability to realise, as you were talking about, Sage, that the wisest thing that they could be doing is designing a lifestyle and making choices at this current time that are going to guard the amount of Jing essence that they have from the very beginning.

 

Mason: (33:45)

The wisest thing you could possibly do is if you're in a lucky position where you haven't felt the edges of your fatigue yet, that you start realising that this shit isn't made up. This is real. This exists. And you can start really gardening your lifestyle so that you never really have to feel the edges of that fatigue. And then, so when huge changes come along, your water meridian, your kidneys, and your adrenals are able to make huge changes in life if needed, and not have that be the straw that breaks the camels back.

 

Mason: (34:19)

And that's going to be a massive source of longevity for you. And that's going to be a massive source of longevity for your adrenal function and for your sex hormones. Then, "All right. I don't have money. Okay. All right. I'll have to move house. Okay. All right. So that person's dying. Okay." Let's continue to meet, meet, meet. That's the idea of the kidneys. And that's what really sits at the heart of this adrenal function, this conversation for me, is bringing out you're inner sage and you're inner elder. That's wintertime here. We are kind of creeping through autumn into winter. You guys are emerging out of it, Sage, so I'm you seem wiser.

 

Sage: (34:54)

I do my best. I try to tap into my inner Sage.

 

Mason: (35:01)

Yeah. I was waiting for it. It was just lobbed up there.

 

Sage: (35:04)

Too many mentions of the name Sage to not say something.

 

Mason: (35:09)

And I'm sure people are listening, going, "My inner Sage? Is this an imaginary visualisation of Sage, just sitting on my kidney?"

 

Sage: (35:17)

No. Honestly, it's something that... It's a name. I actually picked it when I was five years old, and it's something to aspire to over the course of a lifetime, so it's always a little reminder for me.

 

Mason: (35:27)

And it suits you. And we are kind of looking down the barrel of going into that winter time. It's always really beautiful. And I talk about this process, because yeah, we're going to go into supplements and herbs and just rad shit, and it's going to be awesome. But if you can't get to this core of it guys, and beat it to the punch, you are going to play that game that Sage was talking about, where you're going to be borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and you're going to be needing to live a life of excess.

 

Mason: (35:49)

Mantak Chia, the Taoist master, last weekend I was up with him in Brisbane. He's Tiny's teacher, and so he was there doing the sexual practises and he was talking about what happens when men excessively ejaculate. And he's just like, "You always borrow from kidneys. The balls, they don't pay back. Then this section and these sexual practises. You get yourself to the point of ejaculation and then stop and massage and breathe, and breathe up that sexual potency and that energy that you're creating and then send it to the kidneys. Time to pay back. Time to pay back." It was just great.

 

Sage: (36:24)

That's unreal.

 

Mason: (36:25)

It was unreal. And I can put that book for anyone. I'm sure many people know Mantak Chia's work, and it's always fun to look at the Taoist sexual practises. And we've got a few podcasts coming on them as well, but living a life of excess and starting to walk on these eggshells, that's what really you're staring down a barrel of. But really what we get into is this flow of life, especially when we're looking at the seasons.

 

Mason: (36:45)

And this time here, autumn, where we're in at the moment in Australia, that's the time to mourn, because it's not just a matter of not letting things affect you in life, because part of what's going to allow you to really feel the fear and the doubt that you have in life, and then gently, consistently allow that verberation of those emotions that are emerging from your Chi, coming through your kidney channel, allow that to transform. You sit with it and you feel it. Physiologically, you start bringing your adrenals back into place so you're not exhausted, so that physiologically your Chi can then be supported to keep on moving and transforming. And then it transforms into its organic pattern. It remembers how to move through and transform the water system. And then you're going to start feeling and accumulating your virtues of trust and wisdom. And that's not something external for you to chase. That's something for you to feel and discover in yourself, and see what those words point to in terms of what they mean for you.

 

Mason: (37:42)

It's really important for me at this time of year to really allow the mourning to come forth, so I can feel as I move it into winter. You can do it anytime, but the seasons do have their feel. And as you go into winter, it's time to be like, wow, you get to really feel that fear. And since you've mourned and you're really ready to just then embrace that fear and allow that to transform. And I think that's really huge, because otherwise it's FOMO and fear that makes us feel like we've going to absolutely burn it at both ends right now, or that if I leave this job, it's just going to be, "Oh, what am I going to do?" It's just such a source of adrenal fatigue in our culture. It's so shit, but it's good for people to start getting onto that really now. And if there is trauma in your life, I'll quickly throw in neurofeedback. Sage, you love. I think it's just something-

 

Sage: (38:22)

Love it.

 

Mason: (38:22)

Yeah. I just wanted to throw that out there because I know that you find it really effective, the neurofeedback, if there's been a trauma.

 

Sage: (38:28)

Yeah, tremendously. So many people have experienced stuff primarily in first seven years of life that had a real negative impact and changed the way that your brain works to a totally dysfunctional way. But you've been that way for so long, you don't know the difference. And neurofeedback is such an incredible tool, where you're getting these electrical sensors, these electrodes hooked up to your head, and you're basically watching a screen and watching some sort of a video play on the screen. And as your brain is engaging in certain patterns, you're hooked up to a whole very advanced computer system that is determining whether those are good functional brainwave patterns or dysfunctional ones. And basically on the screen, it will fade out and the music will be kind quiet, and the picture will kind of shrink down. That's kind of a very gentle form of punishment to your brain, is taking away the sensory excitement when your brain's kind of misbehaving there.

 

Sage: (39:15)

And then as your brain behaves, the music comes up, everything becomes bright and beautiful. And it's the way of gently training your brain out of these old patterns. It sounds kind of funny and silly, until you really come out of a session and feel how it works. And you do get a benefit out of one session, but the more you do it, the more benefit you get out of each consecutive session. It's something where I would say you really want to commit to do at least 10, if not 20 sessions of it with a really quality practitioner who knows what they're doing. Because this is another one of those things, when you're stuck in trauma-induced brain patterns, it can just set you up in a situation of chronic stress, where you don't even know you're stressing. You just don't know the difference, because it's always been this way since you were a toddler and some weird thing happened. And this is such a helpful way to get you out of that, and also to deal with more immediate adult life stressors.

 

Sage: (40:03)

I've had days there was real challenges happening in my life. I was feeling extraordinarily stressed, pretty dark. And I went in for a neurofeedback session and came out half an hour later feeling totally at peace, spectacularly one with the world, calm, clear. It's a little expensive, but for the long-term benefits of sorting out those traumas in a very precise way, it's incredible. So many people are going about it with things like psilocybin and Ayahuasca, and I'm not knocking those by any means. They absolutely have their place and are fantastic, and the research going on around them is also very exciting, especially with psilocybin and PTSD and things of that nature.

 

Mason: (40:40)

Yeah. And even MDMA now I think with PTSD.

 

Sage: (40:42)

MDMA as well. Yeah. End of life anxiety and things like that. But the cool thing with neurofeedback, it feels to me like it's doing similar work, but with laser precision. So it's just incredible. I think it's definitely something that, I've got to say, 99% of people could dramatically benefit from, I feel.

 

Mason: (41:00)

Yeah. Rad. It's something I've been meaning to do, in conjunction with that in terms of if there's a trauma and then I want to jump over into start digging into some treatment then, the walkabout. Really, I know it's going to be time in nature. It's so healing, and it comes onto this thing that you've got to check off a list to do every day. And it's not where you want your walkabout. You don't want your walkabout to be in a place where it's a check off the list.

 

Mason: (41:24)

Now what I find is when you get really good and you need to, if you are burning at both ends, you really need to get smart with the decision what you're letting into your life. I really relate to Jerry Seinfeld in that episode where that pool boy wants to be his friend. And he's like, "I'm sorry, I already have three friends. I just don't have any room for anymore." I'm like, 'Oh, yeah. Jerry, you're my spirit animal, bro." Because I've got a business, child, family stuff going on, and I also want a social life and want to go out, and I've got my hobbies, body surfing, which kind of falls into what I'm about to talk about. I need to get really smart with what I'm saying yes or no to, and get the fuck out of this morality that is driven onto us from mainstream media in terms of your social obligations, what the official story is and what a rich life is.

 

Mason: (42:10)

I'll tell you what my rich life is. And that's, I'm making very smart decisions with my energy now, and I'm not perfect at that. And I think everyone should have the permission from themselves to continue to mess that up, and never, ever, ever stop learning from that. So that's one.

 

Mason: (42:25)

And then if you do that enough, you will have space emerge, and then what will emerge if you don't have anything to fill it with, is you going on a walkabout with yourself. So being in your own spirit energy, whether it's personal practise, whether it's going for a bush walk, whether it's being in the waves. If you are in nature, there is a very primordial function where your trauma will continue to emerge and it'll be stuck within that HPA access. It'll be stuck, been thrown out there on a projector screen in your mind and your emotions through your amygdala, because you're no longer hooked in and connected. And that's going to continue to bring the stress, stress, stress, stress.

 

Mason: (43:02)

When you're going on extended periods through walking through the bush or watching the waves, that trauma of that memory will attach to the leaves moving, the trees moving, the waves, and basically, the way the indigenous here in Australia would put it is that emotion or trauma or memory will begin to attach itself to that non-important thing that you are meditating on and watching, and be plucked away bit by bit by bit by bit. But it's just more about taking this bundle of rope and start untying it so you can meet the reality of what's happening.

 

Mason: (43:35)

And that's your symbiotic relationship with the world around you, and it's why it is so important to allow that spaciousness to arise in your lifestyle, not just have the most, "Okay, now I've got to do this and I've got to go meet this person. And then I got to spend my one hour in nature. Okay. My one hour in nature is happening. I'm so healthy." That's not going to work. You need spaciousness, because we've all got things to heal. And then, if you can do that prophylactically, if you can do that preventatively, then you're rocking. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

 

Mason: (44:03)

So, going into what we're going to be doing treatment wise, Sage, you talked about sleep. This was another thing that Mantak Chia said. He's like, "People come to me with adrenal fatigue. I go, 'Okay, come with me.' And I put them to bed." And I'm like, "Great." He's like, "No more stuff, go to bed. And you just sleep for as long as you need to." And that's a struggle for a lot of people to do. I know me and Tans are at like that at the moment. You guys both have your own businesses. Sometimes it's just like, "Okay. I'd probably just need a week. That is so impossible right now, but I probably just need a rest."

 

Sage: (44:38)

It's not happening.

 

Mason: (44:39)

It's not happening. But I think Tans, for woman who's had to give birth and, not had to, but has given birth, it's like, "I need a week." And we're really trying to get ourselves to the point where that's realistic. And some people are like, "Are you going to have another child?" We're like, "No, not yet. We're trying to really get our energy back on track from this. We're considerate of the eggshells. If it happens, we'd do it healthily and we'd rock it. But not whether we're going to go in and charge into that, but having awareness of our edges, and how long we want to live and how much we want to be rocking our health, we think we'll wait a little bit."

 

Mason: (45:12)

However, if you are exhausted or fatigued, the extent to which you need to take yourself to bed, at SuperFeast, we have, rather than people chucking sickies in order to get some reprieve, we encourage people to chuck healthies, where they're going to have a day to themselves so that they don't burn the candle at both ends. And that might seem like, "Oh, that's a really..." Sometimes when I was first doing that, I was like, "God, I'm a good boss." But no. And yeah, I want people not to get exhausted. And this isn't my driving... I know my mind doesn't think this way, but if I go back into my university business days, that makes so much sense economically, in terms of what's the benefit for keeping your team super healthy, and not getting to that point of adrenal fatigue, because you are going to lose people left, right, and centre. Absolutely left, right, and centre.

 

Mason: (46:03)

And this is what the Western industrial machine does. It just chews people up and spit them out like a nut in a piece of machinery that's worn out. Coming up, next one in. And it lacks efficiency. And of course it will, because we are running our absolutely inefficient fuels in that industry. So it's time to get very efficient, and we're going to find in the long run economically and physiologically and emotionally and spiritually, it's going to be much better for us to get onto these things and take time out for ourselves to sleep. So go to bed. And then Dan, feel free to jump in, add anything to that, but just jumping straight into some distinctions here. What are we going to start doing about this fatigue?

 

Dan: (46:37)

Well, I often say, a lot of the time, patients will come in and will talking about fatigue and adrenal issues and whatnot. And I always like to say that our ancestors worked 17 hours a week. Just stop and ponder that for a second. They worked 17 hours a week, and they went to bed pretty much when... If it got dark at five o'clock at a particular time of year, that was it. They were in bed. There were true honourers of circadian rhythms. And humans were like that for how long? Thousands and thousands and thousands of years. It's imprinted in your DNA.

 

Dan: (47:10)

What did we do in the last hundred years? We just went and totally screwed all that up. It's a good little reminder, just to say, "Your machinery does not support this lifestyle." I'm sorry, hence why it's breaking. These adrenal glands, which we term the "battery pack to life," they're batteries. You've got to recharge them. What are you doing right now to recharge your batteries? "Oh, I only get a few hours sleep." There we go, so that's where we need to start.

 

Mason: (47:34)

Well, that's it. It's like our endocrine system is... By the way, I like an instrumental analogy, like say you're playing a guitar and you're just playing, playing, playing, playing. And it's sounding good and sounding good. Sleep is when you stop and tune, maybe learn a few new skills. And we're obviously not going to be able to have this conversation without driving that home. And at the same time, it's a hard thing for a lot of people to hear, because they're like, "What are you talking about, Dan, circadian rhythms?" But crush it. I've got to crush it, bro. But what happens is, yeah, you're crushing it. You're crushing the wax of your Jing, and you're crushing it into an insustainable fuel source, so you can put that in the furnace and get through your day. Yay. So you can do everything.

 

Mason: (48:15)

So then this is where you can accept... And some people have a lot of Jing, as Sage, you were talking about before. You watch people who are often in that real crush it model. They've got that shitload of Jing, and they can kind of do it. Or they're smart enough to, if they need to burn it at both ends working, they don't try and have a social life, or they don't try and have all these other things that are going to take up that time that they need to actually restore.

 

Mason: (48:39)

And so, what you were talking about, Dan, accept how wide your cup is. Right? Accept it. And that's hard for people, because then you have to look at your mortality. That's what I like. I think it comes down to this. People, look at your fucking mortality. Look at your last breath and death in the face. It's coming, whether you like it or not. Just because you ignore it doesn't mean it's not going to come for you faster.

 

Mason: (49:03)

And if you look down the barrel of that fear as we were talking about before, and you really think about it and you meditate, and, "Great. It's okay if I say no to things, if I miss out, if I accept the FOMO, and really go, 'Ah, what am I really missing out on by trying not to miss out on all these things? Ah, the good stuff.'"

 

Mason: (49:19)

And you get more efficient in designing your lifestyle and actually say yes to the things that are good, keeping your adrenals in track, and your endocrine system in track, knowing how often to say yes to that, so you don't become a boring health robot that's just an absolute shit, wet sponge to be around. And also not saying no to everything so, and so pedantic about everything, that you actually start boring yourself internally. I definitely have been there. So you got to let that party animal out in whatever that looks like for you, socially.

 

Mason: (49:49)

But yeah, you need to get onto that. You get onto that big time, and you need to look after yourself. So yeah. Sorry, I just took over for you. I'm just like-

 

Sage: (49:56)

No, not at all. It was bang on.

 

Mason: (49:58)

Okay. Say that someone starts accepting that, because I think a lot of people listening to this will have accepted that, and a lot of them are already on that.

 

Mason: (50:04)

... That's accepting that. Because I think a lot of people listening to this will have accepted that. A lot of them are already on that lifestyle. But there's a bit of fatigue occurring within their body, just that general lifestyle fatigue, that hypoadrenia. And what are we going to start doing from a clinical approach and then also I think and then it'll jump over to Sage, and I think we just keep on throwing out clinical, supplement herbs, lifestyle, what are we doing at this point to get us from that point where we're leaking [inaudible 00:50:26] and we're leaking our ability for adrenals to be uptaken and all their hormones to be fine tuned and accepted to the point where back and rocking.

 

Sage: (50:33)

A big one, I think, to throw out there initially is getting these folks away from active exercise to passive exercise. That one's huge because I find a lot of the people in this scenario, there's still the sorts of people that come in and are like, "Yeah, I don't exercise that much. I'm not that busy. I'll do like two or three runs a week and they'll be like five or six kms." And I'm like, okay. So I'm looking at your adrenal momentum, looking at all your symptoms and everything that's happening. I can see why you're doing that because we know that exercise is a cortisol hit.

 

Sage: (51:01)

For the folks whose cortisol is starting to burn out, they usually do go to things like that. Like really high intensity, short burst activity, which can be therapeutic in some instances. But we know that it gives them a cortisol hit. So people get addicted to that, but it's sustaining the issues. So getting them to switch over from those active catabolic exercises to stuff, which sometimes is boring to them, but it's a necessity, to get them into the parasympathetic which we've spoken about before. We can't have a conversation about healing someone's adrenal glands without tapping into the nervous system and reprogramming that and getting them over to parasympathetic. Yeah. Absolutely. Sleep above everything like a lot of practitioners say.

 

Sage: (51:41)

And if you don't mind me interrupting, before you go to sleep, I'm curious to hear more about what kind of passive exercises you kind of direct people toward?

 

Sage: (51:47)

Yeah, sure. So a really good one, which I have been getting a lot of success with lately is referring people to float tanks. So sensory deprivation, which actually kind of ties into what you were saying earlier Sage, about getting them out of that traumatic mind where they need to try and control everything. Letting go of that control is so, so healing for the nervous system.

 

Sage: (52:06)

So sensory deprivation in a float tank with magnesium salt, perfect. Super daunting at first, a lot of people freak out, but if you can do that and start to stack it up, and then things like sauna; sitting there and sweating. You're not going for a run at thousand miles an hour sweating. You're just sitting there in a sauna and getting the same sort of effect at the cellular level. So those sorts of passive exercises are really good to start resetting the nervous system, but they also trigger what we call hormesis, which is hormetic stress like a primordial stress, a thermal stress, so cold and warm, and that sort of thing. These sort of subtle stressors on the body that are good for the mitochondria that don't involve you having to participate in really, really hectic, strenuous catabolic type of activities.

 

Mason: (52:50)

See, I'd probably throw in there as well. Like I'd be looking at not doing exercises that are about hashtag gains during that time. Now your hashtag gains can come back once you're kind of in balance, and maybe at that point, especially a lot of athletes, lot of athletes know that you get adrenally exhausted when you're an athlete, right? We all know the marathon runner that just like [inaudible 00:53:13] when he is like 35 or whatever due to excess, it's excess. So this excessive body building, excessive gains in the gym, excessive long distance running, excessive BCR, yoga, all these kinds of things that are like, they're excessive. I'd be coming back to explorational movement that does not have a gain. It has an explorative nature about it. So I'd be saying a lot of walking, if that becomes a gentle exploratory jog, but you're not going for a jog.

 

Mason: (53:46)

Don't be scared of moving, like gentle rebounding, just to help the body move through some of that crap. Swimming. Again, no gains, just go for a swim. If you feel... This is where the no gains thing comes in. If you feel you have to stop, stop. That's like explorative yogas. Yogas that aren't about nailing the sequence, and beyond just the teacher going, "And if you want to have a break come into child, whenever you need," yet, the energy of the class is like super, like nobody's doing that. It's embarrassing to stop in the middle of that class. Well, unless you're in the mindset of just like, "I'm going to be super evolved and I'm going to listen to me and I'm going to come down into child." But then at the same time, that's like, and I'm don't know why I took that Maycella moon accent with everybody there.

 

Mason: (54:32)

But that is again, it's not the energy of the environment. As you said, Sage, either you're not going to do it, or the energy of the environment isn't going to do it for you. It needs to be like proper exploratory and restorative. [crosstalk 00:54:49]. Oh yeah, man. Like take from the testes. Give back to the adrenals. Yeah. And absolutely. I think people should definitely be getting into the inner alchemy at this point. If you want to start tuning back in whether you get to qigong or there's lots of folks offering that as well if you want to start really feeling your body and understanding your body. I've mentioned him a couple of times, Benny Fergusson, Movement Monk's tension release programme. It's like super cheap for what you get. And one of the key things in there is starting to get very gentle spinal wave and spinal perception.

 

Mason: (55:27)

It's not about actually getting the gain of doing a wave. It's about perceiving the way that your vertebra are moving. And then you start to begin to feel the tension in and around your kidneys and your adrenals as a byproduct of that, because that's a massive one for you to start to rereleasing all that tension around your kidneys and through your psoas and so on and so forth, going to play such a big part. And that's going to also include in your practise with Benny's stuff, but in qigong standing poses where you're learning to release your lower back and go nice and heavy through the legs. So you're not holding on through that lower back region because of course, that's going to contribute through excessive standing, excessive sitting in a chair, so on.

 

Mason: (56:08)

And so for excessive running, all those kinds of things, it's excess guys. Sage, that's it, right? Like the daoist's whole thing is just don't get into excess of anything that might seem boring. But if you have an excess, it's good material. Work with it for a year.

 

Sage: (56:24)

Yeah. You wouldn't, if you didn't have an excess in some sort. We've all got our vices, I'm sure. Sage, I don't know. You seem pretty perfect.

 

Sage: (56:32)

Oh, I have plenty of imperfections. I have plenty of imperfections. I just keep them private.

 

Mason: (56:39)

Yeah. That's it. Instagram, you remain in the perception that I'm a clean bill of health. No, no, you're not doing that. So Sage, where would you come at it? In those beginning stages of treatment and getting out of fatigue and back into rocking?

 

Sage: (56:55)

Yeah. So I mentioned before, the stress reducing aspect of it, that's like step one, because otherwise you're kind of bailing out water from a boat that has a fat hole in the bottom. You might as well start patching up the hole, then bailing. And when it comes time to rebuild from food perspective, of course you want to have a very nutrient dense diet. You're going to do a lot better rebuilding if you're not on McDonald's and things like that or whatever your comparable things in Australia are.

 

Mason: (57:18)

That's what I do, have Maca's, you know.

 

Sage: (57:21)

You have McDonald's, you have Macas. There you go.

 

Mason: (57:22)

Hey, what would your... See my take would... This wouldn't be the appropriate time for just fatigue to be doing any fasting necessarily. What's your take on that?

 

Sage: (57:30)

Right. So absolutely. So when we talk about intermittent fasting or extended fasting, it's definitely more challenging and pushes the adrenals a little bit more. So it's more of a time where you want to go the other direction and have maybe some smaller, more consistent meals throughout the day because you don't want to be relying on the cortisol to keep blood sugar up to keep you functional.

 

Mason: (57:51)

We haven't mentioned the fact of the utilisation of glucose and glycation that the adrenals plays, right? And that massive effect that it has in our blood glucose levels.

 

Sage: (58:00)

If you think about evolutionarily, when your blood sugar is getting low, your body's going to boost up the cortisol to keep you going. And why does that happen? Because some of those ancestors who got low blood sugar and passed out, got eaten. They didn't survive to pass their gene on. Once you have a little bit of cortisol come up, they survived because they kept going. So that's good because we're here now because of them. But if you are doing this all the time and you don't have the capacity to really be supporting that, it's going to place excess stress in your system.

 

Sage: (58:35)

Just like you were talking about in going to the gym, intermittent fasting is kind of an [inaudible 00:58:39] stressor in the sense that it's a challenge to the body, after which the body, if it can meet that challenge, grow stronger. It is in all areas of life. You see it with fitness. If you can lift those weights and do it sustainably, you will grow stronger. If you go and try to deadlift more than you can lift, you're going to hurt yourself. Same with the cold. So many people see the Wim Hof kind of stuff and think, "Oh, I can never do that." We're not going to go into an ice bath right away. And you shouldn't, that's like....

 

Sage: (59:06)

You want to start with maybe a 30 second cold shower at the end of a hot shower or after a sauna when it's easier to do, because your core body temperature is a little higher and then you progressively work up to eventually you can do ice and things like that. It's like that with the blood sugar. And we went on a little bit of a tangent there, but it ties in because you want to make sure that you're not going to excess any of these things. If you put somebody, for example, just a one more note on the ice, like if you put somebody who has a serious heart condition into the ice, they'll have a heart attack and die. That'll be the end. Cold is not necessarily the best medicine for them all of a sudden. It's a matter of finding the balance. And I think when you're building back up from adrenal fatigue slash exhaustion, depending on the term you want to put on it, you don't need to be pushing the limits of intermittent fasting and extended fasting.

 

Mason: (59:52)

Dan, let's quickly check into the whole electrolyte conversation. The salt conversation adrenals are producing aldosterone, I think it is?

 

Dan: (01:00:03)

Aldosterone, yeah.

 

Mason: (01:00:04)

Okay. So basically that's managing, regulating fluid retention, both within the cell and outside of the cells and especially through electrolytes through sodium potassium, magnesium?

 

Dan: (01:00:16)

Yeah. Sodium potassium, magnesium chloride.

 

Mason: (01:00:18)

So what's the deal with salt and the desire for salt when there's adrenal fatigue and some of the benefits of maybe adding, if there are multiple words in your mouth, then adding like a good quality salt?

 

Dan: (01:00:29)

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So that's good too, because it ties really well back in with the Daoist philosophy too, which they always affiliated the kidney element with the water and leaking Jing and that sort of thing. Aldosterone is a hormone from a Western perspective that is correlated to salt intake. So for example, if someone comes in with a low aldosterone reading, they're not getting enough salt, they're not utilising enough salt, their bodies are requiring salt.

 

Dan: (01:00:55)

And so that's obviously one way that it can remedy the aldosterone to better regulate blood pressure and fluid in and out of cells and whatnot and control electrolyte and fluid balance is by maximising that. But it's just a good sort of take home for the listeners to say that if you find that you are craving carbohydrates and salty foods over sweet foods, sweets, we normally more associate with pathogens and we talked about that in the candida podcast, but with the salts that is a textbook one for adrenal issues. So the classic I get is potato chips. Someone will come in and say, I just crave potato chips. And it's like, yes. And you know why? Because potato chips happen to be sodium and potassium. That's exactly what the adrenals want in that right ratio. So it's like, let's just upgrade what you're eating. Let's just give you a healthy version of that.

 

Mason: (01:01:41)

So, okay, you're not saying Kettles are the perfect, or Spits are the perfect adrenal food. OK. Sorry about that. Again, keep going.

 

Sage: (01:01:48)

Really excited for a couple seconds thinking [crosstalk 01:01:52] chips for adrenal fatigue.

 

Dan: (01:01:53)

But it's true, man. I say like, listen to your body, don't fight that craving. You don't go, "Oh, carbs are bad. I'm on a keto diet." I'm kind of like, no, you need carbs right now. Like you're emaciated, look, you're in a catabolic process. You're at this end stage of adrenal exhaustion. If you want to call it that, listen to your body, it wants carbohydrates. You've just stripped all your glucose because of a primordial mechanism. You've been under stress for so long. Your body is doing that through this ancestral kind of way of adapting. But you know, now it's time to add those calories back. So yeah, go lower on the fats and the proteins and get some carbohydrates into it.

 

Mason: (01:02:27)

What are your favourite sources of carbohydrates?

 

Sage: (01:02:29)

I would just often say to people go to the root veggies, go to the starches, just make sure they're clean, add a good sea salt onto them. So your sweet potatoes, your [inaudible 01:02:37], your taros, your quinoa, buckwheat, good quality black rice, for example, which is another good point, actually. Black foods, they talk a lot about in Daoist philosophy, black foods are kidney foods, Jing foods. So adrenal fatigue in terms of a diet, try and stack those black foods in. So we're talking black olive, black Sesame seeds and so on.

 

Mason: (01:02:57)

Yep. The whole black food association's been a fun one for a while. I definitely agree with that. Sage, jumping a little bit further, I don't know whether you in the tonic bar days, what I got into the habit when I got into like making my tonic hot chocolates and that kind of thing, adding a little pinch of sea salt, both for the flavour profile and just to be a little bit of an electrolyte mineral support to the adrenal, especially if I was bringing a stimulant, did you ever have that connection?

 

Sage: (01:03:20)

Yeah. It's definitely supportive of the adrenals, no doubt. It wasn't really a big thing in the tonic bar scene at the time, I think the only drink back 2010, 2011, 2012, the only drink that really incorporated the salt was the keeper margarita. But you know, the Jing things were really more focused on the Daoist Jing herb approach. But no doubt salt is supportive as well.

 

Mason: (01:03:40)

Well, let's go, just like a side note guys, that is that water Meridian, that's going through there, water retention we've just talked a lot to it. If you are not holding on to your water, I mean just a little pinch, I utilise this all the time, little pinch of sea salt in my water, shaking that water up, swirling that water around. And also if you are not drinking enough water throughout the day, or if you're not waking up and really feeling like drinking water, warm that water up a little bit, then add your little pinch of sea salt. It can really make a difference because possibly you are not wanting to bring in your remaining dehydrated, because you're not wanting to bring in that room temperature, which happens to be quite cold and maybe a little bit colder than your internal temperature. So that could really help. And before we go on, cause I think we're going to go into herbs, I'd love to go into herbs and supplements now.

 

Sage: (01:04:21)

All right, let's do it. Can't wait....

 

Mason: (01:04:24)

Hold on Sage, one second. Whoa boy. I just really want to talk to the fact that the fatigue and stepping into the exhausted states can, if you are really having trouble getting your way out, because obviously from everything we're talking about, you need time and space in your life. And to be able to design a lifestyle where you're not going to keep on going down that route, but you know, you might have four kids and a sick mother who's coming to live with you and you need to work. I get it. You might not have time to be that person who's going and doing the investigation and you might need some support. So that's why like Dan here, Dan's a practitioner that works through folks in these instances coming from a naturopathic angle and has an understanding. Beginning their understanding of a TCM I think would be fair to say, right Dan?

 

Mason: (01:05:06)

And then I like the naturopath and possible acupuncturist approach as well. If you are really finding hard to get out from the TCM approach, there's like eight classifications that's going to merge from adrenal fatigue. So kidney yin deficiency, kidney yang deficiency, kidney yin and yang deficiency, kidney qi deficiency. And then we go to a miscommunication between the kidney and the heart. Then we go to kidney and spleen yang deficiency, or kidney and lung yin deficiency, or kidney and liver yin deficiency. So there's going to be like generally eight categories there, as you can see, we can energetically get a little bit deeper in. So I do encourage folks to go if they're really having a hard time, but if you can keep it in your hands you're the real doctor. Let's jump into herbs. So Dan, you're starting to develop like the supplement routine psychologically? They're making changes, they're sleeping, they're going and doing what they need to do. And you're like, okay, cool. I'm free. So just rock in these supplements and it has context. What are your faves?

 

Dan: (01:06:05)

Ooh. Yeah, that's a big question. Honestly, it will depend on the person in front of me. And what sort of I mean I like to do a lot of pathology. I like to see if there are underlying pathogens at play. I like to look at what the adrenals are doing. If they're still in those initial stages of "adrenal fatigue," stage one and two, where the hormones are really high and you actually want to modulate cortisol and bring it down.

 

Mason: (01:06:30)

Well, let's talk from that space because I feel a lot of people have high cortisol. Let's talk from that space primarily.

 

Dan: (01:06:36)

Well, the good thing is that a lot of our adaptogens, we know that there's a famous quote that says, let me try and remember, it's like all adaptogens modulate cortisol activity or balance physiology, regardless of pathology. So what that means essentially is that all the adaptogens, mostly speaking, regardless of whether cortisols are high or low, are going to have some sort of modulating capability, it's usually the ones that you'll have to go to specifics when cortisol is really low. So for example, licorice, rehmannia, born perfect, perfect like trio that you can use when people are presenting with those end, there's more end stages when cortisol is really bottomed out. So they might be producing good, healthy levels of serum cortisol, but like we said earlier, if they can't actually access that and use that they need more.

 

Mason: (01:07:22)

That's going to be presenting yin deficiency, I imagine? And that's going to be emerging also with like night sweats and insomnia. That's the kind of like going to be that world of that.

 

Dan: (01:07:32)

Totally. Yeah. Breakdown. I often see catabolic breakdown with those sort of folks as well. They're typically the patients where they are losing weight unintentionally. And as I said earlier, in the earlier stages, when it's more cortisol's high and they're in the initial fight or flight stages, that's when the body's usually hanging onto more weight and the metabolism's slowing down and it's like doing that. We think as a storage mechanism, because it's like, we're under threat. We better famine. We better pull it together and hold because we might not have access to food for another however long.

 

Mason: (01:08:02)

What about when cortisol's a bit higher? What are some of your favourite tonics?

 

Dan: (01:08:06)

Sure. So Rhodiola and Withania, or ashwagandha, as our folks will know it, that'd have to be my favourite for sure. I'm sure Sage will probably agree with that?

 

Dan: (01:08:15)

Yeah, those were fantastic. Absolutely.

 

Mason: (01:08:16)

Especially in that phase where you're probably a little bit at that point, you're be getting a little bit yang deficient, especially men that's at that point for when you're going to start seeing like erectile dysfunction emerge and you're going to start seeing like premature ejaculation, like bam yang herbs, Withania, like ashwagandha, Rhodiola, Eucommia, right? And that's when that starts really presenting.

 

Dan: (01:08:34)

Cordyceps, as well, Cordyceps [inaudible 01:08:36], maca. Even maca root, a beautiful, beautiful adaptogen. Yeah. And look the combination of them. I think you get synergy with these adaptogens and that's really key here. It's like one plus one equals three. If that makes sense?

 

Mason: (01:08:47)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean like that's Sage, what did you put in your restore chocolate? I know your restore chocolate with the Jing herbs was the best seller until Trump was elected. And then your tranquillity herbs started selling a drive.

 

Dan: (01:08:59)

Yeah. So in our recharge chocolate there we've used six of my favourites, which are some of the ones you mentioned Cordyceps, He Shou Wu, Eucommia, [inaudible 01:09:10] and rehmannia, and then there's only so many I could put in there into a product like that without kind of overwhelming people. But some of my other favourites would also be Rhodiola, ashwagandha and then of course you look at things like Schisandra, she's great as a three treasure herb and as an as stringent Jing walking herb, because it helps stop the stress and is all supported.

 

Mason: (01:09:27)

Yes. Seeing that Sage, can you repeat that for everybody?

 

Sage: (01:09:30)

Yeah. Schisandra is considered a Jing walking herb. So it almost functions in a way to stop you from a stressing, stop you from leaking that Jing and it's helping to build it at the same time. And it's working on the kidneys. It's working on the qi, which is the active moment to moment energy and it's working on the higher self. So the shen, the spirit. So Schisandra is an incredible herb to incorporate there. Kind of the drink that I like to make, I like to start with a base of a Gynostemma tea. It's another great, very underrated, not nearly well enough known for how good it is adapted. [inaudible 01:10:01] other kind of

 

Mason: (01:10:02)

Magic qi herb is about like far out that's as like magic.

 

Sage: (01:10:07)

Yeah, it's fantastic. And then, so I'll do those six that I mentioned Cordyceps, He Shou Wu, cistanche, Eucommia, Marinda and rehmannia. And then this is of course for the non-vegans, vegans, please don't get angry. Polyrhachis black mountain ant. It's a very super massive black mountain ant coming from China. And I believe it's the highest natural source of zinc. Also very high in ATP. Then we're talking about black foods earlier. This is as black as it gets. Then also looking at deer antler. If ethically harvested, deer antler kind of fits the model of things that you're interested incorporating. That's another great one.

 

Sage: (01:10:40)

Now some of these are more fiery you have like deer antler and the Eucommia and cistanche are more on the, and Marinda even, more on the fiery side, but then you have the yen. So I like to incorporate a nice, healthy balance of the yen and the young herbs. And then also I love adding in there, high Himalayan black shilajit. I really feel that the minerals in there really, and that almost takes the sense, the place of the salt that you're mentioning in terms of the minerals. I feel like in the formulation, although you can add a little bit of salt by all means, and that really harmonises and potentiates everything going on in there.

 

Mason: (01:11:10)

Yeah. Full power. A bit of saturated fat in there.

 

Sage: (01:11:14)

Yes, a good kind of a Jing fat and then some steering pumpkin seed oil. This steering pumpkin seeds are just spectacular.

 

Mason: (01:11:21)

Oh yeah. So you're getting the zinc in there from that angle.

 

Sage: (01:11:23)

Exactly. Exactly. So very supportive of the adrenals, of sexual function and taste just delicious. It really brings the flavour around nicely and add just a couple drops of stevia. And that is a transformative drink. Just in one drink, you can kind of feel the stress go down, just like the stress in your mind just shuts off and you can feel the adrenals kind of slowly start to recharge, not in a stimulated way. You don't really, it's like your kidneys and your adrenals are your battery pack and it's been taken out of you and plugged in to charge. It's not there for you to use. So you're just going to be sitting still and just chilling the F out while it recharges. And then in a while you can kind of start to feel the energy coming in. You get hit with these little like waves of serotonin and good feelings you maybe haven't felt in some time.

 

Sage: (01:12:08)

And then maybe half an hour or an hour later, you kind of feel the kidneys get plugged back into your body and you feel some of this vitality starting to feel back up. And this is something you can keep doing on a regular basis, consuming these herbs and slow and steady work on rebuilding that foundation. And it's not going to happen overnight. Some of these herbs, you may try it for the first time they could drink like this for the first time and you feel spectacular, but then you slide back because I always say we feel the acceleration. We don't feel speed.

 

Sage: (01:12:36)

So if you really change the situation of your body very quickly, it feels wild. But then you get up to that new speed and then you have hedonic adaptation. So you get used to it and you realise, okay, I still actually have a way to go to get back to where I really want to be, but you keep building. It took you a long time to get to the state of depletion where you're at. It's going to take some time to build back up. So be patient with yourself.

 

Dan: (01:12:57)

Can I just add there as well? I think it's bang on what you're saying there Sage. And I would add to that, it's important to look at these people like of who they were prior to coming into this adrenal fatigue as we're calling it. So for example, if you take an athlete who had a super rock, solid constitution, was able to hold their muscle mass and has got them itself into this fold. But prior to that, didn't get sick much, wasn't particularly depressed or didn't have trauma or infections or anything like that. That recovery process is going to be able to kind of not accelerate, but get them through those stages where yes, you'll start with the in building herbs, a really nourishing sort of moistening herbs. And then you'll be able to start using things like the Eleutheros and the ginsengs and the [inaudible 01:13:40] and the more mitochondrial powerhouses in the later stages.

 

Dan: (01:13:44)

But for a vast majority of people I find, and you guys probably find too, a lot of people that are tapped out do require that yin nourishing for a really long time. Like they're just going to be on a cocktail of things like He Shou Wu, Rehmannia, a lot of the herbs that are in the Jing products and they'll feel it too. They'll know when they'll kick into that next gear where they can say, "I'm handling this. I can feel the adaptogenic nature of this. I can feel the shift. What else have we got, throw something else at me I'm ready now." And an important thing really there is to always say to patients, bank that energy, when that energy comes back, you bank it, you deposit it. Don't spend it. If you spend it, you quite often end up right back where you started, then we have to start again. It's like when you get well, rest.

 

Mason: (01:14:23)

I think that's it like when you're presenting everything that we've been talking about, where you're at that point, where that's it cortisol has actually now started being bottomed out and it started getting a little bit serious. Now we're generally talking about some serious yin deficiency at that time. And it's kind of like that's post the straw breaking the camel's back somewhat. And that's when you start really declining. That's where we find the most common combination being that He Shou Wu and Reishi and people just starting off in that combination, He Shou Wu and large doses getting up to two heap teaspoons a day. Personally, I was getting up to a tablespoon of He Shou Wu a day, right in the beginning, doing that for a couple of weeks until I could really feel my Jing starting to build back. And then coming back down to a more sensible dose.

 

Mason: (01:15:04)

Starting to build back, and then coming back down to a more sensible dose. Reishi coming in there as well, doing that top down, as you were saying, in talking about the [inaudible 01:15:09] or working on our consciousness before sage. Reishi getting in there as well, getting in there and doing that.

 

Sage: (01:15:13)

Before we leave, He Shou Wu, I just want to inject one little note of caution to be mindful of people who have maybe predisposition liver disorders and things of that nature, because there is some collected research showing that there have been quite a large number of cases that people who encounter liver toxicity issues on He Shou Wu, when you look at the individual cases, and most of the cases were not on prepared He Shou Wu, it was on a raw He Shou Wu.

 

Mason: (01:15:35)

That's what I was going to say. It's like most time-

 

Sage: (01:15:37)

But there are some cases that were on prepared He Shou Wu even, but they're usually very large doses. So just be mindful. It's obviously not something that affects everybody. It's something that I think some people have a genetic predisposition to having liver troubles. But if you are taking quite a bit of He Shou Wu and negative things are happening, don't feel like the answer is to take more.

 

Sage: (01:15:58)

You know, no herb is perfect for everybody. We have some amazing tools here and different options. You know, you've heard us talking about so many different herbs. If you just realised if one herb doesn't work for you, if you're ultrasensitive to nightshades and Ashwaghanda doesn't work for you... no problem.

 

Mason: (01:16:11)

Yeah it doesn't matter.

 

Sage: (01:16:11)

Other options are out there

 

Mason: (01:16:13)

Get the whole apothecary working.

 

Sage: (01:16:15)

If it's not working, there's other ones. If something is making you worse, don't feel like you have to stick to it.

 

Mason: (01:16:20)

It's probably worth mentioning if you are in the middle of breast cancer, suffering from breast cancer, it's probably not the time to do He Shou Wu or Rehmannia also. At that point though, we have lots of different options and there are lots of beautiful yin herbs for that rebuilding stage until you get to that point where... unless you're at that point as well, you might be the other side of that, where it might be extreme edoema, extreme water retention, and you might want to really hit that by bringing the yang fire back to the adrenals and that at that point, like the Eucommia Bark, Cordyceps, the Deer Antler especially, just absolutely breathes magic into the body. At that point, I really enjoy watching that occur. Especially then if we go into menopause, I don't know whether you've seen it much with Jing herbs and menopause.

 

Mason: (01:17:04)

I've had women, especially who are having a little bit of trouble with their weight when it gets to that point where menopause starts to hit and you get midlife and they get onto Jing, or occasionally when the plant herbs Jing is too far gone and deer antler and owning an animal, Jing herb is going to be able to actually do it, but I've had women come up to me going, "you should just call that the menopause blend because within a day, within a week, I could sleep again. All my symptoms are starting to alleviate."

 

Mason: (01:17:33)

I think I've shared it on the podcast before, a couple of times, where women are in tears about it, because it can get very, very gnarly, very gnarly during that time. Quite often what you are looking at is a deficiency in the HPA axis and the adrenals being able to actually transform and take on that potentially moving towards that more elder role of the adrenals, starting to move those sex hormones through the body and starting maybe having a bit more of a different relationship with the sex hormones and creating different ratios. I just wanted to throw that out there, especially men going through, all of a sudden, midlife and "bang" something changes.

 

Mason: (01:18:05)

All of a sudden you start getting dumpy, you start holding onto weight. This actually happens in late 20s now and early 30s. I don't know, those guys from school that are just... they're going bald early when it's not even in their family. They're just getting and becoming very dumpy. I'm not saying I'm in the absolute best shape of my life, but I feel I'm pretty good. I don't feel like I'm wasting away. I feel like I'm maintaining muscle mass, despite minimal exercise and my shoulders aren't withering away. That happens, especially if that's happening early and you're getting low libido or erectile dysfunction, any of these kinds of things.

 

Mason: (01:18:37)

Especially if it's happening around 50s/60s "Bam!", deer antler, "bam!" Jing-

 

Sage: (01:18:43)

Cordyceps.

 

Mason: (01:18:43)

Yeah, Cordyceps. Eucommia bark. I like bringing in the Rehmannia and Dendrobium is that other herb. I think it's it was the last herb that came into the Jing. Again, having that different way of doing it, but especially locking in that Jing into the kidneys, as you were talking about that Shizandra before as well, Sage. Anyone want to throw anything else out there in regards to herbs?

 

Dan: (01:19:03)

Astragalus, we haven't spoke about. It's one of my favourites.

 

Mason: (01:19:07)

You're using Astragalus for that?

 

Sage: (01:19:09)

Yeah.

 

Sage: (01:19:09)

I find that is such a good herb to use for the HPA dysfunction. We know it works on the adrenals by the HPA access and it's so good for that chronic stealth infection archetype.

 

Dan: (01:19:20)

A lot of people I see, I'm seeing probably a biassed population. I tend to get a lot of the people that do have these gnarly underlying infections with the fatigue pattern. So I'll usually make astragalus a prime mover in a formula. I'll do... The majority of the formula will be astragalus and I might be adding things like Withania and maybe some really calming nervous system herbs, like passion flower and St. John's Wort, even. Obviously it depends on the person. Yeah. But Astragalus is a powerhouse there, I reckon.

 

Mason: (01:19:49)

Yeah. I mean, immunologically, you might as well have Astragalus and mushrooms in there. Right?

 

Dan: (01:19:52)

Why not?

 

Mason: (01:19:55)

It's all good. It's all good baby.

 

Mason: (01:19:56)

We've been talking about the fact that the majority of the time it's going to be adrenal fatigue and we don't want to become paranoid about underlying pathogens and we don't. But I think it's becoming pretty obvious these days that we have a stupid... you don't have to be to the point where you're laid out exhausted. If you are laid out exhausted, you're going to want to start looking underneath of what's going on in terms of a pathogen, while you undergo that rebuild. But even if you're not getting to that laid out stage a lot of the time, there's going to be a bit of a stealth pathogen. I mean, even when you start getting laid out, you were talking about lime, I think before the show. Sage, it's always one to be aware of. Any others you want people to be aware of, be on the lookout for?

 

Dan: (01:20:33)

A little less obvious and pernicious, but it's something that actually Dan, you mentioned earlier. We went off in another direction, but it was just genius of you to mention it. It was the overall inflammation.

 

Dan: (01:20:42)

When you're in a chronic state of inflammation, that's a huge Jing leak right there. A lot of times, a leaky gut is playing into that as well, creating inflammation throughout the body. We don't need to think about any aspect of health as disconnected from the other. We haven't even mentioned gut health this whole time, but it's so key and can play a huge role in this because if your gut health is a mess, your adrenals are constantly going to have to be working on dealing with that. You also described cortisol as being anti-inflammatory, so if your body's relying on this to deal with the chronic inflammation going on from a variety of sources, maybe you're on a really inflammatory diet.

 

Dan: (01:21:20)

Maybe you're taking things that are causing leaky gut, or maybe you have gluten sensitivity or maybe you're just exposed to too much glyphosate that's causing gut issues. So you want to look at taking probiotics, eating a gut-healthy diet with good, healthy fats and fibre and lots of vegetables.

 

Dan: (01:21:36)

Also, I don't know if you guys have it available in Australia, but a supplement we have here that I love is Terrahydrite supplement. It's a special mineral supplement called "Restore for Life" that helps to tighten up the tight junctions in the gut and essentially create a more amenable environment for the good bacteria to settle in, protect from things like gluten and glyphosate being actually absorbed.

 

Mason: (01:21:54)

What's in there? You said it's a mineral supplement?

 

Dan: (01:21:56)

Basically they've extracted it and put it through a certain degree of processing. Some "ancient fossilised plant minerals" is basically how they describe it. Their trademarked term for it is Terrahydrite.

 

Sage: (01:22:06)

It's not totally clear exactly how and what it is, but it's basically a mineral supplement when it comes down to it. It's one that is actually quite well studied. It has been shown to have this effect of closing up the tight junctions in the gut, which are basically your places of vulnerability in the gut to create a more welcoming environment for the good bacteria to settle in.

 

Sage: (01:22:25)

Looking at the probiotics, so many people are getting into probiotics these days, which is fantastic, but so many probiotics out there don't have a high level of survivability to actually be able to make it through the stomach and set up shop in the colon and the large intestine where you want them. So that's an important thing to look at as well when you're considering probiotics, that they have been shown to have this kind of efficacy and survivability.

 

Mason: (01:22:46)

I wanted to ask both of you because I don't really do probiotics anymore. I meant to bring it up in the Candida one but what I do, when I'm up at my mate's farm in the Hinterland where I know there's nothing sprayed and I know the soil is rocking. Sometimes, I will put a bit of the soil in water and we'll throw that down. That's my probiotic these days.

 

Mason: (01:23:03)

What probiotics are you guys using? Is Dr. Ohira's Japanese still the rocking one? What do you like? What are you using Dan?

 

Dan: (01:23:11)

I like to use probiotics, how I use herbs. If I want to use a herb for a particular action, like antimicrobial or adaptogen, for example, that's how I'll use my probiotics. I think it's important to state as well that a lot of probiotics, you won't know what strain you're getting. A lot of the commercial based probiotics will just have the the genus and the species, for example, lactobacilos acidophilus.

 

Dan: (01:23:33)

What you are looking for is what comes after that, which is the strain, which a lot of companies just don't list and therefore you don't know what you're getting. Two strains within the same species can have completely different actions, according to research.

 

Dan: (01:23:45)

So you really want to specify the strain and you want to make sure that strain has research behind it. Otherwise you are wasting your money. And like Sage said about survivability, that's a massive issue. As is the amounts per capsule, the CFU, the colony forming units per capsule. In terms of strains, again, it's hard to say what I'm using, cause it'll depend on what's present, but I'll look for strains that have efficacy and research for that particular condition. So if it's respiratory tract infections in kids, it'll be this strain. If it's constipation, it'll be a totally different strain. I match it based on what the condition is.

 

Mason: (01:24:19)

In terms of the supplement you're using ongoingly, would you focus more on a prebiotic?

 

Dan: (01:24:22)

Correct, that's exactly right.

 

Dan: (01:24:23)

Ongoing the best way to maintain gut health is to feed your good gut bugs, which is prebiotics. Yeah, exactly right.

 

Dan: (01:24:31)

We get a lot of those from the diet Jerusalem Artichoke, Chicory root, dandelion-

 

Mason: (01:24:36)

Artichokes.

 

Dan: (01:24:37)

Artichokes, exactly.

 

Dan: (01:24:38)

I usually use harshly hydrolyzed Guar Gum, which is one of my favourites. It comes from, obviously, Guar Gum, but it's been broken down and hydrolyzed.

 

Mason: (01:24:46)

Yeah.

 

Dan: (01:24:46)

That is a really, really good, gentle prebiotic fibre. That's very tolerable for a lot of people's guts that might be more sensitive or they might have SIBO or whatever going on. They can't generally tolerate lots of dietary prebiotics. I'll go in with something like that. Yeah, so there's a few options we've got.

 

Mason: (01:25:02)

Sage, what are you doing for probiotics in terms of have you got a rad supplement over there?

 

Sage: (01:25:06)

Yeah.

 

Sage: (01:25:06)

I'm using one from a company called "Just Thrive", it has got a five different strains in there. Really nice ones. Like Dan said, it's so important to make sure that the actual strains you're using have research behind them and these really do.

 

Sage: (01:25:16)

The company does a tonne of research on and clinical studies on their product itself. Very nice people behind it as well. Most important to me, their CFU count is not super high, but they show an extremely high level of survivability. It's a multiplication. If you have a hundred billion CFUs, but 1% of those are actually surviving, you don't get that much. Right? You have to kind of wade both variables there.

 

Mason: (01:25:42)

Okay, rad.

 

Mason: (01:25:43)

Alright, let's get to a little fire round and I don't do fire rounds, but I'm going to do one. I want to hear from Dan.

 

Mason: (01:25:48)

Zinc. Do you use it?

 

Dan: (01:25:50)

Oh yeah.

 

Dan: (01:25:51)

Zinc's one of my favourites.

 

Mason: (01:25:52)

What form do you use? Are you using a citrate or what you going for?

 

Dan: (01:25:55)

Yeah, sometimes I do use citrate if it's part of a different blend. If I'm going for Zinc on its own, I usually go for Zinc picolinate which isn't actually approved here yet. We do have to order that one in.

 

Mason: (01:26:05)

For those of you who aren't watching, Sage just gave a big thumbs up.

 

Sage: (01:26:11)

I was hoping you'd say that, that's my favourite.

 

Mason: (01:26:13)

Yeah.

 

Mason: (01:26:13)

Sorry Dan, to jump in there.

 

Dan: (01:26:14)

That's a type of thing which we have a lot of research behind to say is a lot better absorbed, more efficiently absorbed in the cell and uptake in the cell. It can bring that high copper down, which we often see in practise. People come in with really, really high copper, low zinc. I have to say a lot of adrenal fatigue patients do end up in that pattern.

 

Mason: (01:26:33)

You know what I heard as well? If you've got high copper, eating like 40 apricots can be something that would really help mobilise that copper from a dietary sense.

 

Mason: (01:26:41)

Anyway, I just want to throw that out there. Apricots is such a low percentage fruit. You'd probably have one good apricot in like that whole lot, so you don't want to do that anyway. "You're going to be flowery." There's a little Larry David reference there.

 

Mason: (01:26:53)

Sage, ideal situation. Let's say it's a good friend who is adrenally exhausted and they're like, " what else should I be on? What other's, from your perspective? I'm doing all the diet lifestyle stuff, I'm de-stressing, I quit that job. What other things can I be taking to really get on top of it?"

 

Mason: (01:27:10)

What are you getting them on?

 

Sage: (01:27:11)

It would really depend on the individual based on the certain nuances of the individual, but also how much I think they're willing to do. A lot of people, if I throw 20 different things at them, chances are they'll do none. Often I'll try to just put out maybe three things.

 

Mason: (01:27:26)

What's the first three?

 

Sage: (01:27:27)

Ho Shou Wu, Cordyceps and Goji. From a herb perspective, I think are a nice three, and very easy ones for people to do.

 

Mason: (01:27:33)

If you don't mind me saying Sage, additional. We've got the herbs going, they're all on the herbs.

 

Sage: (01:27:38)

You're looking for supplements, additionally?

 

Mason: (01:27:41)

Or activities.

 

Mason: (01:27:42)

Are we getting them in the sauna? What is it, additionally, you'd like to see them on just to support the body and get from that place of fatigue back to the point where it's rocking.

 

Sage: (01:27:49)

I'm not allowed to talk about herbs. This is quite the challenge.

 

Sage: (01:27:52)

Okay, so I would take a leaf out of Dan's book, the wise man over there, and I would go for the mitochondria. I'm going to look at taking ubiquinol. I'd go up for a good solid dose, like 300 milligrammes of ubiquinol. It's a great mitochondrial fuel. It's basically a more advanced form of CoQ10, effectively.

 

Sage: (01:28:12)

Then you can also look at something like Antecidal Cystine. I would also incorporate C8 Caprylic Acid. It's a concentrated compound out of coconut oil. That is, whether or not your in ketosis, it is turned by the body very easily into ketones. So that's providing us with a nice extra fuel for yourselves.

 

Mason: (01:28:27)

Dan, any three additionals you generally throw out there?

 

Sage: (01:28:30)

Magnesium, definitely. I think you did mention earlier, Sage, that magnesium is huge with adrenal repair as is your activated B's. You really want to give the body a bit of rest on having to convert B vitamins from food. Knowing that there's a mitochondrial impairment, just get the activated B's in there temporarily to give that mitochondria some fuel to start moving processes again and getting those engines and things turning.

 

Sage: (01:28:53)

So yeah, your activated B6 is huge. Your B12. We talked about magnesium. Apart from that, I think another one, which we didn't state earlier, just getting what I like to term "the vampires" out of your life. Getting those people around you that just suck your blood. That was huge for me and a lot of people that I've come into contact with, not to say "you have to separate yourself, you have to be a hermit. You can't see people."

 

Sage: (01:29:15)

It's just, modulate your friends. Maybe you don't want to spend too much time around that particular person if every time you see them they're draining you and it's just monologue and you're just like "uh-huh. Yep, yep. Okay, yep." Then you go and you feel like you need to have a sleep.

 

Sage: (01:29:28)

Look at things like that in your life. Usually that's the boss. If that's the case, you might want to change jobs.

 

Mason: (01:29:34)

So good, man.

 

Mason: (01:29:34)

I get exactly what you're saying. Sometimes it's just about reframing those relationships, especially if it's family members, maybe you've got to mourn the ending of a period of that relationship and then step in and adjust to the next phase where you maybe don't have as much riding on it.

 

Mason: (01:29:51)

I think that's fair enough, absolutely. You need to adjust the "vampirish" aspects of the relationship. Quite often, if you point at that person entirely, you're going to classically have the three fingers pointing back at you. You really do have the power to reframe over a few months or years, the way that you relate to these people so that you don't get drained and it takes a long time, but it's worth it because your 60, 78 year old self will be loving you for it.

 

Mason: (01:30:16)

In your personal practise. We've already mentioned the possibility of doing some gentle yoga sequences. If you have a breath practise through your yoga sequence, I think that's very useful. If you're going down the route of doing some of Benny Ferguson's online work, you're already going to have your mobility practise and you're releasing tension from your lower back. Incorporate the breath work, so you're going to have an incredible effect on your levels of cortisol and oxygen. Your breathing is one of the ultimate adaptogens.

 

Mason: (01:30:42)

We've spoken a lot about that in the past, but definitely having a breath practise. If you can get your arse into an infrared sauna. You mentioned that before Dan.

 

Mason: (01:30:51)

Sage, do you like, not like, or love them with unbridled enthusiasm? I can't remember.

 

Sage: (01:31:00)

Infrared saunas?

 

Mason: (01:31:00)

Yeah.

 

Sage: (01:31:00)

Well, my family's in the infrared sauna business so head's up, I of course carry a heavy bias here. I do also do some work with their business too.

 

Sage: (01:31:08)

It's great for stress reduction. If you think about the last time that you were in a dark quiet environment, surrounded by infrared heat, that was when you were in the womb. Infrared is that natural heat that we go off. It takes you back to that place of totally being provided for and taken care of.

 

Mason: (01:31:24)

I think it constantly comes up in these conversations. I think I'll say it again but if you want a good deal on clear light infrared saunas, for the best sauna in the world got a Sage in the US or our mate here in Australia, Sebastian, who we've been friends for years. He runs it in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

 

Mason: (01:31:42)

So just get into contact with Sage in the US and for those other places just drop the name "Mason", actually, I think it still works to get you the biggest discount you can get and Sage will you'll hook you up in the States.

 

Mason: (01:31:53)

Then the third would be... I'd really get into this place where you have a reflection period where you are redesigning your lifestyle and especially the way you are going to be relating to sleep. Remember, this is something you're going to be doing every single day for the rest of your life.

 

Mason: (01:32:08)

Just continue to come back and reflect on your sleep practise. Spend some time without an alarm, if possible. Spend some time experimenting with laying down at eight or eight 30 and allowing yourself to drift off. Because quite often... it's like if you have a kid, and we're all just big kids. You know what it's like Dan. If you miss the window with getting your toddler sleep sometimes it's like " cracked out" and we are all sitting in that cracked out space and we continue to ignore and miss those windows where we have the opportunity to go sleep.

 

Mason: (01:32:37)

It's like, "I just can't sleep. I just can't sleep!" It's like, no, you didn't. You're like a toddler. You need to go and be put to bed. I know you're internally kicking and screaming. Sometimes, I know personally, I don't know why but I know I'm scared to go to sleep sometimes. I don't know why but it's there though. I've got a little fear about it, of just laying in silence.

 

Mason: (01:32:54)

Meditation absolutely helps because then you're actually not going like "what voices and stories are going to emerge?" Every now and then for me, I think it's like twice a year or maybe once a year at the moment, I'll have one of those times where anxiousness will just hit me and I just won't be able to go to sleep until like two or three, you know?

 

Mason: (01:33:13)

I know people have to live with that all the time. That's enough to recognise that I need to look at that and make sure that I'm acknowledging that happens sometimes and take my sleep practise or my sleep very seriously. I'm learning more and more how to say no to staying up. There are many instances in this world, staying up and just like flicking through Instagram or in this instance, working.

 

Mason: (01:33:34)

I do it sometimes, I'm not perfect. I have to do it sometimes, but I'm more often saying no. I'm getting smarter about saying no to certain things at work so that I can say yes more to sleep.

 

Mason: (01:33:44)

That's the final piece that I just want to really throw out there. Any final words you want to give to the good people guys?

 

Sage: (01:33:50)

I think we've covered couple fair bit of ground here.

 

Sage: (01:33:52)

We've said a lot of big words over past few hours. I'm feeling pretty complete and satisfied.

 

Mason: (01:33:57)

Yeah, me too. I'm not really feeling exhausted, which is a plus.

 

Sage: (01:34:00)

That's great.

 

Mason: (01:34:01)

Yeah.

 

Mason: (01:34:02)

Guys, thank you so much. Everyone, I think at this point you are realising that we are here to support you ongoingly. I think if you need some assistance clinically or you want some advice, I'm sure Dan wouldn't mind doing either. Reach out to Dan "The Functional Naturopath"-

 

Sage: (01:34:17)

Reach out.

 

Mason: (01:34:18)

Instagram, email?

 

Sage: (01:34:20)

Yeah, all of it.

 

Mason: (01:34:21)

All of it?

 

Sage: (01:34:21)

All of it, yeah. Ask me questions, hit me up.

 

Mason: (01:34:24)

Awesome, and I know a bunch of you had jumped over there and are working with Dan, which is awesome. Honestly, you're incredible practitioner. I've had some Chinese friends come. They've been working with people for 10 years, naturopaths and acupuncturists and she finally started getting over the line because you're so practical, yet mystic and methodical. I think there's like three [inaudible 01:34:42].

 

Sage: (01:34:42)

Thank you, I appreciate it.

 

Mason: (01:34:42)

That's alright.

 

Mason: (01:34:43)

Sage, I know how generous you are with your time over your Instagram, you're non-stop answering questions. I definitely get people-

 

Sage: (01:34:51)

I see you're doing it as well, it's fantastic.

 

Mason: (01:34:54)

I used to do it and I missed it. I had a realisation in terms of where I'm most effective at SuperFeast and what got SuperFeast off the ground, in preparation for this podcast. It's always a process for me when we come to do a podcast. I go through it to myself and I was trying to do all these different marketing things.

 

Mason: (01:35:11)

Then I remembered the grassroots was the markets for me. I was speaking to a lot of people, just hundreds of people over the years, thousands and thousands of people in the markets. It was the thing that trained me and really lit me up. It was the thing that got SuperFeast off the ground and created SuperFeast as a resource for people to come back to and be consistently supported with the health.

 

Mason: (01:35:32)

I was like, "yeah, of course I saw it." I love watching your stuff and got reminded. I actually did have a similar feeling at those like market days when I was doing these stories and really putting time into them and really focusing on it. As a member of the marketing team at SuperFeast, it does make sense when the majority of the eyes are on Instagram at the moment. I'll change it wherever the eyes go, I'll change it so that we can support people.

 

Mason: (01:35:53)

I've ended up really cutting out a lot from my days and on my workload and really starting doing what I love, which is consistently talking to people and supporting people as you do.

 

Sage: (01:36:04)

[inaudible 01:36:04]

 

Mason: (01:36:04)

Yeah.

 

Mason: (01:36:05)

It's a really nice realisation, because it feels like it's backtrack, but it's really me having the maturity to make a non-egoic decision within the business. I don't know how you feel in terms of the way you-

 

Sage: (01:36:17)

I don't know, putting myself on camera does feel egoic sometimes, but it's helping people and it's working.

 

Mason: (01:36:22)

Yeah, very. I mean, you come off as a big arsehole ego most of the time, I just don't want to tell you.

 

Mason: (01:36:28)

But everyone, follow "Addictive Wellness". They have wonderful chocolates, herbs, elixir blends and all those kinds of things. I think everyone knows by now.

 

Mason: (01:36:34)

Definitely pop those questions in for Sage, I think you got to box up every day.

 

Mason: (01:36:37)

Obviously SuperFeast is here to support you ongoingly. You can ask me questions, send us a DM, email us, call SuperFeast, all of it. It's all there, whether you need advice around issues like this... obviously we're having a conversation about bringing this folksiness and this know-how of how to keep yourself out of these fatigue and diseased and disordered and dysfunctional states of being and doing as much as you can within your own home and your apothecary to wisely, smartly and responsibly get yourself back into a place of rhythm.

 

Mason: (01:37:04)

Also, acknowledging your edges and when it's time to get some panels done and go see a practitioner, that's also what we are consistently wanting to bring forth. I think you'll see that all we're doing is having conversations so that we can bring forth a beautiful culture of health where we're ongoing in the conversation and not just presenting you with black and white rules or protocols because that's boring and we've already cited that we don't want to become boring. So, thanks boys.

 

Sage: (01:37:29)

Thank you, that was awesome.

 

Sage: (01:37:30)

It's always a pleasure to be on here with you Dan, because you've got such great, deep clinical wisdom. I love listening to you talk.

 

Sage: (01:37:35)

Cheers, brother. Likewise, man.

 

Mason: (01:37:38)

Guys, we're bonding!

 

Sage: (01:37:40)

We're just speaking to our fellow health man in the trenches.

 

Mason: (01:37:44)

Yeah, it's good. It's fun.

 

Mason: (01:37:46)

Thanks so much, I love you both.