Why Your 3rd Cup Of Coffee Is Losing The Argument

If you’ve been doing all the “right” things—sleeping more, eating better, managing stress—but still wake up exhausted, this episode is for you. Dr. Tamar Lawful reveals how your DNA might be driving your fatigue and how to finally align your body’s rhythm for steady, sustainable energy.

Feeling tired no matter what you do? You’re not alone—and it’s not just stress or aging. In this powerful solo episode, Dr. Tamar Lawful explores how two key genes, COMT and CLOCK, influence your energy, mood, and sleep patterns.

Through real stories from her practice, including “Maya’s moment,” she shows how understanding your genes helps you stop blaming yourself for burnout and start working with your biology instead of against it.

Dr. Lawful also shares her own experience balancing night shifts and entrepreneurship, and how learning her DNA blueprint helped her turn exhaustion into alignment. You’ll walk away with practical steps to understand your rhythm, nourish your energy, and redesign your wellness from the inside out.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

• How your COMT and CLOCK genes shape your stress response and sleep-wake cycle
• Why fatigue is feedback, not failure
• Simple DNA-based strategies to support your body’s natural energy rhythm
• How to start syncing your habits with your biology—without extreme diets or quick fixes

 Special Message from Dr. Tamar Lawful: Discover the InHer Glow® Concierge Wellness Experience , a precision health program designed exclusively for high-achieving women ready to lose weight, boost energy, and reduce medications without guesswork. Spots are limited! Apply today at thelyfebalance.com/concierge

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Pills And Personalization
• 2:34 Introducing Raise The Script And Mission
• 3:35 The Hidden Cost Of Constant Fatigue
• 5:56 Meet Your COMT And Clock Genes
• 8:01 Night Shifts And A Body Out Of Rhythm
• 10:23 Energy As A City: Traffic And Timing
• 12:43 Client Story: Maya’s Second Wind Trap
• 16:08 From Fixing To Syncing: Simple Shifts
• 18:43 Fatigue Is Feedback, Not Failure
• 21:03 The DNA Strategy: Detox, Nourish, Align

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 1:00

Medications certainly have their place, but what if there was a way to support your body naturally by working with your genetics?

SPEAKER_01: 1:09

We are a pill for an ill society. We take 18 pills per person per American per day. It was so hard to find somebody who took my insurance. And for me to get well, it took thousands of dollars. And I thought, what do regular people do? This is not right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24

Despite my best efforts, I wasn't actually reversing disease and helping people to heal in the way that I thought I would.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

We want to empower yourselves to take care of this root call. We don't just want to cover it up.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37

If you're ready to break free from outdated, one-size-fits-all health care, you're in the right place. Welcome to Raise the Script with Nature Genomics, brought to you by Inner Glow by Life Balance. Here's a literature from we are all unique, right down to our DNA. So it's no wonder we respond differently to the same medications, foods, and environments. How do you discover what your body needs? Which medications, foods, supplements, or exercises are right for you? How can you manage chronic conditions without piling on more prescriptions? That's what we're here to explore. I'm your host, Dr. Tamar Lawful, Dr. Pharmacy, Nutrigenomics Specialist, and your partner in reimagining how we personalize care for better outcomes. Whether you're a patient or a practitioner, let's raise the script and bring healthcare to higher levels together. Because the future of health is personal. You ever had that kind of morning where you open your eyes and before you even sit up, you can feel the weight of the day sitting right on your chest. You did all the right things. You went to bed at a decent hour, maybe even skipped a late night scroll on your phone. You've been eating better. You've cut back on sugar. You try to get more movement in, but somehow, no matter what you do, you still wake up already behind on energy. I've been there. I remember one morning standing in my kitchen with my scrub still smelling faintly like hospital sanitizer. The sun was coming through the blinds, and I was stirring sugar into my coffee, the third cup, and it wasn't even 9 a.m. yet. I was so tired, I could feel it in my bones. And yet my mind wouldn't stop running through my to-do list. I was supposed to be off that day, but my body didn't understand what rest meant anymore. I think about that version of me a lot. The one who thought exhaustion was a sign of strength. The one who believed that if I just pushed a little harder, I'd finally catch up. But here's what I learned later. Sometimes the reason you're exhausted has nothing to do with willpower or even lifestyle. Sometimes it's about the invisible code written in every cell of your body. It's in your DNA. Hey friend, I'm Dr. Tamar Lawful, and welcome back to Raise the Script with Nutrigenomics, the show where we decode your DNA so you can live and lead with energy, confidence, and longevity. Today we're talking about that constant fatigue so many of us brush off as normal. Maybe you said things like, I'm just getting older, or it's stressed, or I probably need some sleep. But deep down, you know something doesn't add up. Here's the truth. Your body might be doing exactly what it's designed to do. It's just that your design, your genetic blueprint, doesn't match the pace you're living at right now. When I work with women in leadership, high performers, and even my healthcare colleagues, I notice the same pattern. They've built these amazing lives, they're doing meaningful work, but their bodies are quietly waving a white flag. And it's not for lack of trying. They've already checked every box. Better diet, check, vitamins, workouts, check, maybe even meditation, check. Yet that deep energy, the kind that makes you feel clear and steady, still feels out of reach. So let's talk about why that happens. And to do that, I want to introduce you to two little genes that can have a big say in how you feel. And if you've been following me on Raise the Script, you've heard of these genes C-O-M-T and Clock. That's C-O-M-T and Clock. Now, before your eyes glaze over, stay with me. All right. I promise this isn't going to sound like a science lecture. Think of these genes as characters in your energy story. C O M T is like your internal cleanup crew. Its job is to sweep away the stress hormones that build up after long days of doing, leading, worrying, and multitasking. Clock is your body's timekeeper, the gentle rhythm that tells you when to wake, when to wind down, and when to repair. If either of these characters are offbeat, your whole system feels it. Back when I first started working night shifts, I didn't understand this. I would finish a 12-hour shift, grab fast food on the way home. My preference was IHOP. I wanted those pancakes so bad, and I would binge on those pancakes, sleep for a few hours. My body had no sense of time. Day felt like night, and night felt like an endless day. I kept telling myself, I'm fine. I just need a good weekend of rest. But rest wasn't the issue. My internal clock was completely out of rhythm. My stress hormones were on constant replay because my C UMT gene, my cleanup crew, was struggling to keep up. Have you ever felt like that? Where even when you're lying still, your brain is busy. Like there's this invisible hum running in the background that never really shuts off. If you're nodding right now, I want you to take a deep breath because it's not in your head. Your body may simply be asking for alignment. And when you understand what that means for you, everything changes. You stop blaming yourself for being tired, you stop chasing quick fixes, you start working with your biology instead of fighting it. In a minute, I'll share a story about one of my clients, Maya, and how understanding her genes completely changed her relationship with energy. But before we get there, I want to explain what's really happening beneath the surface because it'll make her story and maybe yours make a lot more sense. Think of your body like a city that never sleeps. Every hormone, every chemical messenger is like traffic moving through those city streets. COMT is a crew that clears the roads after rush hour so everything can flow again. When that crew's running behind schedule, you've got a traffic jam everywhere. Adrenaline, dopamine, cortisol, all crowding the streets. That's when you feel wired but tired. Your body's foot is on the gas, but the tank is running low. Now, add in the clock gene, the one that decides when the lights in that city turn green or red. If the lights aren't synced properly, even the best drivers get stuck. You're tired in the middle of the day, alert at midnight, hungry at random times. Your system's just trying to keep up with signals that don't make sense anymore. I want to pause here for a moment. If you're listening while driving or walking or maybe folding laundry, just take a second and notice. When does your energy usually dip? Morning, afternoon, evening? That simple awareness is the first step in understanding your rhythm because your rhythm is the gateway to your energy. And when your genes, your hormones, and your habits finally start working in rhythm, that's when things begin to shift. Now let's go back to Maya. When she first came to me, she looked put together on the outside, sharp suit, bright smile, planner colored, coated down to the minute. But the first thing she said was, Tamar, I'm running on fumes. Now she wasn't exaggerating. She tried all the usual fixes, new supplements, cutting gluten, joining a boot camp class at 5 a.m., even buying one of those expensive blue light alarm clocks. She was doing everything right. Yet by the time her kids went to bed, she was sitting in the dark kitchen, staring at her laptop, eating cereal out of the box just to keep going. When I asked what rest looked like for her, she laughed and said, scrolling Pinterest in bed. Sound familiar? We ran her genetic test, and sure enough, her CMT gene was what we call the slow clearance type. That means when adrenaline and dopamine rush through her system, they hang around longer than average. In a crisis, she's incredible, focused, decisive, cool, under pressure. But when the day is over, her body doesn't get the memo. It keeps running yesterday's script. Now I want to point out that when we do nutrigenomic testing, we don't typically look at just one gene. We look at a variety of genes and together they tell us the full story. But for the sake of simplifying things for you, I'm just highlighting these two genes separately. So the more Maya and I talked, the more she realized she'd been living in a loop. Push hard, crash, recover, just enough to push again. Push hard, crash, recover, just to push again and repeat. The cleanup crew never had a chance to finish a shift. Then we looked at her clock gene and things really clicked. Hers tends to release alertness hormones later in the day. So when everyone else was winding down, her body was revving up. She'd get on her second wind right after dinner, power through another three hours of work, and then lie awake wondering why she couldn't shut off. Once she understood that, we stopped trying to fix her and started sinking her. She shifted her hardest task to later in the morning, got 10 minutes of sunlight right after waking, and started using a simple wind-down ritual. No screens, soft light, some magnesium at the same time every night. Two weeks later, she emailed me and said, I didn't realize what rusted actually feels like. That line stuck with me because how many of us don't even know what rust it feels like anymore? When I first learned about my own genes, I had my own Maya moments. I still work nights at the hospital pharmacist while running life balance during the day. So my schedule isn't exactly what most people would call balance. For a long time, I wore that as a badge of honor. I told myself I was built for it, driven, efficient, unstoppable. But there was a stretch of time when I could feel my body quietly disagreeing. I remember one morning sitting in my car after a shift, the sky just starting to brighten. I had a list of errands, messages to return, business tasks awaiting, but I couldn't move. My hands were on the steering wheel, and I just sat there, staring at nothing. My body was buzzing, but I felt hollow. I remember whispering, am I burned out or just weak? Later, when I saw my DNA results, everything made sense. My C O M T cleanup crew, the one responsible for clearing stress hormones, was working overtime without a break. My body wasn't weak. It was loyal. It was doing its best to keep me upright in a life that never powered down. That realization didn't change my schedule overnight, but it changed my relationship with it. Now I honor recovery as fiercely as I honor productivity, but I built in light exposure, sleep hygiene, and mental decompression as non-negotiables. I run a very tight ship with my schedule. I stopped seeing fatigue as a flaw and started seeing it as feedback, my body's way of asking for alignment. If you take nothing else from this episode, take this fatigue is feedback. It's not your body betraying you, it's your body begging you to listen. When I share this with healthcare practitioners, they usually smile and say, that's what we tell our patients. And I nod because yes, we know it intellectually, but knowing it and living it are two very different things. We teach self-care, we really practice self-alignment. So whether you're a clinician, an entrepreneur, a parent, or all of the above, I want you to pause and ask yourself three things. When do you feel most alive during the day? When do you hit that invisible wall? And what happens right before the crash? Write it down or at least say it out loud. Patterns reveal themselves quickly when you start paying attention. Let's talk about what you can do with this awareness. Inside my inner glow programs, we follow something I call the DNA strategy: detox, nourish, and align. Detox isn't about green juices or deprivation. It's about clearing the mental clutter, the myths that say exhaustion is a badge of honor that slowing down means you're falling behind. Sometimes the most powerful detox is the one that happens in your mind. Nourish is where science meets daily life. If your C UMT gene clears stress slowly, magnesium, B6, and leafy greens are like fuels for that cleanup crew. They help it finish the job. If your clock gene's rhythm runs late, getting natural light early and limiting caffeine after 10 a.m. tells your body, hey, it's morning. Let's start fresh. And then aligned, that's the magic. Aligned means taking what you've learned about your genes and weaving it into your actual lifestyle, not forcing a brand new one. Maybe that means moving your toughest meetings to the part of the day when you naturally feel sharpest. Maybe it means protecting a bedtime routine, the way you protect a business meeting. Alignment is where science becomes self-respect. When women, and yes, plenty of men too, start living this way. I see a transformation that has nothing to do with supplements or lab numbers. Their faces soften, their language changes from I'm so behind to I feel balanced. That's what happens when biology and behavior finally agree. You might be thinking, okay, but I haven't done a DNA test yet. That's fine. You can still start tuning in. Notice how caffeine affects you. And I encourage you to really write this down so you can start noticing the patterns. If you feel great at first after having caffeine and then crash or get anxious, that's your C OMT talking. Notice when you naturally feel sleepy and when you fight it. That's your clock waving its hand. Notice how foods steady your mood and what foods make you foggy. That's your nourish cue. It's small observations like these that turn guessing into understanding. And if you're listening as a healthcare professional, here's something to think about. How often do your parents or your clients describe the same fatigue loop? What if instead of prescribing another stimulant or lab panel right away, we started teaching them how to interpret their body's rhythm? Precision health isn't about more data, it's about deeper connection. When we bring that lens into practice, we stop treating people as broken machines and start treating them as unique systems designed with purpose. That's why I'm so passionate about merging nutrigenomics with clinical care. It humanizes medicine again. I want to circle back to you for a moment, because if you're still listening, something about this message resonated. Maybe you've been telling yourself you're fine, just busy. Maybe you've been running on shared willpower. Maybe you're the one everyone else leans on and you're secretly wondering who's holding you. Take this moment as your permission slip to rest, not as withdrawal, but as recalibration. Your body is on your side. It's been waiting for you to remember that. When you start listening, you might find that the fatigue isn't as mysterious as it felt. It's data, it's guidance, it's a map back to yourself. So take a deep breath with me. Right here, right now, wherever you are, maybe driving, walking, cooking dinner, let yourself feel what tired really means in your body. Is it a heavy kind of tire that feels like fog? Is it a restless tire where your mind keeps spinning even when your body's begging to stop? That sensation isn't proof that you're broken. It's communication. Your DNA has been whispering all along at this pace, this pattern, this timing, it doesn't match the way I was designed. And once you start hearing that whisper, the goal isn't to overhaul your entire life overnight. It's to begin a conversation with your biology. Ask simple questions like, what was support look like for me today? Do I need more sunlight or more silence? Do I need stimulation or stillness? You'll be surprised how clearly your body answers once you stop treating it like an opponent. When I finally started listening to my body, things didn't magically get easier, but they did get clearer. I still work night shifts, I still run life balance, my schedule is full, but it's no longer fighting me. What changed wasn't my hours, it was my awareness. Now I know when my energy needs pause, when my body needs light, when my mind needs stillness, I protect those things the way I used to protect deadlines. There are still nights when sleep comes in pieces, but even then my recovery feels different. It feels intentional. I wake up knowing exactly what my body needs to reset, and I give it that without guilt. That's what alignment looks like. Not perfection, but partnership. And I want that for you too. You deserve to experience what true energy feels like. Not that jittery adrenaline that keeps you surviving, but the steady clarity that lets you lead your life instead of chase it. Because when your energy finally aligns with your DNA, life doesn't feel like a constant uphill climb anymore. It starts to flow, even when the schedule doesn't. So here's my invitation. If you're a woman who leads, whether that's in a boardroom, classroom, or your own household, start by downloading your inner CEO blueprint at lifebalance.com. That's www.thelance.com. It's a free guide that walks you through five DNA-based strategies to boost energy, clarity, and confidence without extremes or burnout. And if you're listening as a healthcare or wellness professional, a pharmacist, a nurse practitioner, a health coach, there's a resource for you to visit the same site and explore the DNA strategy starkit. It's a practical roadmap to begin integrating nutrigenomics into your own practice so you can help your patients and clients create precision wellness plans that truly last. The links are in the show notes. Both tools were created to remind you that health isn't guesswork, it's design. Before we close, I want you to remember this. Fatigue isn't failure, it's feedback. Your energy hasn't left you, it's waiting for you to meet it where it lives, in rhythm, in awareness, in alignment. Talk to you next Friday. Until then, always remember to raise the scripts on health because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.