Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Learn to see your body through a different lens.
There comes a point where you begin to sense that what you are experiencing cannot be fully explained by symptoms alone. Patterns repeat, progress feels incomplete, and something deeper is asking to be understood. I’m Dr. Rue, a naturopathic physician focused on chronic illness and integrative oncology, where the work is not about chasing conditions, but about observing the terrain in which they arise.
In this space, we explore how the body adapts, how systems communicate, and how environment, metabolism, and lived experience shape what you feel day to day. The body is not random, and it is not working against you. It responds in ways that reflect its internal and external worlds. As you begin to understand those responses, your relationship with your health begins to change.
These are quiet, intentional conversations designed to bring clarity without removing complexity. If you have ever felt that your experience does not fit into a simple explanation, you are not alone. This is a place to listen more closely, to reconnect, and to begin seeing what may have been there all along.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Why Are You So Tired? | Ep. 057
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Fatigue is often misunderstood. We tend to think of it as simply feeling sleepy or needing more rest. But true fatigue is something much bigger. It is a state where the body no longer has the same capacity, resilience, or reserve it once had. The spark that fuels physical energy, mental clarity, emotional balance, and recovery begins to fade.
When fatigue takes hold, it rarely affects just one part of the body. It can touch every system, every organ, and every aspect of daily life. It changes how we think, how we feel, and how we move through the world. Fatigue is not the problem itself. It is often the visible expression of a deeper story unfolding beneath the surface.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
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One of the most common things I hear from patients is this. I'm tired all the time. Not sleepy, tired. The kind of tired where getting out of bed feels harder than it should. And simple tests feel overwhelming. And what's interesting is how quickly we start looking for someone to blame. We blame our hormones, we blame our thyroid, we blame our adrenals, we blame stress, or we blame age. But here's something worth thinking about. None of those things actually create energy. Mitochondria does that. So what are hormones doing? What is stress doing? What is the circadian rhythm doing? They're sending messages, instructions, information, and the mitochondria responds accordingly. Think about what happens when you wake up in the morning. Light enters your eyes, your brain receives that information. Hormones begin to shift, metabolism begins to shift. The body starts preparing for the day ahead. That's circadian rhythm. It's one of the ways the body communicates with the mitochondria. Now, let's take it a step further. What happens when you're under chronic stress? Or when you're burned out? Or when you're sleeping poorly? What happens when your hormones are out of balance? The messages change. And when the messages change, the mitochondria changes too. Suddenly, fatigue starts looking a little different. Because maybe fatigue isn't simply a lack of energy. Maybe it's a response to the information the body is receiving. And that changes the conversation entirely. Because now we're no longer asking, how do I force myself to have more energy? We're asking, what messages is the body sending? And perhaps most fascinating of all, emotions send messages too. Hope sends messages. Fear does the same thing. Same with safety and grief. They all send messages. We'll spend more time on that in future episodes because emotions don't just change how you feel, they change biology. And mitochondria are part of that story.