End Fatigue

Understanding and Treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome:

An Interview with Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum By David Jay Brown, Mavericks of the Mind

[Note: This interview was conducted in 2004. Since that time, Dr. T has revised the acronym "T.H.I.N.S." mentioned within this interview to its current, and expanded, form "S.H.I.N.E."]

Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D. is a board-certified internist and a leading researcher in the field of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM). He has a specialized practice for CFS/FM and pain patients in Annapolis, Maryland, and is director of the Annapolis Research Center for Effective CFS/FM therapies. Dr. Teitelbaum is also the author of several books, including From Fatigued to Fantastic, Pain Free 1-2-3!: A Proven Program to Get You Pain Free Now!, and Three Steps to Happiness: Healing Through Joy.

Dr. Teitelbaum received his medical degree from the Medical School at Ohio State University, and in 1980 he became Board Certified in Internal Medicine. For over two decades he has worked with CFS/FM patients. His motivation to specialize in this area of medicine began with personal experience. In 1975, Dr. Teitelbaum had to drop out of medical school when he himself contracted CFS/FM, and this had a profound influence on the course of his medical career. Although he recovered enough to resume his medical school training a year later, CFS/FM symptoms persisted for many years, and this motivated him to become an avid reader of the scientific medical literature, where he came across many studies that he not learned about in medical school.

Applying this research, Dr. Teitelbaum began to treat his patients with nutritional and herbal therapies, hormonal supplements, anti-infectious treatments, physical therapy measures, and sleep support. Much to his surprise, these previously untreatable patients started to improve dramatically. Dr. Teitelbaum was amazed as his general internal medicine practice began to fill with patients who were flying in from around the country. He has now effectively treated approximately 2000 patients with CFS/FM related disorders.

In addition to having written several books, Dr. Teitelbaum has written numerous articles on CFS/FM, including the recent landmark paper “Effective Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia–A Randomized, Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled, Intent to Treat Study,” published in the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Dr. Teitelbaum has also designed a line of nutritional supplement and support formulas, and all of his royalties from the sale of these products goes to charity. To find ot more about Dr. Teitelbaum’s work visit his Web site: www.endfatigue.com

I interviewed Jacob on October 11, 2004. Jacob is open-minded, curious, and very enthusiastic about alternative medicine. He has a very upbeat perspective on life in general, and he laughs a lot. We spoke about the etiology of chronic fatigue syndrome, the relationship between CFS and FM, how to sleep better and increase mental clarity, and other effective treatments for CFS/FM.

David: What inspired your interest in medicine, and how did your experience with chronic fatigue syndrome in medical school influence your medical career?

Jacob: I’ve wanted to be a healer since I was a little kid. I tend to be very empathic, and if somebody was hurting I could feel what they were feeling. When I was seven or eight years old I still remember how I’d want to hide behind a corner, and just wiggle my finger and make people who were hurting feel better. So that’s always been my goal. If you look at my high school yearbook, you’ll see that it says that’s what I’m going to be. I’ve felt this way for as far back as I can remember. Part of being a Jewish kid is the expectation that you’re going to be a Jewish doctor, but that’s my nature. Part of being empathic is being a healer.

Because I had chronic fatigue syndrome in medical school, I was forced out of school for the year. It also forced me on the road. I was basically homeless, because my dad had died when I was about seventeen and I had no money. I had a scholarship, loans and work study, but since I was out of school, I had none of that, and I couldn’t work because I was too sick. So I was homeless, and I was living on the road. I discovered that on the road you meet fascinating people. I met all these healers and fascinating people along the way–people who were teaching some fascinating areas I had never heard about in medical school.

Also, I grew up in an old Eastern European Hassidic family, and Hassidic community, so the healing arts are very natural. Science is natural, and using healing was natural. So these things were all becoming second nature, as I met people that were teaching energy medicine, naturopathy, all different things along the way. So I healed up enough, in part because of that–probably in large part because of that. I think that’s why I recovered, as opposed to staying sick, was because of the energy work that I was doing and learning. It really kept me open to that as I learned the hard science, instead of just getting closed down. In medical school they would teach that anybody who does any of this stuff is a quack, but I knew better.

Using the chakra system, I could do an energy scan, feel a tumor, and send the person for a test and find it there. You see people get better. You see it and experience it. Then I would also look at the medical literature aggressively for just about everything, not just prescriptions, but also for natural remedies. In my training this encouraged me to not just look at the three main journals, and a specialty journal, that most doctors read, which are basically paid for by the drug companies. They’re basically big advertisements for the medications. They think it’s science, but what they ignore is that if the drug company pays for the study it has a much greater effect on the outcome then whether it’s placebo-controlled or not.

The medical journals wouldn’t dream of publishing something that wasn’t placebo-controlled, but what they publish is almost only articles related to medications that are paid for by the drug company, or by people who are working for the drug company and getting money from them. So it’s a big advertisement, and that creates a selectivity and bias that’s just very strong against natural remedies. And that’s all doctor’s hear about. But I would look at studies from literally dozens of different journals. I discovered that the smaller journals don’t draw as much drug money, and they do more basic research. They’re much more open to just publishing what science shows works, and just giving the straight data. So it got me interested in being open-minded to natural remedies as well as prescriptions.

I learned to recognize that there are many tools in the healing tool kit. In medical school all you come out with is a hammer, and everything looks like a nail. But when you start to do comprehensive medicine, you have a hammer, so if you have appendicitis you can do surgery. But if you have back pain, instead of having to cut the person open, you can give nutritional support or hormonal support. You can use willow bark, for example, which has been shown to be more effective than Motrin. You almost never have send anybody for back surgery, so you don’t have to whack everybody with a hammer. You could use gentler things that are more effective and more appropriate, because you have an entire tool kit.

Around five years ago there was a forest fire and my office burned down. It just took it out, and I saw this as a good thing. The universe knew I was about to burn out, because I’d been doing all that research, writing, lecturing, and teaching, in addition to running a practice, raising my five kids and the rest. The universe knew I would either burn out or the office would burn down, and it always take care of me. So the office burnt down. It gave me a chance to sit back and think, okay, what do I want to rebuild out of the fire? What do I want to let stay in the ashes? So that’s all good stuff. But when the office burnt down I had over 14,000 research study reports in my files that went up in smoke, and that’s only a tiny percent of what I read, because most studies aren’t worth the bother. Now I still know the stuff, because it’s in my head. However, when it first went down, it left me feeling like I got kicked in the stomach.

But this stuff is all accessible anyway, and it actually turned out to be a good thing. So this is what my work is based on, and when people say it’s not evidence-based medicine, and that they see no evidence that natural remedies work, that’s because they won’t look at the thousands of studies that show that it works. (laughter) Then they they can honestly say that they haven’t seen any evidence. It’s like Sgt. Shultz in the old Hogan’s Heroes. He would say, “I see nothing!” Well, that’s what the priests of high medicine are like in academia and the rest. It’s like they see nothing, and they will support no data that shows natural remedies work. If anybody does a study they will peer-review it into the ground, coming up with nonsense reasons to not publish it. If it is published, they question the journal, and they won’t look at the data. Then they can honestly say that they don’t see anything. But it’s a religion. It’s scientism, and basically, if they had their way, they would keep people from having access to a vast panoply of safe and effective therapies.

David: Can you talk a little about what you’ve learned about the etiology of chronic fatigue syndrome?

Jacob: Yes, chronic fatigue syndrome is basically like blowing a fuse. It’s like the circuit-breakers you have in your home. If you plug in too many heaters, for example, or blow-dryers–boom!–off go the lights because you’ve blown a circuit or a fuse. The fuse that you blow in chronic fatigue syndrome is called the hypothalamus, and that’s a key control center in the brain. It controls temperature regulation, sleep, hormonal function, and the autonomic nervous system, which regulates blood flow, blood pressure, and pulse. Because the hypothalamus is blown, those four systems are off-line in chronic fatigue syndrome.

Now the way that that acts as a circuit breaker is like this. You can view chronic fatigue syndrome, and its painful cousin fibromyalgia, as a energy crisis, where you’re calling on your body to supply more energy than it’s able to supply–and you can only overdraw your bank account for so long before things start bouncing, so to speak. So, since the hypothalamus is so energy-dependent, because it’s doing so many things in a small area, when you you are outstripping your energy supplies, that’s the place that goes first, and that’s why it acts as a circuit-breaker.

David: How does chronic fatigue syndrome lead to immune system dysfunction?

Jacob: It does this in several ways. Chronic fatigue syndrome is integrally tied in with the hormonal functions of the hypothalamus, which control the immune system, and poor sleep also causes immune dysfunction. There’s also the problem of not making enough energy in your muscles, so the muscles get stuck in a shortened position, just like with rigor mortis when somebody dies. The muscles don’t have enough energy, so they don’t go loose. The muscles become rigid as a board, and when they go rigid they hurt. So there are a number of ways that it causes direct immune dysfunction, as well as ways that are not quite as direct; they’re basically one step removed from that. Then, because the immune system is not able to have the energy it needs to fight infections, you get these infections, which puts more demand on the immune system, when it’s already on its knees. Then it basically just starts firing off wildly, trying to fight all these infections, and then it exhausts itself. That’s why the change is biphasic. We have an overactive immune system followed by an exhausted immune system.

David: Can you talk a little bit more about the relationship that you see between chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia?

Jacob: They’re the same thing in most people. The body doesn’t care what name we call things. What’s going on is what’s going on. You can call it fibromyalgia, fibrositis, chronic fatigue syndrome. If the person, in addition to fatigue, insomnia, and brain fog, also has widespread muscle pain, which most of them do, then they have fibromyalgia.

David: What role do you think vitamin deficiencies and diet play in chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and how might taking nutritional supplements and improving one’s diet help improve symptoms?

Jacob: Oh it’s a major role. Remember we talked about blowing a fuse because you can’t make enough energy? So the question then is how do you make enough energy so that you can turn that fuse back on? I use the acronym T.H.I.N.S. to help people understand how to do this. The initial T is for toxins, which you want to eliminate. H is for hormonal support. I is for infections, which need to be treated. N is for nutritional support. And S is for sleep support. Those are the things that make energy, keep energy, and eliminate the energy drain. So people who have this disease need proper nutritional support. Actually, the American public in general is horribly nutritionally deficient–and it’s not that they’re deficient in one nutrient. They’re deficient across the board, and the reasons are multiple.

One reason is that we get an average of a hundred fifty pounds of sugar per person added to our diet every year. Soda has almost one teaspoon of sugar per ounce. So if somebody goes to the 7-11 and gets one of these 64 oz Big Burps, that’s 64 spoons of sugar and sugar supplies 18% of our calories. Another 18% of our calories come from white flour. So 36% of our diet is nutritionally wiped out before you ever get out of the starting box. Then you have food processing, and you have all the different bowel infections that people get that decrease absorption and increased nutritional needs. So most Americans are nutritionally-deficient, and it’s not just with a single nutrient. In chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia it gets even much worse because you have both increased needs and decreased absorption. So the question is what do you do?

We used to give people dozens of vitamin tablets and different supplements to take, because there’s about forty or fifty different nutrients that they’re low in. But after awhile that started to get insane. It was just too much for people. So there’s a vitamin powder that’s out now which makes it easy. People take one drink and one capsule, and it replaces thirty-five tablets of supplements. You have to make it easier for people, or they’re not going to be able to do it. Because of my teaching role, I have a policy that 100% of the royalties for any products that I make go to charity.

For example, we just gave a hundred thousand dollar grant to do a study on autism using NAET, which we have found to very effective. NAET is an acupressure-applied kinesiology technique, and we’ve seen it make autism go away a lot of times. It’s just amazing. So the money gets used for charity or research, and I just don’t get any of it. I think this allows for more objectivity, and it’s also more fun for me to have the money go that way. So I don’t take money from any company for any products that I recommend, because when people start selling me stuff I tune out, and I didn’t want that to happen. The teaching is too important, and I didn’t want that to get in the way of it.

David: You said that the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia is the hypothalamus being blown out. Would you recommend any type of hormonal treatment then to help correct the situation?

Jacob: Absolutely. Remember the acronym T.H.I.N.S. H is for hormonal support.

Nutritional support is easy. Avoid sugar and increase water because the hormone that holds on to water is low. Take the Energy Revitalization System vitamin powder, which simply maintains good solid nutritional support in general. Most people find a high-protein diet feels better than a high-carb diet, but everybody is different with that. Except for sugar, it’s most important that people eat what makes them feel good, because there’s no one diet that’s right for everybody.

Then with hormonal support it’s important to be clear that blood tests are hopelessly unreliable, and they miss the majority of people who benefit from and need hormonal support. So thyroid is usually low if people are tired and achy, cold-intolerant, and suffer from weight gain. If they have two or three of those, they deserve a trial of thyroid hormone, period, regardless of what the blood tests show. Tens of thousands of adults are dying a year, in addition to tens of thousands more neonatal deaths and miscarriages, because people are not being treated for their low thyroid. Generally, it’s better to use the natural hormones than the synthetic ones, because they’re the same thing that the body makes. So Armour thyroid is excellent and very helpful.

Then there’s adrenal support. The adrenal is our stress handler, whereas the thyroid is like our gas pedal–it’s like the thermostat that says how much energy you’re making. The adrenal gland is what helps you handle stress, and in our modern society we put so much stress on our bodies, because of the environment, because the fast pace of things, things like that. We exhaust the adrenal glands, and you can tell that that’s going on because you get these hypoglycemic symptoms. This is basically when you get very irritable, when you’re hungry, when your blood sugar drops, people around you recognize that if they don’t feed you NOW, you get so irritable that they feel like your going to kill them. Fortunately, natural adrenal hormones and glandulars (e.g. Adrenal Stress End) can be given in low dose very safely and can be dramatically beneficial.

You can use natural hormones safely. Testosterone deficiency needs to be treated in women as well as men. Treating a low testosterone in men using natural hormones decreases the risk of angina, improves diabetic control, and decreases cholesterol. Now you don’t want to go to super-high levels like the body builders, that’s dangerous. But you don’t need to do that with hormones generally. So the hormonal support is critical and the blood tests are horribly unreliable.

David: You spoke about the role do that sleep deprivation plays in chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. What suggestions would you make to help improve someone’s sleep patterns?

Jacob: The hypothalamus is the sleep center, so it’s not a matter of poor sleep hygiene. It’s a matter of the sleep center is not working. So, first of all, I like to start with natural remedies, and there’s herbals. I think the best herbals for sleep are wild lettuce, Jamaican Dogwood, ptheanine, and hops. Passion flower and valerian are also okay. All six of those are in a product called Revitalizing Sleep Formula by Enzymatic Therapy, so they can get them all in one capsule.

5-HTP is good, but is expensive and takes six weeks to work. It also causes weight loss, and because the average weight gain in this disease is 32 pounds, that’s helpful for people. It also decreases pain. Taking calcium and magnesium at bedtime also helps.

Melatonin helps too, but only one half milligram. A half milligram is all it takes to totally bring a low melatonin level up to normal, and the studies show that for most people that low dose is every bit as effective as a higher dose for sleep. I have concerns when someone starts taking a massive dosage of hormones. Even if they’re natural, I don’t think one should take a dose that brings us above what the body normally would have.

David: Are there any other herbal remedies that you would recommend for treating chronic fatigue syndrome in general?

Jacob: Oh, there’s a whole host of things. If you go on my web site, and click on “treatment protocol”. It’s the bottom link on the left. And if you go through it section-by-section–for sleep, for treating yeast, for treating pain–you’ll see dozens of different herbals that are recommended, and how to use them.

David: Are you familiar with Jay Goldstein’s work, and his book Tuning the Brain? What are you thoughts regarding his ideas about neurosomatic medicine, and his approach to treating chronic fatigue syndrome by reconfiguring neural networks through pharmacologic modulation?

Jacob: Oh yeah, Jay is brilliant. Jay and I used to tease each other–you know the story of the five blind men and the elephant? They go feel around, and one feels the back leg and says, “it’s a tree trunk.” The other other felt the trunk of elephant and said, “no, it’s a snake.” And one felt nothing at all and said “you’re all crazy.” That’s what it’s like in chronic fatigue syndrome. I tease that I have the left thigh and leg of the elephant, and Jay’s got the trunk. He’s working specifically on the brain chemistry to alter things downstream, and the good thing about that is you’ll sometimes see dramatic effects with a single medication.

The downside is that since you’re goosing one part of the system, but not bringing up the rest of the system, the benefits often tend to wear off over time. With my approach it takes more treatments, but you’re actually fixing the problem. But Jay is brilliant, and his work is wonderful. He just got burnt out because he just ran into so much opposition from the medical system, the National Institute of Health (NIH) groups, those kind of things. They are so resistant to any change that does not come from within the NIH or academia, and certainly if it comes from natural remedies.

Their resistance is like a religious faith, and I applaud their religious faith, but what they’re doing is religion, it’s not science. Their blind faith against anything natural takes on a fervor of heavy-duty fundamentalism, and I honor and I appreciate their faith. I just think that the people who want to use natural remedies have the right to their religious beliefs too. The science supports the use of the natural remedies. So Jay got the same kind of slamming from them, and he finally just gave up.

David: What advice would you give to someone to help them find a physician who understands conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia?

Jacob: Go on my Web site. I see people from all over the world, but it’s two to four hours for a new patient visit, and I only see people five or six days a month, because the rest of the time I’m teaching. But the Web site has the tools that everybody needs. I actually hold the patent on a computerized physician. If you go to the patent office, I’m the one that has it for computerized doctor, because we needed that to reach six million people. So people can go on the web site, put in a detailed history, put in their lab tests (and get a prescription for the lab tests to take to their local lab if their doctor won’t give them one), and it will analyze all of that, make a complete medical record of their case, and tell them exactly what they need to do to get well, because treatment is different for everyone. If you have a hundred people you could have a hundred different treatment protocols, so it tailors the treatment to each individual case.

Then there’s also two referral lists on the Web site. One list is of doctors who want to see people with chronic fatigue syndrome. We don’t charge people to be put on the list, so one list is anybody who just wants to see people. Many of these people are clueless, but at least they want to see people with CFS, as opposed to the physicians who start crossing themselves and running out of the room if they hear you’ve got chronic fatigue syndrome. Then the second list gives the people that I’ve trained, who have done two or four day workshops, and that group has at least gotten the basic foundation and training. So people can go online from anywhere around the world, and see who’s in their area.

David: What are your thoughts about human longevity, and what do you think are the best ways to slow down the human aging process?

Jacob: We often talk about humans causing more mass extinctions than any other lifeform in history, but that’s not correct. The life form that caused the most mass extinctions in the history of the planet, that we know of at least, is algae–because algae made this incredibly toxic substance that they put into the environment called oxygen. Now oxygen is very oxidative. If you put oxygen with iron it rusts and becomes iron oxide. So oxygen is very toxic and it causes wear and tear. Now the species that survived were adaptive enough to actually not just learn how to live in an oxygen-rich environment, but how to use it to make energy. It’s a little bit like in Judo, where you turn your opponent’s force to your own advantage.

So a couple of things if you want to stay young and live very long–or as I put it, if you want to die very young very late in life. Number one is sleep, because studies show that things that raise growth hormone can slow aging. For example, if you have sex three times a week you look ten years younger. This is from a study out of Scotland, and it was postulated that that’s because of the growth hormone release. So if you want to increase your growth hormone, get deep sleep, get exercise, and have sex. That’s how you raise growth hormone naturally. I don’t like growth hormone shots because I’m not convinced of the safety. They’re also expensive, and they’re a pain. So raise it naturally by following the “rough” prescription that I just gave you.

Two, get good nutritional support. The antioxidants are critical. The vitamin powder–the Energy Revitalization System– is a real easy way to do that, so you get solid overall nutritional support. You’re not going to get it out of a single tablet. Too much has been pulled out of our diet for that, and there’s too much stress on the body. So get solid nutrition. Then the T in T.H.I.N.S. is toxins, so detox. It doesn’t mean that you need to avoid every toxin. You can’t do that in the American environment–it’s pretty much impossible. But don’t spray a can of bug spray in your house for God’s sake. That’s poison. That’s why it kills bugs. There are safer ways to control pests, like by using boric acid.

We had this big line of ants coming into my house recently because they found the cat food bowl. So we could have sprayed the hell out of them, which would have kept them away for about two days, and then killed us more than them. But we just put the cat bowl in a bigger dish that had water in it, so the ants couldn’t get to it because there’s a little moat around it. So you can poison yourself, or you can just use common sense.

I often gave lectures in the schools to the third graders on nutrition. When I was first starting this practice, I would say that there’s a very simple rule of thumb–if you can’t read what’s in the ingredients because the words are so complicated, don’t eat it. If the ingredient list says that it contains chemicals with names that start with something like tiulated, futalated, hydroxy, or whatever it is, then avoid it. Also avoid sugar. But words like flour and milk–you can read that. But these big long chemical names, that’s probably not very good for you. So just use common sense with it, but don’t make yourself nuts.

So avoid heavy toxins, get the hormonal support that really prolongs life, add nutritional support and sleep, and those are the key things basically. There’s a concept that I call Vitality 101, which says, feed your body–get proper nutrition, avoid sugar, and get plenty of water. Use your body–get exercise and have sex, things like that. And rest your body–get eight to nine hours sleep a night. And if you do that, you can die very young very late in life. These things are not hard to do. There’s a policy that I have–you never take away something that’s giving a person pleasure without substituting something equally pleasurable. So, for example, I’m going to say avoid sugar, but I’m going to add the three magic words–except for chocolate. I think chocolate is a healthy food, and so are other things that give you joy. I’ll tell you the fourth thing for Vitality 101, which is the most important for staying young and alive late in life–follow your bliss. This means do what feels good.

David: What advice would you give to someone who is looking to improve their mental performance?

Jacob: Again, nutritional support and sleep are critical. Then, if they have low thyroid the brain is not going to work very well. If they’re tired, achy, gaining weight, and cold-intolerant, they probably have low thyroid. So start with the vitamin powder. It’ll have a dramatic effect on giving your brain what it needs to function properly. Get eight to nine hours sleep a night. A hundred years ago the average American got nine hours of sleep a night–as many people got ten hours as got eight. We’re sleep-deprived, and because of this our brains are not going to work too well.

So first of all, make the time for sleep. Then second, take what you need to get solid sleep. There are many natural remedies like we discussed. You do those two simple things and you’re going to improve function markedly. Then make sure your hormonal levels are okay. Make sure your testosterone and your thyroid levels are not too low. But let me give you a quick primer on blood testing. For most blood test the normal range is based on what’s called two standard deviations. This is just a statistical norm. What that means is that they take a hundred people, and measure the blood test. The highest and lowest two and a half out of a hundred are considered abnormal, and the other ninety-five percent in the middle are define as normal. That’s all the normal range means for most tests.

So say you wanted to define a normal shoe size. We take a hundred people on the mall, look at their shoe size, and you get a normal range of maybe four to thirteen. That would get ninety-five percent of people. So say you had a shoe problem, and I measured your shoe size, and you were wearing a size five. I’d say, “no it’s normal. There’s no problem. It’s in the normal range.” I see you lost your shoes, so I’ll just take one out of the pile, and as long as it’s in that range, it’s ok. You would put it on and say, “I can’t get into this thing.” Then I’d measure it again, and I’d say, “no the test says it’s normal. It’s just fine.”

The analogy I just gave you is almost exact, and that presuming that if the test is normal the shoe fits doesn’t work. You have to look at the symptoms. Are you tired? Are you achy? Are you cold intolerant? Do you have weight gain? Then you have low thyroid, and you deserve a trial of natural thyroid hormone. So consider thyroid, testosterone, and adrenal support. If any of those three are low your brain is not going to work very well. So taking the treatments to bring these up to normal, if they’re low, could make a big difference. So start with getting nutritional support, get your eight to nine hours sleep, treat your hormonal system, and treat any infections or toxin exposures. But that’s kind of Vitality 102 at that point. I’d start with 101 for most people.

David: What do you think are the key steps to happiness, and how do you think happiness promotes healing?

Jacob: My book Three Steps to Happiness: Healing Through Joy talks about that. These are the keys steps. Number one would be to be authentic with our feelings. A lot of us are taught we’re not supposed to be angry, hurt, pissed off, or whatever, and the thing is you’re going to feel how you feel. So simply be authentic with your feelings, and feel your feelings, but you also need to know how to let go of them when you’re done feeling them, and start feeling good. So the book talks about how to get in touch with your feelings, and how to let go of them when you’re done.

Number two is that you want go ahead and stop being a victim, because as long as you have a sense of victimization you’re giving up the power to control your life–in which case, you’re dead meat. I’m going to broaden that out. If you’re caught up in blame, fault, guilt, judgment, comparisons, expectations, you are putting other people in charge of your happiness, and that’s a real bad idea. So part of not being a victim is no blame, no fault, no guilt, no judgment, no comparisons, and no expectations, on anybody else or on your self. Now, you can be really pissed off at somebody, and that’s fine. But that’s different than blaming them. You create your own reality. If something happens, it’s what you created, and don’t blame yourself either–because no guilt and no blame apply to you as well. Just recognize, oh okay, that’s what it is. Is that how I want it to be? And if not, then how do you want it to be? And change it.

Then that brings us to step three, the most important step, which is follow your bliss. This means do what feels good. That’s why we have feelings. Our brain tells us what we’re programmed to do to get approval. Our church, synagogue, parents, school, T.V. sets, and society said we needed to be good boys and good girls and get approval. That’s what our brain tells us, or to get attention in some cases, in which case then we can be the bad boys. But either way, it’s to get attention and approval. But that’s not authentic to who we are; that’s just what people are telling us.

Our feelings tell us what’s authentic for us. When you’re authentic, and you’re at one with your spirit–which is what authentic means–it feels good, because spirit always feels good. That’s what spirit it is–a place of bliss. So if you’re feeling good, then you’re connected with spirit. You’re tapped in. When you feel bad it’s cause you’ve cut yourself off. You’re in a place of thinking or believing that’s not authentic, and that’s why we have feelings. So we can get past this computer program we have and get into who we are. So if something feels good I recommend you keep your attention on it. Joseph Campbell, who had studied religions throughout history, and all over the planet, when asked to summarize in one sentence what he had learned from all of these, put it very brilliantly. He said, “Follow your bliss”.

David: What is your perspective on the concept of God, and how has spirituality played a role in your view of medicine?

Jacob: Oh, to me the concept of God is that it’s all one. In other words, if everything is God, Goddess, Spirit–whatever you want to call it–it’s all one. It’s all connected, and that means that all that’s going on is God looking at God’s self. So it’s all simply different perspectives, and that’s a fascinating thing. That means nobody is cut off from God, whether they’re atheists or whatever. You don’t have to believe in God for Spirit to love you and be present, so it means that nobody is right and nobody is wrong. It’s all simply different perspectives, which is very freeing, because now you don’t have to battle anybody. You just have to do your own thing.

This also allows us to recognize our own connection to spirit, which is very healing, because it allows that energy to flow into us, and allows us to stay whole and connected. So that’s a very powerful thing. I mean, my whole life is about Spirit and about God, or Goddess. To think of God as only a man sounds like an insult to God. It’s pretty limiting, because God is everything. It also means that nothing and no one is better or worse than anybody else. And there’s this critical thing that happens, because that’s been the touchstone through much of my life–to recognize I am the equal of all beings, and no one is lesser than me. That means there’s nobody that I meet that’s better than I am, or that I’m better than them. We’re all different perspectives of God. We’re all equal, and we’re all divine, everybody.

David: What are you currently working on?

Jacob: My next book, Pain Free– 1-2-3, which is coming out in November 2004. I’m interested in addressing those areas that are poorly dealt with in modern society, and this is why I spent twenty-five years teaching people about fatigue, vitality, and chronic fatigue syndrome. The next area that I’m addressing is pain management, which is horribly dealt with by doctors, and this is what the new book is about. Pain Free– 1-2-3 will teach people how to get pain free using natural and prescription therapies. They can use either or both. It’s comprehensive, and it guides people step-by-step. If this is what you have, then here’s how you handle it, and this is what you have to do to get pain free. So that’s an awesome book, and it’s going to be out in a month.

So that’s where I’m moving into right now. Then I want to take on the biggest crime and most devastating thing in our society. You know how we look at suicide bombers in the Middle East, and we say, God, these people must be insane–sending their children out to kill other children and die. But then if we look at ourselves, we realize we’re teaching our children that if you suffer you’re going to Heaven, and if you feel good and have a joyful life you’re going to go to Hell. I think that’s more psychotic. So that’s where the three steps to happiness is so important. It’s like I tell the docs, if you help people to get healthy so they can go back to a life they hate, you’ve done nothing for them. I think that’s a really important concept. You want to get healthy so you can get a life you love. And the flip-side of that is having a life you love helps you to be healthy. It goes both ways. So it’s those areas that I’m interested in. It’s a mix of teaching people what they can do to get healthy, but also teaching them how to get a life they love–so that it’s worth it.

David: Is there anything that we haven’t discussed that you would like to add?

Jacob: If I could just say one thing, if there’s one message I could get out for people, it’s follow your bliss. It’s do what feels good, because that’s authentic to you. There’s no one thing that’s good for everybody to do–to eat this or do that. I can only give you general principles. It’s by following what feels good to you that you check in with your own intuition, your own inner wisdom, and that’s how you know what’s good for you. So that’s what it boils down to.