The Energy Blueprint Podcast By Ari Whitten

Most people think fatigue is simple. You're tired because you didn't sleep enough. Or you're stressed. Or maybe you just need more caffeine. But what if you've addressed all those factors and are still fatigued? Today, I'm joined by Dr. Evan Hirsch, a physician who has helped thousands of people recover from chronic fatigue after experiencing it himself. And according to Dr. Hirsch, fatigue is rarely caused by one singular thing. When you look deeper, a pattern emerges. Hidden infections, environmental toxins, nutrient deficiencies, poor sleep quality, and nervous system dysfunction often show up together. Once you start connecting these dots, fatigue stops looking like a simple problem and starts looking like a signal. In this episode, Dr. Hirsch and I break down the real drivers of low energy and what it actually takes to fix them, not just manage symptoms. This episode was first released in June 2017 In this podcast, Dr. Hirsch and I discuss: Why fatigue is often driven by multiple root causes, not just

Most people think weight loss is simple: eat less, move more, push through the fatigue. But what if that approach is exactly why so many diets fail? Today, I'm joined by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, a PhD in brain and cognitive sciences who studies the neuroscience of eating behavior and long-term weight loss. According to Dr. Susan, fatigue during dieting is a short-term feeling that should ease over time…with the right approach. When you cut calories, your body doesn't just burn fat and carry on. It responds. Metabolism slows, energy drops, and hormones shift in ways that are normal but may make you feel tired. However, Dr. Susan's work challenges the idea that dieting has to mean constant hunger and fatigue. According to her data, hunger actually drops to very low levels when the right strategy is in place. Her approach is different. She believes sustainable results don't come from pushing harder. They come from working with your biology in ways that reduce fatigue, stabilize appetite, and support long-term

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar taught the most popular course ever at Harvard and is one of the world's top happiness experts. He defines happiness not as temporary pleasure (like going to the beach or eating ice cream), but as "whole person well-being," captured in his SPIRE framework: Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and Emotional. One of the most powerful studies Dr. Ben-Shahar shares is about janitors, nurses, and doctors working in the same hospitals doing identical work…yet some saw their work as a "job" (something they had to do for a paycheck), others as a "career" (focused on climbing the organizational hierarchy), and others as a "calling" (meaningful work that matters). The janitors who saw their work as facilitating patient healing were happier and performed better than doctors who saw their work as just a job. Surprisingly, research shows there is NO connection between IQ and happiness. But there IS a strong connection between using your intelligence (being curious, asking questions, and lifelo

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Alan Christianson, a board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist and the founding president of the Endocrine Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the American College of Thyroidology. We'll discuss his new book, the Hormone Healing Cookbook, and specific foods for resolving pesky symptoms driven by hormonal changes in midlife.

In this episode, I'm speaking with Caroline Alan, the self-proclaimed "Mineral Geek." She shares her history of serious health problems, including gut inflammation, periodontal disease with bone loss in her teeth, recurring sinus infections, brain fog so bad she left her corporate career, and lifelong insomnia.  But her health completely transformed thanks to a chance suggestion from her business partner to try liquid minerals. Caroline is now passionate about sharing the connections she's found between mineral depletion, replenishment, and cellular function. She's also a soon-to-be published author; her book, The Mineral Reset: The Essential Guide to Replenishing Your Body and Restoring Your Health, will be available at the end of April.  

Most people think body fat is the problem. If you gain weight, the goal is simple: eat less, burn more, and try to get rid of it. But what if that way of thinking is fundamentally flawed? Today, I'm joined by Dr. William Li, a world-renowned physician and scientist who has led the development of more than 30 new medical treatments that impact care for over 70 diseases, including cancer, diabetes, blindness, heart disease, and obesity. Dr. Li has spent decades studying the biology of metabolism, fat, and disease. In his view, body fat itself is not the enemy. In fact, it plays a critical role in your health. The real problem begins when fat becomes excessive, dysfunctional, and inflammatory, disrupting the systems that regulate metabolism and energy balance. This shift in perspective changes everything.  

Most people think of chronic illness as something caused by a specific trigger…an infection, a toxin, or even an autoimmune reaction. And the solution is to find and eliminate that one thing.  But what if that's not how it actually works? Today, I'm excited to have Dr. Eric Gordon back on the podcast. He's built a reputation for doing what most doctors won't, which is looking beyond the diagnosis to find what's actually driving a patient's illness and figuring out the right order to address it. His clinical work spans Lyme disease, ME/CFS, autoimmune conditions, and mitochondrial dysfunction, and many other forms of dysfunction, often all at once in the same patient. In 2016, he co-authored a landmark study with Dr. Robert Naviaux, also a former guest on this podcast and a bit of a personal hero of mine, someone who has done some of the most important work in medicine of the last century, with his work on the cell danger response.  In Dr. Gordon's view, chronic illness happens when the body's normal healing c

A 2018 study found that 88% of the population is metabolically unwell. But more recent studies estimate the number is closer to 92%!  My guest today is Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo, founder of the Institute of Nutritional Endocrinology. She has 30+ years of clinical experience and sees imbalanced blood sugar and disordered insulin regulation as the underlying cause of so many people's problems.  Her bottom line is that to get fuel into your mitochondria, good insulin and blood sugar control is a non-negotiable. Most people think of insulin resistance as the diagnosis you get from your doctor, but by that point, there's already been retinopathies (damage to retinas), neuropathies (damage to peripheral nerves), damage to kidneys, and damage to blood vessel linings.  Dr. Loscalzo focuses on "pre-insulin resistance," catching the breakdown decades before diagnosis, when you can actually prevent it. This episode was initially released in November 2022   

Today's podcast guest is Dr. Amie Hornaman, most well-known as The Thyroid Fixer. She was a figure competitor and powerlifter who gained 25 pounds eating chicken, broccoli, and asparagus while hitting the gym twice a day. Biologically, it didn't make sense.  It took seven doctors before she got diagnosed with Hashimoto's, and the sixth one made her cry in her car, praying that something was wrong because, as she told me, "if something was wrong, we could fix it." The seventh doctor gave her Synthroid, and after five months, there was zero change. Not one pound lost, no energy gained, hair still falling out. In this episode, she explains that nearly all diagnoses of hypothyroidism are Hashimoto's, the autoimmune form, where your body attacks your thyroid gland. The conventional standard of care is to check only TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone), even though TSH doesn't identify an autoimmune disease. This episode is especially important if you've been struggling with thyroid symptoms and haven't been checked f

Today's podcast guest, Dr. Sonya Jensen, is a first-generation immigrant who grew up navigating two very different cultures and the rules imposed on her about how she should look, who she should be friends with, and how she should perform in school. Around age 13, she developed anorexia as a way of gaining control of her own life.    Ultimately, her experiences with anorexia, processing childhood trauma, and working with patients led her to put the pieces together between emotions, trauma, and physical health. In this episode, we discuss the deep work she does with women, where she focuses on the well-researched links between emotions and physical health. In this podcast, Dr. Jensen and I discuss: A 66,000-woman study over 16 years found every single woman with a fibroid had childhood abuse, whether physical, sexual, or emotional (this is when Dr. Jensen started piecing together trauma and physical health) When progesterone is low, GABA is low - so you may feel anxious - when estrogen is low, dopamine and

My guest today, Dr. Wendie Trubow, went to France in 2019 for the trip of a lifetime.  But when she came home, her hair started falling out, she gained weight, and had a rash all over her face. She tested her thyroid (perfect), hormones (perfect), and gut (great). Ultimately, she realized that when Notre Dame burned, it released 500 tons of lead into the air and soil, and she had slogged through that dust for a week. Testing showed that her lead levels were incredibly high. Her biggest insight was that all the modern medical issues she treated as a functional MD—obesity, diabetes, cancer, insomnia, endocrine dysfunction, gut dysfunction—could be tracked back to toxic exposures, creating a state of inflammation.  Dr. Trubow believes your particular "soup" (genetics, lifestyle, early childhood, antibiotic use, diet, sleep, stress, relationships, self-talk, movement) determines how inflammation manifests in you. Wendie's story is really incredible, and I think you'll love this podcast. This episode was first re

Dr. Shivani Gupta comes from a family of people with diabetes, generation by generation, where she's seen the after-effects of suffering with chronic metabolic disease.  Her new book, The Inflammation Code (launching, distills 20 years of studying Ayurveda into simple pillars you can apply to prevent the level of inflammation and disease we see today. When people tell her, "I have brain fog, I'm tired, my sleep is off, my digestion's off, I have stubborn weight gain…I guess this is just aging," her reply is, "No, it's not aging, it's inflammaging." We had a really excellent, in-depth conversation that covered a lot of ground, from black pepper and the blood-brain-barrier to our detox experiences in India. I hope you enjoy the podcast! In this podcast, Dr. Gupta and I discuss: Her study of Ayurveda, a 5,000-year-old system from India that taught us the circadian clock, modern science discovered what Ayurveda taught 5,000 years ago about living in rhythm with nature The three doshas or constitutions of Vata

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon argues we've been focusing on the wrong idea for 50 years…the problem isn't that we're over-fat, it's that we're under-muscled.  Skeletal muscle makes up 40% or more of your body and is an underrecognized endocrine organ that secretes myokines (signaling molecules) when contracted, impacting the brain, liver, pancreas, and truly every body system. Yet skeletal muscle wasn't even considered an organ system until about 25 years ago! The diseases we think of as obesity-related—type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease—are actually diseases of skeletal muscle first, decades before symptoms appear. When Dr. Lyon asked a PCOS expert what body fat percentage contributes to infertility, the answer shocked her: "It has nothing to do with body fat percentage—it has everything to do with the fat infiltrated into the muscle, the intermuscular adipose tissue (IMAT)." The new US Dietary Guidelines (which Dr. Lyon witnessed being announced on stage) recommend 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kg

Over 30 million women in the US deal with some form of pelvic floor dysfunction…nearly 1 in 4 women.  In this episode, I speak with Jana Danielson, founder of Lead Pilates and creator of the Cooch Ball (and no, that's not a typo!), who reveals shocking realities about the urinary incontinence product industry.  Even though they'll top $24 billion in profit this year, 9 out of 10 people could fix incontinence if they learned to breathe correctly and stopped being such literal "tight asses" (her words, not mine). Listen to the podcast to hear all of Jana's insights.   In this podcast, Jana and I discuss:   Why over 30 million US women deal with pelvic floor dysfunction—nearly 1 in 4 women—and the urinary incontinence product industry will top $24 billion this year The pelvic floor can be too tight (hypertonic) or too loose (hypotonic)—too tight causes one set of symptoms, while too loose causes another About 90% of erectile dysfunction is actually a fitness/movement issue, not medical…when pelvic floor mu

In this episode, I am speaking with Dr. Loretta Breuning, who is the founder of the Inner Mammal Institute. She's the author of many personal development books, including the one that I have read of hers, which I highly recommend, and found fascinating, called Habits of a Happy Brain.

Periodontist Dr. Al Danenberg was diagnosed with incurable bone marrow cancer (multiple myeloma) in September 2018 and given 3 to 6 months to live. His oncologist wanted to start chemotherapy the next day, but Dr. Al rejected chemo and instead focused on natural methods to help his body heal.  While Dr. Danenberg has since passed on, he survived most of his remaining years with an outstanding quality of life, shocking his oncologist and maintaining such good health that his gut microbiome diversity was in the 97th percentile. In this episode, filmed in March 2023, Dr. Al discusses his diagnosis and why he believed his cancer stemmed from toxic exposures in dental school in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He emphasizes that all cancers are diseases of lifestyle, and that there are very few wild animals with cancer and very few primal societies with gum disease, tooth decay, chronic diseases, or cancer. Dr. Al also explores a few somewhat shocking oral health ideas, including why dental plaque is actually healt

Did you know that, in the United States alone, one in two women and one in four men over the age of 50 will have a fracture due to osteoporosis?  And if this happens to be a hip fracture, 24% will die within a year due to complications, while an even higher percentage will never be independent again.  The most unfortunate part is that conventional doctors typically just prescribe vitamin D, calcium, and maybe a non-specific form of exercise…then immediately put you on medication without examining root causes. In this episode, Margie Bissinger, a physical therapist with over 25 years of experience treating osteoporosis, reveals the real culprits behind the bone density epidemic, including sugar, gluten sensitivity and gut inflammation, proton-pump inhibitors like Nexium and Prilosec, corticosteroids, antidepressants, stress and cortisol, and sedentary behavior. Listen to the full episode to get all of Margie's actionable information to avoid or even begin reversing osteoporosis. This episode was initially rele

Dr. Izabella Wentz is a renowned pharmacist focused on thyroid health. In this episode, she reveals a shocking pattern: about 90% of people with Hashimoto's have alterations in how much cortisol they release throughout the day.  They struggle with brain fog, chronic fatigue, and sleep issues—tired all day, wired at night—even when they're on thyroid medications. She's discovered something fascinating about "adrenal fatigue" that challenges both the old naturopathic model and the skeptics.  Your adrenals aren't damaged or lazy…they're perfectly capable of producing hormones. "Adrenal fatigue" is an intelligent adaptive response where your body down-regulates cortisol production to protect itself from chronic stress, essentially saying, "This is unrealistic, we can't pump out high amounts of cortisol all the time." After being forced to find solutions during years of severe sleep deprivation with her son, Dr. Wentz developed a 4-week protocol that has now helped thousands of people. By week two, people report t

In this episode, Dr. Bonnie Kaplan shares a statistic that should stop everyone in their tracks: 50% of people will be diagnosed with a mental disorder at some point in their lifetime. When she was a kid in the 1950s, that rate was 1% or less. As a professor emeritus at the University of Calgary and co-author of The Better Brain, Dr. Kaplan has spent decades researching what went wrong. She shares the case of "Andrew," a 10-year-old with childhood psychosis who recovered on micronutrients when six months of psychiatric care failed…yet his doctor refused to try it with other patients because "it's not part of clinical practice guidelines." This episode was initially released in July 2022

This interview took place on a historic day: the FDA removed the black box warning for HRT (hormone replacement therapy) after 20 years. My guest, Dr. Mariza Snyder, author of The Perimenopause Revolution, explains why this matters and why women have been suffering needlessly for decades while doctors dismissed their symptoms as "just aging" or "just stress." Perimenopause is the 4 to 10-year transition where hormones wildly fluctuate before menopause, and Dr. Snyder calls it "the window of vulnerability." She uses a powerful metaphor: imagine estrogen as your brain's master CEO who shows up like clockwork from 9 AM to 6 PM for 30 years. Then, suddenly, without warning, it shows up at 2 PM one day and leaves at 11 PM, then shows up at 6 AM the next day and leaves at 11 AM. Your brain scrambles trying to regulate energy, neurotransmitters, sleep, mood, and cravings. The most compelling insight of our conversation is a Mayo Clinic study that found 84% of menopausal women don't seek care. Why? Because they feel