- The relationship between digestive functions and fatigue
- How gut issues can mask as hormone imbalances
- The three categories of probiotics
Day 1
Powerful strategies to heal your digestion
"Heal your digestion"
- What autoimmunity is
- 5 pillars in the development of chronic inflammatory conditions
- The links between autoimmunity, inflammation and fatigue
- What inflammation is and why it matters
- How to test for inflammation
- Practical strategies to reduce inflammation
- What causes inflammation
- Why gut health is so important
- Practical strategies to reduce inflammation
- Why gut ecology is different in CFS
- The 3 P's to support bacterial changes
- The importance of circadian rhythms in gut health.
- The role of the nasal microbiome in inflammation
- Why addressing inflammation is so important
- Practical testing advice to identify root causes
Bonus Sessions
- Why gut health is so important
- What the gut/brain axis is
- How the OHC approach works to promote balance and healing
- What a healing state is and why its so important
- What helped Joanna calm her nervous system
- The lessons Joanna learned from being ill
- Please ensure you have enough space around you
- Best practiced in a quiet environment
- Running time 56 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 4 minutes
Day 2
Practical guidance to balance your hormones
"Balance your hormones"
- Why methylation is so important to healing
- How methylation diet can change genetic programming
- How methylation influences resilience and PTSD
- The role of cortisol in fatigue
- How cortisol interplays with other hormones
- Supporting your stress response and mitochondrial health
- What are bio-identical hormones
- The role of sex hormone balance in fatigue and pain sensitivity
- Strategies to improve hormone balance
- The role of your thyroid and adrenals in energy
- Why digestion is so important to healthy hormones
- Practical strategies for balancing your hormones
Bonus Sessions
- How perfectionism can be a block to healing
- How to break the habit of perfectionism
- How to ensure you still manage details in a sustainable and healthy way
- Why your relationship with yourself is so important
- How Richard learnt to connect to himself
- What life looks like from a place of inner connection
- Very gentle movement, mostly lying down
- Includes a calming breathing practice
- Running time 30 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 11 minutes
Day 3
Cutting edge frameworks and practical guidance for healing fatigue
"Cutting edge frameworks"
- The SHINE protocol for overcoming fatigue
- Why good sleep is so important
- The power of serum polypeptides
- Dr Wahls' inspirational story of healing
- Why nutrition is so important
- Practical strategies from the Wahls protocol
- The impact of inflammation
- Why healing a fermenting gut is critical
- How your mitochondria are at the heart of your fatigue
- How symptoms work as messengers
- How the functional nutrition matrix works
- Real-life case studies of healing in action
- The difference between functional and standard testing
- Which tests can be most helpful
- How to move forwards based upon results
- How to talk to friends about your fatigue
- How to deal with doctors not believing you
- How to ask for help and support
- Lloyd's story of how EMFs caused fatigue
- What the science tells us about EMFs
- Practical strategies to protect yourself from EMFs
Bonus Sessions
- The role of mitochondria in fatigue
- How functional testing can help assess mitochondrial function
- Practical strategies for mitochondrial healing
- How childhood experiences can cause us to disconnect from ourselves
- Recognising the hallmarks of disconnect
- How to learn to reconnect
- Please ensure you have enough space around you
- Best practiced in a quiet environment
- Running time 35 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 10 minutes
Day 4
Mind-body medicine and how it can support your healing
"Mind-body approaches"
- Healing attachment wounds
- How to understand and communicate your needs
- Practical tools for creating more connection and support
- Why healing inflammation is so important and how to do it
- The impact of leaky gut and poor liver function on your mood and emotions
- How to get started with healing from physical and emotional trauma
- What cell danger response is and how it affects energy production
- How to switch it off
- Where to start
- The impact of the vagus nerve on healing
- How to rebalance your vagus nerve
- Practical techniques to get started with
- How nervous system dysregulation affects energy
- Why calming the nervous system is critical to healing
- Practical strategies for switching off the nervous system
- Fiona's healing journey with yoga
- Why breathing is so important
- The healing power of deep rest
- Gail's story with yoga
- Why deep rest is so important
- How to get started
Bonus Sessions
- What trauma is
- How trauma affects our body
- Practical strategies for healing trauma
- The kinds of life conditions that can lead to somatized emotions
- The impact of somatized emotion on the body
- How to begin to process your emotions
The de-stress effect
- Please ensure you have enough space around you
- Best practiced in a quiet environment
- Running time 29 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 13 minutes
Day 5
Overcoming sleep issues and supporting deep rest
"Overcoming sleep issues"
- How digestion affects sleep
- Which vitamins affect sleep
- How to start balancing your vitamin levels
- How our gut bacteria drive sleep patterns
- Why inflammation plays a role in insomnia and poor gut health
- Why managing light exposure is key to better sleep
- The research for how EFT works
- How EFT can support you sleep
- Practical demonstrations you can follow along with
- What the parasympathetic nervous system is and why it is so important
- Which essential oils are most effective to support sleep
- Practical strategies for improving your sleep
- How hormonal imbalances affect sleep
- How to navigate the healing journey
- Why addressing viral infections can be so important in sleep
- The research for how mindfulness helps support sleep
- Why deep rest is so important for healing
- Practical demonstrations to get you started
Bonus Sessions
- Why sleep is so important for healing
- How stress hormones affect our sleep
- What you can do to bring balance
- Why and how we create non-authentic identities
- The cost of living out of alignment with our true self
- The challenges and benefits of finding an authentic path
- Please ensure you have enough space around you
- Best practiced in a quiet environment
- Running time 36 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 11 minutes
Day 6
Supporting immunity and overcoming mold, Lyme and viral infections
"Supporting immunity"
- How mold and Lyme cause fatigue
- How to support your healing
- How to sequence treatment
- Co-infections and related symptoms
- Key tests for borrelia, co-infections and viruses
- Protocol options for viruses and tick-borne diseases
- Why hazardous exposures can cause fatigue
- Similarities between Gulf War Syndrome and ME/CFS
- How to address and support healing
- How toxic mold causes fatigue
- How to get tested for toxic mold
- Which treatments work, and which order to do them in
- What are biotoxins and how they contribute to Fatigue and Autism
- The role of nutrition and herbs to support recovery from complex illnesses
- Why plant based approaches are so powerful
- The different forms of tick-borne disease
- How to effectively diagnose tick-borne disease
- Practical strategies for addressing tick-borne disease
- The key viruses involved in fatigue
- How to detect and diagnose viruses
- Powerful strategies for clearing viruses from your system
- Why infections play a role in fatigue and other CFS-related symptoms
- What do these infections look like and strategies to address them
- How to play infection ‘whack-a-mole’ for best results
- How mycotoxins affect energy levels
- How do you identify mycotoxins in your home and body
- Practical strategies for improving outcomes
- Why water damage is so harmful
- How to assess water damage
- Practical strategies for remediation
Bonus Sessions
- How emotions affect our body
- How to identify the role of your emotions
- What supports emotional healing
- The impact of several different psychological and physiological predisposing factors
- The process of reconnecting mind and body
- The role of trauma in perpetuating the maladaptive stress response
- Please gather several blankets, some pillows and an eye cover
- You will be guided to comfortably rest through the practice of Yoga nidra
- Running time 32 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 14 minutes
Day 7
The latest research and practical strategies for healing from long-COVID
"Strategies for long-COVID"
- The story of David's wife's experience with long-COVID
- Parallels with ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia
- The latest insight on treatments to support healing
- The concept of the inflammatory threshold
- The importance of lymphatic drainage and melatonin
- Why the vagus nerve and anxiety management help support immunity
- What autoimmunity is
- The role of autoimmunity in post-viral fatigue
- The role of PANS/PANDAS
- The importance of nutrition and gut health
- Practical ways to boost immunity
- The role of genetic testing
- What yoga therapy is
- How yoga supports healing
- The role of yoga in post-viral fatigue
Bonus Sessions
- The importance of perspective and self care in the role of carer
- What Nik would do differently as a carer now that he is a trained practitioner at OHC
- Practical lessons to support you now
- Why getting a diagnosis is only a first step
- What predisposes someone to fatigue
- How to map where someone is on the healing path
- Why self-care is so importan
- How to ask for help and get support
- How best to support your loved one
- How to take care of yourself as a carer
- How to be the best support you can for your loved one
- How to make the best of a difficult situation
- Please ensure you have enough space around you
- Best practiced in a quiet environment
- Running time 27 minutes
- Best listened to in a quiet environment
- Includes images, music and voice
- Running time 15 minutes
Meet your hosts
Alex Howard
Alex Howard is Founder and Chairman of The Optimum Health Clinic (OHC), one of the world’s leading integrative medicine clinics specialising in fatigue. With a team of 20 full time practitioners supporting thousands of patients in 50+ countries, the OHC team have pioneered working with patients remotely since 2005.
Along with founding and leading the OHC practitioner teams for the past 17 years, Alex is an immensely experienced psychology practitioner, having delivered over 10,000 consultations. He has also led the Therapeutic Coaching practitioner programme since 2005, training the next generation of psychology practitioners. Since March 2020, Alex has been documenting his therapeutic work with real life patients via his In Therapy with Alex Howard YouTube series.
In the last few years, Alex has created some of the largest online conferences in the health and mind–body markets; including the Fatigue Super Conference, and the Trauma & Mind Body Super Conference. Alex’s online conferences have been attended by over a quarter of a million people.
Alex has published research in publications such as the British Medical Journal Open and Psychology and Health. Alex is also the author of Why Me?: My Journey from ME to Health and Happiness, and his second book Decode Your Fatigue: A clinically proven 12-step plan to increase your energy, heal your body and transform your life was recently published by Hay House.
Kirsty Cullen
Kirsty’s interest in nutrition began as a consequence of health issues experienced by her own daughter, and later evolved due to her own mother’s experience with ME/CFS. After seeing significant improvement using nutritional therapy, Kirsty made the decision to become a practitioner herself and leave a successful corporate career. Following graduation Kirsty worked in the corporate wellness sector and also undertook a number of nutrition roles within the professional sports arena, assessing and advising football managers and elite athletes on health and nutrition. Kirsty also worked as Lead Nutritional Therapist at Derby County Football Club. Kirsty joined the team at the Optimum Health Clinic in 2011 working within the nutrition support team initially, followed by a role within the practitioner team and then subsequently as Director of Nutrition for the clinic, before becoming CEO in 2020.
Sara Jackson
Having worked in senior management roles in the fashion industry most of her career, a cancer diagnosis caused Sara to explore the life-changing benefits of nutrition and integrative medicine to assist her recovery and stay well. The power of natural medicine resonated so much with her that she retrained as a nutritional therapist and naturopath and had a successful private practice before joining OHC. Sara has a special interest in complex case management and a breadth of knowledge and experience across many diseases and health conditions. Sara is a passionate, calm and caring clinician with acute sensitivity to her clients’ needs. Sara has a proven track record, supporting her client’s recovery journeys with evidence-based nutritional guidance that has transformed the health and life of hundreds of individuals.
Claire Sehinson
Having recovered fully from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia and complex illness, Claire has a wealth of personal experience and knowledge to share. She has completed an MSc in Personalised Nutrition, AFMCP (Functional medicine in practice), NLP practitioner training (neurolinguistic programming) and clinical neuroscience modules whilst contributing to research in Autistic spectrum disorders. Claire has lectured in Biomedicine and continues to teach Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at several of the top nutritional therapy colleges in the UK. She contributed a chapter to Case Studies in Personalised Nutrition (a textbook for health practitioners and students). Before starting a career in functional medicine, Claire was a classical pianist in training and now works with individuals in the music industry with a focus on psychiatric and mental wellness, addictions and overall resilience in a very challenging and pressured industry.
Anna Duschinsky
Anna was the founding Director of Psychology at The Optimum Health Clinic, where for ten years she was responsible for developing the foundations of the Psychology department to its current level of international recognition. Anna holds a degree in Languages and Linguistics from Cambridge University, and has numerous qualifications in solution based psychological approaches to mind-body healing. For the last 15 years she has co-trained the Therapeutic Coaching practitioner training with Alex Howard, where she is now Course Director.