The Metabolic Toolbox

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About Us
☰

The Metabolic Toolbox

At the Metabolic Toolbox we give people who are sick and tired the nutrition and lifestyle tools to rebuild their health and regain their energy.

*Emi C (33 year old woman): "...over the past 3 years my physical and mental health has declined. Getting out of bed and getting dressed is a huge struggle. When get to work I'm unmotivated and have poor productivity. At home I'm just tired and want to go straight to sleep. My body hurts all the time. Almost always have a constant brain fog or drain, can't pay attention or remember things. I know I need to change somehow, I want to change, but I just don't know how to change."

☆ Are you tired of feeling exhausted and ill?

☆ Are you done with being depressed and just existing?

☆ Do you have Long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) or similar disorder?

☆ Do you have any type of metabolic disorder: Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), fatty liver, obesity, abnormal blood lipids, etc.?

☆ Do you have an autoimmune disorder?

☆ Are you depressed, anxious, and stressed out? Do you suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD or CPTSD)?

☆ Do you want to feel healthier and have more energy?

☆ Are you fed up with doctors dismissing your health concerns? Or telling you that feeling crappy is normal at 'your age' or 'your weight'?

☆ Do you find yourself desperate enough to try unproven, expensive or dangerous remedies?

☆ Do you want to regain your zest for life using scientifically sound and REALISTIC lifestyle and diet changes?

☆ Are you too tired and too busy to read hundreds of research articles on this stuff?

☆ Are you tired of poorly written and inaccurate AI 'articles' on health issues?

☆ Do you need solutions that won't cost you a lot of money?

Below: Long COVID saps your strength. A scene from the book Aunt Louisa's Nursery Favourite by Laura Valentine (1870).

Laura Valentine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We want to help you regain your passion for life

Our goal in creating The Metabolic Toolbox is to help you regain energy and take back your life. Whether you suffer from Long COVID, heart disease, diabetes, depression, insulin resistance, fatty liver, chronic fatigue, bipolar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) or any other metabolic or chronic fatigue disorder; we can help.

Surprised by the inclusion of mental disorders in this list? Your brain is affected by the same conditions as your body. Improving your physical health also improves your mental health.

Pinwheel Susan Fluegel

Do you have LONG COVID?

If you are interested in participating in Long COVID studies check out RECOVER: Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery Long COVID research studies. You will receive payment for participating in these studies and help advance knowledge of Long COVID.

Right now the RECOVER team is exploring 13 possible treatments for Long COVID. They are looking at autonomic dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, viral persistence, sleep disturbances and exercise intolerance and fatigue.

Types of Long COVID Studies

Observational studies: You will not be asked to get any treatment, medications or shots. Your health will be monitored with check-ups and blood tests.

Clinical trial studies: You will get treatment for Long COVID. It could be conventional or experimental therapies and/or medications. Obviously, you get to check out and consent to the treatment beforehand.

What do we do at The Metabolic Toolbox?

We provide YOU with the tools to fix your health and regain your energy using the latest evidence-based research on nutrition, exercise, stress relief, light therapy, nature exposure and more. We give you realistic solutions you can start implementing today.

Lori and I, Susan, are two nutritional scientists who love reading a riveting biochemistry research paper or analyzing conflicting information on diets. We talk about this stuff in our free time and debate it over lunch. We are not afraid to dive into new and innovative therapy techniques like forest exposure, light therapy and more.

We condense the information for you and give sensible recommendations on how to reduce inflammation and regain vitality. For those of you who want more information, we summarize the biochemistry responsible and provide links to the papers we reference. All of our recommendations are supported by real science not pseudo science or wishful thinking. Please check out the research for yourself. Learn more about both Susan and Lori in our page cleverly titled About Us.

This website will discuss the development and pathology of MetS, Long COVID and related disorders; how nutrition and diet can accelerate or reverse the course of these disorders; and how current research supports using specific diets to prevent and treat people.

We have the research and scientific background to back up our statements. Check out the references for our webpages (almost all are freely available online). You can link to the original research studies by checking out the reference section at the bottom of each web page.

In the interests of not boring our readers to death and making this website easier to read for non-science people, I often condense minor older references (especially those behind a pay wall) by referring you back to the research paper where they are initially discussed. I usually indicate this by saying 'see discussion in FancyPants McPaperface 2024'. You can find all the references at the original paper if you want to learn more about the topic.

Learn more about us and our credentials here.

How to use this website as a health professional or as a person who just wants to feel better

You can use these recommendations as is or as a jumping off point to help yourself or your loved ones feel better and get healthier. Check out our research (we have done our homework).

If you are a health professional you can use these guidelines to develop sound, scientifically based MetS prevention and MetS and Long Covid treatment plans for your patients and clients.

All our information is based on current real scientific knowledge. We update our information as research progresses in these fields.

*Names and some minor identifying details in all stories in this website are changed to protect people's privacy.

This information is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

References:

Al Amir Dache Z, Thierry AR. Mitochondria-derived cell-to-cell communication. Cell Rep. 2023 Jul 25;42(7):112728. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112728. Full article.

Komaroff AL, Lipkin WI. ME/CFS and Long COVID share similar symptoms and biological abnormalities: road map to the literature. Front Med (Lausanne). 2023 Jun 2;10:1187163. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1187163. Full article.

Ryu KW, Fung TS, Baker DC, Saoi M, Park J, Febres-Aldana CA, Aly RG, Cui R, Sharma A, Fu Y, Jones OL, Cai X, Pasolli HA, Cross JR, Rudin CM, Thompson CB. Cellular ATP demand creates metabolically distinct subpopulations of mitochondria. Nature. 2024 Nov;635(8039):746-754. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08146-w. Full article.