Chronic Fatigue Doctor in Orem, Utah
You sleep eight hours and wake up exhausted. Your doctor says your labs look fine. You've been told to reduce stress, drink more water, maybe try an antidepressant. But you know something is wrong. Functional medicine investigates what conventional medicine misses, and Dr. Drussel at Integrative Motion has the tools to find it.
Does this sound like you?
If you're checking off more than a couple of these, you're not lazy. You're not making it up. Your body is telling you something, and it deserves a real investigation.
- Exhausted no matter how much you sleep
- Brain fog and difficulty concentrating throughout the day
- Afternoon crashes that make you want to crawl under your desk
- You need caffeine just to function like a normal human being
- Your doctor told you your labs are "normal" and to "just reduce stress"
- You feel like you're running on empty all the time
- Exercise makes you more tired, not less
- You've been offered antidepressants when you know you're not depressed
Why you're still tired
The reason you're still exhausted is that nobody has looked deep enough. A standard physical with a basic metabolic panel checks the bare minimum. When those numbers come back in range, you get sent home with advice to sleep more and stress less. But "in range" and "optimal" are two very different things.
Dr. Drussel sees this pattern constantly at Integrative Motion. A patient comes in for chiropractic care because they keep getting injured, their muscles won't recover, and they can't build any momentum with their health. After digging into their history, the picture starts to make sense. He runs a standard CBC and finds out the person is anemic. Once the anemia is handled, all of a sudden the muscles heal better, the fatigue lifts, the spasms stop. It was never a structural problem. It was a systemic one hiding underneath.
Here are the root causes Dr. Drussel investigates when a patient comes in with chronic fatigue:
- Anemia and iron deficiency - one of the most common and most overlooked causes of fatigue, especially in women
- Magnesium deficiency - involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions in the body, and most people don't get enough
- Thyroid dysfunction - your primary care doctor checks two markers, but there are nine. Those seven extra markers tell the real story of whether your thyroid is actually functioning or just technically alive
- Adrenal and cortisol dysregulation - your stress response system may be stuck in overdrive or completely tapped out
- Gut issues affecting nutrient absorption - if your gut is inflamed or compromised, you're not absorbing the nutrients you eat, no matter how clean your diet is
- Chronic low-grade inflammation - your immune system working overtime in the background drains energy you don't know you're losing
- Blood sugar instability - riding the glucose rollercoaster all day creates energy spikes and crashes that mimic chronic fatigue
- B12 and folate deficiency - critical for energy production at the cellular level, and deficiency is more common than most doctors realize
Most of these won't show up on a standard physical. That's the gap functional medicine fills.
How we investigate chronic fatigue
Dr. Drussel doesn't start with a lab order form. He starts with a conversation. Your detailed health history is the most powerful diagnostic tool in functional medicine, and it costs nothing.
He wants to know when the fatigue started, what was happening in your life at that time, what makes it better or worse, what your sleep actually looks like, what you've already tried, and what your diet, stress, and exercise patterns look like. From there, symptom surveys establish a baseline of how every system in your body is functioning right now.
When labs are needed, Dr. Drussel is selective and strategic. He doesn't order a $2,000 panel when your history already points the way. Common testing for fatigue includes:
- CBC (complete blood count) to check for anemia, infection markers, and overall blood health
- Full thyroid panel (9 markers) including TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3, and thyroid antibodies, not the two markers insurance typically covers
- Metabolic markers including fasting glucose, HbA1c, and fasting insulin to evaluate blood sugar regulation
- Nutrient levels including iron, ferritin, B12, folate, vitamin D, and magnesium
- Inflammatory markers like CRP and ESR to detect chronic inflammation
- Cortisol and hormone panels when the history suggests adrenal or hormonal involvement
The goal is to confirm what the history already tells him, not to run every available test. If diet and lifestyle changes can address the issue without expensive labs, that's the first move. Dr. Drussel has seen enough patients to know when a test will change the plan and when it won't.
What treatment looks like
There is no universal "energy protocol" at Integrative Motion. Dr. Drussel doesn't hand every fatigued patient the same stack of supplements and send them on their way. Your treatment is designed around the specific cause we find.
If you're anemic, we address the anemia. If your thyroid is under-converting T4 to T3, we address the conversion issue. If your gut is inflamed and you're not absorbing nutrients from your food, we fix the gut first. The protocol follows the problem.
Treatment may include:
- Targeted nutritional supplementation based on confirmed deficiencies (iron, B12, magnesium, vitamin D), not guesswork
- Diet modifications to stabilize blood sugar, reduce inflammation, and support gut healing
- Sleep hygiene optimization because quantity of sleep means nothing if quality is poor
- Stress management strategies to regulate cortisol and support adrenal recovery
- Addressing underlying thyroid dysfunction with the full clinical picture, not just TSH
- Gut restoration protocols when nutrient malabsorption is the bottleneck
This is a process, not a quick fix. Dr. Drussel monitors progress at regular follow-ups (typically every 4 to 8 weeks), adjusts the protocol based on how your body responds, and reorders labs when necessary to track improvement. Some patients feel noticeably better within weeks. Others need a few months of consistent work. The timeline depends on the root cause and how long it's been going on.
The chiropractic connection to chronic fatigue
A lot of fatigue patients don't walk into Integrative Motion asking about functional medicine. They come in for chiropractic care. Their back hurts, they keep pulling muscles, they've got recurring injuries that never fully heal. They assume it's a structural problem, and sometimes it is. But sometimes the structure isn't resolving because there's something systemic underneath that nobody has looked at.
Dr. Drussel sees this regularly. A patient comes in with chronic muscle spasms and recurring injuries. They're doing everything right: getting adjusted, doing their exercises, managing their activity. But they can't get ahead of it. So Dr. Drussel digs deeper.
"We run a standard CBC and find out the person's anemic. Once we handle the anemia, all of a sudden their muscles heal better, they don't fatigue, they don't spasm. The structural work finally holds because we addressed what was undermining it."
That's the advantage of having chiropractic and functional medicine under the same roof. An MD doing functional medicine can't adjust your spine. A regular chiropractor can't investigate your blood work. Dr. Drussel does both, and the combination is where patients finally start getting answers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sleep quantity is only part of the equation. If your body is dealing with nutrient deficiencies (iron, B12, magnesium), thyroid dysfunction, blood sugar instability, or chronic inflammation, no amount of sleep will make you feel rested. Your body is using all its resources to manage an underlying problem, and there's nothing left over for energy. Functional medicine identifies which system is draining you.
A standard chiropractor treats structural issues, which is valuable but won't address systemic fatigue. Dr. Drussel is different because he practices both chiropractic and functional medicine. If your fatigue has a nutritional, hormonal, or metabolic root cause, he can investigate and treat it. If there's also a structural component (many fatigued patients have chronic tension and pain), he addresses both simultaneously.
A thorough fatigue workup should include a CBC (for anemia), full thyroid panel (all 9 markers, not just TSH), iron and ferritin, B12, folate, vitamin D, magnesium, fasting glucose, HbA1c, and inflammatory markers like CRP. Most primary care doctors only run a fraction of these. Dr. Drussel orders targeted panels based on your specific history and symptoms.
"Adrenal fatigue" isn't a recognized medical diagnosis, but the symptoms people describe are very real. The more accurate term is HPA axis dysregulation, which means your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress response system isn't functioning properly. Chronic stress can cause cortisol patterns to become erratic, leading to exhaustion, brain fog, and crashes. Dr. Drussel evaluates cortisol patterns and addresses the underlying stress response dysfunction.
It depends on the root cause. Simple nutrient deficiencies like iron or B12 can show improvement within 4 to 6 weeks of targeted supplementation. Thyroid and hormonal issues may take 2 to 3 months to stabilize. Gut-related fatigue often requires 3 to 6 months of consistent protocol work. Dr. Drussel sets realistic expectations based on your specific situation and monitors progress at regular follow-ups.
"Normal" lab ranges are built for detecting disease, not for identifying optimal function. You can be technically within range and still feel terrible. Functional medicine uses tighter, evidence-based optimal ranges and tests markers your primary care doctor may not have ordered. For example, most thyroid panels only check TSH and maybe T4. Dr. Drussel checks all nine thyroid markers. Those extra seven often tell the whole story.
Stop Surviving. Start Living.
You've spent enough time being tired and being told nothing is wrong. Call Integrative Motion in Orem, Utah and let Dr. Drussel find out what's actually going on.