I used to think burnout meant working too much or pushing too hard in the gym. That it was reserved for athletes, CEOs, and “overachievers.” But living with endometriosis has shown me another side of burnout — and until more recently I wasn't as in-tune the to reasons behind this as I should have been (#humbled).

I used to look to the adrenals (adrenal fatigue, anyone?), low nutrients, blood sugar dysregulation, and more. And yes, of course these can play a big role in energy... or lack-there-of. Seriously, I'm not down playing them.

Yet, I wasn't totally aware of just how entrenched exhaustion can hide deep in the central nervous system until the past few years when I threw myself deep into the world of nervous system dysfunction and retraining.

When you have a dysregulated nervous system response, it alone can create a feeling that is more than "just being tired." It’s the kind of exhaustion where your brain and spinal cord — your body’s entire command center — simply cannot keep up. You wake up already drained! You try to do something simple, like fold laundry or walk the dog, and your body acts like you’ve just done prolonged exercise. Your muscles feel weak and uncoordinated, even though you didn’t overtrain. Your sleep is wrecked, your mood swings without warning, and brain fog makes it hard to string a sentence together.

Some of us call it chronic fatigue. Others refer to it as "Spoon syndrome." However, it could also be referred to as be CNS burnout. And for those of us with chronic illness, especially endometriosis, it’s not rare at all. It’s the missing piece that explains why fatigue occurs so deeply and why flare recovery can take weeks instead of days. It may be why you've tried everything and simply don't have the voltage to move through life.

Luckily, we can rehabiliate! Read on

What Is Central Nervous System Fatigue?

Real image of woman with CNS burnout considering exercise.

CNS burnout — also called central nervous system fatigue — happens when your nervous system is overstimulated by stress signals for too long without adequate recovery.

Think of your nervous system as a fuse box. It doesn’t just power your muscles (through motor neurons, muscle contractions, and muscle activation); it also manages hormones, digestion, immune response, and mood. When every wire is firing at once — pain signals, inflammatory cascades, chronic stress, disrupted sleep patterns, emotional stress — the system can start misfiring. This is basically nervous system dysfunction.

But when the dysfunction lasts too long, it can lead to a sense of burnout. The high alert stage has exhausted itself into a hibernation phase.

For athletes, CNS fatigue results from months of high intensity exercise, inadequate rest periods, or even chronic overtraining. But for women with endometriosis (or really anyone with chronic inflammation, stress, illness, or sensitivities), the causes are quieter and crueler: years of inflammation, hormonal imbalance, and relentless stress. Over time, this leads to nervous system fatigue where your body can’t distinguish between a life-threatening emergency and simply getting out of bed.

This is why with endometriosis, physical fatigue shows up even when you “haven’t done much.” It’s not laziness. It’s not weakness. It’s the central fatigue of a system that’s been running emergency mode on repeat. And while muscle fatigue (like lactic acid buildup after a workout) clears in a day or two, chronic CNS fatigue can sometimes take months to unwind.

And because the central nervous system (CNS) controls everything from neurotransmitters in the motor cortex to your immune defense, burnout destabilizes your entire system: mood regulation, digestion, hormone balance, and your body’s ability to heal. It's also why addressing it is paramount to deeper healing.

Signs of CNS Burnout in Endometriosis

The hardest part of CNS burnout is that it doesn’t just show up in one way. It spreads across every system in the body, making it feel like you’re falling apart piece by piece. For those living with endometriosis, chronic illness, or chronic fatigue, these layers of nervous system fatigue stack on top of pain, inflammation, poor digestion, and hormonal chaos — which makes recovery even trickier.

Physical Symptoms and Performance Decline

You might notice a shift in physical performance — not in the gym, but in daily life. Walking up the stairs leaves your legs shaking. Carrying groceries feels like an entire training session. Even holding posture at your desk can feel impossible.

This isn’t just muscle fatigue from exertion. It’s your nervous system struggling to send signals to multiple muscle groups and muscle fibers at once. The result? A body that feels clumsy, heavy, and strangely uncoordinated. For many with endometriosis, this looks like a sudden flare crash.

Mental and Emotional Symptoms

Because the central nervous system governs neurotransmitters, CNS fatigue doesn’t just drain your muscles — it impacts your mind. Suddenly, your reaction time is slower, your brain feels foggy, and even simple tasks feel monumental. You might have just about ZERO emotional resilience (like you drop some of your breakfast on the floor and rather than clean it up and make some more food like an adult, you have a flood of emotions so intense it's like you're world is over).

Mood becomes unstable. Anxiety spikes easily. Irritability comes out of nowhere. Sometimes you feel emotionally flat, disconnected from yourself. These are classic signs of nervous system fatigue.

Sleep Disturbances

Despite being beyond exhausted, people in CNS burnout often struggle with poor sleep — lying awake with a racing mind, waking repeatedly, or sleeping eight hours but rising unrefreshed. For someone with endometriosis, where pain already disrupts sleep patterns, this compounds the problem. Without quality sleep, the brain and spinal cord cannot reset — and the fatigue deepens.

Immune and Inflammatory Signs

Endometriosis already involves an overactive immune system. Add central nervous system fatigue and you may notice colds, swollen lymph nodes, flare-ups that linger, or slow healing. The underlying mechanisms are clear: immune, endocrine, and nervous systems are interconnected. When one burns out, the others follow.

Everyday Red Flags

Food cravings (sugar, caffeine) that crash you harder later.
Feeling “run down” that persists despite adequate rest.
Trouble concentrating — “endo brain fog.”
Even gentle physical activity wiping you out instead of helping.
Low emotional resilience, the world hits you much harder than it should.

Why CNS Burnout Hits So Hard in Endometriosis

Chronic Stress as the Default Setting

When we spend a LOT of time in CAN emotions (cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine) it is a HUGE energy and nervous system drain.

With endometriosis, the body’s stress response is rarely off. Pain is stressful. Loss of control is stressful. Medical trauma is stressful. Laying at home scrolling online because we don't have the energy to socialize in real-time is stressful.

Over time, chronic stress can train the nervous system to stay in CAN chemistry (cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine) as a protective default. Take a look at the picture here, how often are you spending time in the red zone? it is a HUGE energy and nervous system drain. Over time this floods the adrenal medulla, disrupts cortisol, and alters how motor units and motor neurons fire signals. Suddenly, even mild physical exertion feels like maximal force output.

Pain, Inflammation, and Energy Drain

While athletes burn through muscle glycogen in a previous workout, endo bodies burn through reserves just fighting inflammation and regulating hormones. It’s hidden physical exertion that feels like endurance sports, but without the medal. You can literally see this if you have a stress tracker like the WHOOP or Aura Ring, where your "stress levels" may be sky high even when you're not in a traditionally stressful moment (you can read about my own realizations about that here, and why I recommend a month of tracking). Think: Red light stress when walking the dog or cleaning the dishes. This can come from an inflamed or sick body. The cost is constant increased fatigue.

Inadequate Recovery in Daily Life

Athletes schedule rest days. Endo patients rarely get true recovery days. Even when “resting,” it’s fragmented by pain and responsibility. This lack of adequate recovery keeps the nervous system stuck in survival mode.

Poor Sleep and Nutritional Depletion

Broken sleep patterns prevent neurotransmitter reset, leading to disrupted serotonin synthesis and dopamine depletion. Add in nutritional losses from inflammation, restricted diets, and low amino acids, and your nervous system lacks the raw material for repair.

Recovery Pathways: How to Overcome CNS Fatigue

The truth about CNS burnout is that it won’t resolve overnight, and it often takes many approaches working together. It’s kind of like healing serious pelvic floor dysfunction: you might need pelvic wand work, strengthening and relaxation exercises, deep core retraining, posture improvement, glute activation, and neural rewiring. No single tool is enough — it’s the layering of many tools that addresses the deep roots of dysfunction.

CNS burnout is similar. To re-regulate the nervous system, you won't just be prescribed "rest." Rather, you may need to rethink how you interact with the world, how you reframe those ruminating and rehashing thoughts to neutral, how you nourish your body with food, how you move and build muscle, how you rest without distraction (deep rest versus stimulated screen rest, for example), how you reduce inflammation, and what your mental and emotional body needs to finally feel safe. There are many moving parts. And that’s the heart of what I’m focusing on in my new clinic, Healing Foundations Lab. Because even with endometriosis and other forms of CNS burnout, healing is possible.

Here are some of the foundational pieces:

Retraining the Brain with DNRS or Primal Trust

When you’re living with central nervous system fatigue, part of recovery involves teaching your brain new patterns. Programs like DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System) and Primal Trust™ are powerful tools for this.

Both approaches use neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire itself — to break cycles of survival mode. By practicing specific techniques daily, you gradually shift your nervous system fatigue out of constant fight-or-flight and back into balance. This isn’t about ignoring pain or pretending you’re fine! It's not about saying your symptoms are invented in your head.

Rather, these programs help us understand how our nervous system can be a driver of some of our worst symptoms and that, by retraining, we can create new neural pathways that help the brain respond with safety instead of alarm, even in the face of chronic illness triggers.

For example, if you're dealing with chronic fatigue in real life, may may start to realize how much your brain has adopted this as your "default mode" and you may have trouble simply visualizing yourself with energy while laying on the couch with your eyes closed. Seriously, imagining running up a large hill or bustling through morning chores? You may be mentally exhausted or even unable to imagine it! And this is where mental practice literally can help shift reality, because if you're brain is holding on hard to the idea you are exhausted, it won't get the memo you are very ready to be vital again.

In my practice I integrate these tools with clients who feel stuck in fear loops, hypervigilance, or exhaustion that doesn’t improve with lifestyle alone. They can be the missing link in learning how to overcome CNS fatigue and reclaim regulation.

Rewiring Triggers with Biolight Technology

Another cutting-edge support I use in practice is Biolight therapy. This technology works with frequency-specific light to retrain the nervous system’s reaction around up to 40,000 different triggers — from foods and environmental sensitivities to emotional stressors.

If you haven't read my posts about how this work treated my son of his life-altering food sensitivities and my own histamine intolerance, know that my scientific mind has been blown by the success of this system.

How? For someone with endometriosis or other chronic conditions, the nervous system often “remembers” certain inputs as danger signals. Biolight helps gently re-pattern those associations at the level of the brain and spinal cord, calming exaggerated responses and reducing symptom flare-ups.

Think of it as helping your nervous system learn a new language — one that’s less about alarm and more about regulation. Over time, this process can lower physical symptoms, improve resilience, and give you more freedom in daily life.

Using HTMA as a Nervous System Roadmap

In my practice, I also use HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) as a way of mapping what the body is holding onto — and what it’s depleted in. Minerals are the spark plugs of the nervous system. Imbalances can affect everything from dopamine levels to stress tolerance.

Through HTMA, we can see patterns like:

Chronic muscle fatigue linked to calcium-magnesium imbalance.
A “calcium shell” that reflects long-term trauma defense
Low sodium-potassium ratios connected with burnout, anger, or suppressed energy.

Rather than just chasing symptoms, I use HTMA to guide clients into nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle shifts that support both body and mind. Combined with nervous system retraining and Biolight therapy, it provides a truly integrative path to recovery.

Prioritize Rest Without Guilt

One of the hardest things for people with endometriosis to accept is that deep rest is medicine. When you’re experiencing nervous system fatigue, pushing through will only deepen the crash. The nervous system needs rest periods and recovery days that are longer and more frequent than you think.

Sometimes this looks like lying down in the middle of the afternoon with a cup of tea and a good book. Sometimes it means canceling plans and choosing your body over expectations. Sometimes it means letting go of guilt and saying “not today.” Gentle active recovery can help — walking slowly, stretching, restorative yoga — but the key is keeping intensity so low that your body feels soothed rather than pressured. Rest isn’t weakness. Rest is what makes recovery possible.

Physical Exercise as Nervous System Therapy

When you’re living with central nervous system fatigue, the thought of physical exercise can feel overwhelming. But when it’s approached gently and strategically, movement is one of the most powerful tools to help your nervous system recover.

Move for joy, not calories, to build back up your reserves.

Unlike pushing through high intensity exercise that can worsen CNS fatigue, low to moderate physical activity actually strengthens your system over time. Movement builds mitochondria — the tiny energy factories in your cells — which improves energy production and reduces that heavy, exhausted feeling. Exercise also stimulates circulation and lymphatic flow, helping the body detoxify and clear out inflammation that worsens pain.

Over time, regular, supportive exercise supports muscle growth, improves posture, and enhances overall exercise performance — not because you’re training for sports, but because your body learns to handle daily life with less strain. Movement also stimulates endorphins and helps regulate neurotransmitters, calming pain pathways and improving mood.

The key is pacing and listening. Think of gentle walking, swimming, yoga, or bodyweight strength work — low intensity workouts that condition your nervous system without overwhelming it. As capacity builds, your system becomes more resilient, making it easier to handle stress, reduce pain, and slowly rewire out of CNS burnout.

When done with care, physical exercise isn’t just about fitness. It’s nervous system therapy — helping your brain, muscles, and mitochondria learn to thrive again.

Rebuild Sleep as Medicine

Quality sleep is the single most powerful tool for recovering from central nervous system fatigue! Yet with endometriosis, sleep is often the first thing stolen — by pain, hormones, or chronic stress. That makes it even more essential to rebuild sleep as a cornerstone of healing.

This might mean creating consistent sleep routines, protecting your evenings from blue light, or using gentle tools like meditation, breathwork, or body scans to calm the peripheral nervous system before bed. It also means supporting neurotransmitters like GABA and regulating dopamine levels so your brain can cycle through deep repair phases.

Without quality sleep, your brain and spinal cord cannot reset. But when sleep improves, every other layer of recovery becomes easier.

Nourish With Proper Nutrition

Minerals and nutrients are the raw materials your nervous system uses to repair itself. When you’re depleted — as so many with chronic illness are — you don’t just feel tired, you stay stuck in CNS fatigue because the body doesn’t have what it needs to rebuild.

Give your body the building blocks to recharge

This is why proper nutrition is non-negotiable. Protein and amino acids support neurotransmitter production. Complex carbs replenish muscle glycogen and give your brain steady fuel. Omega-3s protect the muscle membrane and reduce inflammation. Magnesium calms the system. B vitamins drive serotonin synthesis and energy pathways.

When you eat this way, you’re not just nourishing your body — you’re actively giving your nervous system the tools it needs to rewire and heal. And, if you do this in tandem with Biolight Therapy to reduce sensitivities, your body may be able to tolerate many of the foods you need that you were reacting to before, helping even more to calm the system.

Regulate the Stress Response

The body’s stress response is often stuck in “on” when you have endometriosis. Your vagus nerve and parasympathetic pathways need help remembering how to switch back into repair mode. That’s where daily regulation practices come in.

Breathwork, with long slow exhales, can signal safety. Somatic practices — gentle shaking, humming, or simply orienting to your environment — release tension stored in the body. Journaling can help empty the mind’s endless tabs. Trauma-informed therapy can support deeper repatterning when the system has been living in survival for too long. Primal Trust programs are excellent at teaching these supportive tools.

These aren’t “extras.” They’re core practices that help your nervous system fatigue unwind and teach your brain that it’s safe to downshift.

Seek Professional Support

Sometimes, recovery requires outside support. If poor sleep persists (you can track really well on a WHOOP or Aura ring), then consulting a sleep specialist can be beneficial. You may be mouth breathing all night, grinding your teeth, or have sleep apnea. You may consider extra calming herbs and nutrients (such as the ones Huberman recommends which, in all honesty, helped me immensely in getting deeper sleep consistently).

If proper nutrition feels impossible in the midst of flares, a nutritionist can create a plan tailored to your reality. If anxiety, hopelessness, or trauma cycles are keeping your system stuck, a therapist or coach can provide guidance.

Professional support isn’t a sign of weakness — it’s a form of wisdom. Healing from CNS burnout isn’t just about what you can do alone. It’s about building a team that helps your nervous system recover from every angle.

Moving Forward: Redefining Recovery with Endometriosis

Living with endometriosis means carrying more than most people see: pain, fatigue, and nervous system overload. But when you fall into central nervous system fatigue, it means your body has been in survival mode for too long and may need a loving, helping hand to get back up.

Healing requires patience, gentleness, and deep nourishment. It means honoring your physical symptoms, building proper nutrition, and protecting the fragile circuitry of your brain and spinal cord. Each choice — better sleep, one rest day, one breath — is a signal to your body: We are safe now. We can heal.

You can’t erase endometriosis. But you can reclaim resilience. And step by step, you can overcome CNS fatigue and find steadiness again.