If you constantly feel tired and fatigued you are not alone. Chronic tiredness and fatigue is the #1 health complaint in America.
Do you push yourself just to get through the day? Do you depend on coffee or sweets for energy?
If any of this applies, this article is especially for you.
Even if you’ve been tired for years there’s hope because you are about to discover simple, natural ways to increase your energy and feel better fast starting today.
First, lets assume you get enough sleep.
Nothing takes the place of a good night’s sleep. Even with the health tips in this article, without enough sleep you’ll be tired and that’s that.
With that said, lets get started.
It takes two things to become healthy, energetic and feel good as the day wears on.
- Do things that build energy and vitality in your body, and;
- Avoid things that damage or destroy your health and vitality.
As simple as it sounds this advice is impossible to follow without knowing a few things.
For example, I bet you know someone who starts the day with a quad shot of expresso or a venti carmel something-or-other and a pastry from the local coffee shop.
The caffine and sugar wakes them right up. It also SLAMS the adrenal glands and SPIKES blood sugar to the sky.
Do this long enough and you wreck your adrenals, develop insulin-related metabolic problems, gain weight and will be tired pretty much all the time… not because God is picking on you… because you unknowingly wrecked your metabolism.
After you read this article, the "unknowing" part will be right out the window because you are about to discover how to beat tirdness and fatigue and have enough energy and vitality naturally to work or play all day and still feel great well into the evening.
Here we go.
Metabolism is a set of chemical reactions that occur in a living organism in order to maintain life.
When your metabolism works properly you feel good and have abundant energy throughout the day.
Your energy level depends on a few basic factors that in combination have a massive influence on how you feel.
Factors that control your energy level include;
- Oxygen transfer on a cellular level.
- The effect of chemicals and toxins on energy.
- The effect of diet on energy.
- The effect of stress on energy.
- Other factors only a medical doctor can help you with.
Oxygen Transfer On A Cellular Level
If for any reason your cells do not receive 100% the oxygen they need to function at peak efficiency, tiredness and fatigue is guaranteed.
When you inhale oxygen fills your lungs and is transferred from your lungs into the blood, which circulates throughout your body supplying fresh oxygen to each and every cell.
Essential fatty acids, (EFAs) are essential nutrients that play a crucial role in transferring the oxygen out of the blood and into the cell.
Without sufficient EFAs, cell oxygenation becomes less efficient, which means the cell is forced to operate with reduced oxygen, which means you’ll feel tired and fatigued practically all the time.
EFAs are no longer abundant in the food supply. In fact, unless your diet is rich in cold water fish and raw seeds and nuts you’re probably not getting all the healthy EFAs you need.
How well would a car engine run if each cylinder was just a little short on power? Imagine the cumulative effect of a trillion cells, each one just a little short on oxygen – no wonder people are tired!
Exercise and deep breathing help oxygenate your blood by increasing the amount of oxygen taken in by the lungs, but exercise and deep breathing can never overcome the effect of a nutritional deficiency.
If the essential fatty acids your body needs to facilitate oxygen transfer on a cellular level are not available, it doesn’t matter how much oxygen you breathe in, it will be under-utilized.
In today’s world of pre-packaged food a deficiency in essential fatty acids is common because these nutrients are extracted from food during food processing.
EFAs not intentionally removed are chemically distorted through a process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation completely destroys the beneficial metabolic value of an essential fatty acid and turns them into a liability inside the body.
It’s no coincidence that as the level of naturally occurring EFAs in food has declined and as hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils have become a staple in most people’s diet, more and more people complain about chronic fatigue.
If you’re constantly tired and fatigued, consider supplementing your diet with high quality plant of fish source EFAs on a daily basis to help ensure efficient oxygen transfer to your cells. This alone may give you a noticeable jump in energy.
How Chemicals And Toxins Drag You Down
When your great-grandparents were children there were only about 2000 man-made chemicals in existence, today there are over a hundred thousand man-made chemicals and these chemicals are everywhere and found in just about everything.
Hundreds of different chemicals are used in food processing alone. Every day we encounter automobile exhaust, cleaning fluids, detergents, solvents, adhesives, and countless other chemicals.
Just by breathing, drinking, and eating you ingest a wide variety of chemicals and toxins and processing these chemicals puts a load on your liver and uses up a lot of essential nutrients.
Toxins not completely eliminated from the body build up over time and are stored, primarily in fatty tissue as far away from your organs as possible.
One reason people often feel bad when they start losing weight is because as body fat is broken down stored toxins are released in the blood.
Chemicals and toxins you encounter in the process of daily living drag your system down and drain your energy.
There is no single solution for dealing with chemicals and toxins, however there are some things you can do.
- Avoid physical contact with chemicals as much as possible.
- Read food labels and avoid foods loaded with chemicals, additives, preservatives that do you no specific good; may be harmful; and put a detoxification load on your liver and increase your need for essential nutrients.
- Engage in no acts of voluntary self-poisoning such as smoking, excessive drinking, and eating candy and junk food.
- Start your day by squeezing a half a lemon into a glass of water and drink it down. Lemon water is a great natural detoxifier. Try this and you’ll be surprised and delighted at how good you’ll feel.
- Everyday get fresh fruit and /or fresh green vegetables in your diet. These foods are loaded with nutrients and are rich in fiber to help keep you regular.
A tip for the constipated… an apple a day, (eat the peal), and a little exercise is FAR more effective than any laxative.
How Food Effects Your Energy Level
Your personal energy level and your long-term and shot-term health is powerfully affected by your food choices.
A diet high in candy, junk food, snack foods or high in processed carbohydrates such as rice, bread, pasta, potatoes, crackers, chips and so on is guaranteed to make you tired and fatigued.
It’s a profound mistake to think that carbohydrates give you energy or make you healthy. The opposite is true. A diet high in carbohydrates robs you of energy and will eventually make you ill.
Carbohydrates stimulate an immediate rise in blood sugar, which gives you a momentary burst of energy, but when insulin is dispatched from the pancreas to lower rising blood sugar, your energy drops right along with the blood sugar.
Insulin not only lowers rising blood sugar, it pulls blood sugar down lower than it was before you ate the candy, soda, bread, pasta, or other processed carbohydrate food resulting in a serious "energy low."
When that energy-low hits the usual response is to reach for another brownie, soda, snack cake, or hand full of chips or jellybeans. The result, more glucose, more rising blood sugar, another insulin response, a new energy low, and so goes the cycle.
Carbohydrates drain energy several different ways.
Insulin causes rapidly rising blood sugar to drop sharply, leaving you feeling exhausted and unable to concentrate. If you try to solve the problem by eating something else that quickly raises blood sugar, the cycle just repeats. Over time, this process results in obesity, food addictions (usually to sweets and /or carbohydrates), chronic fatigue, high blood pressure and can eventually lead to even more serious health problems.
Carbohydrate metabolism increases serotonin levels. Serotonin is the "sleep hormone." No doubt you’ve heard that a warm glass of milk before bedtime helps you sleep. This is true in part because milk is almost pure carbohydrate. A few minutes after consuming anything high in carbohydrates your serotonin levels begin to climb, your eyelids get heavy, you begin to yawn and find it difficult to concentrate on anything except how tired you are.
Sweets, junk food and all highly processed foods are typically high in carbohydrates. Consuming these foods on a regular basis sets the stage for developing serious nutrient deficiencies becase it takes more nutrients to process these foods than your body gets back from the food. In other words, eating junk food is like writing a nutritional hot check.
The entire purpose of food is to provide nutrients. Any food requiring more nutrients to process than it gives back in nutritional value is obviously a liability.
A diet is rich in foods that require more nutrients to process than they provide will rob you of energy and increase tiredness and fatigue.
From this simple analysis it’s clear that your food choices have a GIANT effect on your energy level.
Much more can be said about the effect of food on your overall energy level and I say it all in the 5 Steps to Optimal Health Program.
How Stress And Negative Emotions Drain Your Energy
Stress drains your energy, leaves you feeling exhausted and will eventually destroy your health.
- A few hours of emotional upset burns up more energy than a full day of hard physical labor. Nothing will exhaust you faster than losing your temper.
- All negative emotions are devastating from an energy expenditure standpoint and, if maintained over time, negative emotions can destroy your health.
- Anger, guilt, fear, frustration, anxiety, and all negative emotions send your body straight into hormonal chaos. And the eventual result is always complete exhaustion and a weakened immune system.
- Stress stimulates the flow of adrenaline and adrenaline is an extremely powerful hormone that must be used in some intense physical way or must be quickly eliminated from your body by other means.
Adrenaline gives a 120 pound woman the strength to instantly lift a 2500 pound automobile off an injured child.
If there is no automobile to lift because the adrenaline flood was caused by an argument or getting stuck in a traffic jam, the adrenaline still must be eliminated and this requires nutrients and energy.
Since most people are short on nutrients to start with, anything that demands even more of what’s in short supply is a problem.
Adrenaline produced in response to stress and negative emotions affects your system in a number of specific ways, and unless you are fighting or running for your life, every single one of adrenaline’s effects are extremely negative.
Adrenaline instantly shuts down digestion, increases blood platelets, speeds up your heart, initiates an insulin response, and this is just for starters.
Excess adrenaline turns you into a high tension, coiled steel trap – ready to spring in an instant. From an energy consumption standpoint, this is devastating; no wonder people with a lot of stress are exhausted!
Many people suffering with chronic exhaustion are the victims of their own negative emotions. Any strong negative emotional response results in a flood of adrenaline and a burst of energy followed by a quick energy drain leaving you bone tired and longing for sleep.
If stress or negative emotions control your state of mind, unless you stop it, you’ll eventually wreck your adrenal glands and that leads to an entirely new problem that makes tiredness and fatigue even worse and may eventually land you in a hospital.
In 5 Steps to Optimal Health you get a complete explanation of the stress response and learn effective way to eliminate negative emotions in your life and bring stress under control.
A number of excellent books have been written on stress. One of the very best and my personal favorite is The Stress of Life, by stress research pioneer Dr. Hans Selye, available online or at any bookstore.
One thing you can do to help combat the negative effects of stress is to take a good multivitamin.
Even though it goes unrecognized, most people suffer with nutrient deficiencies of one type or another and stress places enormous demands on your nutrient stores.
If you have a high stress lifestyle, there is every reason to believe you will benefit greatly from a good multivitamin.
Other Factors Only A Doctor Can Deal With
Your energy level is one of the most accurate predictors of your quality of health. Besides factors discussed in this article many other things can affect your energy.
A simple infection can make you feel like you’ve been run over by a large truck, even with a good night’s sleep.
An exhausted adrenal gland can elevate tiredness to an art form.
If you are tired and fatigued and there’s no obvious reason, like the obvious reasons discussed in this article, don’t wait around and hope for the best. Go see you medical doctor.
Here are some tips to increase your energy and feel better than ever.
- Supplement with essential fatty acids
- Avoid exposure to chemicals and toxins whenever possible and never engage in a willful act of self- poisoning, like smoking, excessive drinking or overuse of over-the- counter or prescription drugs.
- Avoid candy, junk food, all sugared drinks, processed foods and all food loaded with chemicals and additives you can’t pronounce.
- Enjoy a healthy diet that includes seasonal fruit and lots of fresh, green vegetables.
- Reduce stress when you can
- Eliminate negative emotions, get help if you need to, and learn how to control your emotional response so it doesn’t harm your health.
- Exercise! Nothing gives you more energy than falling in love with exercise and doing it regularly. Just do it!
And perhaps most important of all, learn everything you possibly can about health and put what you learn to work in your life.
With this information your energy level will soar and tiredness and fatigue will be gone from you life forever! Congratulations.
Remember, you can have excellent health, but you won’t get it by accident. Great health is a choice you can make. It’s easy when you know how!
Until Next Post… All The Best To You And Yours!
Russell J. Martino, Ph.D Bringing You Health… At The Speed Of Life!
This is a small sample of the practical, usable information in 5 Steps To Optimal Health, a program I wrote in 1999 and have updated continuously every year since. Learn more here: www.5StepsToOptimalHealth.com
Written by Dr. Russell J. Martino, Ph.D
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Tom Humes