How To Beat Low Energy

Low energy level is something that affects more people than you know. The first thing to think about is work. Sometimes, work and its environment contain vital clues about what may be wrong. Also are you under any kind of stress, work related or not? While a little bit of stress may be good, constant unrelenting stress drains the body of essential B vitamins paving the way for bouts of tiredness and other illnesses.

How many hours quality sleep do you get in one night? A minimum of 6 hours is needed to recharge the body and allow it to face the rigours of a new day.

Do you eat breakfast, or are you one of the armies of people who leave home in the morning without eating? Leaving home without breakfast is like moving the car out of the garage knowing that there is no fuel in it! It will stop somewhere along the road. However, you must watch what you eat! Eating simple, refined carbohydrates like white bread and most cereals will push the body into a “yo-yo syndrome" that provides too much glucose too quickly. Your body needs a steady supply of glucose to provide energy. In my experience, taking a protein only breakfast is one of the best ways of doing this. I sometimes make myself a 3-egg omelette garnished with shrimps followed by a large cup of green tea. This I find holds me together until well past lunch time without the need for a top up.

If however you are one of those who love your carbohydrates, using whole grain carbohydrates like wholemeal bread supported by some kind of protein like chicken, turkey or eggs is a viable alternative. The presence of the protein slows down the absorption of carbohydrates, allowing steady supply of glucose for energy generation. When you take no carbohydrate at all, the body creates the glucose it needs from non-carbohydrate sources, usually fat, a process called gluconeogenesis. Because the process pulls fat out of storage to be burnt it is useful for people trying to get rid of excess body fat.

As to supplements, I find that pycnogenol and a good multivitamin/mineral complex plus CoQ10, a natural enzyme that is intimately involved with energy generation form the basis of what you may need. Minerals and vitamins participate in very many of the energy generation cycles – especially the B vitamins – while pycnogenol is an antioxidant that douses the fires of free radicals whether generated internally or taken in from the environment. CoQ10 is an enzyme that your body uses a lot of. When we are young we produce it fairly steadily. The older we get, the less we make. It is however a vital ingredient for the mitochondria, the small organelles inside which each cell generates its own energy. Without CoQ10 the energy factories slowly shut down one by one. Some recent research actually shows that heart failure happens because the mitochondria in the heart muscle cells have all but gone to sleep.

Antioxidants perform unending miracles in the body, but we are unaware of most of it. There are 5 of them that, for me, form the core of what we need. They are Vitamin C and Vitamin E, CoQ10 and glutathione plus alpha lipoic acid. To explain the activities of these antioxidants will take too long. Suffice it to say that taking fresh fruits and vegetables will supply a lot of them.

Finally, you need exercise. This does not necessarily mean you need to get on a treadmill, jog like a maniac or become a latter day athlete. A brisk walk for about 10 – 15 minutes especially if it is up a gentle hill will do the trick. Any kind of physical exertion produces endorphins from the pituitary gland. Endorphins are hormones that give a feeling of well being and sometimes euphoria and also block pain sensation. Dancing is an activity that generates endorphins and if you love dancing, gets on your dancing shoes!

I am sorry this has gone on for so long. I wish this could have been written with 5 bullet points. However I am one of those doctors who believe that my patients need to understand the basis of the way in which the body works to be able to understand why it may be necessary to do or avoid some things. I am aware that we are all individuals and solutions to problems need to be for each individual. If you still have some questions, please feel free to ask them and I will try to answer specifically for you.