DOCTOR’S CORNER
SOMETIMES the days seem very long and keeping your energy up in the middle of a long day seems nearly impossible.
How can you avoid getting so tired without constantly taking on board huge quantities of sugar and caffeine? How many of us slam countless energy drinks and cups of coffee to try to do so?
We are always working hard, but due to our unhealthy lifestyle, we are often desperately struggling to increase our physical energy.
Below are five simple techniques to increase your daily energy.
A crucial factor in your ability to increase your energy and keep it up is to avoid getting trapped in “the vicious stimulant cycle.”
So many people take stimulants to increase their energy, only to crash later on.
This crash is compensated for by taking more stimulants, resulting in an even bigger crash.
Finally at night, such people experience poor quality sleep due to stimulants remaining in their body, waking up groggy the next morning. This grogginess is relieved by taking more stimulants.
Every day, the cycle repeats itself. Every day, the user’s tolerance to stimulants increases. Thus, every day, they must increase the amount of stimulants to get the same “lift” which is often followed by an even bigger “crash.”
The biggest thing you can do to improve your energy is to improve your mental game. No amount of exercise, herbs or other drugs can increase your energy if your mind and beliefs will not allow them to.
The mind has a profound ability to increase or decrease your physical energy in direct accordance with your mood and beliefs.
To increase your energy, you must believe you have energy. Recent research indicates that if you improve your cognition, you improve your energy.
A clearer mind makes you more energetic. And to improve cognition, you want to eat Omega-3 fatty acids.
The anti-oxidants in food help with brain function and memory. So you must plan to eat extra servings of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains.
Particularly good sources are flax seeds, walnuts, and soybeans.
Aim for six to eight ounces of salmon per week. If you don’t get these fatty acids regularly at least supplement your diet with fish oil.
All of this will help keep your head clear and your mind engaged as well as keeping you from getting so tired in the first place.
Water is crucial for keeping your mental and physical energy up throughout the day. Sometimes fatigue is actually dehydration, but you may not feel thirsty and therefore don’t know how to address it.
Insufficient water consumption has been shown to be a huge factor in people feeling low on energy at work, especially during the late morning and early afternoon.
Drinking water keeps your physiological systems working properly and flushes out toxins as you go throughout your day, allowing you to operate much more efficiently and have more energy. Water stimulates metabolism. It does this in several ways, and one way is the simple fact that when cold water enters your body, your body must increase your heart rate to heat the water in order to maintain equilibrium.
Water stimulates your digestion by making it easier for your stomach to break down your food and transport it to the cells in your body.
At the very least, the majority of your physiological systems are stimulated when drinking water. Thus, simply pounding glasses of water, processing them and using the bathroom will help you stay alert and keep your energy up.
Your diet is massively critical in regulating your energy! If you are following a “diet” of greasy, fried, refined and sweetened foods, you’ll greatly increase your physical energy and mental energy by simply changing how you eat.
Out of all the physically fit and energetic people I know, unquestionably, the ones with the “cleanest” diets are the ones with the highest energy levels! Grease, simple sugars and processed fats all add to mental “fog” and hurt your body in countless ways.
Cleaning up your diet can be done in countless ways. Eliminate sweets. Cut back on greasy or fried meals. Avoid heavy starches.
Recognise and avoid heavily processed food. These simple changes can literally increase your physical energy within only a few days.
The excessive carbohydrates that most people consume via sweet snacks, juices and pizza, for example sap physical energy all on their own.
The heavier the meal, the more blood your body must allocate to digest it.
As a result, most people are in a continuous state of digestion the entire day, and a good portion of their blood that could be flowing in their brain is assisting their stomach, engaged in devising ways to digest the synthetic, sweetened and processed snacks they consume to “gain energy.”
