In my practice I help people improve their energy and get the most out of their day. Increasing your energy often centers around removing the things in your life that are draining you. Feeling drained or lacking in energy is commonplace in our society and can be felt as fatigue, tiredness or exhaustion.
For some these symptoms are mild and infrequent, for others they are debilitating. In more serious cases, symptoms that accompany fatigue include, chronic tiredness, irritability, moodiness, impaired hand eye coordination, reduced immune system function, muscle weakness, low motivation and poor concentration.
Wherever you are on the spectrum, if you suffer from fatigue, the first thing you should do is see your healthcare provider. There are a number of medical conditions that can be ruled out including anemia, cancer, hypothyroid, nutritional deficiencies and sleep apnea.
It’s also important to access lifestyle choices around diet, alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes and drug use. Our diet and lifestyle choices play an integral role in our long term health and greatly influence the development of chronic illness. This is becoming increasingly important as chronic illness such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases have become the most common causes of death worldwide and statistics show our average lifespan is now declining for the first time in decades.
If you’ve ruled out the more obvious causes of fatigue and are still feeling drained, you may have to take a deeper look. Fatigue is multifaceted and can be caused by a number of factors including physical, mental, and environmental. Anything that puts stress on the body and drains your energy can cause fatigue. When we look at all the sources of physical and mental stress present today it’s no wonder fatigue and exhaustion are so commonplace.
Food
Food is an obvious place to start when looking at physical stressors on the body. Food is our fuel and what we put in our bodies has a huge impact on our energy output. When investigating food we’re looking at the kinds of food being eaten, the quality of the food, the ratios of micro and macro nutrients and the body’s response to the food.
Sugar and Refined Carbohydrates
Sugars are essential to our survival – but in the right quantity and form. Refined sugar is corrosive and damaging to our health. Processed foods like white bread, pastry, and breakfast cereals that convert into simple sugars also have this damaging effect. They provide little to no nutritional value but take energy to digest.
Diets high in sugar have a causal relationship to obesity and type 2 diabetes. They give us a temporary boost in energy but in the end we crash. Excessive sugar negatively impacts our mood, our ability to handle stress, and contributes to feelings of fatigue.
Macronutrients and Micronutrients
Finding the right balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat for your body and lifestyle can be a major factor in how fatigued you feel during the day. Each macronutrient plays an important part in driving our energy. Determining the right portion and timing to meet your specific needs will help reduce feelings of fatigue and can even improve your sleep.
Protein, carbohydrates, and fat are important factors to consider – but so are micronutrients. Micronutrients are obtained from eating a wide range of whole foods. They provide all the vitamins and minerals that are essential to the workings of our body. Being deficient in just one micronutrient can cause us to feel drained and fatigued. Micronutrient deficiencies can be assessed through your healthcare provider.
Food reactions
Sometimes eating a healthy whole food diet isn’t enough. If you suffer from food allergies, food intolerances or food sensitivities, eating certain foods can cause damage to the body. In these situations, the body reacts with an inflammatory response causing a wide range of symptoms from anaphylactic shock, skin rashes, bloating, aching joints, leaky gut and heart burn to name a few. Eating foods that react negatively in your body can be an underlying source of fatigue and ill ease.
Toxic Exposure
Our environment is filled with carcinogenic and neurotoxic chemicals, many of which are a result of mankind. These toxins are in our ecosystems, our food and our bodies and affect our health long term. Toxins in the environment are being linked to decreasing populations of many birds and insects, and over 250 known toxins have been identified in the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies. Common sources include pesticides, cleaning products, plastics, toxic molds, heavy metals, industrial and commercial product chemicals, fragrances and cosmetics.
Fruits and vegetables are some of the most healthy food choices we can make. Unfortunately they too can be a major source of toxic load due to modern agricultural practices.
Monsanto, the company that makes the pesticide Roundup recently lost a number of court cases where it was proven that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, caused cancer. The evidence showing a causal relationship between glyphosate and cancer is mounting.
Roundup is the most commonly sprayed pesticide in the world. This means that glyphosate is in our ecosystems worldwide. The choice to buy organic food is an attempt to avoid ingesting cancer causing chemicals. And perhaps even more importantly, it allows us to use our buying power to stop the spread of these harmful chemicals in our ecosystems.
Our bodies work hard to manage and process the toxic load they are exposed to and the harder your body has to work to try and maintain proper functioning the more drained you will feel.
Mental Stress
Stress that affects us mentally is typically what we refer to when we talk about stress. We use sayings like, “I’m stressed” to refer to our ability to cope with what is occurring around us. Mental stress not only drains our mental energy but affects us physically and contributes to fatigue.
Mental stress can come from anywhere in our life; family, health, relationships, the workplace. Some of the stress we experience is out of our control. But we can control how we manage the situation we’re in and how we choose to react to it. How we frame the events in our lives can greatly affect how much stress we experience.
There are many ways that stress can be managed both physically and mentally. Recognizing and managing your sources of stress is an important step in addressing energy levels.
Loneliness and isolation
The ultimate punishment in our prison systems is solitary confinement, isolation from other beings. This shows how important social connection is to us. From an evolutionary standpoint, being part of a community was essential to our survival. The same is true today, social connection is integral in our wellbeing.
In today’s world, many people feel isolated and disconnected from themselves and from others regardless of how many people are around us. Smartphones make it even easier to disconnect and lose ourselves in an alternate world.
Loneliness and isolation affect both our physical and mental energies. Common symptoms include depression, anxiety, and increased inflammation and stress hormones. There is also a correlation with increased risk for dementia, addiction and suicide.
Sleep
The most obvious lifestyle factor that affects our energy levels is sleep. Sleep is essential to our health and well-being, allowing our bodies to restore and repair. When we’ve had a great sleep we feel incredible!
The amount and quality of sleep are both important. Things that can affect our sleep include not getting enough, imbalanced hormones, not reaching the deeper stages of sleep, medical conditions like sleep apnea, being woken up by children or noises, too much caffeine or alcohol, improper diet, stress, an overactive mind, sensitivity to light and electro-hypersensitivity (EHS).
There is increasing concern about the negative effects of mobile devices on our sleep patterns and how they contribute to fatigue. Research shows that we tend to stay up later when on our screens, getting less sleep overall. Artificial light emitted from our devices suppresses melatonin production and signals our bodies to wake up. There is also evidence suggesting that the electromagnetic radiation given off by our devices can negatively affect our sleep.
Movement
The amount and type of activity in our lives can greatly affect our energy levels. It’s well known that exercise can increase our energy but you also need to have energy in order to expend it in the first place. It’s best to tailor the amount and type of physical activity to your body’s current ability.
Adding exercise into your life should relieve stress. If your exercise regime is causing you physical or mental stress then you might want to re-evaluate. On the other hand, if you lead a stressful lifestyle and have an overactive thinking mind, exercise might be just what you need to give you relief and allow a good night’s sleep.
Technology
Technology has made lives more convenient but it’s also added a new kind of stress for us to navigate. Technological stress affects both our physical and mental bodies.
Man made electromagnetic fields (EMF’s) are generated from smartphones, wifi networks, cell towers, smart meters, appliances, and electronics. EMF’s interact with our physiology and there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting they can have ill effects. Some people claim to have a sensitivity to EMF’s and have found relief from their symptoms of headache, nausea, anxiety, depression, and fatigue from reducing their exposure.
Receiving constant notifications from our devices activates the sympathetic nervous system, stimulating our fight or flight response. If left unmanaged, this minor stress felt repeatedly all day long can have a great effect on the body.
Increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide have all been linked to technology use. While we are seemingly more connected through our devices and social media, many feel more isolated than ever. When we grow up with a reliance on devices to fill our time we don’t develop the skill of learning how to sit in solitude with our own thoughts. For some being alone feels scary and unnatural, furthering addictive attachments to our devices.
Being aware of how our technological world affects our biology is becoming increasingly important. It may also be time to take a critical look at whether your technology use is negatively affecting your energy levels. Understanding its effects on our physical and mental bodies allows us to make better choices and provide more balance in our lives.
While we might not be able to remove all the stresses in our lives, but we can learn to balance them and minimize their effect on our body. Being aware of our sources of stress and managing them accordingly will allow us to maximize our energy levels and allow us to live healthier, longer lives.
