Energy Levels

Your energy is impacted by so many variables! Let’s explore the big ones.

ENERGY LEVELS: Rating Influence

ENERGY LEVELS: Discussion

1

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Influence on energy levels: 10

When people are chronically tired — look to gut health.

The microbes in your gut digest your food, release nutrients for you to use, and fight off opportunistic pathogens.  Manipulating these flora is critical to turning the food you eat into energy, proper nutrient absorption, high-functioning immunity, and improving your energy levels long term.

While true health of the gut depends on many factors, including hormones, nutrition, diet, and sleep — the front lines of gut health (and therefore your energy levels) are certainly in the microbes (flora) that live in the intestines.

2

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Influence on energy levels: 10

Think light doesn’t affect your energy levels?

Ever felt great after a day at the beach?  Or felt exhausted sitting under fluorescent lights?  It’s not just stress of the job or sitting all day that makes you fatigued or unhealthy.

Light has the power to impact your blood pressure, stress hormones, and enzyme activity in your blood stream.

Light also directly affects your brain chemistry, gut health, inflammation, and sleep quality. 

Whatever you do for your health, don’t ignore the light in your environment.

3

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Influence on energy levels: 10

The circadian rhythm is perhaps the single most important variable controlling how you feel every day.

Lagging energy? It’s nearly guaranteed that sleep is suffering, too.

Your brain needs sleep to remove metabolic waste toxins and encode memories for learning — and your gut needs timely sleep so it can digest your food properly and fend off invading pathogens.  

There’s a reason sleep is rated a full 10 on this chart:  It’s of utmost important for energy levels.

4

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Influence on energy levels: 9

Food is important. Especially when you make big mistakes.

But are you focusing almost entirely on food to solve health problems?

What’s important with food is this:  Stop eating foods that irritate your digestion, but then work to improve your gut health and tolerance of other healthy, natural foods. Restricted diets often lead to nutritional deficiency. As always — eat mostly real, natural foods — with less artificial junk.

Additionally, don’t avoid carbs unless you absolutely have to — it can be really bad for the metabolism — otherwise known as: your energy levels.

5

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Influence on energy levels: ?

Chemicals, mold, EMF, air quality, light, and even poor relationships. 

Become aware of how an unhealthy a home/work environment is. Whether the problems are a “sick building” — involving EMF, light, air quality, mold, or “other humans” — this could be a powerful first step in changing or leaving that environment.

Sometimes improvement happens fastest not by what we add to our lives, but by what we subtract — and that goes for the buildings in our lives, too.

6

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Influence on energy levels: 7

Nutrients can be a rapid way to change how you feel.

…that is, if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t — it can also be a quick way to feel worse.

For most people, supplements don’t do “nothing”… they do A LOT.  And for many, it’s a lot of bad.

Getting nutrient balance out of whack is a major problem among health-seekers.  Let’s make sure we are balancing nutrient intake safely and healthfully.

7

Influence on energy levels: 7

When the thyroid slows down, it often slows down for a reason. There’s a real cause — resulting in real effects within your body.

Many look to their thyroid first when their energy levels fall — and it makes sense:  the thyroid controls the metabolism, and the metabolism controls how well you turn energy into food.

Whether it’s undereating, going low carb, low immunity (with resultant elevated infectious load), poor gut health, trauma, or ongoing life stress — the thyroid responds to all of these variables by depressing the metabolism. 

Simply boosting the metabolism again — by taking thyroid hormones — sometimes yields results, but if the underlying causes aren’t addressed, the result could actually be as much harm as good.

Hence — this relatively low ranking for the thyroid when it comes to energy levels.  Sure, your thyroid is important — but so is whatever crisis it is responding to. 

Let’s get to the root cause of your energy issues, not just boost the metabolism artificially.

8

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Influence on energy levels: 6

Exercising for optimal health is a different approach than typical fitness.

Modern gym habits designed to create extra-large muscles (via hypertrophy & isolated repetitions) are likely not so great for long-term health.

Now, what if you’re struggling with chronic illness?  Intense exercise is likely to utterly wipe you out — leaving you unable to recover for days afterward.

Figuring out how to move — sustainably — is a critically important step to improving your energy levels.