TIRED ALL THE TIME?

This article was originally published in Families magazine.  

London based Nutritionist Penny Crowther offers some natural solutions for raising energy levels.

Most of us would like more energy. Every year millions of people go to their GP complaining of tiredness. There are probably also millions more who don't bother to consult a Doctor but who have energy levels which are low enough to significantly affect their quality of life and prevent them from achieving as much as they want.

If you feel persistently tired, your Doctor's surgery is a good place to start if only to rule out any serious underlying health problem. Once you have done this you may wonder where to turn next. It can be really frustrating when you know there is something wrong yet you are being told you are perfectly healthy.

The Nutrition Connection

The air we breathe, the food we eat, our stress levels and the emotions we feel all have a significant impact on our energy levels. Our nutrition is probably the factor that we can most easily influence. Many people don't realise that how they feel both physically and emotionally and their resistance to stress, can be strongly influenced by what they eat.

For example, a client of mine came to me for advice on healthy eating. He mentioned in passing that he suffered badly from anxiety and also that he drank 6- 8 cups of coffee per day. He had not made any connection between the two. Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that sets off hormonal reactions in the body and the quantities this man was drinking were affecting his nervous system. This is an extreme example but there are many less dramatic ones. The way in which a food or drink affects us varies according to individual biochemistry. Some people are so sensitive that they cannot metabolise a single cup of coffee without getting the jitters.

The healthy eating mantra that we hear most often is “eat a balanced diet” with plenty of fruit and vegetables. Many people think they eat a “balanced diet”. But, in my experience as a nutritionist, very few people (official estimates suggest it is only 3% of us) actually eat a truly healthy diet containing optimal levels of nutrients. The main problem is that the concept of a “balanced diet” is too vague and unspecific. Dietary needs will vary subtly according to the individual and must be tailored to the person to fit their unique health picture.

Sugar Blues

One extremely important factor in the food – mood – energy equation is blood sugar balance. When you eat carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, sweet foods or chocolate, your digestive system breaks them down into glucose, a form of sugar which can be absorbed by your body and used for energy. Ensuring that there is just the right amount of glucose in the blood at any one time is a delicate balancing act and is the function of hormones including insulin.

Constant over-stimulation from the wrong foods can over time lead to inefficient blood sugar control. Diabetes which can be diagnosed by a conventional medical test is an extreme state of blood sugar imbalance involving insulin deficiency. However many people have an imbalance which does not show up in a test but can be assessed by the presence of clinical symptoms which may include:

• Finding it difficult to get going in the morning.
• Mid afternoon energy slumps.
• Mood swings.
• Dizziness, weakness or irritability on not eating for a few hours.
• Lethargy, apathy or drowsiness.
• Excess sweating.
• The need for caffeine, chocolate or sugary snacks as a pick-me-up.
• Feeling “spaced out” or “not with it.”
• Hard to shift weight around the waist.

One of my clients thought she had an eating disorder because she could not stop herself bingeing on sweet foods and had been doing so for years. She could not believe that a few simple changes to her diet together with some mineral supplements caused her to completely lose the sweet tooth that she had become resigned to.

Stress and Blood Sugar

Stress is likely to exacerbate a blood sugar problem and vice versa. When your blood sugar crashes your adrenal (stress) glands have to pump out hormones to raise it again. Similarly, if you are stressed your blood sugar levels will rise in order to provide energy to deal with the situation.

Our prehistoric ancestors would have burnt off the excess energy by fighting a wild animal or running back to the nearest cave! Unfortunately, in our modern day sedentary lives without an outlet for physical action, we are often left with an over-production of hormones and over-stimulated glands and organs, leading in time to exhaustion.

Glandular Factors

Adrenal gland and thyroid gland function is key to maintaining good energy levels and these glands can be supported with herbs and nutrients. There are laboratory tests to assess adrenal and thyroid function.

Toxic Overload

In the modern world it's impossible to avoid coming into daily contact with toxins of some sort or another. We are subjected to a daily cocktail of toxins, for example in household cleaning products, toiletries and cosmetics, traffic pollution and chemicals in our food to name but a few. But doing some internal housecleaning can make the body more efficient at expelling the toxins before they have time to do any damage. The main line of defence against toxins is healthy organs of elimination, which are the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin, bowel and lymphatic system.

Your Internal Plumbing System

The colon or lower bowel is a potentially huge source of toxicity from within the body. In a healthy colon the food mass is able to make close contact with the intestinal wall allowing proper absorption and assimilation of nutrients into the system. What so often happens is that the colon wall becomes encrusted with mucoid plaques from partially digested foods which form a barrier around the wall, blocking absorption of nutrients and providing a breeding ground for all sorts of unhealthy bacteria. If you don't have regular bowel movements (and most of us don't if you consider that a healthy bowel will evacuate its contents twice per day) impacted, putrefying faeces will add to the cocktail of toxins. A sort of self-poisoning occurs whereby the toxins circulate from the bowel to the liver and back again. Not surprisingly, all this toxicity will affect your energy levels. You'll feel sluggish and tired or you may feel vaguely unwell as if you've got a hangover but without having drunk any alcohol.

Blocked Pipes

Eating the wrong sort of foods (which includes foods that you are intolerant to) is the main reason for such unhealthy gut conditions. The protein in wheat called gluten is particularly hard for the body to break down and if partially digested can form sticky chewing gum-like deposits on the gut wall. Imagine trying to poke a piece of chewing gum down a test tube and getting it stuck all around the insides of the tube and then you'll get the idea of what your colon may look like!

Giving your body an internal spring clean is common sense and it can prevent more serious health problems developing in the long term.

The Whole Picture

So as you can see, there can be many underlying factors behind a problem such as fatigue. A nutritional therapist is specially trained to identify the root cause and implement a naturopathic based treatment programme. To book an appointment for a one to one nutrition consultation call 020 8767 3893.