NO ENERGY, FOR NO REASON?
The Role Of Nutritional Therapy When You Have No Energy
You’re all over the place with no energy…you’re life has become chaotic because it’s all you can do to get up in the morning let alone get out to work or clear the decks and get into the garden…
You’ve no home life because you have to sleep all day or all evening just to function at all the next day and you can’t plan ahead although you know that would help
You used to have loads of get up and go but somehow it got up and went when you weren’t paying attention. You were fine one day, got by just fine, but now everything’s changed although the doctor ’s tests say it hasn’t.
Perhaps you were active, sporty even, a high achiever, ambitious, maybe a perfectionist but now you hardly have the energy to read this blog…
You wonder how it happened and you asked the doctor who said it hadn’t happened at all, “Look! Everything’s fine on these results…”
Ask yourself if everything’s ok? What if you took your will-power out of the equation, how much could you get done then? If the answer’s “Not so much…” then maybe there’s some help on these pages.
I hear the above all the time and many of my patients who come and see me at my practice in Belper, Derbyshire have benefited from adjustments in their lifestyle and nutrition.
BUT DON’T PANIC, THERE IS HOPE…
In nutritional therapy and functional medicine, problems with lack of energy, tiredness, dragging fatigue, exhaustion, brain fog, inability to do the things you used to do represents a loss of function.
Normal energy production means you wake feeling refreshed after a good night’s sleep, your mood is good, you look forward to the day ahead because its demands are within your scope.
You can walk the dog at pace if you choose and your recovery time is reasonable, you can complete daily tasks at home and at work without feeling wiped out by all but an extraordinarily demanding day and smiling isn’t an effort at all.
When others’ get viral infectioins that last for weeks, you can skip them or recover in days, because you’ve no pain to contend with you’re not using extra energy overcoming it and you’re not dead on your feet come 4pm
As a diploma-trained nutritional therapist, I’ll look for the root cause or causes of loss of function and address those through a programme designed for you and your unique presentation that’ll be easy for you to manage and which will help you feel fabulous again
What can go wrong with energy output?
Many factors can drive low energy levels from sub-optimal levels of iron, vitamin B12 and folate to sub-optimal thyroid function, nutrient deficiency, food intolerance…
…inefficient detoxification, adrenal insufficiency or burn-out, infection, toxicity creating a mitochondrial ‘clog-up’, stress overload weighing down on those ever-tolerant adrenal glands, lack of resilience, infection, blood sugar imbalance, poor sleep patterns, anxiety…
…unpredictable gut habits are just some of the things that can affect energy production
Feeling sluggish mid-afternoon, difficulty staying alert, may be to do with what you’ve had for lunch or that you’ve had nothing for lunch.
Maybe you haven’t figured it out and could do with some help form a professional?
Constipation is a lack of a daily, regular, easy bowel movement and this can contribute to headaches and sluggishness.
The build up of toxins from waste matter hanging around in the lower digestive tract creates changes in pH and can lead to disease.
Lack of fibre in the diet can contribute both to constipation and fatigue.
Hormone tests can establish whether the endocrine system is in balance or if one gland is stealing nutrients from the others.
What this means is that in a state of high stress the body will use its cholesterol stores to keep itself functioning.
It powers the emergency generator which is the adrenal glands' cortisol output in favour of such as the thyroid which although important are not immediately vital in terms of survival.
So the thyroid which supplies cell battery function may not get adequate resources. Conversion of thyroid hormones TSH to T4 and T4 to T3 may malfunction due to lack of key nutrients such as iodine, selenium, zinc among other things and this can affect energy levels.
HPA-axis dysfunction brought on by chronic stress in a go-go-go lifestyle where overwhelm starts to feel like fatigue, sleep is no longer restorative and digestion is less efficient can have wide-ranging effects across all body systems.
After a prolonged phase of chronic stress you can enter a resistance phase where for a while you keep going and you’re coping but due to a depletion of resilience and the hormone DHEA may not be that far from burn-out.
This final stage of exhaustion, leaves you incapable of much activity at all.
Infection can create fatigue while the body fights off bacterial or viral invasion.
Protein resources are diverted to creating Killer T and B cells to do this leaving us sleepy and lethargic during tis time.
Genetic SNPs may mean that your detoxification systems are not working optimally.
A sedentary lifestyle is a slow one that slows you down even more and leads to hormone imbalance, depression, low mood, lack of oxygen, weight gain.
Getting moving in the outdoors with plenty of sunlight and fresh air is a booster to energy reserves
A leaky gut can reduce energy levels by reducing the absorption of key nutrients and harbouring pathogenic bacteria which further reduce energy by contributing toxic waste which permeates cells and mitochondria, activates the immune system stealing precious energy to fight its battles
Digestive function affects our ability to produce energy via nutrient absorption, effective waste removal, manufacture of immune system and energy components, feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin, sleep hormones like melatonin, appetite hormones like grehlin and leptin.
Mitochondria are cell engines and sub-optimal function here affects that ‘gone away’ feeling of utter dropping fatigue and exhaustion
Emotional stress can be exhausting and debilitating and looking at changes to lifestyle, partnerships and friendships towards those more supportive, sympathetic and aligned to your natural self can make a big difference to your energy reserves.
Pain is draining and as a professional reflexologist with 17 years’ experience I am capable of supporting pain management and control using many different channels and combinations of points on the feet connecting to relevant pain sources within the body
Liver dysfunction and fat malabsorption; mechanisms here may be driven by genetic SNPs, faulty diet and lifestyle. Detoxification support can help here together with changes to food intake, exercise styles…
WHY IS A PROPERLY FUNCTIONING ENERGY SYSTEM SO IMPORTANT?
It is number one in optimising wellness. Without energy, where’s the real joy in anything?
LIFE CAN BECOME EASY AGAIN…
As a diploma-trained nutritional therapist, I search for answers to your health problems through functional testing using reputable labs going beyond basic freely available tests.
The results will establish better understanding from which to devise a therapeutic protocol targeted to you the individual.
The aim will be to support optimal health where currently you may be surviving just outside the realms of disease, and the catchment of conventional medicine.
This may be a safe space but it is not one in which you can necessarily thrive
I look for healthy mitochondrial function, toxicity markers, optimising the Kreb cycle, thyroid function, adrenal stress, levels of anti-oxidants, food intolerances, leaky gut, presence of pathogenic microbes, absence of symbiotic microbes, inflammation markers and factors contributing to them, absorption capacity, levels of key nutrients like magnesium, B vitamins, ferritin, pH balance, mineral balance, kidney function…
…and I’ll help remove the fear around food and what to eat, discuss lifestyle choices and any other contributing factors.
I work together with you to create a written programme that suits you and your lifestyle that includes how to choose food in your favourite shops that suits your body-machine, delicious recipes to back up what’s on your plan, handouts to explain the ‘why’, easy-one-step-at-a-time dietary and lifestyle changes for greatest effect.
With regular reviews at intervals that suit you and the programme you’re on, I can check how you’re getting on and support you to reclaim your daily routine so you can get on with your life socially, at home and at work.
Food is the core of wellness, as are lifestyle choices. So starting your healing investment portfolio by buying stocks in a health programme designed to support your optimal energy levels and wellness is a great idea! Come and see me soon…
Results may vary from person to person