GOOD
Health
Spring Into Sustainable Energy For Your Body Feeling tired, like tired-all-the-time tired? Health and energy depend on each other. So why is it that many young and healthy adults feel the need to reach for high-sugar, energy shots, or caffeinated drinks multiple times throughout the day?
T
he reality is that many social and environmental forces are contributing to the modern health issue of low energy and are pushing many toward the need for stimulants, keeping them in the cycle of short-term energy and then long-term crashing. • The Multitasking Myth: Lives are more hectic these days, and dare we say we make them more hectic than they need to be. Our juggling of work, home, digital, and social lives is filled with demands which most glorify as “multitasking”. Despite what we might believe about our talented abilities to multitask, research shows that we are
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March/April 2022
not that great at it. Mental demands add up and begin to take their toll, increasing stress and exhaustion which in turn makes us more vulnerable to other energy sucking patterns. • No Movement Means No Energy: When we move our bodies, we not only decrease the mental stress with the release of endorphins, we actually promote our bodies to properly rest once we relax. Alternatively, sitting around and being inactive is an incubator for fatigue. But it is very hard for someone who is mentally exhausted to push through and be physically active. It is a cycle that in the end leads to less and less energy.
• Poor Sleep: So many factors can contribute to a bad sleep. Digital devices, lack of time spent outdoors, lack of exposure to natural light, overall stress— these all disrupt our innate need for sleep and natural circadian rhythms. • You Feel What You Eat: Here’s the daily dilemma: fatigue drives choices for calorie-dense, nutritionally-inferior foods that make us feel worse! High-fat, highsugar “comfort foods” give a (very shortlived) energy and mood lift, but the day after consuming these foods, our mood is lower and tends to be prone to negativity.
