Restoring Your Natural Vibrant Energy

"When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength is not to be found, wealth becomes useless, and reason becomes powerless."

Herophiles, 300 B.C., Physician to Alexander the Great

For many people vibrant energy is one thing of which they can’t seem to get enough. They may remember a time in their lives when they had more energy but for some, it may feel all too elusive now. I believe that explosive amounts of massive energy is inherently available to all of us. We are born with it and the potential for it remains with us throughout our entire lifespan. I believe we are all capable of enormous creative, intellectual, spiritual, and physical accomplishments of staggering proportions far beyond our wildest imaginations!

Vibrant energy is a natural by-product of good health and a balanced life which is best supported by the following ten fundamental elements:

• A healthy diet
• Adequate Physical activity
• Proper hydration
• Fresh air and being outside communing with nature
• Stress management
• Sufficient rest
• Adequate sunshine
• A satisfying social relationships
• A rewarding and fulfilling family life/career
• A supportive and sensible belief system

Entire volumes could be written on each of these fundamentals. This article will focus on how a healthy diet contributes to restoring your natural vibrant energy.

A significant portion of your total available energy is expended each day on the process of digestion. If we can find a way to ease the burden of digestion while maintaining adequate nutrient intake this would result in spare energy. Energy is generated in your body by synthesizing glucose into ATP which is then used to fuel the mitochondria in your cells through what is called Krebs cycle. In short, this is what we label “biological metabolism.”

Each person is normally capable of generating a finite amount of energy on any given day. Energy usage varies person to person and day to day according to diet, lifestyle, and overall health condition. Here is a representation of how energy is expended on a daily basis by the average person on the “Standard American Diet” (SAD):

Daily Energy Allocation – Standard American Diet” (SAD)

These percentages represent the bare minimum a person on the “Standard American Diet” (SAD) can expend for each of the five categories and still be able to function in today’s society. Basal metabolism includes the resting autonomic body functions such as breathing, heartbeat, cell division, and your immune system. Brain function includes conscious cognition (thinking.) Muscle movement includes all those things we do voluntarily such as walking, talking, singing, exercise, running, dancing, play, etc. Digestion normally takes up the greatest portion of the body’s total available energy. This includes:

• saliva production in the mouth
• chewing
• swallowing
• stomach muscle contractions to churn the food chime
• the secretion of digestive juices by the stomach, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, and spleen
• the peristaltic action of the intestines to navigate the food chime through a circuitous thirty foot route of your digestive tract

While minimum basal metabolism, brain function, and muscle movement are basically fixed values as illustrated in the pie chart above, digestion is the one area where we can re-negotiate energy usage. For example, if we change our diet from foods that are relatively difficult to digest to foods that are easier to digest we are able to free up some surplus energy.

Daily Energy Allocation – Minimally Processed, Whole Food, Plant-based Diet

“Minimally processed” includes the absence of cooking. Uncooked foods contain naturally occurring substances such as enzymes which greatly aid in the digestion process. Furthermore, plant-based foods are easier to digest than animal based foods because they are closer to the bottom of the food chain. As you can see from the chart above, the average amount of energy expended on digestion on a minimally processed, whole food, plant-based diet is reduced by 33% compared to the SAD. All other things being equal, this results in a HUGE surplus of energy assuming the other energy usage functions remain the same. This means much more energy is available for thinking, moving, working, creative expression, exercising, playing, healing, and living!

Another way to boost your energy levels is to consider the work required for your body to generate digestive juices. On average, your body has to make two gallons of digestive juices every day when eating the SAD. Whereas, on the minimally processed, whole food, plant-based diet your body only has to make two cups of digestive juices per day. The energy required to make two gallons of saliva, enzymes, hydrochloric acid, peptic acid, bile, and other digestive juices every day is enormous. Plus, this way of eating is unnatural and can ultimately lead to wearing out your organs. Once again, the energy conserved on a minimally processed, whole food, plant-based diet can be reallocated to other of life’s pleasures.

Restoring your natural vibrant energy depends upon many different lifestyle factors. The goal of boosting your energy levels due to your food choices is to eat a diet that is calorie-poor and nutrient-rich. The fewer calories you consume, the more energy you will have. However, you still need to insure that you are satisfying your nutritional needs. This means eating foods that have the highest concentration of nutrients per calorie. The foods that best meet this requirement include sprouts, sea vegetables and edible algae. These foods also happen to be the easiest to digest. The combination a diet consisting of easy to digest, calorie-poor, and nutrient-rich foods will result in a huge energy surplus.

By Brian Hetrich

Greenhouse Manager at Hippocrates Wellness