Dubai: Do you feel tired the first thing when you wake up? Do you want to go right back to bed after breakfast? Do you have aches and pains all over? This means you have a build-up of fatigue.
Here are five ways to drive away that achy feeling, spring back to life — and tips for a quick recharge.
1. Cut back on sugar
Eating foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates causes the blood sugar to rise instantly and there is a surge of energy. However, the pancreas secrete excess insulin to metabolise the sugar and then the blood glucose drops down, sapping energy.
This creates a situation of peaks of energy followed by sharp drops — which causes a craving for sugar and a ping-pong pattern of energy rise and drop causing tiredness, irritability and fatigue.
Cut out direct sugars from diet, have dense carbohydrates and limit the intake of carbohydrates in the evening to have a steadier blood sugar and a sound sleep.
2. Advance your bed-time
Are you a night owl, keeping awake way past the midnight hour? That disturbs your body’s circadian rhythms and metabolism. Circadian rhythm is the inner body clock that helps us regulate our metabolism.
Our bodies metabolise and assimilate nutrition during the night and that’s the time one needs to have a proper and sound sleep to allow the activities of the body to take place in an uninterrupted and seamless manner.
Keeping awake disturbs that rhythm and diverts the energy.
The result: Our body feels exhausted and overworked trying to juggle too many activities during the night. Turn off your night light and sleep by 10pm. Eight hours of sound sleep in the night will help you wake up refreshed at 6 am and reset your body clock.
3. Practise Meditation
Unresolved anger issues, social media addiction, guilt, work pressures, relationship blues, all roll up into a tight ball and cause a stress build up, activating the adrenalin glands and also causing a high release of the stress hormone cortisol. The body is continuously in a ‘fight or flight’ mode, which causes physical, mental and emotional stress and leaves one exhausted.
Practising meditation greatly helps to control stress. It helps regulate the breathing rhythm, disengage from the imminent fears, focus on one’s inner world and calm a person down. A 30-minute meditation is equal to eight hours of sleep. Take time out for this intimate tete-a-tete with yourself and notice the refreshing surge of energy in your body.
4. Robust work out
You might not be intending to focus on six-packs or planning on body building, but include a small physical work out in your daily routine.
A 45-minute physical routine in your daily schedule will not only help exercise your muscles but also help release endorphins or the happy hormones, besides making you feel a happy tired and happy hungry to be able to eat and sleep without guilt.
5. Avoid caffeine, go for energy boosters
Start your morning not with caffeine but with an energy boosting green smoothie. Innovate and work out your own recipe. Here’s a basic one — blend a bunch of greens — mint, curry leaves, cilantro, green sorrel and basil along with a green apple or guava, add a pinch of cinnamon, turmeric and Himalayan salt, squeeze half a lime and quaff down this pure chlorophyll concentrate.
The micro-nutrients in the greens replenish your energy levels, besides bringing the acid-alkali balance of your body to equilibrium.
This helps counter all the acidic onslaught of the previous night that you may have had with spicy and processed foods, alcohol and even late sleeping.
A highly acidic body goes into inflammation, which is the precursor of all life style diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. One green smoothie a day can go a long way in cancelling out the inflammation.
