Give Your Energy Levels A Boost Whenever You Need To

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Non-caffeine ways to boost energy levels when needed?❞

A great request! And let’s take a moment to note that caffeine has two ways of making people feel more wakeful, and neither actually increase energy levels, so much as stimulate the adrenal (and thus, indirectly, the cardiovascular) system and (as a separate mechanism) block the brain’s ability to know how tired you are.

For this reason, caffeine is essentially the “payday loan of energy”, in the sense that it’ll allow you to go beyond your energy budget in the moment, but it’ll take it back with interest later (i.e. when the adenosine-blocking action ends, your brain becomes aware of how tired you are, and you’ve been overclocking your heart for the past 4–8 hours or so).

That said, caffeine does have its place: Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?

…it’s just that “sustainably giving more energy” is absolutely not something it does.

So, what can be done?

The “when needed” part of the question is interesting, because it means that the energy must be available at any time, in case it’s needed, even if it’s just the option of a temporary boost that we’re looking for.

So, in order to get that always available energy, the first things to take care of are the things that affect everything, i.e: These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health, our summary at the end of which was:

We suggest this order of priorities, unless you have a major health condition that makes something else a higher priority:

1. If you smoke, stop
2. If you drink, reduce, or ideally stop
3. Improve your diet

About that diet…

• Worry less about what to exclude, and instead focus on adding more variety of fruit/veg
  • See also: Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
  • That said, if you’re looking for things to cut, sugar is a top candidate (and red meat is in clear second place albeit some way below)

When it comes to exercise, get your 10,000 daily steps in (actually, science says 8,000 steps is fine), and consider adding HIIT per our above article, when you feel like adding that in. As for that about the steps:

Meta-analysis of 15 studies reports new findings on how many daily walking steps needed for longevity benefit

When it comes to sleep, if you’re taking care of the above things, and set a regular early wake-up time that you do not deviate from, then this will probably take care of itself, if you don’t have a sleep-inconvenient lifestyle (e.g. shift work, just had a baby, etc) or a sleep disorder.

For further pointers, see: 10 Tips for Better Sleep: Starting In The Morning

And now for the “boost in the moment” items

You can, in fact, get much of the same effect as caffeine, without the caffeine, by doing a short burst of intense exercise.

How this works:

• Accelerates the heart rate and acutely increases blood pressure (so, much like the active stimulant side of caffeine)
• Activates the sympathetic nervous system (so, has a similar “the brain can’t notice the tiredness” effect to the adenosine-blocking side of caffeine)

These effects will be, compared to caffeine, quicker to arrive and quicker to depart, thus resulting also in no adverse side effects (unless you have a condition that makes intense exercise dangerous for you, in which case, obviously don’t do that).

It may be that you don’t feel up to intense exercise, but this can be worked around: How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)

However, if you really can’t do that (or even simply don’t want to), then it’s not the only option, because there is also: A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

While that article is about cold water therapy‘s benefits to general, chronic good health, the acute benefits are also not to be ignored, and in fact, are what we’re looking for in the context of today’s question—because once again, it also does those two things that we bullet-pointed just above (accelerates heart rate and increases vasoconstriction, alongside activating the SNS).

For this reason, it was also item #5 on the list offered by Nisha Vora (of Rainbow Plant Life fame) when we featured her as an expert here: 5 Ways To Beat Afternoon Energy Slumps

On the topic of nutrition, it’s worth noting that especially after a certain age, often a problem is…

Literally just vitamins (but…)

In particular, vitamins B1, B5, B6, and B12. Of those, especially vitamins B1 and B12.

Vitamins B5 and B6 are just as critical to health too, including energy metabolism, but relatively very few people are deficient in those, while astonishingly many are deficient in B1 and/or B12, especially as we get older—for example, if trying to get these vitamins from meat, 50% of people over 50 cannot manufacture enough stomach acid to break down that protein to release the vitamins.

So, supplementation:

You might especially want to consider taking sulbutiamine, which is a synthetic version of thiamin (vitamin B1), and instead of being water-soluble, it’s fat-soluble, and it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, which is a big deal.

And about that vitamin B12: there’s a problem with most B12 supplements, which is that the most commonly-used form of vitamin B12, cyanocobalamin, is not absorbed or used well. It is very cheap to produce though, which is why it’s so widely used despite not being particularly good.

Much better are active vitamers of B12 that the body can absorb and use correctly, for example: methylcobalamin, adenosylcobalamin, & hydroxocobalamin ← example product containing all three on Amazon, but feel free to shop around.

Learn more: Which B Vitamins? It Makes A Difference

And one thing that can be done at any time, for free

It’s simply No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness. You’ll be surprised how much you can suddenly wake up, if you take just a moment to, well, wake up, and be actively conscious of doing so.

One of the quickest ways:

1. Notice your hands
2. Notice that you are looking out from behind your eyes
3. Notice where you are.

Not just where you are, but also where you are.

A surprising amount of energy can be found by taking a few seconds to correct the disembodiment that happens so often in our daily lives. That disembodiment was usually causing a lot of fatigue!

If our body is our vehicle through which we explore the world, it pays to be conscious of being behind the wheel, after all.

And if you have more time…

Naps can help, if and only if you do them right.

Here’s how: How To Be An Expert Nap-Artist (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

Alternatively, you can get many (but not all) of the benefits of sleep, without sleep.

Here’s how: How & Why Non-Sleep Deep Rest Works (And What Activities Trigger The Same State)

Take care!