Living A Full Life

Energy Crisis: Decoding Fatigue and Finding Your Vitality

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 34

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Feeling drained despite a full night's sleep? That persistent exhaustion might be more than just "being tired" – it could signal deeper imbalances in your body's energy production systems. 

Dr. Enrico Dolcecore dives deep into the fascinating world of human energy, exploring what truly powers our bodies beyond just caffeine and willpower. By understanding energy as a three-dimensional concept – physical, chemical, and emotional – we gain powerful insights into why so many people feel perpetually exhausted in modern life.

The episode unveils the five critical drivers of fatigue that might be sabotaging your vitality: poor sleep quality, nutrient deficiencies, chronic stress, sedentary lifestyle, and hidden inflammation. Each driver connects to your mitochondria – the cellular powerhouses producing ATP, your body's primary energy currency. When these microscopic energy factories malfunction, every aspect of your life suffers.

What makes this exploration particularly valuable is the science-backed, practical approach to rebuilding your energy reserves. From optimizing sleep cycles to strategic nutrient supplementation, from counterintuitive exercise benefits to detoxifying your environment, Dr. Dolcecori offers a comprehensive roadmap to sustainable energy restoration. You'll discover why movement paradoxically creates more energy, how EMF exposure might be draining your batteries, and why conventional hydration advice might be making you more tired.

The distinction between temporary energy fixes and true vitality becomes crystal clear: energy isn't about constant hustle – it's about creating harmony within your body systems. By implementing these evidence-based strategies, you can transform your relationship with energy and reclaim the natural vitality that stress, poor nutrition, and environmental factors have slowly eroded.

Ready to stop feeling tired all the time? This episode provides the blueprint to recharge your life from the cellular level up. Your journey toward boundless, sustainable energy starts now.

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Speaker 1:

Have you ever had one of those days where your body works but your energy is just gone? Last week, we dove into fatigue. So if you listened to that episode, we went deeper into what causes fatigue in the human body. This week, we're diving into what energy is. Why are we so fatigued and how do we restore our vitality. Welcome to another episode. Why are we so fatigued and how do we restore our vitality? Welcome to another episode.

Speaker 1:

I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori and we're going to dive into what is energy this week, both the physical and chemical and emotional parts of energy. So energy in the body is the capacity to be able to do work. Biologically, this comes from ATP, adenosine, triphosphate. This is produced in every single cell in your body in an area called the mitochondria. It's also an emotional and mental part of our vitality, felt as motivation, clarity, zest, however way you want to put it. It has all three components to it.

Speaker 1:

So fatigue in itself is a symptom. It's not a diagnosis of anything in particular. This is why it's so frustrating, because we may go to our primary care physician and tell them I feel fatigued, and they may or may not run tests on this, because there's really nothing to test in that portion of physiology, so nothing may actually show up with fatigue. Once we get into a diagnosis of, maybe, chronic fatigue syndrome, it's because hormonal testing has been showing low production of some hormones, adrenaline decay, some kidney fatigue or adrenal fatigue. So that becomes more of a diagnosis of chronic fatigue. What we're talking about today is just fatigue, just feeling tired, and how do we just feel energized? That's what we want to get into. So physical fatigue is muscle tiredness or lack of endurance. Mental and emotional fatigue is brain fog, low motivation, irritability. And nutritional fatigue is poor cellular function due to micronutrient deficiencies, dehydration or imbalanced blood sugar. I feel as a primary provider myself, as a chiropractor, talking to people every single day. Those are the three questions I always ask them Are you hydrated? Not? Do you drink water? Are you hydrated? Are you getting electrolytes? Do you have salt in your diet? A lot of people have pulled away from just salting their foods because salt has been given a bad rap and when our blood pressure goes up or a doctor says, hey, you have got high blood pressure, you got to watch your diet, people immediately default on cutting out all the salt, which can lead to deficiencies. So that's what we're going to dive in today.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode is all about the five drivers of fatigue, and if, by understanding the drivers of fatigue, we can then have more power to recapture our vitality. So let's start with them. This is in no particular order, but instead of you know one, two, three, four, five, we're going to go A, b, c, d, e. How's that sound? So today, a is poor sleep quality, and you knew this was coming. So when we have a bad night's sleep and we have that groggy feeling the next day, we obviously know we're fatigued because we had a poor night's sleep. Maybe we only got two hours of sleep last night. New parents know exactly what we're talking about right here.

Speaker 1:

So deep sleep is when your brain detoxes and your body repairs. If we miss that portion of our sleep cycle, well, now we have no detox and our body wasn't able to repair, so we may feel it the next day. Even six or seven hours of low quality sleep can feel worse than four hours of deep rest. Sleep deprivation reduces glucose metabolism in the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex. This is from the Journal of Neuro Report from 2000,. But it shows that sleep deprivation can actually be picked up on PET scans in the brain, where the brain only uses glucose as energy and it reduces that metabolism in our frontal cortex, where we pretty much do all of our thought during the day. That's where we get the term brain fog from where we just can't think straight. We're forgetting what we need to do. Next, that's from lack of sleep, of good sleep. So sleep is really important.

Speaker 1:

We've done probably two or three podcasts on sleep and circadian rhythm. Go back and look at those up and listen to them. They have some great tips on how to improve your sleep. So that's number one when it comes to fatigue. You knew this was coming. You knew we were going to talk about sleep Nutrient deficiencies. Now this is where things get a little bit interesting.

Speaker 1:

B vitamins, magnesium, iron and coenzyme Q10 are essential for mitochondrial energy production. When we're looking to get energy back, these are hard things to test for. B12 is tested a little bit through blood tests and then if you're low, you're given a B12 shot, but other than that, other things are really not checked for, unless we have signs of anemia, where iron can be checked for. So we're missing a lot of things here and most people will or know to get a B-complex multivitamin and start there if their energy feels low, and many report back saying it did help a little bit, it was great. Then we want to add our magnesium Iron. You want to make sure you talk to your doctor first, make sure you review that with someone who knows your blood work before you add iron into your diet. But coenzyme Q10, for many of you listening right now can be added and that combination of B vitamins, magnesium and coenzyme Q10 can help repair mitochondrial damage and improve mitochondrial energy production, which is absolutely essential for energy, which is amazing.

Speaker 1:

So an iron deficiency, anemia, is one of the most common causes of chronic fatigue, especially in women. We've known this for a while. Happens because they have a cycle every month, they give birth and also their hormones play havoc on the red blood cell production through the different phases in their life, in their adult life. And anemia can be misdiagnosed. It can be missed completely because numbers and blood volumes may come back normal, like an RBC study or a CBC panel can come back, showing everything within normal range. So things can sometimes be missed and they usually are. So if you're feeling tired, it's the beginning of a symptom or a clue that things are not in balance. So looking into that is really important, but starting off with those things to help stimulate mitochondrial production may be the best first step forward to restoring your energy.

Speaker 1:

C chronic stress and emotional exhaustion. Constant cortisol production burns you out. There's no question about it. That's what we talk about with stress. The constant cortisol production burns you out. Mental stress manifests physically it turns into digestive issues, tight muscles, and it lowers your immunity. We've all been witness to this. We can all attest to having this happen to us at some point, where the chronic stress and chronic issues can add up on our bodies and leave us sore, tired, tight and in pain. Emotional exhaustion correlates with low heart rate variability and poor sleep. This is from the Journal of Psychosomatic Research from 2013. So they showed a direct correlation between stress and lowering HRV. So we got to play and understand what stress is.

Speaker 1:

50 years ago, the word stress wasn't used as loosely as it is today. We have teenagers walking around saying I'm stressed, and they are. They're not lying, but it's used more so now than ever, either because we are attuned to how we feel or we've drastically changed the way the world works, and I think it's both. 50 years ago, we weren't bombarded with the information we are now. It's both. 50 years ago we weren't bombarded with the information we are now. We get more data per hour now than we did 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. We have more points of interest, more points of data because of the screens. We're constantly downloading information and most of it's not good. Most of it is either news, which is never positive, it's usually negative. Two, it's updates and three, it's social status, where we're comparing ourselves to what we see on social media, and all of those things cause an increase in cortisol because it does start to stress us out. We feel like we're never good enough, no matter what we do financially, spiritually, friendships good enough, no matter what we do financially, spiritually, friendships, humanitarianly, diet, fitness the list just goes on and on. So this chronic fatigue and this chronic stress and emotional exhaustion that everyone's facing is really because of the constant download of information and we need to give ourselves a break information and we need to give ourselves a break. D on this list.

Speaker 1:

Number four sedentary lifestyle. This has been shown over a hundred year study that, counterintuitively, movement gives you more energy. We just talked about muscle exhaustion, muscle fatigue, and you think rest and not moving would actually improve your energy. But it's actually contrary to what you may think. Movement actually gives you energy and research has shown that regular low-intensity exercise improves feelings of fatigue more than rest. That's from the University of Georgia in 2008. So just constant daily moving, even going for a 15-minute brisk walk every day there's been studies showing it reduces the chances of breast cancer by 80% and all the health benefits that come from movement. But also for energy. It keeps the circulatory system moving, pumping and needing energy from mitochondria and it causes a positive feedback loop for production of ATP, which is wonderful. So movement is key.

Speaker 1:

And the last one is the hidden inflammation or toxin exposures that we're chronically subjected to on a daily basis, like mold or mildew EMF exposure. This comes from our electronic devices and Wi-Fi devices, processed foods, chronic infections. These can all zap your energy without obvious symptoms, and they're the most common things that I see on a daily basis with my patients is they're either chronically exposed to mold this is definitely a thing in more humid areas and hotter temperate areas. Mold is chronically around. If there's humidity and we have to have this, I would check your home every year or two to make sure that the mold is minimal in the home. You definitely don't want it to be in places where you sleep the living room, you know. If it's in and around the garage because of moisture and rain, that's fine, but you want to try and mitigate this stuff as much as possible and if it's gotten into your body you have to detox this out because mold can run rampant on your immune system.

Speaker 1:

Emf exposure is not talked about enough, unless you wear a tinfoil hat, it seems, or you listen to weird podcasts. That's the only time it's ever talked about. But it should be talked about more because there's very conclusive evidence from the literature showing that chronic EMF exposure changes the frequency of our cells and by doing that it changes the output of mitochondrial production, which is ATP. And we want to make sure we turn off devices. Turn off Wi-Fi enabled devices from our body at least when we sleep away and out of our rooms. Don't charge the phone 14 inches from your head on the nightstand. Charge it in a different room or on a different floor, maybe even if you can turn off the Wi-Fi at night completely, so that signal diminishes within your home and gives everyone in the home a chance to have minimal EMF exposure a little bit every day, otherwise we're chronically subjected to it everywhere we go.

Speaker 1:

And even devices, heavy duty electronic devices. I don't know what you would have in the home. I think of medical equipment, and, yeah, I don't know microwaves. Conventional ovens maybe, but those are not running all the time. I don't know what you would have. Oh, headphones, earbuds. They constantly have a connection to electronic current and you're putting them so close to the body. Those things can add up EMF exposure as well.

Speaker 1:

And then infections. Many people don't even know it, but they have chronic gut infections or overgrowth of bad bacteria and virus, and these things can constantly drain energy from the body. Things like staph infections, strep infections, bacterial overgrowth, candida the list goes on and on and on, but these chronic infections can completely drain you in general, as the entire system. So a study from Frontiers in Immunology in 2020 showed that mitochondrial dysfunction and systemic inflammation are primary drivers of chronic fatigue syndrome, which is again the diagnosis of long-term chronic fatigue issues.

Speaker 1:

We're talking about short-term or acute fatigue. Maybe you've been feeling fatigue over the last month and you're like man. What do I do to zap out of this? That's what this podcast is all about Things that you can start implementing right away. So what does energy feel like? We talk about fatigue. Everyone's like, yeah, I know what fatigue is, but what does it feel like to be energized? Go ask your eight-year-old. They know exactly what it feels like. They won't be able to describe it to you. They're like, hey, I'm just being me, this is just normal. And they're like, well, give me the secret sauce, kid. And they won't know the answer to it. So let's talk about it.

Speaker 1:

You have energy when you're energized with when you wake up, without dragging at all. You wake up, you look at your phone. You dragging at all. You wake up, you look at your phone, you turn off the alarm. You're able to sit up and walk straight to the bathroom and start your day with minimal drag. You have a clear mind and ability to focus. You have a positive outlook or you're in a good mood and your motivation to move and interact is positive. Those are all things where you're like I get up, you pretty much are able to go brush your teeth, go downstairs, know that it's time to make some breakfast and you're relatively in a good mood.

Speaker 1:

If you're dragging through all of those first steps in a day to start your day, it could be a sign that you are fatigued. And then, when we are, we have things like heavy limbs, slouched posture, brain fog, trouble remembering things. We're easily overwhelmed. We have a reliance on caffeine or sugar for stimulation throughout the day Multiple coffees, multiple energy drinks, sweeteners, things that we add there to give us that quick 15 minute boost. We have to repeat that because there's 24 hours in a day. That is a sign that we're fatigued and all we're doing there is spiking cortisol and lowering mitochondrial production by putting those things into our body.

Speaker 1:

So what are some practical steps? I listed a few steps for you that we can take to reclaim our energy. What are some things? Fix your sleep first we have to Sleep. We spend almost things. Fix your sleep first we have to Sleep. We spend almost a third of our life sleeping. We have to spend some time making sure that it's healthy sleep and work on it, just like we take care of our cars. A good car is reliable to get you from point A to point B every single day, so that you can do the things you need to do Work, leisure, sports, go to the gym, go to grocery shopping. Take care of your life. The same thing we need to do for our sleep is fine tune it all the time Make sure we're changing the oil, make sure we're changing the filter, making sure we rotate the tires the same thing we have to do.

Speaker 1:

We have to look at our sleep and make sure things are aligned properly. We want to sleep if you have a standard work schedule from 10 pm to 6 am, if that aligns with your circadian rhythm. That's what we want to try and focus on is be in bed by 10, set the alarm for 6 to improve the chances of getting eight hours of sleep. Use blue light blockers during the day, blackout curtains at night in your bedroom, and magnesium before bed has been shown to help calm the nervous system and muscles to get you to sleep a little bit easier. So these are all tips on maybe improving your sleep, and we've done the sleep and mattress podcast and a pillow podcast and all those things on how to improve or know which pillow is right for you.

Speaker 1:

So there's things we can look at there, okay, and we need to focus on what we eat. We have to eat for our cellular energy. So what does that mean? We got to focus on real foods, because processed foods decrease our cellular energy. Whole foods increase our cellular energy. So protein, leafy greens and healthy fats that has to be the base of pretty much every meal. So if you eat three meals a day, you have to focus on protein, greens and healthy fats as the base of every one of your meals. Avoid blood sugar crashes, so cut out processed carbs and sugar and we want to stay hydrated. Dehydration equals low blood volume and that equals low energy. We want a higher blood volume and a higher hydration level to keep everything moving smoothly through the cardiovascular system.

Speaker 1:

Number three take key supplements if needed, like vitamin D, if your vitamin D is low or below average, which is below 50, medically it says below 30, but we want to keep our vitamin D levels. 50 to 70 range is optimal. So we want to take vitamin D B complex vitamins so we're getting a little bit of all the B vitamins, not just B12. Magnesium glycinate that's the easiest one on your stomach. Omega-3s, which is typically found from fish oil, but you can get it from flaxseed oil and other sources. And adaptogens like rhodiola. Always test before you guess. Don't just add these supplements. Make sure that you're low in these and you can ask for these tests by any provider and they can send them for you fairly inexpensive, and they can check your vitamin levels and see where they're all at and wherever you're low at. As long as it's an energy producing vitamin, we may want to increase that.

Speaker 1:

Get moving 20 minutes a day. All it takes is a 20 minute walk. Take the dog 10 minutes in one direction, 10 minutes back. That's all it takes. Include strength training, if you can, two to three times a week to support your metabolism and your mitochondrial health as well. So exercise plays a big role, but in this case for energy. It doesn't take a gym membership to improve your motion. All it takes is just getting up and moving.

Speaker 1:

Manage your mind. Practice mindfulness or breath, work for at least five minutes a day. Journal to get the mental clutter out. Write down the stressors in a book. This book eventually will fill up and once it's filled up you can throw it out and start a new book. But by writing these things down helps you disperse a lot of the mental stress onto paper. There's been a lot of research showing that by writing it or saying it out loud, gets it out and at least recognized.

Speaker 1:

Detox your environment, your entire environment. Swap out toxic locations. Sorry lotions, toxic cosmetics, toxic lotions, toxic shampoos, conditioners, fragrances, cleaning supply, plastics these things are all toxins and what we mean by that is the byproduct of them can be estrogen inhibitors in the body, which helps spike pseudoestrogen issues inside the body, which causes a hormonal discombobulation. It's horrible. We want to minimize these things. So look at the ingredients. Make sure that we're not overusing these things in our home.

Speaker 1:

Consider a HEPA air filter and mineral rich water. So if we completely reverse, like use a reverse osmosis system and water filtration system in the house, we want to make sure it's going through a calcium rinse or a calcium cartridge to put electrolytes back into the water once we drink it. Because true, h2o with nothing else in it is actually dehydrating. Because once it goes into, think of it like a small glass of salt water. The more pure water you add to that glass or to that bucket, the less salty it gets and eventually, if you add enough pure water to it, you'll barely be able to tell if there's any salt in it. You may think it's a good thing, but think of your body as that bucket and if it's supposed to have this certain electrolyte balance, this certain salt balance to it, and we keep adding pure H2O to it, we start to deplete these electrolytes from our body, and this stuff can actually come from our bone too. We can deplete calcium from parts of our body as well, so that's the whole point of that. So make sure we have a complete reverse osmosis system. Usually, if you have one in the home, they're already built like this. You have to change those cartridges. There's a reason for it. They're carbon filters, and then they also add other things in there, like calcium and some other electrolytes, to make sure that we get more of a pure water rather than just H2O.

Speaker 1:

And then reset your nervous system. We talked about this a couple of podcasts ago your nervous system and balancing it. Chiropractic adjustments, acupuncture, vagal nerve stimulation can help regulate your nervous system. Breath work, cold shower, cold plunges and grounding all stimulate healthy energy pathways. So when do you actually need to go get help? Because everything we said, there is stuff you can do on your own to help improve your energy production.

Speaker 1:

But when do you know that you need actual help? If you're constantly tired, despite trying everything? You could have thyroid issues or adrenal fatigue or sleep apnea or chronic infection or mitochondrial dysfunction, and I went from probably the most common to the least common in that list, or a combination of a couple of things above. You could have thyroid issues and sleep apnea. You could have adrenal fatigue and sleep apnea and thyroid issues. So that's where now it's time to get some help and try and find out what's going on. And where we start is exactly like that Check the hormone system, the thyroid, and see what's going on there first. So blood work is first, then a gut test to check for any chronic infections. Usually, when we do those two things, we can now see the entire body and see what is going on from an energy perspective.

Speaker 1:

Energy isn't just about hustle, it's about harmony. So that is what the goal is with all of this and your health is to try and encourage harmony of everything inside of it. So, just to recap this episode, there's a lot of things that you can do to help boost your energy and just you have to remember energy is both physical, emotional, nutritional and environmental. It comes from all aspects. Reclaiming it is a lifestyle. It's not going to be simply taking some more magnesium. It's not a quick fix, but it is. It is possible we can get our energy back.

Speaker 1:

So if you have any questions about fatigue, I encourage you to share with us at info at fulllifetampacom. We love answering all your questions and if you ever need any more resources, go to fulllifetampacom and check out some of our resources there, or our that we've put in the past about stress, nutrition, nervous system regulation and all the things that are on there. There's some resources there for you and online Go search online as well. So if you're tired of being tired, this episode breaks down what's really draining you and how to recharge it, and all you need to do is just take control of your health by making decisions. That's all it really takes. Add the few things in, take a few things out and, if you need help, reach and ask people for some help. Ask the people you trust and they will have the right referrals for you. Stay healthy, stay well and catch you on next week's episode.

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host