Ads on television and social media often ask, “Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?”. They usually sound as if there is only one reason for this, and they can sell you the answer to the problem.
Your body is a finely-tuned biochemical marvel that is constantly working to maintain homeostasis and health. Many interconnected mechanisms monitor what’s going on and help us maintain balance, ongoing, all the time. This is great when those mechanisms are all working well, and it is marvelous that most of them are working really well, most of the time. But if any of those rebalancing mechanisms is adversely affected, our bodies may not be able to maintain optimal function, and we just don’t feel right. Often one of the first things we notice is that our energy is lower than usual.
When you are getting sufficient sleep and nourishment, and fatigue is beyond just being tired from a hard day at work, it could be due to any of so many reasons:
Depletions: Not enough of something you need to function optimally
Unhealthy excesses: Too much of something that is detrimental to optimal function
Impaired function: An organ or system that is unable to keep up with the body’s demands.
Let’s take a closer look at these.
Depletions
Anemia: Low iron, B12 or folate can cause different forms of anemia, all of which cause fatigue. This is easily checked through standard bloodwork.
Other nutrient depletions: Vitamin D, Vitamin C, B vitamins and low mineral intake can all be causes of fatigue. Some of us require much more of certain nutrients due to our unique genetics.
Unhealthy excesses: Alcohol consumption, sugar consumption and a diet high in ultra-processed foods can also commonly lead to nutrient depletion and place undue burden on our bodies’ delicate biochemical balance.
Organ systems functioning below par: a multitude of interacting systems need to be working properly to create energy.
Digestion: Any impairment in digestive function can reduce the absorption of what you need. It can also increase absorption of toxins that are better off excreted. Even if your diet is great, you may not be digesting and absorbing what you need to feed your cells sufficiently. The classic example of this is someone with celiac disease, where gluten intolerance destroys the gut lining, but sensitivities to any food can impair digestion.
Dysbiosis, from any cause, can also impair nutrient absorption. Dysbiosis is an umbrella term, that means “wrong lifeforms” and includes all kinds of microbial imbalances, including yeast, unfriendly bacteria and parasites.
Blood circulation carries oxygen and nutrients to all our cells to feed them. If these can’t get to all your tissues due to poor circulation, those tissues go hungry.
Thyroid hormones: The thyroid can be problematic in several ways. The most common ones are poor thyroid hormone production, if the thyroid gland is not working well, or poor conversion to the active form of thyroid hormone, T3. It is important to differentiate between these two in order to understand the problem.
Adrenal hormones: Your adrenal glands help you manage stress. A person may be “running on jet fuel” to meet the demands of their life, often in a fight or flight state. If this continues without restorative rest, that person ends up “running on an empty tank”. Both of these extremes leave a person feeling exhausted, whether tired but wired, or unmotivated and flat.
Mitochondria are the little power houses in every cell, that make energy. When the mitochondria are fully supplied with the nutrients necessary for proper function, the energy they make is readily available to our cells.
Liver congestion: all the toxins in the modern world overload our detox systems, the most important of these being the liver. When the liver is overloaded we may feel tired, even on waking, sluggish throughout the day, and have fitful disturbed sleep: a vicious cycle.
Lymphatics: if your lymphatic system isn’t working properly, waste products aren’t removed and can build up to create an excess of unwanted, unhelpful chemical in our bodies. These chemicals can slow down any of our body systems, including the thyroid, adrenals and mitochondria.
One way of helping your body shed some toxins and improve your energy, is to do a spring Liver Detox.