Hi, it's Eric Bakker, the naturopath from New Zealand.
The sniffling naturopath.
Pardon my head cold at the moment.
But don't worry.
We social distance at the moment, so we're sitting good, all right?
And it's not the dreaded COVID, I can tell you that.
So anyway, I always get asked by people, "How can I get my energy back?
I had energy.
I've lost it."
Or people say, "I've never had a lot of energy.
I want to get energy.
I want to get a lot of energy."
Now, that's one commodity I've never had a problem with is energy.
Not for the last 40 odd years.
I did when I was younger, I had crappy energy when I was in my twenties.
But as I get older, my energies is going up and up more and more, which is the opposite
of what doctors say.
They say, as you get older, your energy goes down.
Well, remember, a lot of doctors are dead by the time they're my age anyway, so they
wouldn't even know half the time.
It's amazing how many patients I've seen have outlived their medical doctors.
All right.
Here's five key ways, I think, that you can get good control of energy.
Okay?
Now, one of these five is going to ring a bell in your head.
It's going to go, "Cling, cling, cling."
As soon as I say it, you're going to go, "That's me.
That's me."
So when that bell goes off in your head, you need to write that down, what I just said.
Okay?
That particular thing, because that could be one of the big things contributing to your
fatigue right now.
All right?
I can tell you now, even at 60, I've got more energy than a lot of people in their thirties.
So age has got no bearing on energy levels.
No bearing, all right?
Well, maybe when you're 95 or 100, you might not have as much energy as a 30-year-old,
but I've seen some really energetic 90-year-olds, I can tell you that would give you a hard
time.
In fact, one of my best friends is two times world mountain bike masters champion.
And Gary would have to be now in his mid to late sixties, but I've never met a fitter,
more energetic guy than Gary.
So here's five key ways.
The first one is the most important one.
And it's the one I want you to pay particular attention to.
All right?
It's controlling what?
It's controlling stress in your life.
All right?
For stress zaps more energy than just about anything in people.
All right?
It's the unnecessary discharge of energy.
You don't need to discharge energy unnecessarily.
When the hypothalamus part of the brain gets involved with stress and the pituitary gland,
deep in behind the eyes and the adrenal glands on top of the kidneys, when that HPA axis
gets really effected constantly, when you keep going in fight or flight all the time,
you're going to get tired.
If you look at any animal that gets stressed, what it does after the stress, it goes...
it'll lie down and recover.
Now you can't do that.
You can't be yelling and screaming at your boss or he or she screaming at you.
And then say, "All right, I'm going to go for a nap now."
And you go and lie down for half an hour and then come back.
Doesn't work, does it?
You're not allowed to go for naps at work usually.
So if the adrenal glands are constantly pushed and pushed and pushed, eventually it's going
to affect your cortisol response.
Your blood sugar response will get affected and you'll get increasingly tired.
It's a scientific fact that stressed people are tired people.
Highly stressed people are very tired.
Extremely stressed are so flipping fatigued, they can barely get off the couch.
So every time you emotionally react, you're basically draining your batteries a bit more
and a bit more and eventually you'll be exhausted.
You may have a friend, a lady you know, or a guy you know, that gets stressed a lot and
is exhausted a lot.
Think about it carefully.
By controlling stress, by understanding the stress response and limiting the responses,
you'll have more energy to play with it.
Remember, the first one is the most important one.
This is the kicker, okay?
I didn't do it at the bottom.
I did it at the top.
This is the one you really want to get a grip on.
Second one is doing too much.
Overworking and expecting too much from other people and expecting too much for yourself
and not saying, "No, can't do that today.
Sorry, I've got too many emails.
I've got too much.
I'm not doing it."
Remember, not saying it's stress, but saying no.
Okay?
Backing off.
Don't do too much.
All right?
If we look a long time ago, people did probably about 20% of what we do today.
All right?
They didn't spend half their day on Facebook.
They didn't spend half their time on Twitter.
Okay?
They didn't spend any time on the internet.
They did their work.
They went home.
They relaxed.
That's what people used to do when I was a kid.
They go home.
They sit there with the newspaper and turn the radio on.
They listen to a radio show and they'd sit there.
Well, I still can remember when I was a little boy that the lady from next door would come
over and have a cup of tea with my mum.
And they'd be sitting there talking for an hour or so, and that was quite normal in the
old days to do that.
People would actually sit there and talk to people.
They wouldn't be actually just liking all this stuff on the internet all the time and
their brain wasn't drilled down by stress.
They didn't have to like multitask.
That's a word I never heard of until I think, I don't know, 20 years ago.
We didn't have to do three jobs at once.
Now with downsizing, everyone's expected to do more and more and more.
So if you're overworking, it's one of the prime causes of fatigue.
Too much work, too much expectation, not enough downtime.
Not enough time for the batteries to recharge.
So one and two basically go together, don't they, stress and overwork.
Third one, sitting on your butt with a remote control, not getting off the couch.
Just sitting there thinking, "Oh, I'm relaxing.
I'm just going to watch this murder show.
This guy's shot nine people dead.
I'm just going to relax, watching that kind of stuff."
It's not really relaxing, is it?
It's either nudity on TV or twerking or sexual stuff or murders, or I don't even know why
people watch this kind of stuff anymore.
I don't really get involved in social media.
I don't really get involved in internet stuff.
I just prefer to be at home with my family, my garden, and live a basic lifestyle like
people did a long time ago.
So exercise is important to me.
So we walk every day and that's something that you could be doing every day walking.
All right?
Easy to do.
Doesn't cost a lot of money.
Simple.
Good for your relationship.
Good for your health, good way for your heart to get benefit and a good way to build energy
levels, natural energy levels because you'll get tired.
If you walk regularly, especially you go for five, six, seven miles, you'll sit down, come
home and relax, you'll have a good sleep that night.
And with a good sleep pattern comes good energy in the morning.
Try and understand that natural, healthy movement and exercise pushes you into a healthy, natural
sleep pattern, which pushes you into a healthy, natural production the following day of energy.
Okay?
Sitting there watching, bingeing on Netflix till 03:00 in the morning is not going to
give you a good sleep.
It's going to give you crap energy in the morning and you're going to wake up and do
the whole cycle again.
And it's probably filled by coffee, soda drinks and shitty food.
If I'm right.
The fourth one, eat for energy.
Eating the right kind of foods is paramount if you want good energy levels.
You're not going to get energy from a can of Coke and a bag of fries, bag of chips.
Tastes nice, but it's not really good for the energy production.
Okay?
Just pushes your blood sugar all over the place.
Eating normal, healthy food is what you want to do.
We've spoken enough about that on this channel.
You know what my views are on eating well and eating healthy and cooking from scratch
and eating vegetables and fruits and meats, the basic stuff.
All right?
This is going to give you energy, particularly if you follow those other points.
The last one is hydration.
So water is exceedingly important, is to have lots of fresh water in your life.
It's probably one of the most overlooked things of all when it comes to natural health is
drinking water.
People have me being banging that drum now for, I don't know how many years, but it's
surprising how many people don't drink water and favor a glass of wine or coffee over a
glass of water.
Now, remember your body is not a machine.
It's not a robot.
It's actually a living biological being with a big emotional component attached to it.
And it thrives on water because water is the biggest component that makes up this whole
frame.
So if we add a lot of pure stuff into this, it's going to make us feel good, isn't it?
I think it is.
So alcohol is not a substitute.
So, that's the five points.
Okay?
Control your stress.
Understand how stress drains energy, number one.
Two, multitasking, not the best if you're tired, overworking.
All right?
If you've got a lot of kids and you're on your own, ask for help or think of ways how
you can relax.
The third one, exercise.
I don't like that word.
It sounds gross.
Movement, all right?
The fourth one, eating the right kind of stuff.
And the fifth one, drinking.
All right?
Thanks for tuning in.