9 Naturopathic Tips To Raising Energy Levels

Men’s Health Week is focused around physical activity and so Harley Street’s world leading naturopathic physician Harald Gaier is offering his tips on improving energy to raise awareness of the importance of looking after your health.

Following research by Men’s Health Forum, stating that men over the age of 35 tend to reduce the amount of physical activity they undertake, blaming pressure of work, stress, the divorce and children as the causes, Dr Gaier has some suggestions for how to help men to stay healthy. I have said it so often it must be imprinted on your brain cells by now, but physical activity has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety as well as decreasing the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes and can even improve sexual performance. I thought that last bit might wake you up!

Dr Gaier commented: “For practitioners of Herbal Medicine, preventing disease is not an afterthought: it is the cornerstone of such a healthcare practice. Natural Medicine practitioners are trained to be agents of life-style change. They treat illness promptly and aggressively when appropriate, but always seek to maximise the body’s innate capacity to stay healthy and resist disease and injury.”

So, bearing that in mind, here’s how to make a difference to your energy levels:

1 Water
Another old favourite that I can’t over-emphasise the importance as when your calls become dehydrated it saps your energy. Even slight dehydration of 1 or 2 % of your body weight can make you feel tired. Don’t wait until you are thirsty because if you feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated and this can lead to fatigue, muscle weakness, dizziness and other symptoms

2 Exercise
Yes I know you’ve heard it all before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Exercise gets your heart pumping and increases your metabolism, but more importantly it releases endorphins which gives you that same happy sensation you get when you have sex or eat chocolate, for this reason your brain begins to crave it more. A great form of exercise for men is Yoga — and no it is not just for women in pink leotards, but has been a staple of a strong healthy body for men at all ages in India and increasingly in the West. A 10-15 minute yoga session in the morning will speed up your metabolism and has the potential to work out every muscle in your body – which your regular cup of coffee just can’t match.

3 Keep the weight off
Obesity can be the cause for a lack of energy, as this excess weight can slow you down and leave you feeling drained, tired and not to mention lowering your sexual self esteem.

4 Graze not guzzle
It’s important to maintain a normal blood sugar level and in order to do this you should eat every few hours. This will help you maintain muscle tissue, which burns more calories than fat tissue, and will help increase your energy levels.

5 Don’t neglect carbohydrates
With all the emphasis on high protein and low fat diets carbohydrates have been rather neglected, but they are an essential part of your daily diet. They provide us with the much-needed energy to power us through the day as they release energy slowly into your body to keep you going for longer.

6 Sleep: Although we all have different sleep requirements, there is an absolute minimum that the body needs for essential maintenance and rejuvenation during your rest period. The ideal if you can manage it is 8 hours a night but the average in the UK is only around 5-6 hours which means that your body isn’t fully alert which which has an impact on your stamina levels, and not for the better.

7 Avoid quick fixes
It is so tempting when you’re tired to reach for a cup of coffee or a sticky bun or her a piece of chocolate and psychologically this may well give you a boost however the physical reality is somewhat different. Your body will waste copious amounts of energy turning the sugar in the snack into energy to use in your body and the boost will be short lived, and inevitably leaving you more drained as it imbalances your blood sugar. The best things to keep in your snack drawer — what do you mean you don’t have one — I’m nuts, fruit or whole grain products.

8 Detox
The less your diet is 100% pure, organic and natural the reality is that you will be taking in toxins that stress and pollute our bodies. Toxins can have many effects that the most common are to make us feel lethargic and bloated at best and ill and depressed at worst. It’s a great idea to have a regular detox day at least once a week as the actor Larry Hagman used to do when he only ate fruit on Sundays. There are certainly plenty of detox diets available but you can just make it simple and spent one day having nothing but water, Herb tea, and fruit such as grapes, cranberries and pomegranates a as they are all effective at ridding the body of toxins.

9 Laugh
How do you feel after you’ve had a good belly laugh? That’s right, you feel good you feel energised and you feel lighter and that’s because it generates chemicals in the blood that boost well-being. Try to laugh at least five times a day — you can do if you try.

If Dr Gaier’s ideas appeal to you on how to improve your health then you can find out more at his website at www.drgaier.com or for the technically adept amongst you is also on twitter at www.twitter.com/drgaier

Men only – Pass it on!

Men’s Health Week aims to get men more aware of their own health, and to take action when it’s needed. These health stories could make a difference to you, or someone you know, so pass them on:

Increased health risks for men with chronic insomnia

A ten year study of over 1,700 men and women followed found that men with insomnia and short sleep duration were almost five times more likely to die than men who had normal sleep. Short sleep duration was defined as less than six hours uninterrupted sleep per night, chronic insomnia as lasting more than one year and poor sleep as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up excessively early in the morning.

Promoting prostate health

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in England, causing about one in four of all new cases. Unlike many cancers, prostate cancer can grow slowly and show no symptoms, however a minority are fast-growing and have to be treated quickly and aggressively. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to tell which is which so that the key factor lies in monitoring your own health and having regular check ups.

Known risk factors are being over 50, a family history of it, being of African-Caribbean or West African descent, being overweight and having a high-fat and high-dairy diet.

Top 3 Tips for a healthy prostate:

1) Dietary sense. Research suggests that diets containing foods with antioxidants may reduce the risk of prostate cancer as well keeping your diet low in red meat, dairy products and saturated fats as these all can increase the risk. To lower your risk eat more tomatoes, soy foods and fish. Include green tea as it contains compounds that can block the actions of an enzyme that promotes prostate cancer. Include a daily multivitamin with good levels of antioxidants, particularly selenium, and vitamin D.

2) Exercise sense. To reduce your risk, start some form of regular aerobic exercise that you enjoy and will maintain.

3) Screen sense. To get early detection it is essential to have regular screening, particularly once over 50.

Prostate problems are the number one concern for men’s health and there have been some positive anecdotal reports on men with prostate cancer who have used natural progesterone cream. There is no clinical evidence, or trial, but much of John Lee’s work was based on his own patients’ responses so it might be worth investigating if you have concerns about your prostate health.

Laptops Linked To Male Infertility

Young men and computers are almost synonymous, but there is a hidden danger in frequent laptop use. Being a father might not be an immediate priority, but if it is a hope for your future then as well as avoiding hot tubs and wearing boxers instead of briefs you might want to limit your laptop use. These three factors all can reduce male fertility, but the laptop link is a new problem according to Dr Kavic, who is a reproductive specialist in Chicago.

The problem is that the heat generated from laptops can damage both sperm count and motility and therefore has an impact on fertility. Dr Kavic recommends placing laptops on desktops and I suggest if it has to be on your lap you need some barrier between you and it such as a cushion or what I use, which is a lap tray with a rigid top and beanbag base to provide a ‘safe zone’.

Extra health benefits for men

Over 16 million adults in the UK currently are affected by hypertension and it is certainly vitally important to control high blood pressure to help keep your heart healthy. However, now it seems that paying attention to your blood pressure can also bring other benefits, particularly for men and some of the concerns they might have around ageing. A study conducted by researchers from Harvard and the Veterans Association (VA) in the USA examined the medical records of more than 350 older men who were part of the VA Normative Aging Study, which included a range of neuropsychological tests. This is a way of looking at brain function by summarizing the results of a series of organized mental tasks such as ability to learn and retain information, problem solving ability and intelligence for example. The key finding was that as the men aged, their overall neuropsychological function declined.

That is something you might expect, but what was startling was that that decline was significantly more pronounced among men who had high blood pressure but were taking no preventive measures or treatment to control it. In particular this group showed a reduced ability to handle language so that their verbal fluency and word recall was significantly worse when compared to men who also had high blood pressure but who had it under control. So if you want to keep on having lively arguments using exactly the right words then make sure you monitor your blood pressure levels!