Fatigue is a common health issue that many people face. And in the winter months we are more vulnerable than ever to feeling tired and sluggish.
Unfortunately it can be attributed to a whole myriad of problems, from chronic illnesses to sleep routine and diet, making it hard to correctly diagnose the root cause. While feeling a little more tired than usual, especially at this time of year, isn’t much to worry about, lingering fatigue could be cause for alarm.
Now an expert has shared an underlying reason why you could be feeling tired. Speaking via his YouTube channel, Dr Eric Berg revealed the “deeper source of your fatigue”.
The health educator told his 11.2 million subscribers that he too had fallen victim to fatigue when he was younger. “I’ve been tired a good portion of my life and I overcame it”, he said.
“I remember driving down the street with my wife and my late 20s being completely exhausted, trying to find a healthy store to find some vitamin to give me energy. It never worked, I had tons and tons of vitamins and didn’t know what was going on.
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https://www.youtube.com/embed/l4kCN3Lgvdc
“So if I could teleport this video back in time and show it to myself, this video would have solved my problem, if I really understood how the body makes energy.”
He explained that “everything starts with this mitochondria.” But what is the mitochondria?
Dr Berg said: “It’s an energy factory, deep inside your cells, that produces energy. If you have any aspects of fatigue, even if you exercise and you run out of gas really fast or even if you have many other different problems, the health problems that most people have, this mitochondria is at the root of it.
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“In fact, most diseases come directly from this mitochondria. It’s a battery making machine because food directly can’t give you energy. It has to be converted into a chemical form of a battery so you can use it. And so, the energy battery itself is called ATP.
“So the mitochondria is actually the battery maker and the ATP is the actual battery.”
To properly fuel the mitochondria, you need to be eating the right kinds of foods.
“If you’re living on ultra processed foods, it’s going to be almost impossible to extract energy from that simply because it’s dead,” he said.
“There’s not a lot of energy in there. And on top of that, there’s a lot of nutritional factors in food that we need that the battery maker assembly line requires.”
According to Harvard Health, foods that contain fatty acids and protein like chicken, turkey, salmon, tuna and nuts can all help with ATP production.
Vitamins and minerals are also essential for ATP levels. Dr Berg recommended the following nutrients for this reason:
- Vitamin B2
- Vitamin B3
- Folic acid (B9)
- Vitamin B12
- Magnesium
- Manganese
- Selenium
- Vitamin C
- Co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10).
According to Dr Berg, exercising can also help you boost the production of ATP in the body.
“As soon as you start exercising, that ATP generation goes way way up,” he said.
He also partakes in cold therapy (exposure to cold water) to tackle fatigue. Dr Berg said: “If you’re a little hesitant of doing that, you can do, kind of like a partial cold immersion with a cold shower.
“The most difficult part about this is when you submerge around your heart because your heart is pumping, and it’s trying to keep you warm and it’s kind of like the most vulnerable area, but you can always do half of your body cold and you’ll get some benefits from them.”
To help support your mitochondria Dr Berg also recommended eating nutrient dense foods, red meat, cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli and cabbage) and micrograins.
He added: “When you consume those, they help your mitochondria. And then on the flip side, it’s avoiding certain things too. Like avoiding the refined foods, avoiding the sugar, going on keto, avoiding chronic stress, heavy metals, smoking, alcohol.
“These are all the things. I wish I would have known back in my 20s and also, this understanding of what the mitochondria really is.”
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