Your sleep cycles are approximately 70 to 100 minutes each1, cycling through phases of REM and non-REM sleep, plus all of the stages in between. Each phase is correlated with specific regeneration or detoxification of cells and organs throughout your body. Factors like elevated cortisol (stress) levels and unstable blood sugar levels can throw off your sleep cycles. It doesn’t matter how much time you spend in bed if your sleep cycles are not healthy. Disrupted REM sleep, for example, has been found to be associated with mild psychological struggles such as irritability and difficulty concentrating. Though ATP is the main source of energy in cells, it must be bound to a magnesium ion (Mg) to be biologically active2. So, ATP is really Mg-ATP when it comes to making the magic happen3 in your body. Magnesium is responsible for more than 300 enzymatic processes4 that help keep you energized and healthy.* If you’re deficient in magnesium, that’s more than 300 processes your body can’t effectively do. The end result is you feel totally wiped. If you work out an hour a day and then sit around the rest of the time, you’re not much more active than the rest of the sedentary population. There’s even a new name for the growing class of people who try to balance out being desk-bound all day with some time in the gym: The Active Sedentary. Of course, getting some exercise is clearly better than no exercise at all—but to bolster those energy levels we’ve got to get back to basics. Set a timer on your phone to do two minutes of bodyweight exercises every 90 minutes. You’ll easily feel more charged up during the day. Most people hear about the importance of drinking plenty of water, but time and time again it’s overlooked as a reason for common health challenges. Your cells, tissues, and organs are all operating in a water medium. The more murky that water becomes, the more you start feeling symptoms of fatigue. When you drink a glass of water, within mere minutes that water begins to become your blood and extracellular fluid and pushes out the used fluid that’s now littered with metabolic waste products. If you don’t drink enough water, then that stuff stays gummed up in your system. And you start to feel like a microwaved couch potato. Stress suffocates your energy in a number of ways. With chronically elevated stress, your adrenal glands are forced to operate in maximum gear. This keeps cortisol and other stress hormones high. Excess cortisol leads to a surge of glucose to facilitate the perceived “fight-or-flight” situation you’re living in. This is your body’s attempt to make sure you’ve got the energy to run away from that man-eating lion (or run away from that overdue phone bill—because to your body, that stress is all the same). Find a practice that works for you and implement it for just a few minutes a day. A simple 5-10 minute practice can buffer your brain and body against stress and ensure you have the energy to have the quality of life you deserve.
