Sugar, Caffeine or Fresh Juice - Which Is Better for Energy?

Sugar Energy

Many people start the day with sugary breakfast cereals or white bread (virtually equivalent to sugar to your body and possibly even worse). These simple and unnatural carbohydrates are digested extremely quickly and hit your bloodstream with large amounts of sugar in as little as 15 minutes.

You'll often see processed cereals trumpeting on their packaging that they are a source of energy. But is this really the type of energy you want? You may feel a temporary burst, or even a little wired or high, but the effect is short-lived.

Simple sugar energy quickly overloads your bloodstream with far too much glucose for it to handle. In fact, it's such a threat to your body's health that it produces the hormone insulin to shuttle the excess sugar out of your bloodstream for storage.

Insulin is the fat storing hormone. It can store some of the excess sugar you've absorbed from the bread or cereal in your liver as glycogen. But once that's full it can be converted to triglycerides and stored as body fat.

In removing the excess sugar from your bloodstream, insulin often does its job too well and leaves you with low blood sugar. So just a few hours after a concentrated simple carbohydrate meal, your energy is gone, you feel tired, sometimes lightheaded and usually hungry again.

To top it all off, insulin has been using that time to store more body fat and effectively prevent stored fat cells from being used as energy. For a better understanding of the process and a simple solution see the page on cutting carbs to lose weight.

Check here what are the best multivitamins for energy

I'd also recommend swapping out cereal, bread and other grain-based breakfasts for these far more satisfying and stable energy alternatives.

Caffeine Energy

Many more of us start the day with a shot of coffee and if you are addicted to caffeine it will usually make you feel better and more energized. It's important to realize though that this is simply because it temporarily negates the effects of caffeine withdrawal, something millions of people in America go through every morning.

Research is showing that once you replace coffee with healthier alternatives and are no longer addicted to caffeine you perform better without it than you did when you needed it just to wake up. There’s a plan for just how to do that here, with a replacement that tastes similar to coffee but is actually good for you.

Even in the medium-term, caffeine becomes less and less effective as a drug and you end up needing more and more to get the same buzz from it. For many people that 'buzz' has long since gone beyond a little extra energy and would be better described as tension and anxiety.

Coffee can also strip your body of important minerals like magnesium, increase acidity and potentially cause gastrointestinal problems like bloating, cramps and poor digestion. All of these regular side effects can have a seriously negative impact on your energy levels.

Here's more about the seven health problems with coffee and how to avoid them if you're ready to make a change.
Fresh Juices for Energy

Freshly made juices like these are one of the simplest and best ways to improve your energy levels. This is because the nutrition in freshly juiced fruit and vegetables is very easily assimilated, energizes your cells and gives your body what it really needs to perform at its best.

Vegetables and fruit juices are concentrated sources of electrolyte minerals like magnesium, calcium, potassium and sodium, so important for metabolism, stable blood sugar levels, muscle and brain function and numerous cellular processes involved in energy production throughout your body.

Trace minerals like iron, manganese, selenium and zinc are also vital for creating and maintaining energy within your body and juicing a variety of produce is a great way to cover a lot of these nutritional bases.

Pro-vitamin A, vitamin C and B vitamins in particular are vital for stable mental and physical energy. When levels are low your body and brain will soon suffer but fresh juices are a simple way to increase your intake of natural and highly absorbable vitamins.

There are also a rich range of enzymes, antioxidants and other phytonutrients to be found in making up your own juices and the five recipes coming up next are great examples of how easy it is to improve your health with homemade juice.

If you want to increase your energy levels and improve your overall vitality then juicing offers a concentrated and effective way to give your body the nutrition it needs.