billion dollar product. I don’t know if you’ve done the math lately, but you have to sell A LOT of $3 shots to add up to $1 billion dollars. When combined with energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster, the industry has become a massive $9 billion dollar industry!

So what gives? Why are we as a society running on fumes in terms of energy?

Are we not sleeping enough?

Is it my job?

Are we born with a caffeine deficiency?

I remember a time when I was in chiropractic college and early in my first year in practice when I suffered with the same type of experience. I never drank coffee, but I’d come to depend on a lunch time nap as well as a pick me up tea to get re-energized for the afternoon shifts.

It just didn’t make sense to me that people inherently needed a pick me up during the middle of the day, so I began doing some research. I knew that my structural alignment was sound and my scans showed healthy function of my nervous system already. The next place to start looking was my eating and sleeping patterns.

Without getting into too much detail, I found three very important things:

1. I was beginning my day on the wrong foot with my sleeping pattern

2. The food that I consumed was spiking acidity, inflammation, and  insulin in my body creating a biochemically LOW energetic state.

3. My lowest energy days followed 3 consecutive days without exercise.

Now here’s the thing. I’m not a believer in quick fixes. Actually, let me rephrase that, I believe that quick fixes exist, but it’s a thought process that’s unsustainable and makes failure inevitable. That’s on top of the detrimental effects that some of these energy drinks have been associated with.

I’m a HUGE believer in strategic solutions that make doing the right things in my life easier. Thankfully, with a combination of some will power and the help of some inexpensive services and phone apps, these strategies can help create a higher energetic state for the long term.

8-hour Energy Strategy

Start the Morning Fresh – There’s a lot of debate about how much sleep the average adult needs. The truth is, everyone operates well with varying amounts. The most important factors are consistency of sleeping times, and the timing of your wake cycle.

A friend of mine told me about the Sleep Cycle App for my iPhone one

Deliver Lean. It takes the guess work out of what to eat, and it really makes it affordable for most people. When you take a look at the amount of money you spend eating out, Deliver Lean is really a huge bargain. Healthy snacking is right around the corner now, so be on the lookout for a new site called Graze.com.

Get Moving – It doesn’t have to be extreme, but our bodies are built to move. It doesn’t have to be a full workout or running miles at a time, but movement will help keep your brain oxygenated and alert. Sometimes it just took that extra 15 minutes right after I wake up to do 50 push ups before I hit my morning shower.

Sometimes it meant doing a 10 minute workout at the gym at lunch time. Or, if you’re a pretty fast runner, why not knock out a quick mile?

Now is this a different way of doing things?

Absolutely, but here is how I see it. If you have to stare at a clock and fight back that miserable feeling of fatigue every……single……day, then wouldn’t it make sense to take on a few changes to make your life better? Take it or leave it, the choice is yours.