Let’s face it: mornings are hard. Even if you’re a morning person, it can be hard to get out of bed and jumpstart your day. If you’re not a caffeine drinker or if you’re trying to reduce your caffeine intake, then you may feel out of luck. Thankfully, we have a few natural ways to fight that morning slump by using vitamins for fatigue.
Vitamin B12 Boosts Energy and Improves Mood
We’re huge advocates of vitamin B12. It is the powerhouse of B vitamins and does so much for your body, including fortifying your bones, boosting your mood, fighting fatigue, and staving off depression. We’re here to talk about its energizing properties, though.
Vitamin B12 on its own isn’t enough to boost your energy — you need a good breakfast (or a snack) to really get it going. It helps your body convert food into glucose, which gives you energy. Therefore, if you have B12 right in the morning with your breakfast (or at night so it stays in your system for the next day), you’re more likely to feel energized faster!
While studies are mixed if B12 actually helps energize everyone, one thing is for sure: if you’re B12 deficient, you’re tired! Being deficient in B12 isn’t that uncommon, especially if you’re vegetarian, vegan, or above the age of 50. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimated that 3.2% of adults over age 50 have a seriously low B12 level, and up to 20% may have a borderline vitamin B12 deficiency
Therefore, simply taking vitamin B12 can combat the symptoms of a deficiency, including fatigue!
Better Mood = More Energy
It’s widely known that your mood is tied with how energized and productive you feel. For example, depression is known to reduce motivation and increase fatigue. B12 helps combat that.
It plays a vital role in synthesizing and metabolizing serotonin. Serotonin is the chemical responsible for regulating mood. It’s most commonly known as the “feel good” hormone that causes happiness.
This study looked at people with depression and low vitamin B12 levels. The group that was given B12 showed fewer depressive symptoms than those who were only treated with antidepressants
Exercise Helps Boost Your Energy
It’s a widely known fact that exercise helps increase your mood and energy. While the idea of working out can put you further into a slump, even just 15 minutes of moving — whether it’s a walk around your office, around the neighborhood, or just standing up — can help you feel more energized.
Exercising causes your body to release epinephrine and norepinephrine. They are hormones that help reduce stress and, if released in modest amounts, can make you feel energized.
Not every exercise will do this, though. It all depends on what you enjoy doing. If you hate lifting weights, then your mind is going to be thinking how much this sucks instead of enjoying the moment. It’s very hard to trick your brain into liking something you don’t like doing, which in turn makes it more difficult for your brain to release serotonin, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.
On top of all of this, getting active almost guarantees that you’ll sleep more soundly. It’s not only good at burning fat and building muscle, it also gives your cells more energy to burn and helps circulate oxygen throughout your body.
Fight Fatigue by Staying Hydrated
Staying hydrated does wonderful things for your body. It also plays a direct role in your energy level too. Dehydration impacts your quality of sleep. When you’re asleep, your body restores chemical balances, heals and recovers. Being dehydrated actively affects how your body restores and heals itself when you’re asleep. This can negatively affect your mood when you wake up.
We recommend having a glass of water when you wake up to help jumpstart the day. Then try to get the recommended amount of about 15.5 cups of fluids a day for men and about 11.5 cups for women every single day.
Heartburn Slowing You Down in the Morning?
Heartburn isn’t fun, especially when it’s the morning. As much as you may not want to hear it, it could be your morning coffee that’s causing it.
If you frequently suffer from heartburn after your morning cup of Joe, you may want to try our above tips and start weaning yourself off of coffee. You can try switching to tea, though stay away from anything mint or peppermint flavored, as that can trigger heartburn as well.
We hope these tips help you! Now go and conquer your morning!
If your fatigue caused by daylights savings? We feel that too! Read all about how to beat DLS fatigue here.