Every day, over 100 trillion cells in our bodies are working hard, ingesting and digesting nutrients, removing waste, and reproducing themselves. Healthy and correctly functioning cells provide the energy which ensures we wake up, get to work, enjoy our recreation, live our lives and retire to bed at night for restful refreshing sleep.

In order for life's activities to take place, cells must create their own energy. This energy production s essential to life and it is this energy created within our cells we most crave and scent to lack. Yet even when we are tired, our bodies are remarkably active. At rest our normal metabolic processes involved in maintaining our breathing, detoxifying and heat production, consume some 60% of our daily energy production.

Energy, a difficult concept to define
Scientists describe it as the amount of heat given off from the body, but this is of scant relevance to someone worn out after walking up stairs or unable to concentrate because of brain fog. So for the purpose of this article, energy may be described as 'the capacity to do useful work repetitively'.

Energy is the currency of life and its presence provides us with choice of action, a lack of which results in a pernicious imprisonment of our bodies and minds. Yet as our vitality is lost and function becomes compressed we find people rationalising this declining capacity as a result of age, genes, bad luck, overwork, family pressures etc, as if it was an inevitability, simply because so many people seem to be the same.

Going to bed exhausted and waking tired, falling asleep during the day putting off decisions because of a fuzzy mind, missing out on exercise or travel and tolerating unsatisfactory relationships are all linked to our capacity to feel capable of change. Change depends on energy giving us the physical and mental ability to absorb and adjust to new demands.
The key issue to keep in mind is that cells manufacture energy by burning the substances found in foods. To do this, the foods we eat are broken down into smaller and smaller components, which include a number of carbon atoms. Eventually, the bonds between the carbon atoms are broken down into the electrons that make them up. These electrons contain energy, which is used to make a substance called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). One of the bonds holding ATP together has great energy potential. When it is broken, it releases the equivalent of approximately seven kcal/mole. This is the energy our cells use to keep us alive.

A steady production of ATP is necessary because only about three ounces of ATP is stored in the body at one time, the amount that will sustain a strenuous activity, such as running as hard as you can, for about five to eight seconds. It is therefore important that our bodies have the most efficient means possible to produce this valuable substance.

So energy is derived from the combination of the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Before anything else is considered these are the basic rules to life and energy production. This concept is simple, yet the processes needed by the body to convert food into energy are complicated and the interactions within this programme provide us with many opportunities for failure.

We quite naturally take the presence of energy for granted until it is missing and yet most of us would consider it folly to add diesel to a petrol car even thoug h diesel is a fuel derived from oil, as is petrol. Day after day people put low quality food and drink into their systems and expect their body to perform as if it was running on the perfect fuel. Our system's remarkable adaptability means we can manage and function on the most appalling diet for so long that the very simplicity of this argument is lost in the search for more complex answers to energy loss. In addition some people's genetic pool means they will function for longer than the 'yellow canaries' or highly sensitive amongst us, but decline in function will still occur earlier than chronology would expect as long as the raw materials are of inadequate composition and quality

So what actually happens?
Energy production takes place within mitochondria (eliptical shaped organelles) within our cells. We have over 100 trillion cells in our body and each cell has some 300-800 mitochondria (energy factories). The liver cells have as many as 5000, and the heart as many as 20,000 of these units per cell. Each one using many nutrients including the B vitamins, B1, B6, B2, B3, folic acid and biotin, magnesium, manganese, glutathione, calcium, potassium, CoQ10, carnitine, zinc and malate etc, necessary to produce the ATP, we need to empower our body. Each of the processes undertaken within the mitochondria depends on the presence of nutrments derived from food.

So the foods we eat must be of the highest quality. They should include energy dense foods such as whole grains legumes, nuts, seeds, fish meats vegetables and fruit, organic if possible for optimum health benefits.

Fluids, especially water should be drunk regularly. Stimulants such as tea, coffee and alcohol kept to a minimum as they destroy key nutrients necessary for energy production.
Meals should be small and regular and people generally fare better when there is a high level of protein with some fat and complex carbohydrate.