How To Increase Energy When You Have Cancer

Learn how to increase energy levels naturally if you have cancer fatigue. Discover why you need to balance your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energies to be healthy. Get practical tips on how to boost your energy without spending a lot of money.

How To Increase Energy Naturally

In 2003 Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz wrote the book The Power Of Full Engagement. This book says that managing our energies not time is our key to fulfillment, energy, and happiness. 

Boosting your energy requires drawing on four separate but related dimensions of energy. These energies are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Our energy capacity diminishes with both overuse and underuse of each energy source.

We have to balance each force to be happy and healthy. You can eat right and take good care of your body on the physical plane. But if you have emotional problems you can get sick anyway.

In this blog post, you’re going to learn what these four energies are and how to increase energy naturally.

Too many natural cancer websites focus too much on the physical part of fixing cancer. Few sites address the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of healing. When you're engaged on all four energy levels, you're the happiest and healthiest.

So let’s talk about what each type of energy is and how you can balance them. I’ll start by talking about the physical energy.

1. Ways To Balance Our Physical Energy

Physical energy involves taking care of your body’s physical needs.There are several aspects of taking care of your physical energy. One of them is your diet.

Animal Products Make Us Sick

What we put in our mouths affect our health in a big way. As I mentioned in several blog posts, we humans are plant-eaters, not meat eaters. When we eat animal products, we manifest many diseases including cancer.

Meat is one of the highest risk factors for getting cancer. Animal products lack carbohydrates fiber, many essential vitamins, and minerals. Instead, they consist of cholesterol, saturated fat, animal protein, toxins, and much more.

Insulin-like Growth Factor One(IGF-1) is a cancer-promoting growth hormone. It is present in every stage of cancer growth. IGF-1 increases when we consume animal protein. To get a real drop in IGF-1, you have to eliminate all animal products, including dairy and eggs.

Heterocyclic amines (HCAs) are chemicals formed in meat or animal protein during cooking. They develop when you prepare meat at a high temperature or over an open flame. HCAs are part of many cancers. Animal protein by itself or the way we cook the meat may contribute to cancer development.

There are three types of macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Our bodies can’t handle too much fat or protein. When you eat meat, you get too much of these macronutrients and become sick.

Why Humans Need To Eat More Vegetables

Vegetables contain the perfect amount of fats and protein for our needs. Humans are starchivores. Our main foods source should be starchy vegetables such as brown rice, sweet potatoes, or potatoes.

Our bodies run on glucose. The healthiest diet to eat is a whole food high carb low-fat diet. A whole food, plant-based diet consists of whole, unrefined plants. It’s a diet based on fruits, vegetables, tubers, whole grains, and legumes.

Some of the foods on the whole-food diet are:

Fruit: Mangoes, bananas, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, oranges, cherries, etc.

Vegetables: lettuce, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, carrots, etc.

Tubers and starchy vegetables: potatoes, yams, yucca, winter squash, corn, green peas,  sweet potato, etc.

Whole grains: millet, quinoa, barley, rice, oats, etc.

Legumes: kidney beans, chickpeas, lentils, lima beans, cannellini beans, black beans, etc.

Glucose comes from carbs and is the body’s preferred and the brain’s only energy source. It should dominate our diet. It’s almost impossible not to get enough protein, even when you eat a vegan diet.

Why We Need To Stop Our Obsession With Protein

In the western world, we have an obsession with protein. Many believe it’s the most critical macronutrient we need. And it is also common to think that we must eat a lot of animal products to be lean, muscular, and healthy. But most of us eat way too much protein.

When you eat a whole-food plant-based diet, you get the right amount of protein. You do not need to eat animal products to get enough protein. We also need to limit our fat intake to become healthy.

Why Too Much Fat In Our Diet Is Unhealthy

Fats are essential to our health too. Plants consist of the right amount of fats for our needs. When you overconsume fat per day, you impair your health. Fat slows down our blood flow and keeps the sugar from entering the cells by blocking it.

We know that processed sugars are junk foods. But a majority of us believe that vegetable oils are healthy. Oil is fat and nothing but fat. It contains no nutrients, including protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and water.

Vegetable oils of any kind have more calories per gram than any other food we know. And without any fiber or water in it, our senses do not see how many calories you have eaten.

Eat food mother nature made and not what humans created. Avoid processed food such as white sugar, all vegetable oils, candies, junk food and more. Have more vegetables and fruits and avoid all animal products including eggs and dairy. Here are some healthy eating habits you should follow.

Good Eating Habits

Eat your food at regular times and three times a day. Have your biggest meal at lunchtime and smaller portions in the morning and evening. Consume a lot of starch, so you don’t get hungry between each supper.

Don’t eat later than 7 PM or your body can't digest the food.  

Focus on eating your food and don’t stand up or multitask while eating. Sit down after each meal and wait five minutes before you leave the table.

If you rush through the whole experience, you create toxic stress hormones. The stress will prohibit the body to digest the food.

Drink Enough Water Every Day

Don’t forget to drink enough water on a daily basis. Drink about 8 cups(2 liters) of water per day. Water is part of your digestion, saliva, urine, bowel movement and other functions of your body.

Drink filtered water without any nasty chemicals like chlorine or fluoride. Berkey is a good water filter that you should buy.

Learn more about the importance of water in this blog post.

Spend More Time In The Sun

We need vitamin D from the sun to be healthy. Sunlight has a beneficial effect on our heart. Vitamin D from the sun reduces the risk of getting several diseases, including cancer. Sun exposure helps to build and maintain bone density and reduces fractures.

If you don’t have adequate vitamin D levels, you can’t use calcium from your diet or supplements. Humans also need sunlight to control their biological clocks.

Sunlight also makes you feel better. Those who avoid the sun miss out of the life-sustaining benefits of sun exposure. If there is not enough sunshine, then you might need to take supplements.

Sleep 8 Hours Per Day

Getting enough sleep is crucial if you want to maintain good health. Your body does it’s most essential repair work during the night. Not getting enough sleep can elevate your cancer risk. When you don’t sleep enough, you make it harder for your body’s organs to repair and rejuvenate.

The body needs rest to recharge and heal itself. If you stay up late, you disrupt this critical process.  

Melatonin is a substance found in animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. In humans and animals, melatonin secrets during darkness. Physiological functions such as sleep, or blood pressure regulation, depend on it.

Melatonin relays information about the cycles of light and darkness to all the cells in the body. Including cancer cells. Low levels of melatonin in the blood increase the risk of cancer.

When you use artificial lights during the night, you mess with the molecular clocks in the brain. Your body now believes that it’s day when its dark outside.

You should go to sleep no later than 10 pm and wake up at 6 am. Deep sleep only happens two hours before midnight. Sleep eight hours a day to help your immune system.

Another way to boost your physical energy is to exercise

Why You Should Exercise More

Exercising oxidizes our blood and is good for our heart. When you train, you are eliminating stress hormones like cortisol from your body. Exercising releases healthy endorphins that make you feel great.

Try to exercise as much as you can every day. Don't push yourself so hard that you’ll feel weak and tired. If you overdo it, you deplete your immune system. Don't use more than 50% of your capacity in each training session. You want to feel strong and fresh after each training session, not tired.

A ten-minute walk daily is far greater than sitting on your couch all day.

If you undergo chemotherapy, it can help you combat the fatigue from the treatments.

Download this pdf to learn 20 ways you can exercise even if you have cancer. 

Eating right, exercising, sleeping enough and drinking lots of water can go a long way to turn you healthy. But all these physical aspects are useless if you can’t balance your emotional energy.

2. How To Balance Our Emotional Energy

Our emotional stress is behind about 90% of our illnesses. When you're stressed, there is a higher chance of getting sick than when you're at ease.

The human body has a range of emotions. The reason why we have all these negative emotions is to protect us from danger. If we didn’t feel these sensations, we wouldn’t be able to run away from a real threat.

Anger, anxiety, pride and any other emotions have an important purpose. But these emotions can become toxic if prolonged. When you’re in danger, your body releases stress hormones like cortisol or adrenaline.

These stress hormones won’t impact your health if you only feel them for a short while. But your body can’t see the difference between an imagined or a real situation.

There is a difference between primordial fear and physiological fear. Primordial fear is a real physical threat that activates our cavemen senses. Fear has a purpose and is not something you can turn off.

The problem is psychological fear that feeds on our negative thinking. It is toxic, stressful and unnecessary.

David Hawkins was a spiritual teacher and author. In his books, he talked about the different emotional states. He created the map of consciousness to explain this. You can see it below.

Every emotion in the body has a specific frequency. At the bottom of the chart is shame, followed by guilt and apathy.

When you're depressed your energy level is low, and you feel tired and bored. Life has no meaning. As you climb the range of emotions, you’ll get more energized.

Negative emotions have a lower frequency than positive emotions. If you feel negative emotions on a regular basis, you’re more prone to getting diseases.

Our goal in life should be to work on our ego so that we can be happy all the time. Love, for example, has a high vibration that makes us feel great. And it makes us less prone to getting diseases.

Joy is our natural state. But our negative thinking clouds our true self. Our emotional baggage is behind most cancers. Learn how stress may lead to cancer.

How Our Emotional Trauma Causes Cancer

Cancer patients often experienced isolation in childhood. Many of them had a complicated relationship with their parents. They often felt rejection, abandonment, betrayal, shame, and injustice.

Some people experienced a combination of those wounds. Many cancer patients harbor long-suppressed toxic emotions, such as anger, resentment or hostility.

Dr. Geerd Hamer found the emotional link to cancer. He discovered a connection between cancer and unresolved emotional conflicts.

Hamer worked as a chief of internal medicine in a clinic at Munich University. He thus was able to interview and do Ct-scans of thousands of cancer patients.

His research led him to discover how emotional trauma affects the brain. Every cancer starts with a painful, acute, dramatic and isolating shock. The distress happens on the psyche, the brain, and the organ at the same time.

According to Dr. Hamer, once a perceived conflict or shock occurs, it impacts the body in a particular way. The brain cells affected by the shock relay it to the specific organ which it controls.

The traumatic event that triggers cancer is often beyond the patient’s control. Such as the loss of a loved one, business, job, home, or some other major disaster.

A vegan diet can decrease your cancer risk. But if you have unresolved emotional baggage your can still manifest cancer.

For example, Steve Jobs was a vegan but still manifested pancreatic cancer. If you read his autobiography, you’ll learn that he was an angry person. He often yelled at his employees and was difficult to work with.

Steve Jobs was adopted when he was a baby and never got over the rejection from his biological parents. Because of that abandonment, he felt like the chosen and special one. Those concepts became part of who Jobs was and how he regarded himself.

So at one point in his life, he experienced an emotional shock that manifested his cancer.

From an energy perspective, negative emotions are costly and inefficient. To balance the emotional energy we need to work on our emotional baggage.

Another way to raise our emotional energy is to do things we enjoy.

Do Activities That You Enjoy

Any activity that is enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming tends to prompt positive emotions. Your interests might mean singing, gardening, dancing, doing yoga, or reading a book.

We need these activities to relax and rejuvenate. Do something that challenges you and develops you.

Television is one primary way most people use to relax and recover. Watching TV is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. It may provide a temporary form of recovery, but it doesn't develop us.

In the Western world, we spend most of our time on accomplishments, status, and material gain. Our society encourages hard work and being productive. That is why it is hard for people to relax and do things they enjoy. We feel ashamed if we are not working.

But you need to do things you enjoy if you want to balance your emotional energy.

Another way to relax more is to spend time with your family and friends.

Spend More Time With Friends And Family

Dan Buettner wrote the book The Blue Zones. He examined the oldest living people in the world and their secrets to longevity.

In the Blue Zones family comes first. The grandparents meet their children and grandchildren often. This bond creates a sense of security. In the west, we put our parents in old homes, but in the Blue Zones, they take care of their elders.

By the time centenarians become centenarians their children reciprocate their love and care. Their children check up on their parents. The younger generation also welcomes the older generation into their homes.

Investing in our children when they are young helps assure they’ll invest in us when we’re old. Seniors who live with their families stay sharper longer than those who live alone or in a nursing home.

Western countries are trending in the opposite direction. Working parents have less time for their kids. Everyone's schedule becomes more and more packed with things to do.

When you spend time with your families and friends, you feel cared for and can relax more and don’t feel as lonely.

Another vital energy that we need to balance is our mental energy.

3. How To Balance Your Mental Energy

Mental capacity is what we use to organize our lives and focus our attention.

The mental energy that best serves full engagement is realistic optimism. When we're in this mode, we see the world as it is and work toward the desired outcome. To strengthen this energy demands mental preparation, positive self-talk, time management and creativity.

One way to strengthen our mental capacity is to take regular breaks.

Take Regular Breaks

Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance.  One way to balance our mental energy is to take regular breaks. Artists often get their best ideas when showering, walking in nature or when they relax.

Leonardo da Vinci was a productive artist. He took many breaks and naps during the day.

If you use your mental energy wisely, you can get more stuff done in less time. You don’t need to waste hours on activities that lead to nothing. Insufficient mental recovery increases mistakes and decreases creativity.

Most work environments believe that working longer is the best way to productivity. They don't reward us for taking regular breaks or working out in the middle of the day.

Try to take a break every 90 minutes or so for 10 minutes or more to recharge your batteries.  

A cynical or negative view about life drains our energy faster. It will affect how we treat our relationships with our family or business partners. Therefore it is crucial that we work on our negative thoughts.

Change Your Thinking

Happy and productive people have a more positive outlook on life. They don’t let negative outcomes affect them. Instead, they find a way around the problem and don’t waste energy on things they can’t control.

Everything we experience in life is our objective viewpoint. The world is not black or white. The way you interpret the world decides how you feel inside. Three people can go through the same experience and react differently. It is never the situation that makes us feel bad but our interpretation of it.

To change our negative thinking, we need to look at our thoughts and question them. Byron Katie is a spiritual teacher that has created a method called The Work. The Work is a simple written exercise that you can use to question your stressful thoughts.

When you ask the four questions and do the turnaround, you’ll see the world in a different light. You’ll stop wasting all your energy on negativity and find productive ways to create change.

You can learn this technique here.

Another way to preserve your mental energy is to get more done in less time.

Focus On What Is Important To Get More Done In Less Time

Stephen R. Covey is the author of the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He says in his book that we should focus our energy on non-urgent and important tasks.

These activities include things like building relationships, exercising, planning, and eating healthy. Another word for it is preventive maintenance. These are things we know we need to do but don't like doing.

Urgent and important tasks deal with results that require immediate attention. We call these activities emergencies or problems. Critical problems consume most peoples' lives. They become crisis managers, problem-solvers, and deadline-driven producers.

As long as you focus on urgent and important tasks, it keeps getting bigger and bigger. Some people spend all day putting out fires. Not only does it make you less efficient, but you also waste lots of energy.

If you say yes to every opportunity, you will get less done. Efficient people stay out of trivial tasks whether they are urgent or not. They plan their life to prevent a crisis from forming.

Remember the 20/80 rule. 80% of your results in life comes from 20% of your effort. Focus more on doing the 20% that brings results and not activities that waste your time and lead nowhere.

Another way to balance our mental energy is to declutter our home.

Declutter Your Home And Live A Minimal Lifestyle

Marie Kondo is the author of The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying. In this bestseller, she teaches people how to declutter their lives.

One way to do that is to throw away stuff that doesn’t spark joy in you. The less clutter you have, the easier it is to organize your stuff. When your space is clean and organized, you need to spend less time on cleaning and finding things.

You won’t feel as frustrated when you get home. Therefore you'll spend less mental energy and get more stuff done.

When you become a minimalist, you have fewer responsibilities and less stress. Every time you buy new stuff your cost of living goes up. Buying only what you need saves you money and makes your life less stressful.

Another way to balance your mental energy is to keep learning new things.

Learn New Things

One way to stay sharp is to learn new things. The brain functions as a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it becomes. Loss of memory is the most common complaint that people over the age of forty bring to neurologists.

Every time you learn something new, it builds new connections to the brain cells. When we continue to challenge the brain, it protects us from decline as we age.

Just as learning a new sport forces us to build new muscles and skills, so does learning new things. Even learning a few new words of vocabulary each day pushes us to develop our mental muscles.

Try to pick up a new skill or go on a course to keep your mental focus sharp.

Another energy to balance is our spiritual energy.

In the same way, we can starve on a physical level; we can also perish spiritually. Spiritual energy provides the force for action in all dimensions of our lives. It fuels passion, perseverance, and commitment. This energy comes from our values and a purpose beyond our self-interest.

Spiritual energy is the meaning we attach to what we do in life. Money or external things can’t make us happy if we don't have a deeper purpose in life.  

Self-absorption drains energy and impedes performance. The more preoccupied we are with our fears and concerns, the less energy we have available.

The commitment to live according to our profound values creates a more stable center in our lives. But it also helps us to deal better with the challenges we face along the way.

If we don't work on our spiritual connection, we will stay unfulfilled and frustrated. It will deplete our energy and make us depressed.

Often we need to experience a crisis before we look within. One way to raise our spiritual energy is to join a spiritual community.

Join A Spiritual Community

The people of the Blue Zones all follow a spiritual practice.

If you’re already religious, then get more involved in your church activities. Engage in activities like singing in the choir or volunteering. Schedule an hour a week for the next two months to attend religious services or spiritual groups.

If you don’t want to follow a particular dogma, then learn more about spirituality. One book that you can read is The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle. This book deals with the ego and how to live in the present moment.

Spiritual energy involves being of service to others and deepening our compassion. It also comes from feeling a sense of purpose connected to our deepest values.

Some activities generate spiritual renewal without consuming too much energy. These activities include walking in nature, reading an inspirational book, or listening to music.

Spiritual practices can be renewing and demanding at the same time. Meditation, for example, requires you to focus your attention to quiet the mind.

It can lead to rejuvenating, openness, connectedness and joy. Like yoga, meditation helps to build our spiritual capacity and emotional recovery. Prayer can also serve as a source of emotional and spiritual comfort.

If you want to learn how to meditate, then I recommend that you go on a 10-day Vipassana meditation workshop. For about ten days you’ll meditate for about ten hours per day in complete silence. This workshop is intense if you’re new to meditation. But you’ll feel lighter and more relaxed afterward.

Click here to learn more.

Spiritual energy doesn’t mean that you need to follow a spiritual practice. Meaning from life can come from doing something that helps others.

An essential step in supercharging your spiritual energy is to find your purpose in life.

Why We Need To Have A Purpose In Life

All Blue Zones have a higher purpose in life. Every day they have something to look forward to. Okinawans call it "ikigai," and Nicoyans "plan de vida." In both cultures, the phrase translates to “why I wake up in the morning.”

The strong sense of purpose may act as a buffer against stress. Centenarians do something they enjoy every day. In the world, most of us work at stressful jobs we don’t like.

Viktor E. Frankl wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning. In this book, he talked about his experience in the Nazi death camp. The prisoners that had a reason to live survived longer than the inmates that didn’t feel any hope.

Individuals who have a clear goal in life live longer. A sense of purpose may come from something as simple as seeing your grandchildren grow up. Or you can find meaning in a business, a hobby or by helping others.

Finding a purpose in life makes it much easier to fight cancer. Close to 80% of workers don't enjoy their work. They only do it because of their financial obligations. Even if some people have an impressive salary, they still feel dead inside.

If you don’t find meaning in life, you can become depressed. When I started this blog, I worked at a supermarket. After working several years there, I became bored. The company didn’t have a higher purpose.

Because of this, I became depressed. Even though I ate a plant-based diet, drank enough water and slept 8 hours every night, I was weak and tired. It wasn’t before I found my purpose in this blog that I felt better and got more energy.

One way to find your life's purpose and ignite your spiritual energy is to know thyself.

How To Find Your Purpose In Life

All humans have different talents and personalities. When we know ourselves and live according to our strengths, it is much easier to feel engaged and happy. We perform at our best when we do things we enjoy.

The best way to understand yourself is to take a Myers-Briggs personality test. This test gives your suggestions on what career that matches your personality. You will be happier and more fulfilled when you follow a profession that suits you.

Click here to take this test now.

If you want to create a life you want, then read the book The Pathfinder by Nicolas Lore. This book teaches you how to find your true calling in life. There are many different tests you can use to find your perfect job or business idea.

Another great book on how to create the life you want is Wishcraft by Barbara Sher.

Barbara teaches you how to find your passion in life in the first part of this book. And then she shows you how to create an action plan so that you can make your dream come true. This book is still as relevant today as it was about 40 years ago. 

Another book I recommend is The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron. If you are a highly sensitive person, then this book is a must-read and may change your life.

In this book, Elaine N. Aron explains about a new trait she discovered in herself and other people. About 20% of the population have an extra sensitive immune system.

A person with an extra sensitive personality gets overwhelmed and stressed out more easily. If you have this trait, then you need to create a life that suits your character more.

You can take a test here to see if you’re a highly sensitive person.

Another way to raise your spiritual energy is to write a personal mission statement. Click here to learn how to create a personal mission statement.