Energy – natural resource in shortest supply, especially for 100 million Americans who are suffering from chronic or incurable illness. Just thinking of everyone who needs you can sap out what little energy you have left. Maybe you feel like you can’t possibly get it all done. But you know you HAVE to. People depend on you everyday. Your family. Your friends. Your coworkers. Your clients. Even your pets! To meet demands of life today, you can’t afford to have your energy depleted. So here are some ways to easily boost those levels right away.

1. Aerocize. I was speaking with a friend yesterday who has Lyme disease. He is so ill he literally cannot exercise. He was depressed. I suggested he go out his door (get as bundled up as necessary) and close door. Take in deep breaths for 10 minutes. He could not believe how much better he felt. If where you are is smoggy, or if there is no way you can get outside, get an air purifier and you will have benefits of negative ions anyway.

3. Exercise is energy creator. Move your body, no matter how little. If you cannot even move your ankle or wrist joints around in circles, imagine yourself doing it. You know you need it, so why fight it? Take a walk, even if it is winter. If you can't walk outside, walk in a mall. Stretch. Elongate those tight muscles. Dance! Put on your favorite music and move around (again if you cannot move even minimally imagine yourself doing this.) It feels so good. If you’re bedridden or for some other reason can’t exercise today, at least visualize doing it in your mind. You all know story of P.O.W. from Vietnam who was imprisoned for 8 years, never exercising. Every day he visualized playing golf, stroke by stroke. The day he got home he got best score in golf in his life. The bottom line is we are meant to exercise. The nervous and endocrine systems need stimulation to release endorphins (those feel-good, energy enhancing chemicals).

4. Pump up your energy in your attitude. Think of life as a school. When you quit learning, you begin dying. Open your mind; learn something new every day. Make it a game! Write down your new find in a spiral notebook – nothing fancy. It’s fun to look back and see how much more knowledge you’ve captured over time.

5. Clutter – The silent Energy Sucker. You’ve heard it before – what’s on outside is a reflection of what’s on inside. Surrounded by clutter? It has a real physical effect on your energy levels. Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to clean out your garage or over-stuffed closet all at once. Set a timer and just take 15 minutes a day to de-clutter your space. It’s all about baby steps.

It is common practice in North America to shower on a daily basis, sometimes more than once. Unfortunately, most people are unaware that more chlorine is absorbed through skin during average shower than by drinking six to eight glasses of tap water. This may make one wonder, how clean is shower water?

Are you a fan of hot showers? Since skin is porous, it is body's way of excreting toxins and regulating temperature, hot showers cause pores of skin to dilate, allowing chlorine and other free radicals to be rapidly absorbed. Chlorine is also contained within water vapor that enters air as steam, and which we breathe into our lungs as we shower. Dr. Halina Brown, a professor of water chemistry at University of Pittsburgh, claims that exposure to vaporized chemicals in water supplied through showering, bathing and inhalation is 100 times greater than through drinking water.