Hey there, this is Ari. Welcome back to the show. So the old way that people used to think about

improving their energy levels was largely about drinking coffee, taking your caffeine, taking,

you know, energy pills and energy drinks that are usually filled with basically nothing more

than caffeine or other stimulants and sugar.

And the interesting part about that is that it actually does work to improve your energy

levels, but only for a few hours. And then you actually pay a price for it. And especially if you

use it on a daily basis, you pay a big, big price for it.

And it's very insidious, that whole process of paying that price.

And the reason why it's insidious is because those stimulants, whether it's caffeine or other stimulants, absolutely do give you an immediate or relatively immediate short term

boost in your energy levels for a few hours. So you, when you take those things, perceive them

to be giving you a boost to your energy levels. But what you don't realize is going on is when you

do that on a daily or near daily basis,

your brain actually feels overstimulated.

And what I mean by that is the brain has a certain balance of various neurotransmitters

that are either stimulating neurotransmitters or more calming inhibitory neurotransmitters.

And it's constantly trying to maintain the appropriate balance for you know for example different parts of the day whether

you're waking or sleeping for example that neurotransmitter environment changes a lot so the brain

has a system to regulate the proper balance what happens when you take stimulants like caffeine is you

disturb that balance. You literally actually plug up the receptor for one of those calming

inhibitory neurotransmitters called adenosine. And when you plug that up very frequently,

the brain basically says, hey, I'm out of balance here. We have too much stimulation going on and not enough

inhibition. So we need to reestablish better balance of those neurotransmitter systems. So what does it do? It basically

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