5: Energy and Defence Smoothies
Okay, so you know why smoothies are so good for you, you know how to make them and you know how to avoid the common pitfalls…
So I guess it’s time that we started looking at some actual recipes to help fortify your health and transform your energy and looks.
We’re going to start out with an ‘energy and defence’ approach. The smoothies we’re looking at in this chapter are all about providing you with lots of energy and at the same time, strengthening your immune system to provide you with better protection against illness and disease.
This is your basic smoothie and it’s the kind of purpose that most people associate with smoothies to begin with.
So what should you put into a smoothie designed for energy and defence? Here is one suggestion:
Morning Wakeup Smoothie
First up, the recipe. Then we’ll dive into why it works:
- 1⁄2 a cup of cold water
- 1Beet
- Lemon juice to taste
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
- 2 cups of mixed frozen berries
If you’re used to having coffee first thing in the morning, then you might find that you rely on using something as a pick-me-up. The problem though is that coffee a) doesn’t have all that much nutritional value and that it is addictive. Caffeine works by blocking the receptors in the brain that respond to adenosine – which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that we produce as a by-product of the energy process. The more time we spend working, the more adenosine builds up and the slower and less cognitively able we become. By blocking these receptors, caffeine can prevent adenosine from having any impact and this in turn means that the brain feels more awake.
The problem is that the brain responds to this. How? By creating more adenosine receptors! The result is that you now need even more caffeine to feel its effects. Worse, is that when you aren’t consuming any caffeine you will feel slow, lethargic and prone to headaches! When you are asleep, you of course aren’t getting any caffeine and some people now believe that the morning grogginess we all experience (sleep inertia) is actually often caused by caffeine withdrawal!
Then there’s the fact that caffeine stimulates the release of stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine. It would be a fairly accurate description to say that caffeine is like ‘stress in a cup’. As you can probably work out by now then, coffee isn’t a healthy choice for a morning boost! This smoothie on the other hand is and it has a ton of different ingredients that do a world of good to wake you up in the morning, provide you with energy throughout the day and to protect you from harm.
Let’s examine each ingredient:
Berries
A mixture of berries is a fantastic way to improve your immune system and to protect yourself against a number of health problems – cancer in particular. That’s because berries are absolutely packed with antioxidants. Antioxidants are substances that combat the action of ‘free radicals’ in the body. Free radicals meanwhile are compounds that damage cells when they come into contact with them. These can cause visible signs of ageing as the damage becomes visible in our skin and in our hair. But more concerning is what happens when those free radicals break through our cell walls and all the way to our nuclei – the centers of the cells that contain our DNA. When this happens, they can damage those strands of DNA enough to cause small mutations. And if those mutations are copied, this is how we get cancerous growths.
In short, a diet high in antioxidants is one of the very best things you can look for to improve your health. Adding berries to a smoothie is one of THE best ways to accomplish this by far.
Beet Juice
What you’re really going to feel when you drink this smoothie though, is the power of the beet juice. Did you know that beet juice is actually such a potent performance enhancer that it is used by a number of different athletes?
That’s because beet juice acts as a ‘vasodilator’. A vasodilator is something that widens the blood vessels (veins and arteries) and thereby helps more blood and oxygen to travel around the body. This means more blood and oxygen to your brain, which in turn translates to better concentration, mental energy and cognitive performance. It also means you’re likely to enjoy better energy in general and you may experience considerable performance improvements if you head out for a long run!
Honey
Honey is a great choice for energy because it provides its sugar in a number of different ways. Specifically, honey contains both fructose and sucrose which are absorbed into the bloodstream at different rates. This means that honey can give you a little sugar hit right at the start of the day but will also serve as a slower supply to keep you going until lunch. This can help prevent snacking. Of course honey also lends our smoothie a bit of sweetness!
Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is another very powerful inclusion in this smoothie – everything is there for a reason!
Coconut oil is a good choice because it contains a very specific type of fat: medium chain triglycerides. This fat is absorbed differently from other types of fat in the body and will head straight for your liver, where it will stimulate the production of ketones.
Ketones are interesting to us because they serve as a ‘secondary’ form of energy for the body. When the body doesn’t have glucose, it relies on ketones instead. Thus, your body can survive on ketones and actually the brain prefers ketones for certain tasks.
Any mixture with coconut oil is going to give you a big boost and will help you to feel more alert and alive!
Lemon
Finally, we have lemon juice which is a great source of numerous vitamins and minerals, as well as several other things. In this particular smoothie, the role of the lemon juice is to provide vitamin C and B6, as well as to give us that refreshing wakeup call that you can only get from citrus!
Stress Buster Smoothie
Not a fan of that last smoothie? The next one will help to support your immune system and fight stress but without quite so much fuel in terms of ketones or vasodilation.
Again, let’s do the ingredients first:
- 2 bananas
- 1 cup organ juice
- 1 peeled orange
- 3⁄4 cup of almond milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 carrot peeled
- Ice
This is another great one for combating morning fatigue and giving you some get-up and go. The bananas are a great source of energy and also of potassium, which will help to fuel you for a lot longer than just those morning hours!
The carrot is key because it contains good quantities of B6 (as does the banana) and this helps the body to process energy from food. This means that you’ll get more use out of the carbs that you consume and out of the very sugar in this smoothie! Better yet, recent research suggests that lutein (which is found in carrots) might be effective at improving the energy efficiency of our mitochondria. Mitochondria are the small ‘energy factories’ in our cells that have the job of turning glucose and other forms of energy into ATP, then using that ATP to drive the movement of muscles and fuel our cells. In one study, it was found that when mice were given lutein, they would run further on their wheel and actually burn a lot more calories – with no prompt from the researchers!
Lutein requires a source of fat because it is fat soluble. The good news is that the almond milk in this very smoothie will do that job just nicely.
Vanilla extract meanwhile is another potent antioxidant, as well as providing anti-inflammatory properties and combating cholesterol it’s a very good tool for making our smoothie a little sweeter on the way down.
Finally, we have the orange which is really the ‘stress busting’ part of the equation. There’s a lot of orange in here and that’s going to provide a lot of vitamin C. Vitamin C plays a vital role because it is what the brain uses to make serotonin. Serotonin meanwhile is the ‘happiness hormone’ and our very own ‘natural’ anti-anxiety medication.
By keeping your blood sugar steady and providing serotonin, this drink can set you up in a good mood and provide the perfect start to the day!
Brain Fuel Smoothie
Got a challenging day up ahead? This ‘brain fuel’ smoothie should provide your grey matter with everything it needs to ace any challenge that comes your way!
- Protein powder
- 1⁄2 banana
- 1-2 tsp coconut oil
- 1t cinnamon
- 1-2tsp yerba mate green tea
This combination is a powerful smoothie for anyone looking to boost their concentration and focus. The first thing of interest in here is the protein powder. Protein is brain food because it is where we get our
amino acids – with amino acids being key players in the creation of numerous neurotransmitters. In short, our brain need protein to function properly and protein powder (whey protein) is a great place to get it.
Next up, we have banana and coconut oil, which we have already seen the benefits of. Coconut oil in particular is crucial for brain power and it’s actually the key ingredient in a lot of products designed to enhance brain performance – like ‘Bullet Proof Coffee’ and like ‘Brain Octane’ oil.
Cinnamon meanwhile is a very healthy way to add more flavor to our drink. It not only lowers blood sugar but also helps to reduce the likelihood of heart disease. In fact, the ability of cinnamon to reduce blood sugar is so potent, that it is often recommended for diabetic patients. This makes it perfect for us to once again avoid those spikes and drops in blood sugar that can ruin our performance otherwise. Cinnamon also packs a lot of antioxidants to help support the brain for the long term.
The final ingredient here though is the yerba mate green tea. Green tea is a fantastic option for anyone looking to enhance their brain power and is a better choice than coffee. For starters, the caffeine content is considerably lower in green tea, which means you can get the slight boost without worrying as much about stress, jitters and addiction.
Moreover, green tea contains the ideal combination of caffeine and fellow xanthine ‘l-theanine’. L- theanine has an effect on the brain that is somewhat the ‘opposite’ of caffeine in that it is gently inhibitory. Many people find that when they combine caffeine with l-theanine, the two complement each other perfectly. The caffeine helps to wake people up and make them more alert and focussed, while the theanine helps keep them calm and prevents stress levels reaching an all time high!
Green tea is also once again very high in antioxidants too. Any green tea will do the job nicely but we chose yerba mate because it has perhaps the perfect balance of all the key ingredients. In fact, Darwin himself is reported to have described green tea as ‘the most perfect stimulant’. Can’t argue with that! This should also serve to be neuroprotective and reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer’s, dementia or other forms of cognitive decline.
Breakfast Smoothie
Finally, let’s take a look at a breakfast smoothie that has one job – to fill you up and keep you going until lunch for those big days!
- 1⁄2 avocado
- 150g strawberry
- 4 tbsp low-fat natural yogurt 200ml semi-skimmed milk Lemon or lime
- Honey
This is a smoothie designed to see you through the day until lunch, which will help boost your performance and prevent cravings. The best part of this smoothie is the avocado, which delivers a delicious base but which also helps to release energy very slowly throughout the day thanks to its status as a healthy saturated fat.
It was once thought that saturated fats would cause weight gain and heart problems. More recently though, studies have shown us that this is not in fact the case. While saturated fats do contain more calories, they are also actually better for us thanks to their slow release of energy, which makes them very effective in providing us with a steady supply of energy and avoiding sugar spikes in the blood.
We’ve also seen that honey has a similar effect when it comes to releasing energy slowly. And that low- fat yogurt can help to get your gut bacteria in check, which is very important for digestion. This is something we’ll be looking at in more detail in the next chapters.
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Hopefully, this has given you a few ideas for great morning smoothies you can use to start your day right. And by sharing the reasoning behind each one and the reason they are so potent, you will hopefully now have a better idea of how to bring about similar effects while still experimenting with the ingredients as you see fit!
More importantly, I hope that this chapter has now opened your eyes to the real power of smoothies. We’re talking game-changing improvements in performance and health here. These smoothies don’t just give you a bit of energy and nutrition – when you stick with them they’ll help to protect your brain as it ages, protect your cells from cancer and more.
And we’re just getting started!
a smoothie designed to see you through the day until lunch, which will help boost your
