One of the definitions of Vitality – according to Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary is “power of enduring”. Most of us are yearning for Vitality when we fell we don’t have it, we feel always tired and fatigued and don’t have enough energy to satisfy our own expectations.

Thus, the desire to buy Vitality in a capsule, a potion or get it by eating or drinking is on everyone’s mind and industry is cashing-in on this ubiquitous yearning. But does it work – is there a Vitality activating supplement? Advertisements are certainly not short on promises and hope and desperation is fueling the miracle-cure commerce.

Can we subjectively quantify Vitality?

First of all – we have to ask, how do we measure Vitality? What is the benchmark? Do we have more or less Vitality than others at the same age and how do Vitality levels change during a day?

The Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Oxford did a study to measure Vitality, here are the findings:

Subjective perceptions of mental and physical energy were measured by the use of visual analogue scales (VAS) over the course of a week in a group of normal volunteers. These variables were found to correlate, highly both with one another and with assessments of vigor and fatigue measured with a standard adjectival format. In addition, high correlations were found with a measure of positive effect. These five variables also displayed characteristic patterns of diurnal variation. Physical and mental energy, vigor and positive affect were highest in the morning, falling progressively and significantly over the day. In contrast, fatigue showed the opposite pattern. Extraversion showed positive correlations with physical and mental energy, vigor and positive effect, and negative correlations with fatigue and negative effect, most being significant (P less than 0.05). Conversely, neuroticism showed a negative correlation with the first four energy variables but was positively related to fatigue and negative effect, most correlations again being significant. Physical and mental energy, vigor and positive affect also showed a positive correlation (P less than 0.01) with a measure of happiness. It is concluded that VAS-derived ratings of physical and mental energy are reliable indicators of self-perceived vigor and fatigue.

Can we objectively determine Vitality?

An interesting technology is emerging and vying for acceptance as credible science. The method is referred to as GDV (Gas discharge Visualization) and several papers by various authors were presented at 18th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, 2005. IEEE Proceedings. “The study - by Kononenko, I.; Sedej, M.; Sadikov, A., - verifies a hypothesis that GDV in fact measures vitality. For that purpose a limited study was performed and the findings support the hypothesis.” While GDV is a product of modern computer and imaging technology, the underlying method is Image formation in the gas discharge around objects of different nature initiated by strong impulsive electromagnetic field (also called Kirlian effect) is known for more than two centuries. So far the main direction of investigation of the effect was purely practical: it turned out that gas discharge pictures around biological objects could provide substantial information about the internal state of the object. In particular, physicians in many countries actively use the gas discharge images of human fingers and toes nowadays for screening and monitoring of human state.