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Always sleepy? We find the reasons and ways to solve the problem
You wake up in the morning – you want to sleep, you come to work – you want to sleep. I want to sleep after eating, after playing sports, after a long meeting. I always want to sleep. The only time during the day when you don’t feel like sleeping is the evening when you need to go to bed.
Constantly wanting to sleep – the reasons for this can not always be determined unambiguously. Daytime sleepiness is very often associated with the course of taking certain types of drugs or with the use of caffeine or nicotine. The constant desire to sleep greatly interferes with daily activities, interrupting work or school, sometimes even posing a danger to you and others – if, for example, you are driving. As always, in order to choose the methods of treatment, you need to find the reasons why you constantly want to sleep.
One of the reasons may be disorders of the central nervous system. There is even such a disease, hypersomnia, or increased drowsiness, which, however, is quite rare. In general, about five percent of cases of daytime sleepiness can be explained by hypersomnia. Patients with hypersomnia get good sleep at night, but in the morning they want to sleep, but they have to wake up, and it doesn’t work.
Another reason why you constantly want to sleep may be narcolepsy, a chronic neurological disease caused by the brain’s inability to regulate sleep cycles. Throughout the day, narcoleptics experience sudden bouts of sleepiness, which are accompanied by decreased muscle tone, and sometimes even hallucinations.
Always sleepy? The reason is in violation of circadian rhythms
Circadian rhythms are the natural “clock” by which our body works. In accordance with them, all physical, mental and behavioral changes occur in our body. These rhythms are controlled by nerve cells located in an area of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Both internal factors, such as the release of hormones, and external factors, such as the change of day and night, help to regulate the circadian. The reason we are constantly sleepy may be because these rhythms are disrupted. This most often happens to those who spend significant time on travel or business trips, or to those whose work is associated with a constant change in the daily routine, for example, workers with complex schedules, where night shifts are interspersed with daytime.
Another cause of daytime sleepiness is sleep apnea. This is the term for temporary pauses in breathing during sleep. These stops can last from a few seconds to a few minutes and can occur up to thirty times per hour. Such pauses disrupt the sleep cycle, because of which a person can get a good night’s sleep and feel tired and “nodding off” all the next day.
And of course, the simplest reason we feel sleepy is lack of sleep. Insomnia can be caused by a wide variety of factors, including stress, anxiety, depression, medication, poor mealtimes, and poor sleep management in general. Approximately one in three of us have experienced insomnia at least once in our life.
Food coma or why do you want to sleep after eating?
Very often after eating, we feel tired, and we want to sleep after eating. This happens especially often after a hearty lunch in the middle of the day. Why is this happening? The fact is that the digestion of food requires a lot of energy from the body. To deliver food to the stomach, and then decompose it into nutrients and assimilate, both the mouth and the esophagus and the stomach and intestines do a long difficult job. First, a signal is sent to the stomach to begin the production of acid, which helps to digest food. The stomach also controls the rate at which food passes through the intestines. The pancreas then begins to produce enzymes that break down and absorb nutrients.
Morning. You drank a cup of coffee, and it seems that you are energized for a long time. However, after a hearty meal, you start to feel sleepy, it is difficult for you to concentrate on one thing. Of course, when you want to sleep after eating, work turns into torture. This phenomenon is sometimes jokingly called “food coma”. The reason for the “food coma” is not only that the body does not have enough energy to maintain routine activities after it has spent it on digesting food. Daytime sleepiness also has to do with the chemical processes that take place in the brain after a hearty meal. When nutrients are absorbed in the intestines, it causes a spike in blood glucose levels. Your brain cells use sugar as an energy source, so when your body is hungry, your brain releases a substance called orexin, which keeps you awake and drives you to find food. However, when the food is digested and assimilated, the brain also becomes “full”, no longer needs orexin and stops producing it. This is the second reason why we want to sleep after eating.
In the morning you want to sleep, but you need to wake up
Wanting to sleep in the morning is the norm. Especially in winter, when you have to get up and get ready for work even before the sun appears. What needs to be done so that waking up is not so hard for us?
First, you should try to plan enough sleep each night. Most people need a minimum of seven hours to get normal, healthy sleep. Some and all nine. That amount of rest each night ensures that you’re ready for a new day in the morning. The best way to organize your day to get enough sleep is to go to bed and wake up at the same time.
Secondly, if you want to sleep when you need to wake up, do a short exercise in the morning, consisting of simple movements. Jogging around the house in the morning or going to the gym will seem like a waste of energy to many. And light morning exercises will cause the release of endorphins into the brain, the so-called “hormones of happiness.” They will help us feel energized, at least for the entire first half of the day.