12 non-obvious reasons why you constantly want to sleep

1. You are losing calories
2. You lack physical activity
3. You are overweight
4. You are experiencing chronic stress
5. You suffer from depression
6. You have chronic fatigue syndrome
7. You are missing some vitamins or minerals
8. You are taking certain medications
9. You have a sleep disorder
10. You may have diabetes
11. You have cardiovascular disease
12. Or maybe you have cancer

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Perhaps you just lack vitamin D or exercise.

12 dangerous and harmless reasons why you constantly want to sleep

1. You are losing calories

This applies not only to those who are on strict diets and deliberately limit their diet. Sometimes, due to workload and stress, you may skip breakfast or lunch. As a result, blood sugar levels drop, and the body simply does not have enough energy. Rolling fatigue and a desire to sleep are quite predictable consequences.

What to do

Monitor your diet. Especially if you are working hard or studying.

If for some reason you are unable to eat breakfast or break out for lunch, keep healthy snacks on hand - bananas, whole grain crackers, protein bars, dried fruits, nuts. They will help the body stay energized throughout the day.

2. You lack physical activity

A sedentary lifestyle is a sure way to earn Active and Sedentary Behaviors Influence Feelings of Energy and Fatigue in Women daytime fatigue and sleepiness.

Moreover, this is a vicious circle: the less you move, the more you want to sleep, the more sleepy you are, the less you move. It can only be broken by an effort of will.

What to do

Move. The more you get to your feet and exercise, the more energetic and less sleepy you will feel. Check and make sure.

3. You are overweight

Excess weight and even more obesity can provoke Causes of Excessive Sleepiness: Sleep Apnea, Narcolepsy, RLS fatigue and sleepiness during the day. This is due to the fact that the muscles, cardiovascular and other systems have to make more efforts to move an unnecessarily heavy body from its place and provide it with the necessary amount of oxygen and nutrients.

What to do

Try to normalize your weight. In theory, the recipe is simple: a healthy diet, calorie restriction, more physical activity, including exercise. In practice, changing your lifestyle to shed those extra pounds can be difficult. But the effort is still worth it.

4. You are experiencing chronic stress

In a state of acute stress, the body goes into a "fight or flight" mode: the levels of the hormones adrenaline and cortisol increase, the blood flow to the muscles increases, the body prepares for a rapid throw. This is normal and may even save your life. But if the stress lasts longer, and the throw never occurs, the constant heightened readiness exhausts the body.

Headache, muscle tightness, fatigue, including drowsiness during the day are symptoms of prolonged nervous tension.

What to do

Find a way to relieve stress. In some cases, it is enough to get out of the influence of provoking factors, for example, not to communicate with an acquaintance that unnerves you, to sit less on social networks, to change your unloved job.

If there is no opportunity to act radically, start influencing the situation from the inside. Move more, read, meditate, communicate with people you like.

5. You suffer from depression

Depression can be extremely difficult to recognize. Sometimes people experiencing this mental disorder can behave in a completely normal way. You can only spot a problem by looking closely and noticing minor changes in behavior.

Overwhelmed fatigue, agonizing unwillingness to get out of bed, drowsiness are vivid symptoms of latent depression.

What to do

If you feel that the world has turned gray, you do not want anything (except to sleep), find the strength to look into a psychotherapist. Or at least to a therapist: the primary care doctor will also be able to recognize the problem, if any, and, if necessary, will send you to a specialized specialist who will help overcome depression.

6. You have chronic fatigue syndrome

This is a common violation. In the United States alone, up to 2.5 million people suffer from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). As a rule, the main symptom of the disorder is lack of strength and drowsiness for three weeks or more.

What to do

Unfortunately, this disease is one of those that are difficult to detect. Before diagnosing CFS, the therapist must rule out other health problems.

If chronic fatigue syndrome is confirmed, be prepared to correct it with proper nutrition, exercise, and cognitive behavioral therapy.

7. You are missing some vitamins or minerals

Drowsiness often makes itself felt by a deficiency of vitamin D or B12, as well as iron, magnesium or potassium. All these substances play an important role in energy metabolism. If there are not enough of them, all the body wants is to crawl under the covers and close its eyes.

What to do

To check if everything is in order with the listed vitamins and minerals, you need to take a blood test. This is best done with the referral of a therapist. The doctor will be able to correctly decipher the test results and, if necessary, will recommend pharmacy vitamins and supplements.

However, they may not be needed. Sometimes the lack of a substance can be compensated for by making changes in the daily diet. For example, to increase your iron levels, you need to eat spinach, liver, and red meat.

8. You are taking certain medications

Think about when you started having bouts of daytime sleepiness. If in time they coincided with the beginning of taking a particular drug, perhaps the point is in it.

What to do

Take a look at the instructions: drowsiness can be mentioned in the list of side effects. If this is the case, contact your general practitioner or your doctor: there is a chance that specialists will find an alternative to the medication you are taking.

9. You have a sleep disorder

Insomnia, restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea - there are dozens of possible sleep disorders. Which of them does not allow you to get enough sleep, only a doctor can determine.

What to do

Be sure to consult with a physician if you have any of the signs of What’s Causing Your Sleepiness? sleep disorders (other than daytime sleepiness):

In the evenings, you need at least half an hour to fall asleep.
You regularly wake up in the middle of the night.
You snore, snort, grind your teeth in your sleep. Or your loved ones sometimes think that your breathing stops.
As you fall asleep, you sometimes experience tingling sensations in your hands and feet.
You sleep restlessly. Your partner can talk about this. There is also circumstantial evidence: for example, every morning you wake up with a crumpled sheet and a fallen pillow.
You often get up with a headache.
It happens that something unusual happens to you in a dream - for example, you try to get up and go somewhere.
When you wake up, you sometimes experience acute muscle weakness for some time and cannot move your arms and legs.

10. You may have diabetes

Unmotivated fatigue during the day is one of the clearest signs of developing diabetes. This is not the only symptom: the disease also makes itself felt by constant thirst, more frequent trips to the toilet, itchy skin, slowed healing of wounds and more.

What to do

If you notice warning signs in yourself, be sure to consult with a therapist. The doctor will conduct an examination and issue a referral for the necessary tests. Based on their results, a diagnosis will be made and, if necessary, treatment will be prescribed.

11. You have cardiovascular disease

A persistent desire to sleep for more than 8-9 hours can be a sign of Self-Reported Sleep Duration and Quality and Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality: A Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of disorders in the cardiovascular system. For some reason, the heart does not provide normal blood circulation to organs and tissues, including the brain. And they react to a lack of nutrients and oxygen with a decrease in activity. This is manifested, among other things, by drowsiness.

What to do

If you have made changes in your lifestyle, for example, you started to eat well, move, you are sure that you sleep well at night, but daytime sleepiness does not go away, you should talk to a therapist.

Be as detailed as possible when describing how you feel. Sometimes diseases of the cardiovascular system can manifest themselves in unexpected ways, and the doctor needs to be clear about what symptoms you have.

12. Or maybe you have cancer

A tumor growing inside requires a lot of energy. Therefore, cancer causes constant fatigue. In the early stages, this may be almost the only symptom. An equally indicative symptom is unmotivated weight loss.

What to do

Considering the danger of cancer, be sure to consult a physician if daytime sleepiness does not respond to changes in lifestyle and you do not understand where it comes from.

Perhaps things are not so bad: the doctor detects that you are deficient in some vitamin or suggests a sleep disorder. But this is the case when it is better to overshoot. And then sleep well.