Many cases of tiredness are due to stress, not enough sleep, poor diet and other lifestyle factors. Try these self-help tips to restore your energy levels.
If you feel you're suffering from fatigue, which is an overwhelming tiredness that isn't relieved by rest and sleep, you may have an underlying medical condition. Consult a GP for advice.
A good way to keep up your energy through the day is to eat regular meals and healthy snacks every 3 to 4 hours, rather than a large meal less often.
Read more about healthy eating.
You might feel that exercise is the last thing on your mind. But, in fact, regular exercise will make you feel less tired in the long run, so you'll have more energy.
Even a single 15-minute walk can give you an energy boost, and the benefits increase with more frequent physical activity.
Start with a small amount of exercise. Build it up gradually over weeks and months until you reach the recommended goal of 2 hours 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as cycling or fast walking, every week.
Read more about starting exercise.
Find out the physical activity guidelines for adults.
If your body is carrying excess weight, it can be exhausting. It also puts extra strain on your heart, which can make you tired. Lose weight and you'll feel much more energetic.
Apart from eating healthily, the best way to lose weight and keep it off is to be more active and do more exercise.
Read more about how to lose weight.
Many people don't get the sleep they need to stay alert through the day.
The website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists has information on sleeping well.
Tips for sleeping well include:
Stress uses up a lot of energy. Try to introduce relaxing activities into your day. This could be:
Whatever relaxes you will improve your energy.
Read more about how to relieve stress.
There's some evidence that talking therapies such as counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) might help to fight fatigue, or tiredness caused by stress, anxiety or low mood.
See a GP for a referral for talking treatment on the NHS, or for advice on seeing a private therapist.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends that anyone feeling tired should cut out caffeine. It says the best way to do this is to gradually stop having all caffeine drinks over a 3-week period.
Caffeine is found in:
Try to stay off caffeine completely for a month to see if you feel less tired without it.
You may find that not consuming caffeine gives you headaches. If this happens, cut down more slowly on the amount of caffeine that you drink.
Although a couple of glasses of wine in the evening can help you fall asleep, you sleep less deeply after drinking alcohol. The next day you'll be tired, even if you sleep a full 8 hours.
Cut down on alcohol before bedtime. You'll get a better night's rest and have more energy.
The NHS recommends that men and women should not regularly drink more than 14 units a week, which is equivalent to 6 pints of average-strength beer or 10 small glasses of low-strength wine.
Try to have several alcohol-free days each week.
Read more about how to cut down on alcohol.
Sometimes you feel tired simply because you're mildly dehydrated.
A glass of water will do the trick, especially after exercise.
Read about healthy drinks.
Going to bed earlier, focusing on what you eat and drink, moving more, and addressing your stress levels can help you sleep better and feel less tired.
It’s normal to occasionally feel sluggish during the day, but if it’s something you experience regularly, it might be time to make some changes.
Many common medical conditions, like anemia, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes, can cause fatigue.
Speak to a doctor if your tiredness affects your day-to-day life, takes a toll on your mental health, or if it’s accompanied by other symptoms such as sudden weight loss, weight gain, or a loss of appetite.
It can be hard to pinpoint why you’re feeling tired all the time, but if your doctor has ruled out any serious conditions, there are plenty of ways to boost your energy levels and help you feel more focused.
Read on to learn about nine lifestyle changes you can make to feel less tired.
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A third of adults in the U.S. are sleeping less than the recommended 7 or more hours a night.
Unpublished research by ZOE scientists and international academic collaborators found that study participants who sleep longer find it easier to wake up in the morning and stay alert during the day.
What time you go to bed is important, too. A recent ZOE study — the largest nutrition study of its kind — found that people who go to bed earlier have better blood sugar control the next morning.
Going to bed later is more likely to lead to blood sugar spikes and dips, which can make you feel more tired and less alert later.
Skip sleeping in and instead bring your bedtime forward if you want to feel less tired during the day.
As little as 30 minutes can make a difference.
Mornings can be hectic for many of us, so finding the time to have a balanced breakfast can be tricky. If your usual morning meal is a sugary drink, that could be the reason you’re low on energy.
ZOE research found that eating a breakfast high in fat, protein, or complex carbohydrates is better for blood sugar control, particularly if you haven’t had the best night’s sleep.
Reaching for a high sugar breakfast can lead to blood sugar spikes and dips, which can make you feel more tired and crave sugary foods.
What foods can help you avoid this kind of vicious cycle?
ZOE’s lead nutritional scientist, Dr. Sarah Berry, an associate professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London, suggests opting for a breakfast that doesn't have a lot of refined carbohydrates and that includes fat and protein.
She suggests adding fat and protein sources, like avocado or egg, to wholemeal or sourdough toast and adding vegetables, like grilled tomatoes.
ZOE’s research has shown that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to nutrition. The foods that cause blood sugar spikes and dips in your body throughout the day will be particular to you.
Knowing the best foods for your energy levels can help you feel less tired.
The ZOE at-home test measures your blood sugar and blood fat responses after eating and gives you personalized recommendations for the best foods for your unique biology.
Unpublished research by ZOE shows that after closely following our gut-friendly, personalized nutrition program, over 80% of participants said they had more energy.
Take a free quiz to learn more about how ZOE can help you.
Growing evidence suggests that gut health can affect sleep.
Some research shows that the diversity of your gut microbiome — the trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in your gut — is linked to better sleep, and that particular types of bacteria are associated with poor sleep.
This could explain why tiredness is often a common sign of an unhealthy gut.
In fact, your gut bacteria are involved in the production of many hormones that regulate sleep, like melatonin, serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).
You can help improve your gut health by eating foods rich in probiotics and prebiotics.
Probiotics are live bacteria that scientists believe may have health benefits. They’re found in many fermented foods and drinks, including:
Prebiotics are food for your gut bugs. They’re found in high-fiber plants, including legumes like chickpeas and lentils, onions, garlic, mushrooms, asparagus, and whole grains like oats, barley, and rye.
Our research shows that everyone’s gut microbiome and their responses to food are different.
With the ZOE program, you find out which of the 15 “good” and “bad” gut bugs that we’ve identified live in your gut and what the best foods are for your unique gut health. Eating foods that are good for your gut microbiome can increase your “good” gut bacteria.
Exercise is one of the best things you can do to naturally boost your energy.
Research shows that exercise improves sleep quality and relieves stress, which is itself linked to poor sleep. Unpublished ZOE research also found that people who exercise more have better blood sugar control.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to spend hours at the gym every day. Lower intensity exercise can still significantly benefit your energy levels.
A brisk, 10-minute walk in the morning, on your lunch break, or after work can make a real difference.
Stress and anxiety can stop you from getting a good night’s sleep and make it harder to focus during the day.
Frustratingly, sleep loss can make stress and anxiety even worse. And people with anxiety and longer-term stress are more likely to experience insomnia.
If you’re stressed, you’re also more likely to experience other sleeping issues, like waking up several times during the night.
Anxiety and stress are both complex conditions and can affect everyone differently. The treatment options include:
Although it’s a new area of research, emerging evidence suggests that improving your gut health could also help with symptoms of anxiety. Some studies even found links between specific strains of bacteria and improved mood, but more research is needed.
Managing stress is easier said than done, but it’s vital for improving sleep and feeling less tired during the day.
Being dehydrated can make you feel sleepy, fatigued, and irritable.
Drinking more water, on the other hand, has been linked with reduced fatigue. So increasing your water intake during the day can help you feel less tired.
To stay hydrated, aim to drink around 2 liters, or 6–8 cups, of water a day.
But keep in mind that these are just guidelines — there are no hard and fast rules because everyone is different. Listen to your body and try to drink water consistently throughout the day, or whenever you feel thirsty.
Cutting back on alcohol is a good way to improve your sleep quality. Alcohol can interfere with the quantity and quality of sleep, especially in men.
A large observational study of over 4,000 people found that even low or moderate alcohol consumption — one or two drinks a day — can have significant negative effects on sleep.
Some people find that drinking alcohol in the evening helps them to get to sleep. However, research shows that it can lead to you waking up later in the night, leaving you feeling more tired the next day.
Drinking can also give you a hangover, which can reduce how alert you feel.
This doesn’t mean you have to quit drinking completely, though. Drinking in moderation could make a difference to how well you sleep and how tired you feel during the day.
It will come as no surprise that smoking is bad for your health.
As well as the major health conditions associated with smoking — such as cancer and heart disease — it can also disturb your sleep and make you feel more tired during the day.
According to a review of studies on smoking and sleep, smokers have lower quality sleep and more difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
Smoking also increases both the likelihood and severity of sleep apnea — a serious condition where your breathing stops and starts throughout the night.
Due to the effects smoking has on nighttime rest, cigarette smokers are more likely to have difficulty getting up in the morning and to experience daytime sleepiness.
If you currently smoke, speak to a healthcare professional about getting the right support to help you quit.
Feeling tired from time to time is normal, but if it’s a regular occurrence, try changing your daily routine to increase your energy.
Going to bed earlier, keeping your blood sugar levels in check with the right foods for your body, and looking after your gut health can help you feel less tired during the day.
Taking regular exercise, staying hydrated, managing your stress, and cutting back on alcohol and cigarettes can also boost your energy.
With the ZOE program, you can find the best foods for your blood sugar, blood fat, and your gut health, backed by the latest science. This can increase your energy and help you to feel less tired.
Take our free quiz to find out more.
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Effects of changes in water intake on mood of high and low drinkers. PloS One. (2014).
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Exercise can improve sleep quality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PeerJ. (2018).
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Fatigue in older adults. (n.d.).
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Gut microbiome diversity is associated with sleep physiology in humans. PloS One. (2019).
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Influence of progressive fluid restriction on mood and physiological markers of dehydration in women. British Journal of Nutrition. (2012).
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Moderators and mediators of the relationship between stress and insomnia: stressor chronicity, cognitive intrusion, and coping. Sleep. (2014)
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Neurotransmitter modulation by the gut microbiota. Brain Research. (2018)
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Psychosocial stress before a nap increases sleep latency and decreases early slow-wave activity. Frontiers in Psychology. (2019).
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Woke up, but as if you had not slept? If you wake up tired and even broken in the morning, you need to fix it urgently. We have collected 9 working tips that will help you become alert again and wake up full of energy.
Sports are the last thing you want to do when you feel tired.
But research shows that the more physical activity you have, the more energy you have.
Even short workouts will make you more alert and self-confident. And they will improve the work of the heart, lungs and muscles - and improve well-being.
Devices from the pharmacy will help track the state of the body before and after training:
Any exercise is useful in the fight against fatigue, but yoga is especially useful.
There are also several studies on this subject - for example, scientists in the UK conducted an experiment: they gathered a group of volunteers, forced them to do yoga once a week (only once!). Six weeks later, they were interviewed: everyone noted that their thoughts became clearer, and their energy and self-confidence increased.
Dehydration robs you of energy and reduces physical performance - if you don't have enough water in your body, you will get tired even with the simplest housework. Dehydration also reduces alertness and concentration.
You can tell if you are drinking enough water by the color of your urine: if it is dark, you need to drink more.
Important: you need to drink exactly water, not juices, compotes or dairy products - everything except water is perceived by the body as food, and this does not save you from dehydration.
You can also buy water in pharmacies:
The logic is simple: you get more sleep, you get less tired. Try to go to bed before midnight and put your gadgets away at least an hour before bedtime - so their bright light does not interfere with the production of melatonin, and you can fall asleep quickly.
0003
Fluctuations in blood sugar affect how awake you are throughout the day - the more fluctuations, the more tired you are. To stabilize your sugar levels, you need to increase the number of meals and reduce the amount of servings.
How it works. Sugar is found in almost every product. If we eat a hearty lunch, a lot of sugar enters the body at a time, its concentration rises sharply, and the body absorbs it for a long time. Dividing a heavy meal into at least two small meals will reduce your blood sugar spike and keep you awake for longer.
Supplement your diet with vitamins for energy:
Fish contains healthy omega-3 fatty acids. They improve metabolism and increase alertness - and this helps to stay alert and alert throughout the day.
If there is not enough fish in your diet, supplement your diet with supplements:
Of course, you need to reduce not the weight itself, but the percentage of fat in the body - just more often one is inseparable from the other.
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University have proven that even a small reduction in body fat improves mood and makes a person more alert.
To start losing weight, experts advise reducing portion sizes, eating a balanced diet, and exercising (or at least walking more often). If you work remotely and are afraid that you won’t be able to lose weight due to sedentary work at home, read this material - in it we told you how to start losing weight even remotely.
Help in losing weight can be found in pharmacies:
Are you an owl or a lark? The answer to this question will help you not to suffer from fatigue during the day. If you are a morning person and feel energized in the morning, plan all the important things for the first half of the day. If an owl - at the end of the day.
This biological clock, or circadian rhythm, is determined by genetics and brain structure, so changing it can be very difficult.
It's much easier to just adapt to them
And if you have problems with activity and fatigue even when you expect a daily energy peak, help:
Important: constant fatigue is a common symptom of many diseases. These include, for example, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and anemia. If you have been feeling uncharacteristically tired for a long time, talk to your doctor.
Certain medications can also cause fatigue, such as blood pressure medications, antihistamines, diuretics, and other medications. If you start taking something and feel that you are getting tired faster or more often, tell your doctor about it.
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Anna Sokolova
full of energy
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Even if you work sitting at the computer, this does not mean that by the end of the day you will not die of fatigue.
Fatigue appears not only from physical work. And not only because of the large number of cases. It may also indicate that you have not replenished the resources of the body, have distributed the load incorrectly, or do not see much point in what you are doing. Life in constant stress and work in emergency mode is harmful to health and leads to burnout. Let's talk about how to save energy.
Psychologists have a hypothesis about why mental work is so exhausting. If a task doesn’t particularly excite us, the brain has to put in a lot of effort to focus on it. And there is a lot of interesting things around - from news and Internet discussions to new collections of your favorite brands. This constant struggle with temptations exhausts a person. But without it it is impossible - otherwise the work will not be done.
This version is partly confirmed by a study conducted several years ago in Canada. Scientists monitored the condition of 156 students for a week: they constantly asked what they were doing, how they felt, what they really wanted at the moment, how much effort they had to make in order not to follow these desires and continue to study.
It turned out that the more temptations the students had to resist, the more tired they felt.
/no-willpower/
How can the weak-willed and lazy survive? Molecular biologist Irina Yakutenko answers
According to one of the authors of the study, psychologist Michael Inzlicht, this phenomenon has an evolutionary explanation. In order to survive, a person as a species all the time needs to do something: sleep, look for partners for procreation, get food, clothes - and so on ad infinitum. And if at some point he forgets about one of these tasks, then he simply will not survive. Therefore, the body has developed a biological mechanism that makes us switch from one to another. The psychological fatigue that we feel by the end of the working day is a signal that it is time to switch to another activity.
Tip 1
Increase your motivation In 2019, British scientists published the results of a study in which they observed the behavior, physical and psychological state of 100 nurses during their 12-hour shift.
And as a result, an important correlation was found: those nurses who were more involved in their work, knew that something depended on them, and received inner satisfaction in the process, were more energetic and less exhausted than the rest.
The explanation is simple: if we consider our work to be really important, then we are more motivated to do it and it is more difficult for us to get distracted. This means that the brain does not lose interest in it and gets less tired.
/hate-work/
Why people don't quit jobs they hate
To increase your motivation, try this exercise: at the end of each working day, for a couple of minutes, reflect on how your work is useful for others. If helping others is not part of your duties, remember that work allows you to pay for housing, feed and clothe loved ones, and financially support older relatives.
This simple action will have a beneficial effect on more than just your motivation.
According to research by psychologists Adam Grant and Sabine Sonnentag, people who are clearly aware of the impact their work has on others tend to be less distracted while doing it. And in general, they feel happier and more satisfied with life.
Tip 2
Don't get distracted too oftenThe human brain is not a computer. It's not designed for multitasking. Therefore, when the brain has to do several things at the same time, it spends too many resources. And as a result, he gets more tired and starts making more mistakes.
How can I fix this?
As a result, overall productivity increased. And most importantly, the psychological state improved: by coping with work faster, employees received more positive emotions, and this charged them with additional energy. /how-to-focus/
5 tips to quickly focus on work
Tip 3
Take breaks Research shows that several regular but short breaks throughout the day can be better for rejuvenation, cognitive ability and stress reduction than one long one.
In 2014, specialists from DeskTime, a developer of time tracking software, analyzed the data of many users and found out that the most efficient ones worked in cycles. They immersed themselves in tasks for 52 minutes, and then disconnected from tasks for 17 minutes.
These data correlate with the modern ideas of scientists about the basic cycle of rest - activity: at night, on average, the body goes through all five phases of sleep in 90 minutes, and during the day it experiences a peak of activity at the same time, followed by 15-20 minutes of decline. And it is better to spend them on rest.
/chill-out/
How to rest: 5 tips
Things to do during a 15-minute break:
What not to do during mini-breaks? Check social networks and messengers. This can deprive the rest of the forces. According to researchers from the American Psychological Association, excessive use of gadgets increases stress levels and greatly spoils mood.
Tip 4
Start working lessIt often happens that fatigue at work is not due to psychological problems. But simply because you are overwhelmed. In this case, all the previous tips are unlikely to help you. There is only one way out: discuss with the manager.
It is especially important to do this if you communicate with your boss orally, and not in a chat. When another request appears, specify in what order to fulfill it and, if the matter is urgent, what can be postponed until later. This will help him to assess the volume of your load and you to properly distribute it. 
So don't check your work email on weekends. /time-to-rest/
“I close my laptop and start living”: 7 ways to quickly switch from work to leisure
Tip 5
Take care of yourselfWhen the resources of the body are at zero, it is difficult to cope even with work that does not require serious mental effort, and fatigue sets in faster. Therefore, it is so important to regularly recover physically.
The rules are simple:
10 ways to relax before bed
The World Health Organization recommends that adults need 150-300 minutes of moderate exercise or 75-150 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise to maintain good health.
