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.
It’s common for people to become tired or even fatigued in our fast-paced modern world. Many times, you may find yourself running from one activity to the next, not pausing to take the time you might need to ground, balance, and soothe your soul.
It’s not always easy to pinpoint the exact reason you’re feeling low in energy. If you’re feeling tired persistently or for reasons that aren’t apparent, make an appointment to see your doctor. It could be the sign of an underlying condition, especially if it’s interfering with your daily life.
Signs that tiredness could be something more serious include unexplained pain, fever, and headaches.
Continue reading to learn about some of the causes of tiredness and simple changes you can make to put a bit more pep in your step.
One reason to follow a healthy, balanced diet is that you’ll boost energy levels.
Ensure you’re getting enough nutrients by eating whole, fresh foods from a variety of food groups. Pair unrefined carbs with protein for sustained energy levels. Include plenty of fiber and anti-inflammatory foods.
Following a balanced diet also promotes healthy digestion, which helps to clear and cleanse your body. In fact, research has linked irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to chronic fatigue. Certain foods might even help to prevent and manage IBS, which could be zapping your energy.
The benefits of regular exercise are widely recognized. Exercise releases endorphins that naturally boosting your energy levels. It can also lead to more high-quality sleep.
A 2008 study found that regular exercise can reduce symptoms of fatigue. In the study, 36 sedentary young adults did either low-intensity or moderate-intensity exercise over a period of six weeks. Both groups saw improvements in energy levels.
Do at least two hours of moderate-intensity exercise each week.
To make it easier to stick to an exercise plan, find a workout buddy or hire a personal trainer.
Stay properly hydrated to keep your body running at optimum levels.
Dehydration can lead to low energy levels. It can also have a negative impact on your sleep by drying out your mouth and nasal passages, and can lead to snoring, hoarseness, and leg cramps. Plus, it can make you less alert and mentally clear the next day.
According to a 2014 study, increasing water intake in people who don’t usually drink enough water was found to have beneficial effects on energy. People who decreased their water intake had fewer feelings of calmness, satisfaction, and positive emotions. Feelings of fatigue and inertia were also reported in this group.
Lowering your caffeine intake can give you more energy in the long run. Though caffeine may give you an initial boost of energy, after it wears off you may be left feeling depleted.
Slowly reducing your caffeine intake will help to reduce feelings of withdrawal as you balance out your natural energy levels.
Avoid caffeine after dinnerso you can naturally wind down for a restful night of sleep.
Proper rest is essential if you want to maintain energy levels throughout the day. Relax before going to bed, possibly doing some gentle stretches. Improve your sleep area by keeping it clean and maintaining an appropriate temperature.
Other tips for better sleep include:
Alcohol throws your body off balance and leads to poor sleep, especially if you’re dehydrated. Even though alcohol may seem to help you fall asleep, you won’t sleep as deeply. When you do have alcohol, drink in moderation, and try to have as many alcohol-free days as possible.
The chemicals released by your body to combat allergic reactions can cause you to feel tired.
They can bring on inflammationof your sinuses, airways, or digestive system. Accompanying head and nose congestion can cause you to sleep poorly.
These factors can contribute to brain fog, making it difficult to concentrate and complete your daily activities.
Avoid known allergens as much as possible. Keep a diary and try an elimination diet to help identify triggers.
See your doctor to determine the cause of your allergies if you’re unsure. They may recommend allergy medications or shots.
Stress can zap you of the mental and physical energy needed to carry out your day with ease. Stress hormonescan have a negative effect on your sleep patterns, bodily systems, and overall health.
Reduce stress in whatever way your heart so desires. Go to the spa for a pampering treatment or having a massage. Mindfulness practices such as tai chi, meditation, and yoga are great options. Or curl up on the couch with your favorite book or television show.
Check in with yourself to establish what mental patterns may be causing low energy levels.
Anxiety symptoms include feeling worried, irritable, and nervous. Symptoms of depression include feeling sad, restless, and hopeless. Both conditions can lead to unhealthy sleep patterns and cause tiredness.
Consider seeing a therapist for talk therapy, known as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This method helps you to get to the root cause of emotional issues so that they can be addressed and overcome.
Get up, get moving, and get your energy flowing. This is especially important if you spend a lot of time sitting.
Include short bursts of activity throughout the day, especially when you’re feeling pressed for time. Get into the habit of exercising regularly. Making simple changes such as parking your car a little bit farther away, taking the stairs, or walking to do errands are easy ways to sneak in a bit of exercise.
Anemia is an iron deficiencythat can lead to tiredness. This is due to low hemoglobin levels, which make it more difficult for oxygen to be carried to your tissues and muscles.
It also weakens your immune system, making you more likely to develop illness and infection.
Anemia is more common in women than in men. Sometimes it occurs due to pregnancy or heavy menstruation. It can be treated through diet or medication.
Here are some iron-rich foods to include in your diet:
In terms of energy levels, eating smaller portions more frequently throughout the day may be more beneficial than eating a few large meals. That’s because it keeps your blood sugar levels stable.
Eating every three to four hours will make it less likely that your energy crashes, and in turn you’ll be less likely to reach for unhealthy food.
Avoid overeating at meals, and stop eating before you are entirely full.
Smoking can deplete your energy by reducing your oxygen levels, and making breathing difficult.
Quitting smoking is an attainable goal, and there are resources to help. Over-the-counter and prescription medicationsare available that may help you quit. These medications are more effective when combined with counseling.
Consider trying one of the many smoking cessation apps available. Discover tips from people who successfully quit smoking. Keep a journal so you can have some type of inner reflection during this time.
Take the time to completely unwind, relax, and let go.
Deep breathing techniques, gentle stretching, and meditation are excellent ways to unwind. Yoga nidra is the perfect way to replenish your energy.
Finding peace in nature is another way to nourish your soul, or you can simply enjoy the beauty of doing nothing.
If you feel your tiredness is unusual in some way or is coupled with other symptoms, it may be time to see your doctor. Feeling low in energy could be the result of an underlying health condition, and it’s best to check out this possibility.
Conditions that can cause fatigue include:
Make lifestyle changes to your routine to increase your vitality. Start with what is most appealing to you, and go from there. You’ll likely start to improve your energy levels so you can feel your best on a daily basis.
Above all, honor your body and how you’re feeling. Take a break and allow yourself time to rest when you need to. Avoid pushing yourself beyond your limits, and commit to a healthy plan of action.
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.
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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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We tend to feel tired at the end of the day, after hard work or exercise.
But if such fatigue does not go away after sleep or rest, this is an alarm signal. In the article we understand why strength disappears and how to increase efficiency without harm to health.
Often, speaking of fatigue, we say that we have no strength or energy. But is this really the point?
There are energy carriers in the body - ATP molecules. They are synthesized by all human cells. With the participation of ATP, physiological processes of different levels occur: from intracellular metabolism to walking or running, which involves many structures and systems.
ATP is the body's energy currency. No process will happen if there is no ATP.
In order for cells to synthesize ATP, it is necessary that they receive glucose and oxygen. We get glucose from food, and oxygen from the air we breathe.
Energy is wasted all the time, even when we “do nothing” something is constantly happening in the body: the heart beats, muscles work, the stomach and intestines digest food, cells and tissues are renewed, necessary substances are synthesized. The brain regulates these processes and processes information, which also consumes energy.
When we work - physically or intellectually - even more energy is expended. But if fatigue after a couple of hours in the gym is clear to us, then why we get tired when we solve math problems or come up with a project plan is not so obvious. It can be assumed that thinking is a very energy-consuming process, and we get tired because we think intensively.
The brain does consume a lot of energy. Especially a lot of it is required by those neurons that are currently involved.
But the brain, like the whole organism, is active all the time, and not just when we think. It constantly regulates the processes occurring in the body, processes information and spends about 20% of the energy consumed on it. The "thinking" brain requires more energy, but this increase is not significant.
20%
the brain consumes energy
If we do not diet, then usually our well-being does not depend too much on how much energy we have spent during the day. Therefore, by the evening we will feel tired, regardless of whether we were doing hard work or watching a series. Fatigue is manifested in inhibition of reactions. The man says that he "difficulty thinking and concentrating."
The first remedy for fatigue that comes to mind is sleep.
Normally, fatigue disappears after sleep. But how exactly does it help in the fight against fatigue? Clearly, sleep isn't just about replenishing your energy reserves, as a piece of the pie would do.
In fact, scientists do not know exactly why a person sleeps. But they know that without it recovery is impossible.
Most research suggests one thing: lack of sleep leads to various failures and disorders. Thus, it has been shown that with lack of sleep, carbohydrate metabolism is disturbed, the risk of developing diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obesity increases.
The psyche is also not happy with the lack of sleep: anxiety and aggressiveness increase.
Sleep supports the health and normal functioning of the body, but it is not yet clear how exactly.
And what about the brain? Previously, it was believed that the brain in a dream turns off for a while and “reboots”. But later, technical capabilities made it possible to see what was really happening. It turned out that in a dream the brain works no less intensively than during wakefulness. It processes the information received during the day, new knowledge is built into the network of existing ones, “recorded” in memory or deleted from it (this is called the consolidation of memories).
And yet the "reboot" seems to be happening. There is a hypothesis of synaptic homeostasis, according to which sleep is needed to maintain synaptic connections in order, weaken and clean them up.
New neural connections are formed constantly. If they were automatically fixed, it would be very easy for a person to form new useful habits, memorize complex concepts and formulas, and so on. But at the same time, there would be too many connections, and the neurons could not provide them all with energy. In addition, “noise” would arise in neural networks, which would prevent a person from thinking normally, and the brain from processing and storing information. Therefore, some neural connections are weakened, and some are completely destroyed. And, apparently, it happens in a dream.
One study supporting this hypothesis found that the size of the synapses in the brain of mice does decrease after sleep, by about 18%. And its strength directly depends on the size of the neural connection.
During sleep, it is mainly the synapses that are not so important that are affected. The largest, and therefore the strongest and most important, retain their size.
It turns out that sleep does not restore energy in the literal sense of the word, however, it relieves the superfluous, literally "freeing" the head from unnecessary thoughts and information - a kind of "clearing the cache". This helps us feel rested.
Scientists have discovered that insomnia can be inherited. In addition, researchers have established a genetic link between insomnia and type II diabetes. The Atlas genetic test can analyze the genetic predisposition to insomnia.
But after sleep we are not always alert and full of energy. Sometimes, when we wake up, we feel tired and overwhelmed, although we have slept enough. If this rarely happens, don't worry. But if fatigue is with you all the time, this is a wake-up call.
The body may actually lack energy. As already mentioned, cells need glucose and oxygen to synthesize ATP. If somewhere there is a failure, and there is little oxygen or glucose in the cells, there will also be little energy.
So it can be - banal - when we eat little. There is simply nowhere for glucose to come from, since normally the body receives it from food. Therefore, starvation, strict diets and lack of energy always go somewhere nearby.
Chronic fatigue can also be a symptom of many diseases.
Oxygen deficiency in cells can occur, for example, due to iron deficiency anemia (IDA) . The fact is that oxygen gets to the cells as part of the protein hemoglobin , which is contained in red blood cells - erythrocytes . With IDA, there may be little in the body of both hemoglobin and erythrocytes, that is, couriers that deliver oxygen to all tissues and organs.
Glucose may not be enough due to diabetes mellitus .
In order for glucose to enter the cells, the hormone insulin must act on them. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas produces little or no insulin, so the hormone is virtually absent from the body. In type 2 diabetes, cells lose their sensitivity to insulin, or insulin is not produced in sufficient quantities to cover the needs of the body. Both in type 1 and type 2 diabetes, glucose practically does not enter the cells.
Other hormonal imbalances can also lead to energy imbalance and a constant feeling of fatigue. For example, lack of thyroid hormones .
Cancer can also cause fatigue. Scientists attribute such fatigue to inflammation in the body: inflammatory cytokine molecules send signals, in response to which, the brain "triggers" the symptoms of fatigue. In addition, fatigue increases the stress caused by the diagnosis and the process of treatment itself.
Deficiencies of some vitamins (particularly D and B vitamins) and trace elements (iron, magnesium, zinc) can lead to constant fatigue.
And if “get it and do it” is a short hundred-meter sprint, then long reflections are a marathon several tens of kilometers long. The sprint would have been much less tiring. For the same reason, it is harmful to think about work outside of working hours. Also mental or mental fatigue may cause a feeling of physical fatigue. Participants in one study exercised on an exercise bike. One group had previously watched the movie, while the other group took an hour and a half test of attention. As a result, the second group was able to pedal not as long as the first, and, according to the subjective assessment, it was harder for them. It turns out that a significant part of our fatigue is in the head.
Therefore, scrolling through social networks or watching funny videos will most likely not help recovery either. First, as with rumination, concentration is lost: if you generally find it difficult to focus on work, then you will spend a lot of energy returning to it. And each break will be accompanied by a new effort, which will negate the effect of such a rest. Secondly, by flipping through social networks, you somehow receive and assimilate new information. And if you already have a lot of tasks to keep in mind, the situation can get worse.
If your fatigue is related to health problems, you can't do without a doctor. If with constant stress and overload, then you need to work on this. Excessive fatigue will pass when you eliminate the causes.
But if you're okay, you don't feel overwhelmed, and you just want to be more productive, you can try to change your lifestyle or approach to work a little.
The obvious advice is: get enough sleep, eat a varied and balanced diet, exercise, and walk more often in the fresh air.
Less obvious:
In addition, such work is also useless: working too much, you get tired, and productivity drops. Tip: don't spend the whole weekend cleaning and cooking, it's better to distribute household chores evenly throughout the week.
More articles on how to feel better on the Atlas blog:
, Gusnard D., Appraising the brain's energy budget, 2002 
