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.
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Fatigue is a feeling that you're chronically tired - mentally and physically.
It can be caused by a number of factors, including unhealthy lifestyle choices, workplace problems and stress.
There are many different ways you can boost your energy, but see your health practitioner first to make sure you don't have an underlying medical problem.
Food, which gives us energy, is broken down by the digestive system. Some elements, such as water, are absorbed through the stomach. The rest are absorbed through the small intestine.
The body's preferred energy source is glucose, from carbohydrates , but it can also use fatty acids (from fats) and amino acids (from proteins). Glucose is delivered to virtually every cell in the body by the bloodstream, and is then burned with oxygen to produce energy.
Hormones control every step in this process; for example, the pancreas makes the hormone insulin, which helps to control blood sugar levels.
If you want more energy, look at your diet and make sure you're following these basic guidelines:
Low calorie diets or diets that severely restrict carbohydrates don't contain enough energy for your body's needs. The typical crash diet also deprives the body of nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and trace elements.A common cause of fatigue is not enough sleep, or poor quality sleep. Suggestions include:
Adults need about 8 hours per night.
Take steps to address your work problems. A good place to start is to talk with your human resources officer.Studies suggest that between 50 and 80% of fatigue cases are mainly due to psychological factors. Suggestions include:
Are you so preoccupied with commitments and pressures that you don't give yourself enough time for fun? Laughter is one of the best energy boosters around.Most people feel drowsy after lunch. This mid-afternoon drop in energy levels is linked to the brain's circadian rhythm and is 'hard wired' into the human body. Preventing this drop in energy may be impossible, but there are ways to reduce the slump, including:
**This information was adapted from the 'Go for your life' campaign with permission by the Victorian Government, Melbourne, Australia
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Last Updated: November 4, 2013
Everyone knows the feeling of tiredness and lack of energy, especially during periods of bad weather or outbreaks of viral infections. Normally, this problem is solved with the help of proper rest and sleep. But when such a state drags on and significantly reduces the quality of life, this is a signal that the time has come to think about the state of health of the nervous system.
Fatigue is a functional state of the body with a significant decrease in energy, performance and motivation, which affects both the physical and mental well-being of a person.
As a rule, constant fatigue is a symptom, not a separate condition. In most cases, it is caused by a combination of lifestyle, health characteristics and social problems.
Constant feeling of fatigue can cause a variety of physical, mental and emotional symptoms:
Symptoms tend to get worse after exercise.
Clinically significant is the feeling of fatigue with accompanying signs for two or more weeks.
Certain symptoms may predominate depending on the type of fatigue. There are two of them:
Physical fatigue: Normally, muscle fatigue gradually accumulates during exercise and disappears after rest. Pathological cases are associated with lack or lack of sleep and health problems. It becomes difficult for a person to perform ordinary physical actions that he easily coped with before. For example, a patient who used to go to the gym regularly and with pleasure, completely quits training due to lack of strength. The problem can also affect completely routine matters: climbing the stairs to the second floor, walking to the nearest store. Muscle weakness will be a mandatory symptom.
Mental fatigue: it is difficult for the patient to maintain not only physical, but also mental activity. Memory, concentration, learning ability are impaired.
Eternal fatigue and drowsiness do not allow even light mental work to be done. This condition affects the reaction and attention of the driver. According to statistics, sleepy people at the wheel get into car accidents three times more often than others. This is comparable to the risks that are associated with the state of intoxication.
It happens that a person sleeps enough every day, eats normally and leads an orderly life, but constant weakness and fatigue do not go away. Feeling exhausted can make it impossible to manage even the necessary daily activities. This means that the condition requires professional diagnosis and possibly treatment.
Fatigue can be conditionally divided into physiological (normal) and pathological.
With physiological fatigue of the body, the causes are usually the following:
Pathological causes of fatigue:
Separately, it is worth talking about such a reason as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, myalgic encephalomyelitis).
This is no longer just a symptom, but a separate disease, which is characterized by a high degree of fatigue without a somatic disorder corresponding to the state. Such patients may wonder why they are tired and apathetic all the time, almost constantly, since they are hypersensitive to even light exertion.
Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome are able to conduct some kind of relatively productive activity for only a few hours a day, or even less. It's not about hard work, creative projects, or intense workouts - such people are exhausted even by talking about abstract topics or going to the nearest store. They have to spend most of their time trying to rest and recover.
For persistent weakness and fatigue, the causes in this case include viral infections, primarily the Epstein-Barr virus, and problems with the immune system. The etiology of this disease is still being studied. Risk factors are age over 40, female gender, and stress.
The main symptom of CFS is severe fatigue that lasts at least six months and is not relieved by rest.Post-exercise weakness is characteristic, which persists for at least 24 hours.
Constant companions of chronic fatigue syndrome are various sleep disorders, cognitive disorders, muscle and joint pain, orthostatic hypotension, painful lymph nodes and frequent colds. With constant fatigue, the reasons for the decline in the quality of life lie not only in poor health, but in the fact that it becomes almost impossible to lead a full-fledged lifestyle: there is no strength for previous hobbies and even work, self-development and learning new things stop. It becomes difficult to maintain daily contact with people up to social isolation.
Symptoms of the disorder may wax and wane, which can create a false sense of well-being. But, unfortunately, in the pathological state of severe fatigue, the causes are rarely eliminated without specialized treatment. Therefore, despite temporary remissions, the old problems return with a vengeance.
It is always important to understand why you feel tired.
If the condition lasts for a considerable time and it’s not just a too busy day, then you need to consult a specialist, because this not only interferes with life, but can also be a symptom of a serious mental or somatic disorder.
If you are sure that your condition is caused by a natural cause and is a normal reaction of the body, then you should give yourself a rest. In cases where the cause is unknown or pathological, only a specialist can tell you what to do if you constantly feel tired.
Since fatigue is often associated with insomnia and disruption of the nervous system, it is necessary to consult a psychiatrist-psychotherapist and a neurologist. Depending on the situation, the help of a therapist, psychologist and other specialists may be needed.
There are no diagnostic tests that can pinpoint the exact reason why the patient constantly feels tired. This difficult-to-diagnose condition that can mimic other health problems requires ruling out a number of other disorders and identifying the underlying cause.
The elimination of this pathological condition requires special knowledge and experience from the specialist, since there is no standard treatment regimen. The use of one drug is not enough; correction of prescriptions in the course of therapy is often required. Therefore, with constant fatigue and weakness, only a highly qualified specialist can determine what to do to ensure that the result is as effective and lasting as possible.
This condition affects many organs and systems. With general fatigue of the body, what to do can be decided only after the examination. It may include laboratory testing, exercise tests, instrumental methods, and mandatory psychiatric diagnosis.
Treatment should primarily relieve symptoms. It may include:
In this case, there is no universal drug - therapy is prescribed based on individual needs. If you caught yourself on such questions as “I am constantly tired, what should I do? Why can't I rest and pull myself together? How to stop this?” — don’t expect everything to go away by itself. Contact a competent specialist, because it is not known what is hidden behind these symptoms. Chronic fatigue develops differently for everyone: it happens that it is enough to normalize the lifestyle and eliminate beriberi, but sometimes complex complex therapy is required. Remember that fatigue quickly depletes the body, reduces immunity and prevents you from leading an active life.
July 26, 2021 09:07
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With the modern pace of life and negative information background, it is very difficult to avoid stress and emotional overwork. Even worse, if fatigue accumulates, and then begins to occur not only at the end of the working day or week, but almost constantly. This means that it is time to finally hear the "signals for help" that the body sends.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disease of civilized countries. Residents of megacities are at risk, especially people whose work is associated with increased responsibility. These include teachers, doctors, firefighters, entrepreneurs, people in high positions. However, chronic fatigue syndrome can also appear in people of other professions - no one is immune from this unpleasant disease. Poor sanitary and environmental conditions, chronic diseases, viral infections and an unbalanced emotional and intellectual load - all this increases the chances of earning chronic fatigue syndrome even at a young age.
The occurrence of chronic fatigue syndrome is associated with the development of a specific neurosis of the central regulatory centers of the autonomic nervous system. If left untreated, this syndrome can develop into depression, as well as cause infectious and allergic diseases.
Normally, any severe fatigue disappears after proper sleep and rest. If a person slept well and ate well, but continues to feel sluggish and tired, which prevents him from doing his usual things, this is rather a pathological condition. The main symptom of chronic fatigue is unreasonable constant fatigue, which reduces performance by several times. However, this is also reflected in the psycho-emotional well-being of a person: it significantly limits everyday life and interferes with communication, since moral resources are no longer enough even for loved ones. In addition, with chronic fatigue, there is a headache, memory impairment, insomnia, nausea, and much more.
Due to the variety of symptoms, the disease is quite difficult to diagnose.
Chronic weakness and fatigue appear gradually, and a person may not realize for a long time how many opportunities have been lost until he tries to compare his performance in the past with what is now. Unfortunately, people often attribute their lack of energy to age or life circumstances, thereby ignoring the symptoms and making the situation worse.
It is important to pay attention to the following signs of chronic fatigue in time:
Another symptom of chronic fatigue can be mood swings: from complete apathy to outbursts of anger. The first of these symptoms is the key, while the rest complete the picture. In advanced cases, chronic fatigue not only reduces the quality of life, but can also provoke life-threatening situations. For example, a sharp deterioration in concentration or drowsiness is a common cause of accidents.
That is why with chronic fatigue syndrome it is important to start treatment on time.
Chronic fatigue syndrome can and should be treated, but do not self-medicate. Only doctors who can prescribe outpatient treatment or send them to a health center are able to correctly determine the diagnosis. People at risk and those who have noticed alarming symptoms should pay attention to their lifestyle.
