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.
Written by Camille Peri
Nearly everyone has days when they feel sleepy. But for some people, excessive sleepiness actually gets in the way of daily work, childcare, and even leisure activities. This is known as hypersomnia, recurrent sleepiness that makes people want to nap repeatedly, even at work.
Not surprisingly, the problem of daytime sleepiness usually starts at night. Even missing just a few nights’ sleep, or not getting enough uninterrupted sleep, can slow you down and sour your mood.
Poor sleep habits are often the cause of daytime sleepiness. Before you go through any more groggy and crabby days, try these 12 ways to improve nighttime sleep and avoid daytime sleepiness.
That may sound obvious, but many of us succumb to shaving an hour or two off our sleep time in the morning or at night to do other things.
Most adults need seven to nine hours a night, and teenagers usually need a full nine hours. Block out eight or nine hours for sleep every night.
“Reserve your bed for sleep and sex,” says Avelino Verceles, MD, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of the school’s sleep medicine fellowship. “You shouldn’t read, watch TV, play video games, or use laptop computers in bed.” Don’t do your bills or have heated discussions in bed either. They may leave you sleepless.
People who have problem sleepiness are often advised to go to bed and get up at the same time every day, including on weekends. But randomly setting an ideal bedtime can lead to more frustration if you suffer from insomnia and already have trouble falling asleep, says Barry Krakow, MD, medical director of Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences Ltd. in Albuquerque, N.M., and author of Sound Sleep, Sound Mind: 7 Keys to Sleeping Through the Night.
Instead, Krakow suggests starting out by setting a wake-up time only. “Stick by that for the first few weeks or even months to establish a rhythm,” he says. “That process of always getting up at the same time helps to anchor the circadian rhythm. And if you do that and have a bad night, you’ll also to be sleepier the next bedtime.”
Another approach to getting into a consistent schedule is to try going to bed 15 minutes earlier each night for four nights. Then stick with the last bedtime. Gradually adjusting your schedule like this usually works better than suddenly trying to go to sleep an hour earlier.
Regular mealtimes, not just regular sleep times, help regulate our circadian rhythms. Eating a healthy breakfast and lunch on time -- rather than grabbing a doughnut and coffee in the morning or a late sandwich on the run -- also prevents energy deficits during the day that will aggravate your sleepiness.
Plan to finish eating meals two to three hours before bedtime.
Regular exercise (30 minutes a day on most days) offers multiple benefits for sleep. Exercise, especially aerobic exercise, generally makes it easier to fall asleep and sleep more soundly.
Exercise also gives you more daytime energy and keeps your thinking sharp. And if you exercise outside in daylight, you get still more benefits. Sleep experts recommend 30 minutes of exposure to sunlight a day because daylight helps regulate our sleep patterns.
“If you don’t think you can allow seven or eight hours for sleep, then you need to look at your schedule and make some adjustments,” says Verceles. “Move some activities from nighttime to early evening or from early to late morning.” Try to eliminate tasks that aren’t really important. Getting enough sleep at night will help you function better during your remaining activities.
If you go to bed when you’re just tired, you probably won’t be able to fall asleep, Krakow says. “Distinguish between the feeling of sleepiness and being tired. Get into bed when you’re sleepy -- eyes droopy, you’re drowsy, you feel like you’re nodding off. It’s a very different kind of feeling.”
Late afternoon napping can make daytime sleepiness worse if because it can interfere with nighttime sleep.
A relaxation routine before bedtime can help you separate from the day -- especially from activities that are over-stimulating or stressful, making it difficult to sleep. Try meditation, soaking in a hot bath, listening to soothing music, or reading a book. A cup of herbal tea or warm milk can also be soothing, but skip those if they cause you to wake at night to go to the bathroom.
People often think that alcohol helps sleep, but it actually robs you of deep sleep, which is essential for feeling well rested.
When the effects of alcohol wear off during the night, you’ll probably be wide awake again.
Daytime sleepiness can be caused by sleep disorders. If you are excessively sleepy consistently during the day even when you sleep well or if you fall asleep without warning during daily activities, you may have a sleep disorder such as narcolepsy or sleep apnea, a breathing problem that occurs during sleep. According to Krakow, undiagnosed and untreated sleep disorders are probably the greatest cause of daytime fatigue and sleepiness.
Problem sleepiness can also be caused by certain illnesses and medications. And mental conditions such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and anxiety are very commonly linked to sleep problems.
A sleep specialist can design a treatment program for you that treats the underlying sleep disorder and helps you develop better sleep habits and attitudes though cognitive behavioral therapy. Sometimes it takes a combination of medication and behavioral therapy to eliminate daytime sleepiness, but it can be done.
Anna Sokolova
full of energy
Author profile
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 motivationIn 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 often The 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?
Open only the tabs you need in your browser. And when you're done with them, close them immediately. And even better, if there is a financial opportunity, use the laptop only for work - install only the applications necessary for the business on it and do not log in to social networks. For everything else, get another laptop. /how-to-focus/
5 tips to quickly focus on work
Tip 3
Take BreaksResearch shows that several regular but short breaks throughout the day can be better for rejuvenation, cognition 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.
/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:
Studies show that an adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep a day. This is the minimum task. The maximum task is to observe sleep hygiene: even on weekends, go to bed and get up at the same time, do not exercise two hours before bedtime, do not eat or use gadgets. These basic rules will help make your sleep better, which means that in the morning you will wake up alert, full of energy and in a good mood. 
10 ways to unwind before bed
According to the World Health Organization, adults need 150-300 minutes of moderate exercise or 75-150 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise to maintain good health.
/sport-every-day/
5 tips on how to make physical activity a part of life
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 you 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 - the body perceives everything except water as food, and this does not save you from dehydration.
You can also buy water in pharmacies:
The logic is simple: you get better 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 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 you don't have enough fish in your diet, supplement your diet with supplements:
Of course, you need to reduce not the weight itself, but the percentage of body fat - just most 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.
