Why You’re Tired… and What to Do About it
I’ve got news for you: you’re really not meant to go through life as a sleep, tired all the time husk of a human.
Unfortunately, that’s what so many of us have normalized. Wake up tired, spend the day tired, get home tired, eat dinner tired, zone out with some binge watching and the phone scroll until bed time and then either not be able to fall asleep OR collapse and pass out as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
The way we’re * actually * meant to live is to wake refreshed and have consistent energy levels throughout — get this — the entire day. Then, after taking about an hour or so to wind down before bed, falling asleep with relative ease, getting deliciously deep sleep before waking to do it again.
This is an appropriate rest/exertion cycle. This kind of cycle reflects solid mental health, great physical health (hormonal, in the nervous system, digestive system, etc), and overall wellbeing.
The only trouble is that figuring out what’s getting in the way of your best rest/work cycle can be simultaneously deceptively complex and deceptively simple. The rest of this post will walk you through common reasons folks tend to live life tired, and call it normal… and what to do about it to get yourself out of that cycle.
Physical Causes
Let’s start with the ‘easy’ ones, shall we? While it’s 100% arbitrary to call the body and mind different, for ease in our purposes I’ve separated common reasons for long-term fatigue into these categories.
Hormones: thyroid
Oh, the thyroid! The thyroid gland sits right in the center of your throat, front and center. The hormone it secretes is responsible for metabolic functions in just about every cell of your body. Hypo- (too little) and hyper- (too much) thyroid are classic culprits for being either too sleepy always, and/or not being able to get to sleep at night, which, of course, then causes daytime sleepiness.
Not only do altered thyroid levels contribute to daytime sleepiness or the inability to fall asleep, too little thyroid hormone can be a direct (and easily treated) cause of depressive symptoms. Meanwhile, too much may contribute to feelings of anxiety, including feeling like your heart is racing or experiencing heart palpitations.
Luckily, this has a relatively simple fix, namely, medication based on a simple blood test done by a doctor.
Hormones: Cortisol
Cortisol gets such a bad rap these days, being the ‘stress hormone.’ The truth is that just like thyroid hormone, too little is just as big a problem as too much… more so actually, since if you don’t have cortisol you will quite literally die.
The issue around cortisol and sleepiness has mostly to do with an inappropriate cycle throughout the day. Many of our hormones are secreted in a daily, or circadian, rhythm. A healthy cortisol pattern peaks in the early morning hours, and declines in the evening. This pattern helps to wake you up feeling fresh and then pleasantly drift off in the evening (along with melatonin and a few more sophisticated patterns in your brain).
If you have the classic pattern of being ‘tired and wired’ at the end of the day and cannot seem to power down, you may well have an altered cortisol rhythm at the root of your sleepiness. You can see what your cortisol (and melatonin) are up to with this home sleep test.
One of my favorite products to help re-regulate cortisol rhythms (alongside lifestyle changes) is Cortisol Manager, which you can find here, at a 10% discount.* **
Hormones: Insulin
There’s not a whole lot of research linking high sugar intake to altered sleep patterns, but in my personal and clinical experience, the more sugar you’re taking in, the worse your sleep will be. Furthermore, the more sugar you’re taking in, the more you’ll end up with blood sugar swings throughout the day, spiking with meals and/or snacks and then crashing waayyy down low. As your blood sugar crashes, you’ll experience fatigue (mid-afternoon slump, anyone?), crankiness known as being ‘hangry’ and some blockbuster cravings.
Insulin is the hormone that makes sure sugar gets out of the blood and into cells that can use it. Too much sugar in the blood is toxic… we see this in severe cases of diabetes where folks start to lose eyesight, develop neuropathy (tingling or loss of sensation), or even lose fingers or toes. Insulin works to get that sugar out of the blood stream and sequestered away so it will be useful, rather than damaging.
Because there’s really not so much research out there (I’ve seen one paper to date) on the effects of sugar consumption and sleep, I’m not sure if the actual issue is blood sugar itself being out of whack or if insulin resistance has something to do with it as well.
Regardless, if you’re someone who adores a high-carb snack before bed (crackers, fruit, toast, candy, etc) and wakes multiple times throughout the night, perhaps feeling hungry as you do, there’s a good chance insulin resistance and blood sugar abnormalities are at the root cause of your sleepiness.
Of course, you want to get regular checkups with your doctor and have your blood sugar and insulin levels checked. If, however, you’re afraid to go to the doctor or want a more DIY approach, invest in a glucometer, available over the counter at any drug store. Check your glucose levels first thing in the morning, before and after meals and snacks, and before bed. Keep a record and pay attention to what your levels are. Ideally, you want your blood sugar to be somewhere between 85-140. The higher readings should occur after a meal.
If you’re finding your readings are consistently above 100, it’s time to make some dietary changes. Increase fiber (veggies!), fat (avocados! nuts! seeds!) and protein (eggs! meats! tempeh! beans!) and decrease refined carbs (breads, crackers, chips, candy, etc). Of course, if you would like 1-1 support on this, schedule an appointment.
Alcohol use
The issue of alcohol is two fold. One is the fact that alcohol is metabolized to sugar in the body, and so messes with your body’s ability to maintain stable blood sugar as it spikes drink to drink.
The second is the havoc it wreaks with your liver’s ability to to its job. Alcohol (wine or vodka, beer or bourbon) is a legitimate poison to your system. Your liver drops whatever it happens to be doing so that it can get that stuff out of there ASAP! Meanwhile, your liver requires cofactors (like B vitamins) to process allllll the things it processes on a daily basis (you know, like, your blood), and as it must process alcohol quickly, and right away, these cofactors get used up.
Wouldn’t you know it, you also need cofactors like B vitamins to sleep well!
The official recommendation for alcohol intake is no more than 7 drinks per week for women and no more than 14 for men, with no more than 3 on any given day for women, or 4 for men.
However, no amount of drinking is ‘healthy.’ It’s also worth noting that if you’re working on building some Artful Boundaries, alcohol will more than likely hinder your progress in more ways than one if you’re overdoing it.
If you’re unable or unwilling to cut back on alcohol use, it’s a lovely practice to begin to drink mindfully: Why are you drinking? What do you enjoy about it? Are there things you don’t enjoy so well?
You can also find help for alcohol abuse recovery here and/or here.***
Eating at the wrong times
This is highly, highly subjective. Some folks can eat right before dinner and sleep like a rock. In my experience, most folks need about 2 hours between their last meal of the day and bedtime, assuming a normal blood sugar range (85-140) throughout the day.
We tend to confuse ‘digestion’ with ‘rest’ — mostly because of the ‘rest and digest’ name we give to the parasympathetic nervous system. In fact, your body needs time to simply digest, just like it needs time to do the functions involved in rest.
Consider you have two hobbies: painting and cycling. You love them both, and both give you tremendous joy. You’re not really going to be able to paint while you cycle, or cycle while you paint. Unless you have a stationary bike set up at your easel, but even then, your paintings wouldn’t be so great, I imagine. This is how rest and digest is to the body. If you’re asking it to do both at once, neither is going to happen correctly.
Many folks don’t have an official ‘bedtime’ (one of the most important Personal Artful Boundaries), and simply snack right up until they fall into bed. First thing, pick a realistic bedtime. If you’re regularly in bed by 12, make 12 your official bedtime. If you’re regularly in bed at 11, make 11 your bedtime. You can change it later, but first pick a time on purpose, and stick to it. Then, set an alarm in your phone to go off 2 hours before your bedtime. That’s when you’re done eating for the day. Notice if your sleep quality (and wakefulness throughout the day) shifts at all with this change.
Insufficient exercise
This depends largely on your Human Design type (if you don’t know yours, you can book your reading here). Everyone needs at least some movement throughout the day, about 30 minutes of some moderate activity. That could be running up and down stairs because you keep forgetting you need to bring something to one room or another. It could be going for a jog, doing yoga, simple stretches, or a Crossfit WOD. You get the idea.
Folks who are generators need more movement to be able to sleep well and maintain a good exertion/rest or sleep/wake cycle. They need to exert all their energy throughout the day.
If you’re often feeling like you just have too much energy to sleep in the evening, this may be a sign that you simply need a little bit more movement throughout the day.
Physical pain (body mechanics during the day)
Movement ties right into this issue of body mechanics and pain. I myself experience low back pain from time to time if I’m using a different chair or am not tending my stress levels properly (its a disappointingly reliable teaching symptom of mine).
If you’re not paying attention to how you’re sitting, standing, carrying… fill in some way you regularly use your body here… you may find yourself in pain, sometimes pain that can keep you up at night.
It’s worth investing in a physical therapist to help you learn correct mechanics and re-balance muscle groups to minimize the pain you’re experiencing. Chiropractors can also be phenomenal assets, especially when it comes to back and neck pain.
Physical pain (from other causes)
We humans get pain for all kinds of reasons — we live in bodies, and bodies sometimes protest what we put them through physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually. With complete love, I’ve known folks whose pain is
Temporary, unbidden, and fleeting,
Unexplainable, frustrating, and seemingly unsolvable,
A major coping mechanism that makes them feel safe,
A teacher, letting them know when they’ve over-worked themselves, and/or
Fire to help them learn to set Artful Boundaries and completely overhaul their lives for the better.
No one deserves to live in pain, and the pain of fibromyalgia is very different from the pain of chronic migraine or recovery from a surgery or the lasting effect of a torn ligament. The components of all of our cells regenerate regularly, and we are complex mind/body/spirit beings. This says to me that it is absolutely possible to transcend chronic pain, but everyone’s story is different, and certainly not everyone shares this belief.
If you experience pain, I encourage you to follow your own intuition and seek out care as is appropriate to your goals and circumstance. Where energy healing is great for one person, pharmaceuticals are ideal for another. None of it is wrong… your way is absolutely correct so long as you believe in it!
Insufficient Vitamin D
A few weeks ago I had to get a filling fixed, and my dentist is a practitioner after my own heart. He fully recognizes that he doesn’t just treat the teeth, but that the teeth are connected to a head, which is connected to a whole body and person. He’s also just as obsessed with longevity and healthspan as I am.
When I saw he has a recommended reading list for his patients, I of course started working my way through it. One item on there isn’t a book or an article, but a YouTube video with Dr. Stasha Gominak, a neurologist who has putting together the importance of vitamin D on sleep quality and, of course, overall health. Dr. Gominak’s assertion is that Vitamin D in fact determines how well our bodies progress through restorative sleep, and that, if you’re not getting enough vitamin D, you’re consequently not getting good enough sleep.
Your doctor can check your vitamin D levels with a blood test, or you can test them at home yourself with the Vitamin D kit available here. Depending on your results or where you live, you may take anywhere from 2,000-5,000IU daily at bedtime to improve your sleep quality.
Poor sleep hygiene
Your body is a creature of habit, 100%. It’s most efficient this way — your brain recognizes patterns to save time, and because you’ve done it 1,000,000,000 times before, you brush your teeth starting on the top right molars and put the soap in your left hand when you wash.
If you have a good sleep routine, your body knows, and preps for, going to sleep. A good sleep routine looks like stopping food 2 hours before bed, turning off electronics 1 hour before bed, spending some time in meditation or reading or listening to music or other quiet-ish activity during that hour, before finally brushing your teeth, changing into your sleep clothes (or at least out of your day clothes), and hopping into your comfy sheets.
Kids are a great example of what a difference a good bedtime routine can make. Turning down the lights, starting to wind down for the day and having a steady routine can transform bedtime from a hellscape to a sweet ending to the day.
Adults are not so different, really. A good bedtime routine will — over time! — help to shift your pattern from fitful, unreliable sleep into a steady, rejuvenating sleep until the morning.
Of course, like I said earlier, the first step is to pick a bedtime! Your routine may be as simple as getting a glass of water and taking your vitamin D before climbing into bed. Or, perhaps you prefer a soaking bath and a novel. Whatever it is, play around with a routine that helps you to relax and wind down, without the use of back-lit electronics (phone, computer, TV) if at all possible.
Overstimulation
This goes hand in hand with having a bedtime routine. If you’re playing Call of Duty or Bioshock or even just scrolling Instagram or LinkedIn before bed, well, you’re going to have a harder time falling asleep, which is going to make you more tired the next day.
Figure out what is most stimulating to you, and then, in that time before bed, don’t do those things.
I’ve (seriously) recommended to several folks who have trouble sleeping to read a manual to the fridge or another appliance if they have trouble sleeping. It’s b-o-r-i-n-g. Think manual, and you’ll be on the right track.
Sleep and other Nervous System Disorders
Sometimes, you’ve done all the troubleshooting you can do, and the fact is that you really need to call in a professional. Sleep disorders like sleep walking, true insomnia, sleep-phase shift disorders, narcolepsy and more require an honest-to-goodness specialized pro. If you think you may have a sleep disorder, check in with your GP and see if you can’t get a referral to the right person.
Mental and Emotional Causes of Fatigue
Of course, we tend to be tired for all sorts of reasons, some purely physical, most a blent of physical and mental/emotional. Here are some of the more common mental and emotional reasons you’re chronically tired.
Hint: most have to do with not having Artful Boundaries!!
People Pleasing
Your classic “I can’t say no because…” fill in the blank
I’ll lose the client
No one else will hire me
They won’t like me anymore
I’m expected to say ‘yes’
They’ll think I’m mean
That means I’m selfish
I don’t know how…
Here’s what, sweet one: people pleasing will absolutely exhaust you more quickly than just about anything else. If you’re not saying ‘yes’ from a place of care and compassion backed up by the available resources to help, you’re hurting yourself and you’re hurting the other party because they’re not getting the you they asked for!
If any of the above thoughts have crossed your mind regularly in the last six months or more, join the Artful Boundaries MasterMind to finally kick your people pleasing habit for the good of all involved.
Trying to be who you’re not
Last week I watched Elliot Page’s interview with Oprah, and the issue came up of how draining it was for him to simply exist living life as a woman. Certainly he’s not the only one who’s experienced this phenomenon. Autistic folks who mask experience autistic burnout for how tiring it is (learn more about that here). People of color get exhausted trying to not just fit in, but keep themselves safe via ‘appropriate’ conduct. Immigrants in a new culture may struggle to take on unfamiliar customs.
Think of the last time you had to meet a boy/girlfriend’s family for the first time, or interviewed for a new job. Did you alter your behavior?
How about visiting your own family after a time away, or seeing people you went to college with. Did your behavior mirror who you know yourself to be?
There’s certainly no shame here at all.
In fact, in Human Design some folks are designed to be more chameleon when it comes to personality. Because shimmering in and out of ways of being is how these folks are meant to be, it’s a non issue. There’s not a fear base, or subsequent exhaustion — this shifting IS how they’re themselves!
The issue arises if you notice you’re changing your behavior, speech, posture, clothing, etc because you’re afraid you won’t fit in, or that you’ll be rejected or called out for being ________. This is when it becomes exhausting and unsustainable.
Certainly always do what you think is best for your safety, and also I invite you to consider:
Who are you trying to please or appease? Why?
What part of yourself do you deem shameful? How might you learn to love and accept this bit of yourself?
What’s the price you’re willing to pay for not living your life authentically, with joy and ease and creativity creeping in moment by moment?
Staying where you shouldn’t
Ever been in a relationship you kinda sorta knew wasn’t a good one but you stayed because it was familiar/the sex was great/you loved their family/you didn’t want to lose out on _____?
Most folks have.
If you’re staying where you’re not meant to be though, you’re tiring yourself out because you’re depriving yourself of the people and experiences that call for your vibrance. Just by staying in a place or with people you don’t jive with you’re draining your vital energy.
This gets more serious when we start to talk about staying in a situation that’s frankly not good for you — ie a too stressful job, a dysfunctional family dynamic, or outright abuse.
In these cases, your body is in full out fight/flight trying to keep you safe — this is exhausting!
Keeping in mind your daily needs and current resources, consider:
What’s your exit strategy?
How can you begin to take action on it TODAY?
How can you use your resources creatively?
Who can you ask for help?
What kinds of services might exist that can help you get where you want to be?
Stuffing emotions
Did you know I used to sleep 20-22 hours per day? True story.
When I first moved to Portland, I was unemployed and had the time and space to do what I wanted for the first time. I had no friends, no school (for the first time), no job, no family close by. And I slept… a lot.
Finally, one day I woke up (literally and figuratively) and said “This is NOT normal! There has to be something more than this.”
So I got myself to a therapist and started unpacking grief I’d been carrying for a decade: the death of my grandparents and one of my parents in a span of about the 4 years of my high schooling.
You know what happened?
I slept less. First it was 18 hours, then 15, then 12, and now I’m at a respectable 8-10 per night (I can’t go lower and stay healthy).
But it wasn’t until I was willing to turn and face, eye to eye and nose to nose, those emotions that I got my waking hours back.
Consider:
What are the emotions you really wish weren’t there?
How can you start to open up the chest you’ve shoved them down in and let them out?
What’s the fear of those emotions?
You can also check out these podcast episodes on learning to sit with your more difficult emotions:
Trying to ‘hold it together’
‘Holding it together’ and stuffing emotions live in the same studio apartment.
When I was a kid I was told ‘don’t cry’ and ‘never let them see you sweat.’ In our culture, men aren’t supposed to display emotion, like, at all. Women are only supposed to have ‘appropriate’ emotions.
Which leads to a such (excuse my language here) a shit show of emotional ineptitude and ensuing trauma and damage.
How different might life be if we let ourselves fall apart?
And, oh, I don’t know… ask for help??
Have you heart of kintsugi? This “is an ancient Japanese art that invites to repair a broken object by emphasizing its scars with gold powder.”
You’re absolutely not less than if you fall apart. Whether that means screaming at some trees in the woods or pounding a pillow or sobbing for a bit… Let it go sweet one!
With that pent up energy released, you never know what gold might come in and fill the cracks.
Ignoring what’s capital-T True for you
This is sort of an amalgam of the other points in this section, but I’ve pulled it out because it’s at the foundation of why we do things like people please, stuff emotions, stay where we really shouldn’t, or try to hold it all together.
Marianne Williamson says it best: “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ “
Carl Jung speaks of the shadow aspects of ourselves that we want to just sweep under the rug.
Both are true. Both are valid.
And both are making you downright exhausted, every day.
If you’re afraid of your greatness, you’re tamping yourself down and disallowing your full expression. If that energy can’t move outward and into the world, it has to go somewhere. So it roils within you as depression, anxiety, and the need for so many naps.
If you’re afraid of your shadow aspects, you’re only living as half of yourself, since the shadows accentuate the brilliant light you are, and let others know that the dark isn’t really so scary to face after all. Not to mention the shame you’re letting run your life.
The only way to get to the bottom of it is to start paying attention:
What do you want to say?
What do you want to do?
What’s the raw emotion before you cover it up with flowers and nice?
*Check with a qualified healthcare professional before beginning a new supplement regimen.
**You’ll need to create a complimentary Fullscript account to purchase this product and access the 10% discount.
***NOTE: alcohol withdrawal can be deadly. Please pursue professional, in-patient care if you experience alcohol withdrawal symptoms like shakes, sweatiness, agitation, racing heart, nausea, vomiting, etc.