Excessive daytime sleepiness is a problem for many of us.
It’s estimated that about 20 percent of adults experience this common sleep related symptom. This is not the after effects of a late night out or bad night trying to sleep, but an ongoing struggle with enough impact to make your daily activities hard to deal with or complete.
Most often the causes of your daytime sleepiness are certain medications you may be taking, sleep deprivation, an underlying sleep disorder or may be due to certain mental or health conditions.
Even when you are able to hide your sleepiness do you feel others see you as less competent or under-performing because of how it interferes with your ability to work and focus?
Table of Contents
How it feels – my story
Do you often feel like you are barely making it by, drifting in and out of focus and trying not to be obvious to the people around you. Some days I am constantly on the edge of falling asleep.
Missing parts of conversations and forgetting the parts you could follow, your mind is dulled to your surroundings as you strain to keep your eyes open.
Making decisions is harder. I have multiple tasks to coordinate but my brain is fogged and lethargic. I can’t seem to grasp or prioritize things to make up my mind and move forward and I don’t know which way I want to go.
Reading the same computer screen over and over you try to comprehend what you are reading but are still in the same place you were 10 minutes ago.
Staring blankly at the screen with slowly closing eyes, you begin to nod. Turning your screen away from the rest of the crowd, you hope no one notices.
Struggling, you strain your brain to keep on task and hope the end of the day comes quickly so you can go to sleep. This is my story. Does any of it sound familiar?
I sense the stigma of seeming slow to catch on to things, inadequate or under-performing.
But all I need is sleep.
What causes excessive daytime sleepiness?
- Sleep deprivation – lack of sleep
or lack of quality sleep
- Obstructive sleep apnea – one of the most common sleep disorders and you may be unaware of it or have other sleep disorders including insomnia
- You’re sedating yourself -medications, sometimes over the counter
can make you drowsy, such as allergy meds
- Heath conditions –
one of the most common is diabetes but many who suffer are unaware of it as a symptom
- Your mind – psychiatric conditions
such as depression are a leading cause of insomnia and daytime sleepiness
What happens when you don’t get enough sleep at night?
About a third of adults don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis. We all know how excessively sleepy it can make us feel, but besides that did you know…
- Memory , reasoning and decision-making are affected making it harder to resolve daily issues.
- Accidents can happen more often because you are not as alert and can delay your response when needed.
- Lack of sleep has been linked to greater instances of depression and anxiety.
- You can feel moody, irritable and hard to get along with others.
- Sleep builds and maintains your immune system. You know how you feel run down when you don’t get enough sleep?
Your immune system feels the same way and it is easier to get sick and harder to get over it.
- Many chronic health conditions can be aggravated or have an increased chance of developing. Lack of sleep can contribute risk of diabetes and high blood pressure, coronary heart disease including heart failure, a stroke or even some types of cancers.
- Not tonight honey, I’m too tired. Yup, sex life can take a back seat if you don’t feel the umph! Not only that but you may not feel like doing activities you normally enjoy because you don’t have the energy or are just too sleepy.
The importance of sleep quality vs quantity
Getting the right quality of sleep can outweigh getting more sleep. In other words how much you sleep doesn’t mean you sleep well.
If you wake up often during the night or can’t fall asleep in 30 minutes or less or can’t go back to sleep you may not be getting the full benefit. With good quality sleep you should wake up feeling restored, refreshed and not feel the need for more sleep.
By waking often you might not have enough time to go through all the stages of sleep needed to feel restored and rested. So 8 hours of disrupted sleep may not make you feel as rested as you would with less time sleeping straight through.
It’s important that you cycle through all these stages of sleep each night. Most people go through four to six cycles each night.
These cycles include 4 stages, or phases, of sleep. Some people used to refer to 5 stages; the first stage was actually the process of going from wakefulness into the first phase of sleep, but according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine it is now classified into 4.
The stages are:
N1 – falling asleep (1-5 minutes)
N2 – your relaxed, functions slow and body temp drops (10-25 minutes)
N3 – deep sleep (20-40minutes)
REM sleep – (10-60 minutes) most of us know this as the dreaming stage
A typical cycle is 90 minutes and you usually don’t begin REM sleep unless you have been asleep for at least 90 minutes. As the night goes on the REM cycles become longer and take up a larger portion of the sleep cycle.
It’s believed that during deep sleep and REM sleep is where most of the critical processes occur to help you feel restored and rested.
While, deep sleep is where the restorative part comes in contributing to building tissue, immunity and brain function, REM sleep seems to be what help us with memory and learning abilities. It also plays a role in how creative we can be.
So, no matter how much sleep you get you need to have enough uninterrupted sleep to pass through your needed phases to get the restorative benefits. Quality matters.
How to reduce daytime sleepiness
Of course the first tips you get from anyone to reduce daytime sleepiness is to get a better nights sleep. Right!
And we’ll get to that, but first….
That’s a good thing to try for tomorrow but how about today? It’s a little after the fact. I often have a struggle with daytime sleepiness and use these methods myself to get through the day.
We have an odd schedule that starts at 2 AM most days and feeling the urge to nod off during the work day is common sometimes. Here are some things you can do to help.
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- Be active – If you work at a desk get up and move around when you can. Standing and getting a little physical activity will get you blood flowing and pump you back up a bit. If you need to talk to someone walk over in person rather than email. Which leads me to the next tip.
- Keep your mind engaged – I find being absorbed in my task or subject helps to keep me moving and my mind active.
- Keep things bright – Your circadian rhythm is triggered by light seen by your eyes. If you work inside keep the lights bright. This tells your brain it’s time to be awake.
- Take a stretch – I use 10 to 15 minutes of my lunch or break to go outside and stretch. I mean really s-t-r-e-t-c-h.
I bend and stretch out my calves and legs. I reach out my arms stretching all the way to my fingers and up to the sky.
Then I turn and twist my trunk side to side and turn towards my back as far as I can.
This not only helps to wake me up but can be a good routine toward daytime exercise helping you to sleep at night.
- Check your meds – Make sure you aren’t making yourself sleepy from taking an Rx or over the counter medicine.
- Green tea – Green tea contains L-theanine. At times, I will drink a cup at lunchtime. Why? Because the L-theanine helps to increase focus. I will get a light boost from the caffeine and I feel mentally improved and able to focus on my task from the theanine. L-theanine can also help relieve stress and anxiety making it easier to sleep at night.
- Caffeine – Last of all, yes, we all turn to caffeine at times. But avoid it late in the day so it does not make the problem worse by disrupting your sleep at night. According to the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, even using caffeine six hours before bedtime can have an impact on sleep.
How to sleep better at night
How can you sleep better tonight so you don’t feel sleepy tomorrow? It start with good sleep hygiene.
- Train your brain – Keep a regular sleep schedule by going to bed and waking at the same time every day, including days off.
- Set your environment – Your bedroom should be cool (but comfortable), quiet and dark. Make sure your bed is comfortable and the right support for your sleeping style.
- Keep it for sleep – Your bedroom should be for sleep and sex. Electronics such as computers, cell phones, and TV’s should be avoided in the bedroom or removed completely.
- Don’t pump yourself – refrain from using caffeine late in the day
- Alcohol is not a good bed partner – avoid alcohol near bedtime. While it may make you fall asleep more easily, it typically causes you to wake up at night.
- Exercise is good – You can sleep more easily at night if you are physically active during the day. In one study between exercise and sleep a sample of older adults with insomnia showed significant improvement in sleep quality and reduced daytime sleepiness after 4 months of aerobic exercise training.
Just avoid heavy exercise near bedtime that would wake your body up when it should be winding down.
Lastly, if good sleep habits don’t seem to help there are the natural sleep aids, over the counter products, and prescription drugs your doctor can prescribe if you still can’t sleep well.
That being said, if you experience excessive daytime sleepiness on a regular basis you should talk to your doctor to see if you may have a sleep disorder or other underlying condition. They can best advise you based on your individual health condition.
What have we learned today?
The struggle with daytime sleepiness is real for many of us but you don’t have to feel like a zombie. Check your meds, follow good sleep hygiene and when you feel a little nod starting to overtake you use today’s tips and no one will know the difference.
And, everyone has one of those sleepy feeling days every now and then, but if you feel that way often ask your doctor about it. You don’t have to live in the fog.
How often do you feel sleepy during the day?
Leave your answer in the comments below.
Goodnight!
The information in today’s post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. When you have questions regarding your health you should seek the advice of your health care provider.
references
Excessive daytime sleepiness
https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2009/0301/p391.html#
Which is more important for health: sleep quantity or sleep quality?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34202755/#:~:text=According to the nationwide research,index for assessing sleep quality.
Physiology, sleep stages
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526132/#:~:text=Sleep occurs in five stages,spent in the N2 stage.
A practical approach to excessive daytime sleepiness: a focused review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4904525/
Tips for better sleep
https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/sleep_hygiene.html
The bidirectional relationship between exercise and sleep: implications for exercise adherence and sleep improvement
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341978/