Daytime fatigue is fairly common, even normal, if it happens on occasion. It’s our body’s natural reaction to physical or mental exhaustion. However, when it’s persistent, it might be a sign that something is wrong.
On its own, it can’t be used to make a clear conclusion about what might be wrong. The spectrum of possible causes is very broad, ranging from mild issues that can be fixed with a couple of lifestyle changes to severe health problems that require immediate attention.
Here are some of the most common causes of fatigue and possible solutions:
1. Poor Eating Habits
When it comes to lifestyle-related fatigue, poor diet is among the most common. The importance of our gut microbiota has been a hot topic within the scientific community for years now, and it’s known to serve a variety of crucial functions.
Considering the strong connection between the gut microbiome and the brain, it comes as no surprise that what we eat can have a very strong impact on a variety of mental functions, including the subjective perception of fatigue.
Of course, it’s not just our brain that recognizes chronic tiredness. Without proper nutrients, the body gets weak, the first result of which is fatigue.
There’s evidence that minimizing processed sugar and carbs can help alleviate the symptoms of fatigue. Make sure to maintain a balanced diet, and you might feel a lot more energetic throughout the day.
2. Lack of Exercise
Aside from your eating habits, the amount of physical activity correlates with fatigue. It’s been proven that people living a sedentary lifestyle are far more likely to complain of fatigue than those who exercise regularly.
Lack of exercise and fatigue perpetually build onto one another. In a study, the main reason that middle-aged adults gave for not exercising was tiredness.
This often results in more fatigue, and the only way of breaking the cycle is making yourself do at least some exercises for 30 minutes a day. It can be something as simple as walking, but it’s extremely important that you make it a part of your daily life.
3. Lack of Uninterrupted Sleep
While you’re sleeping, your body performs a variety of important functions, among which is the regulation of energy levels. Unfortunately, many people aren’t able to have high-quality sleep night in and night out, which negatively affects their everyday life.
Sleep deprivation is known to cause a variety of cognitive impairments and one of the leading causes of fatigue. If you’ve suffered from it for a long time, your fatigue might become chronic, so it might take a lot of time and effort before your energy levels can get back to normal.
What you should do is sleep for around seven hours on average every night. Moreover, you need to ensure that the sleep in uninterrupted, so your brain can perform all the necessary functions while you’re going through the stages of sleep.
4. Consistently High Stress Levels
In this day and age, living a stress-free life is impossible for most. Stress is a normal part of our everyday lives, as long as it’s within the normal range. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for many people, who are exposed to overwhelming stress on a daily basis.
There’s a very strong link between stress and chronic fatigue, as well as many other physical and mental issues. High levels of stress are extremely unhealthy, so they should be avoided as much as possible.
Thankfully, this isn’t as hard as many make it out to be. A plethora of studies have shown that mindfulness meditation can yield incredible improvements and a long-term reduction in everyday stress levels. Just 10 minutes of meditation every day can make a world of difference, so there’s a very high chance it can help you overcome stress-related fatigue.
5. Dehydration
Everyone loses water via sweat, urine, and many other ways. Proper hydration is essential to human health, and even mild dehydration can cause some serious issues, including chronic fatigue. Aside from this, it can severely impair both cognitive abilities and physical performance.
You might have heard about 8 glasses of water a day rule, but that doesn’t have to be the case. This is just an estimate, and the actual amount of water that your body needs may vary according to numerous factors, including your gender, size, climate, and activity level.
If you believe you’re even slightly dehydrated, try increasing your water intake and observe the results. Make sure to not replace water with sugary drinks, as this will only make the problems worse.
6. Health Issues
There’s a wide variety of health problems that have fatigue as one of the main causes. Some of them aren’t serious and can be easily treated, while others can be quite serious, or even deadly in rare cases.
A very common underlying cause of fatigue is hypothyroidism. An underactive thyroid produces too little hormones, which results in fatigue.
Diabetes is another common cause of fatigue. Even though the connection isn’t well-understood, fatigue is one of the main symptoms that diabetics report.
The worst-case scenario is cancer-induced fatigue. It happens during both the disease progression and treatment, and almost nothing other than a full recovery can make it go away.
When fatigue is associated with health issues, it’s often not the only symptom. The first thing you should always do is visit your physician so that they can evaluate you and try to pinpoint the cause of your fatigue.
The Takeaway
What you see here are only some of the most common causes of dehydration. The full list is very long, so use this to think about the direction you might want to go towards getting rid of this issue.
It’s always a good idea to visit your GP before you make any major lifestyle changes. Assuming that more water or proteins will make the issue go away isn’t the best thing to do. Only do this once you’re sure that there are no medical issues behind your fatigue. Once you do it, take the advice as outlined above and you should notice some improvements with time.
References:
https://www.gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com/en/about-gut-microbiota-info/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4228144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17176639
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009174358690037X
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24154584
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Understanding-Sleep
https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primers/primer/37/Fatigue-Sleep-Deprivation-and-Patient-Safety
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26039963
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26143479
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46988796/Effectiveness_of_a_Meditation-based_Stre20160703-30744-11u72g7.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1544722389&Signature=DbEwSgCbLxMlpRyl38ux%2FQe1P4M%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DEffectiveness_of_a_meditation-based_stre.pdf
https://today.uconn.edu/2012/02/even-mild-dehydration-can-alter-mood/
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/underactive-thyroid-hypothyroidism/
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/37/1/73
https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/physical-side-effects/fatigue/what-is-cancer-related-fatigue.html
Comments