Why do I feel sleepy? I want to take a nap during the day: ten possible explanations for the syndrome. Diseases that cause constant drowsiness

Many people are familiar with the state when they constantly feel sleepy, have absolutely no strength to work, and coffee is the only source of energy. The feeling of complete loss of strength persists even after 8 hours of sleep. This phenomenon can be observed in every person at least once a year. Most often, successful and busy people are susceptible to it. Why is this happening? And all because exemplary workers voluntarily disrupt the body’s normal biorhythms and themselves provoke health problems.

Scientists call this kind of drowsiness “brown bear syndrome.” But if a bear hibernates only in winter, then this state overtakes a person during the day, regardless of the season. Psychologists conducted a series of experiments with people suffering from chronic fatigue and found that women want to sleep during the day 4 times more often than men.

Causes of daytime naps

Many people have the desire to take a nap for an hour during the day. This seemingly innocent situation has a number of reasons:

• Self-deception and lack of sleep. Many hard workers think they can stay active 24/7. Refusal to get proper rest, which necessarily includes 9 hours of sleep at night, disrupts a person’s normal functioning and causes stress. After such changes in the daily routine, it is very difficult to return to a normal schedule. There is only one way out: you shouldn’t be a hero and deny yourself a full night’s sleep.
• Boredom. Drowsiness can occur due to a lack of pleasant impressions, due to routine tasks, tedious meetings, lectures or lessons. In this case, exercises, tonic drinks, and energetic music will help to cheer you up.
• Hypothermia. If you are always freezing at work or at home, then the natural reaction of the body will be to want to wrap yourself in a warm blanket and fall asleep. The only correct solution to the problem is to dress according to weather conditions.

Caffeine and other energy drinks are not a solution to the problem. It will provide temporary energy, further depleting the body's internal strength. Try to analyze why you feel sleepy all the time, especially if this condition persists for a long time.

"Sleepy" lifestyle

Some actions that you perform in everyday life cause drowsiness, but you don’t even know it. In medicine, the sleepy state is called hypoxia - a process during which blood enriched with oxygen and nutrients does not flow to the brain. Excessively viscous blood cannot pass through the capillaries. This always causes a decrease in blood pressure and a slower pulse. An increase in vascular tone leads to hypertension, which does not cause drowsiness, but also does not contribute to vigor. These processes can only be regulated under the supervision of a doctor.

Drowsiness often occurs when sitting with your head tilted and your muscles tense. Propping your head with your hand also causes a “sleepy” effect. Such poses are typical for employees and students of educational institutions. When a person sits or stands for a long time, he spends even more energy than during active movement, which is why office workers and truck drivers get very tired. You need to watch your posture, work at a table of a suitable height, use book stands, stretch your shoulders and neck in between work.

Sleeping on your stomach with your head turned to the side leads to pinched neck muscles. Resting on high pillows causes the same consequences. It is better to sleep in a horizontal position on your back, with a small pillow under your head, which your shoulders barely touch. To avoid tossing and turning frequently at night, place a rolled up towel under your back.

If your bedroom is a mess, you shouldn't wonder why you feel sleepy during the day. Everything that surrounds us is imprinted in our memory. When there is chaos in the room, confusion creeps into your thoughts. Throw away clutter and unnecessary things, fill your bedroom with pleasant little things, for example, aromatic accessories. The smells of dried flowers have a beneficial effect on our consciousness and contribute to a healthy night's rest.

Some people are so passionate about astrology and deciphering dreams that they do not miss the opportunity to take a nap and look into a dream book to find out the meaning of what they saw and dispel their worries. A person is able to cope with all difficulties on his own, achieving inner harmony.

Foods that cause drowsiness

Drowsiness often overwhelms us after eating. Why does eating certain foods make you want to sleep?

A very important factor contributing to drowsiness is poor diet. A small snack before bed will give your body the energy it needs and ensure uninterrupted deep sleep. Carbohydrates are ideal for dinner. It will be useful to eat half a serving of pasta or whole grain porridge, a piece of wholemeal bread, greased with peanut butter. The total calorie content of dinner should not exceed 150 kcal.

Don't neglect breakfast. Be sure to eat within an hour of bedtime to start your body clock. If you ignore the first meal, the brain begins to realize that the body is threatened by a lack of nutrients, and rapidly produces adrenaline, which causes insomnia.

For breakfast, it is advisable to eat food containing proteins and avoid large amounts of carbohydrates. A serving of low-calorie yogurt or skim milk will provide the body with 20 grams of protein. This will be enough to start the working day.

How to overcome drowsiness?

The main thing is not to deny yourself proper rest. Both physical and mental labor increases blood oxidation, as a result of which it thickens. It's good to stretch after work. It is better to avoid heavy workouts in the gym and visiting the sauna, this will only increase blood viscosity.

When you get a good night's rest on a comfortable bed in cotton linen that allows air to pass through and prevents your body from overheating, you will not be afraid of sleep problems and daytime sleepiness.

Don't sleep on your problem. If you find it difficult to find an answer to difficult life circumstances, seek help from a psychologist or somnologist. Modern professionals will help you and return you to a full life.

Of course, the reasons listed above, such as a lack of macro- and microelements, medications taken, lack of physical activity, psychological disorders, certainly affect how energetic a person feels.

What I am about to tell you now does not replace going to the doctor or regular exercise. But if all of a sudden you think that you already have a fairly balanced diet and have sufficient physical activity, but you don’t have enough strength, attention and concentration to do a lot of mental work, then here is my purely personal experience, which could turn out to be a random coincidence and may not solve your problem at all variant of the problem.

There are a number of natural stimulants that have a tonic effect on the body and increase endurance. According to articles on them, professional athletes take them in order to train better and more, and this is also not considered doping.

Here is a list of effects (taken from the article at the link):

• Significantly increase physical performance, especially increase strength endurance;
• Increasing the threshold of fatigue, increasing exercise tolerance and recovery after extensive physical training;
• Participate in the elimination of post-exertional acidosis (a shift in the pH of the internal environment of the body to the acidic side);
• Promotes the accumulation of glycogen in muscles, liver, heart;
• Activate glucose phosphorylation thus improving the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, proteins;
• Increases mental performance
• Metabolism activation
• Mental concentration
• Improves mood
• Increase appetite
• They increase the adaptability (adaptation) of the body to difficult living conditions - create resistance to various unfavorable factors (heat, cold, thirst, hunger, infection, psycho-emotional stress, etc.) and reduce the time required for adaptation to them.
• Promotes antioxidant effects by preventing the toxic effects of free radical oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids triggered by prolonged physical activity.
• They have an antihypoxic effect - they increase tissue resistance to oxygen deficiency.
• They have an immunostabilizing effect on humoral and cellular immunity.
• They have an anabolic effect.
• Improve microcirculation.

Adaptogens themselves (the same natural stimulants) are substances of plant origin. The article has an extended list, I will give several popular and personally tested ones:

• Eleutherococcus extract
• Ginseng tincture
• Schisandra chinensis tincture
• Rhodiola rosea extract

All of them are freely available in any pharmacy. Of the side effects, the worst are headaches (because blood pressure increases) and insomnia (but this is unlikely to be a problem for the author of the question, just as it was not for me). Personally, they helped me survive the first year of a technical university, and in general, I still take them when I feel the familiar unpleasant drowsiness.

Well, of course, read the contraindications.
Have a nice stay)

You wake up - you want to sleep, you come to work - you want to sleep, you have lunch - you want to sleep... Sometimes drowsiness overtakes you even on the weekend, when you seem to have slept for a sufficient number of hours. Sound familiar? Drowsiness not only interferes with learning, working and relaxing, but can also be life-threatening - for example, if you drive a car. Let's figure out why Morpheus so wants to get you into his arms.

Look around you: a young guy is sleeping while standing on the bus, an office worker is dozing off during a boring presentation, and a whole line of sleepy citizens is lining up at a coffee shop for a latte! Modern man processes a huge amount of information, and drowsiness indicates that the brain requires a break. Here are the main signs of drowsiness:

• difficult awakening in the morning;
• lack of vigor and energy during the day;
• urgent need for daytime sleep;
• feeling of irritability and restlessness;
• deterioration in concentration and memory;
• loss of appetite.

The reasons why you constantly want to sleep vary. Some of them are natural and can be dealt with on your own. In other cases, we can talk about serious disorders and diseases - here the help of a specialist is already necessary. The main causes of drowsiness are:

• sleep disturbance;
• Unhealthy Lifestyle;
• overwork and stress;
• various diseases;
• poorly ventilated area.

Let's look at them in more detail.

The most common cause of sleepiness is the most obvious: You simply don't get enough rest at night. Everyone needs a certain amount of time to get enough sleep. As a rule, it is 7-8 hours, but there are exceptions. In addition, the feeling of drowsiness occurs due to disruption of sleep cycles: waking up in the middle of a cycle, a person feels overwhelmed, even if he slept enough.

You may not know how much sleep you need. And if you do, you may sacrifice sleep due to work or other responsibilities. Deliberate sleep restriction is one of the most important problems in modern society. Many people think that this way there will be more time for things to do, but this is not entirely true: the one who “nods off” has his attention scattered and motivation disappears. The body does not work at full capacity and goes into reserve mode.

Drowsiness occurs not only due to lack of sleep, but also due to its poor quality. Insomnia can have a variety of causes, one of them is the presence of artificial light. For example, watching TV or studying the news feed on a smartphone before going to bed excites brain activity and does not contribute to good health in the morning.

The constant desire to sleep often worries people with sleep disorders and a flexible work schedule. Those who frequently go on business trips, fly from one time zone to another, and also work night shifts are most susceptible to sleep problems.

Do you like to discuss interesting topics with friends over a cup of coffee or with colleagues in the smoking room? Then the reason for lethargy lies on the surface. Caffeine in moderate doses can improve alertness for a short period of time, but consuming too much can have dire consequences. The adrenal glands produce the hormones adrenaline and norepinephrine, which “stimulate” the body and give us a feeling of vigor. But if the adrenal glands work too hard and too often, as happens with lovers of caffeinated drinks, then a new portion of hormones simply does not have time to be formed. And we know about the dangers of smoking from an early age. Nicotine causes spasm of blood vessels, the brain does not receive enough oxygen, and the smoker develops a feeling of lack of sleep against this background. By stimulating the nervous system, both caffeine and nicotine can cause insomnia and other sleep disorders.

Some people like to have a big lunch, thinking that a hearty meal will provide the energy they need for the rest of the day. However, this is not quite true. Why do you always want to sleep after eating? After the body has spent a significant part of its energy on digesting food, it is difficult for it to maintain other activities: after all, to ensure normal digestion, blood flows from the brain to the stomach and intestines. So you shouldn’t overeat: to digest an excessively large amount of food, the body will need more strength.

In addition, the lack of breakfast is directly related to drowsiness. Many people frantically get ready for work in the morning, forgetting about the first - and most important - meal. By having breakfast within an hour of waking up, you start your biological clock. And when, on the contrary, you skip breakfast, the body has nowhere to get energy.

Many people are faced with a situation where drowsiness occurs in winter. The reasons for such “hibernation” lie in the peculiarities of the season. In winter, daylight hours decrease, and in general the sun is rarely seen in winter. Due to central heating in apartments, the air becomes dry. To avoid this, you need to regularly. Also in winter you often want to sleep because of... We don’t always get the right dose of nutrients from food, and we consume less vegetables and fruits in winter. Therefore, doctors advise taking vitamin and mineral complexes.

Drowsiness due to health problems

Some people feel sleepy because they are taking certain medications that have a sedative (calming) effect. These are antidepressants, tranquilizers, antipsychotics, etc. In this case, it is worth discussing the existing problem with your doctor - perhaps he will recommend another drug that causes less drowsiness.

Some people are constantly sleepy due to cloudy and rainy weather. This is not surprising: melatonin, the hormone that controls our sleep, ceases to be produced only when exposed to daylight. Also, changes in atmospheric pressure in bad weather provoke a decrease in blood pressure, we receive less oxygen and because of this we want to get to bed faster. The most pronounced weather dependence is observed in hypotensive patients.

Drowsiness can be a sign of serious health problems: brain pathologies, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc. Therefore, if you cannot explain the reasons for fatigue and drowsiness, you should consult a doctor.

Why do you still want to sleep during the day? Weakness and drowsiness can be reactions to stress or overwork - both physical and mental. If at the very beginning of the influence of a stressful situation on a person his condition is accompanied by excitability and insomnia, then after prolonged stress the body wants to recover, and the most effective rest is sleep. In this case, it is recommended to sleep more than usual to make up for the lack of rest during the day. Depression, which often develops against a background of stress, also poses a danger to your health and sleep. Depression is often mistaken for a bad mood or bad character, although in fact it is a very serious disorder. If you feel apathy, fatigue and causeless anxiety, you should definitely consult a specialist.
Sometimes the feeling of drowsiness is associated with chronic fatigue syndrome - it manifests itself in the form of lethargy, which does not disappear even after a long rest. Chronic fatigue syndrome often leads to significant deterioration in vital signs.

Drowsiness due to stuffiness

Stuffiness is another reason for constant drowsiness. High levels of CO2 in the air reduce your alertness, worsen your mood and cause fatigue. If the situation is not corrected in any way for a long time, mild discomfort will turn into severe discomfort and insomnia. The only way is to let in fresh air from the street. You just need to get the house right - then the drowsiness will go away. The simplest and most effective way to organize a good microclimate is a system. It will help to get rid of street noise and supply fresh, clean air to your apartment.

Drowsiness in different people

Let's figure out who is more susceptible to drowsiness. Why does a woman always want to sleep? It is believed that in women, drowsiness occurs more often due to hormonal fluctuations. However, men also often suffer from loss of strength: for example, low testosterone levels provoke muscle weakness and poor attention.

The issue of drowsiness worries many. A sleepy state is especially characteristic of the first trimester. This happens because the body gets used to hormonal changes and switches to a new mode of operation. Also, during gestation, progesterone is produced, which causes drowsiness. Fatigue and malaise will disappear when the body is completely rebuilt. Also, the occurrence of lethargy can be affected by the emotional background - excitement and anxiety. Therefore, during pregnancy it is necessary to adhere to a clear sleep schedule and a calm lifestyle.

Preparing for future motherhood, many women are interested in: ? Typically, newborns and children under one year old spend most of their lives sleeping. The baby's sleep schedule depends on the daily routine in the family, nutrition, and the state of the nervous system, but on average the permissible number of hours of sleep is 18 hours a day for children aged 1-2 months and 11-14 hours for children under one year old. A child spends so much time sleeping because his nervous system and brain are not fully formed at the time of birth. In a calm state, that is, in sleep, they develop most productively. However, if you notice excessive drowsiness for his age and suspicious symptoms in your child (for example: pallor, lethargy, lack of appetite), then you should definitely consult a doctor.

In the following cases. The first of these is drowsiness after eating. The reason here is that after eating food, blood flows to the intestines and stomach, and flows away from the brain. As a result, the brain cells begin to work not at full capacity, and the person...

Most often, such a desire appears in the cold season. In winter it is discharged, it contains much less oxygen than is necessary for active activity. In addition, in winter, he consumes less vegetables and fruits, and vitamin deficiency often develops. An insufficient amount of oxygen and vitamins often causes a slowdown in metabolism and general fatigue of the body.

A lack of oxygen can also occur in rooms heated in winter, when hot radiators and heaters dry out the air, as well as during rain. The brain receives less energy and the person sleeps.

Often the cause of a constant desire to sleep is chronic lack of sleep and disrupted sleep and rest patterns. After 14-16 hours of wakefulness, the body automatically switches to a sleepy state. Therefore, a person must definitely sleep. To maintain health, improve performance and reduce drowsiness, it is advisable to fall asleep and wake up at the same set time. You don't need to sleep off your entire weekday on weekends.

The craving for sleep may be associated with taking any medications (especially sedatives), eating chemicals or preservatives, bad habits (alcohol or smoking) or the influence of household chemicals.

If the sleepy state is not due to any of the above reasons, it is recommended to consult a doctor. It may be caused by a hormonal imbalance in the body, low hemoglobin, stress or a disorder of oxygen metabolism.

Sometimes increased sleepiness is a sign of asthenic depression, chronic liver disease, bronchopulmonary problems or heart failure.

Don't be irresponsible about your constant urge to sleep. The body thus signals you about chronic fatigue. Maintain a sleep and rest schedule, learn to relax, and lead a healthy lifestyle. Do not abuse alcohol, smoking, or taking medications. Eat organic foods that are free of preservatives and chemicals.

Everything floats as if in a fog, the computer monitor, text, walls and colleagues. You are at work, but two forces are fighting - drowsiness and the need to get work done. If you begin to feel sleepy more often at work, there are reasons for this, be it overwork, lack of sleep, stress, or just laziness.

It's time to adopt methods that will allow you to cheer up if you feel drowsy in the middle of the working day.

Massage or workout

If you know how, give yourself a massage of your ears, neck and hands. It also helps to stand up and start stretching - first your back, then your legs and arms. If you are embarrassed by your colleagues, go to the restroom. A five-minute exercise for the eyes can invigorate you; you need to close your eyes and move your eyes counterclockwise and clockwise, then “look” up and down with your eyes closed. Then close your eyes tighter and open your eyes. After some time, repeat the exercise.

But first of all, take care of your night's sleep. Do everything so that you can sleep comfortably and well - if necessary, buy a new good mattress, pleasant satin bedding, and a comfortable pillow. The better your sleep at night, the less you will feel sleepy during the day.

Herbs

Everyone knows the invigorating power of herbs and herbal combinations. You will be invigorated by lemongrass tincture or ginseng tincture. You can ask them at the pharmacy. They are usually not expensive.

Another key point in using tinctures for drowsiness: it is worth understanding that if you have not slept one or two hours from your norm and take a herbal tincture for drowsiness, this is one thing, but if you have not slept for a day, it would be wiser to abstain from energy drinks and tinctures and go to bed.

Essential oils have invigorating properties

Sage has a particularly invigorating effect. In most cases, essential oils are poured into a special lamp and set on fire, and since not all of your colleagues will be happy with the smells, there may be disputes over the advisability of lighting something in the office. It is better to clarify in advance who will be against the smell of essential oils in the office. Some oils can be simply applied to the skin, for example on the wrist, and the aroma will stay with you for a long time throughout the day. Another advantage of oils is that they are good antidepressants.

Green tea

Many people recommend drinking green tea when feeling sleepy at work. It is recommended to buy high-quality green tea, find out the nearest store that sells green tea by weight and go choose a type of tea, consultants will help you. Like herbs, tea can affect the body in different ways, so next time you drink green tea, monitor your state of alertness. If you notice an increase in strength, then this method of combating drowsiness is suitable for you. Experts say that the caffeine content in some types of tea is even higher than in coffee. Tinctures can be effectively combined with green tea and get an even more invigorating effect.

Vitamins

During periods when vegetables, fruits and sun become scarce in our lives, take a complex of vitamins. Vitamins work most effectively if you combine them with a healthy diet and exercise. Even after 15 minutes of exercise (running, strength training or yoga) you will experience vitality in your body. Cheerfulness will remain with you throughout the day and, most likely, will be enough for the next one.

Look for new and enjoyable methods to combat sleepiness. Don't let the environment and stress make you indifferent to the world around you and your health!