Holistic Health Coach Phillippa Quigley looks to answer the question – why am I always sleepy? Find out how you can answer this for yourself and how to prevent it below…
Do you hear the saying ‘you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep’ and often wonder why you wake up after a long sleep and you don’t feel any benefit?
Going to bed at night is supposed to be the opportunity for your body and brain to reset with the intention that you’ll wake up the next day feeling refreshed.
It is normal to wake up with a certain amount of grogginess and perhaps have a little slump during the afternoon. However, if you are constantly feeling sleepy through the day and find yourself asking ‘why am I always sleepy?’ then that could be down to a few health related issues.
The good news is, is that with lifestyle changes and better habits, these can be solved.
In this article we will discuss the reasons why you are possibly feeling sleepy and tired throughout the day and how you can manage and improve this.
What does it mean to be ‘sleepy’?
If you’re feeling sleepy it means you are feeling drowsy, tired and heavy eyed. When we feel like this it should be late into the evening when our body and brain is telling us it’s time to go to sleep. Feeling like this during the day means that we are unable to function at our most optimal level.
The impact of feeling sleepy means that we would be showing slow reflexes, a poorer immune system response, impaired cognitive function and our mood would be low. If this is how our body is behaving on a daily basis, eventually this could cause chronic diseases and disorders.
It is important to recognize that feeling sleepy throughout the day isn’t normal, especially if you think you are getting the amount of hours of sleep you should.
Recommended hours of sleep:
- Newborns (up to 3 months old): 14 to 18 hours
- Infants (up to 1 years old): 12 to 16 hours, napping hours included.
- Children (1 to 5 years old): 10 to 14 hours, napping hours included.
- School aged children (6 to 12 years old): 9 to 12 hours
- Teenagers (13 to 18 years old): 8 to 10 hours
- Adults (18 years and up): 7 to 9 hours
What is making me sleepy?
Let’s discuss a few of reasons as to why you might be feeling sleepy, even after a ‘full’ night’s sleep.
You don’t sleep as much as you think you do!
Let’s be honest, how often do you tell yourself you are having an early night and actually go to sleep later than you normally would. Everybody can be guilty of getting into bed early and thinking you have enough time to procrastinate or mindlessly scroll through your smartphone. This results in staying awake later and perhaps trouble in actually falling asleep.
Therefore you could be thinking because you are going to bed at 10:00 PM and wake up at 6:00 AM that you actually are getting a ‘good eight hours sleep’. This isn’t the healthy rest our body and brain are after.
What we need to focus on is sleep efficiency. This is where we are calculating the amount of sleeping hours we actually have. Even the smartest smart watch can record inaccurate sleeping time because it includes the time you are lying in bed on your phone, and not actually asleep.
Calculating the exact amount of sleep you actually get isn’t an easy job, which is why even the best technology and the latest smart watch, cannot always be completely relied on when it comes to accuracy.
Whilst tracking your sleep isn’t a bad idea with one of these devices, if you are suffering with feeling sleepy throughout the day but your watch is telling you, you had 8 hours – be mindful that it may not be revealing the full truth.
You’re not meeting your personal sleep needs
As with all things in life we are all unique and individual. We are all determined by our genes with our own genetic DNA codes. Therefore when we’re following rules and guidelines such as how much sleep we need per night, it might be that you are someone that needs more than the average 8 hours.
As the guidelines state above; an adult needs between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night. As with any averages there will be people that need the minimum requirement and others that need the maximum requirement – and then even some outliers beyond the two extremes.
What an average does is give us a good baseline to start with if you are perhaps trying something new.
For example, if you are someone who has poor sleep hygiene meaning that you perhaps have put your sleep at the bottom of your priority list and you are now trying to improve your sleeping habits, aiming for 8 hours of sleep is a good goal to start with.
We also need to take into account that there will be certain times in our lives when our bodies need more rest usual. This could be due to recovering from a period of illness, a time of high stress or you may have completed an intense activity such as a marathon or triathlon.
You’re body clock is out of sync
When we are talking about sleep, the body clock we are referring to is your circadian rhythm. This is basically your body’s internal clock.
It tells your body to sleep and wake over a 24 hour period. Our circadian rhythm goes in cycles of sleepiness and alertness, which respond to changes with the light around us. It also controls the production of certain hormones and the fluctuations of your body’s core temperature.
If you are not in sync with your circadian rhythm, you will feel like your energy levels are depleted. Even if you think you are getting enough of the recommended hours, if this sleep is not happening when it should you will experience low energy. This can be quite common for people who work night shifts or have irregular sleeping patterns.
When you sleep in sync with your circadian rhythm you will find that your energy levels are high and that you feel alert. Whereas the opposite not only gives you that ‘sleepy’ feeling, but you might also begin to experience insomnia symptoms.
You’re in a Sleep Debt
Is sleep debt a real thing? The answer to that is yes! If you are not getting adequate sleep over a set amount of time this can cause sleep debt to build up one day at a time until you accrue so much that it has a real detrimental impact on your daily life.
If you are someone who needs 8 hours sleep at night, but for some reason you’ve only been getting around six hours of sleep a night over the course of a few days, you will be building up a sleep debt of several hours. The sleep debt that has built up will not be restored with just one good night’s sleep, your body will want to make up for the sleep that it has lost out on over several days.
Experiencing sleep debt will not just leave you feeling sleepy. It has a huge impact on your health and can cause conditions such as; diabetes, risk of stroke, high blood pressure, and obesity. As sleep debt increases, our body and brain functions deteriorate and sleep is what is needed to repay this debt.
When you have built up a sleep debt you will need to make extra time to allow that sleep to be repaid. If you ha