8 reasons why you wake up in the morning and still feel sleepy, tired, and weak.
You get seven to eight hours of sleep most nights, yet feel unrested throughout the morning or even most of the day. You’re following the golden rule of sleep exactly, but why do you feel so bad? Sleep grogginess impairs more complex cognitive skills, such as evaluative thinking, decision-making, creativity, and rule-making, and gets worse the more sleep-deprived a person is.
Even if your job isn’t saving lives or driving trucks overnight, experiencing grogginess after hours of sleep can still affect your quality of life.
The solution to this problem starts with assessing your sleep using “two questions,” says Raj Dasgupta, MD, a pulmonary and sleep specialist and clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. “If you’re getting a good amount of sleep, the next question is, ‘Am I getting good quality sleep?’”
Dasgupta recommends seeing a sleep specialist, who can help identify underlying sleep disorders. But there are other, more easily modifiable factors that can interfere with the restorative and repairing processes, such as memory consolidation, hormone regulation, and emotional regulation or processing, that need to occur during sleep.
8 reasons why you still feel sleepy when you wake up in the morning
1. Fatigue
“There are a number of conditions that can cause fatigue, but they don’t always make people feel like they’re ready to sleep,” says Jennifer Martin, MD, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
These conditions may include chronic pain conditions, metabolic or thyroid conditions, anemia, แทงบอล UFABET ราคาดีที่สุด ไม่มีขั้นต่ำ, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
If you feel fatigued for no reason, “an important first step might be to get a regular checkup with your family doctor,” Martin says.
Plus, the National Sleep Foundation says healthy adults need seven to nine hours of sleep a night, so you might need more than eight hours to feel energized. You could try going to bed an hour earlier or waking up an hour later and see if it makes a difference, says Christopher Barnes, a management professor at the University of Washington who studies the relationship between sleep and performance.
2. Living a sedentary life
“If you live a sedentary lifestyle, your body gets used to using lower energy levels, so you may feel more tired than you should when trying to do basic daily activities,” Martin says.
The World Health Organization recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes (2 1/2 hours) of moderate to vigorous exercise per week, while pregnant women should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic and strength-building exercise per week.
3. Anxiety or depression
Having anxiety or depression can drain your body of energy, Dasgupta says. These conditions can also negatively affect how long it takes you to fall asleep, including whether (and how many) you wake up in the middle of the night, he adds.
And sometimes medications used to treat depression or anxiety can have side effects, such as insomnia or disrupting deep sleep, Dasgupta says.
4. Irregular sleep
“Sometimes our schedule will be different on weekdays and weekends,” Barnes said. “ The schedule can fluctuate for those who work shifts as well.”
“A very common practice is to say, ‘Okay, Friday night, I don’t have to work tomorrow morning, so I can stay a little later,'” Barnes says. Maybe you stay a little later on Saturday night, since you don’t have to work Sunday either, and then go to bed earlier on Sunday before the work week starts.
But by this point, you’ve already set your sleep schedule back a few hours in a short period of time. “This is very similar to jet lag,” Barnes says. “A quick reset doesn’t work very well.”
5. Dehydration
The Cleveland Clinic says your body is made up of more than 50% water, which is essential for many functions, including digesting food, making hormones and neurotransmitters, and transporting oxygen throughout the body. Dehydration has been linked to decreased alertness and increased drowsiness and fatigue.
The Institute of Medicine recommends that women consume 2.7 liters (91 ounces) of fluids per day and men consume 3.7 liters (125 ounces) of fluids per day. This recommendation includes all fluids and water-rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and soups. Since the average fluid to food ratio is about 80:20, that’s about 9 cups per day for women and 12½ cups for men.
6. Poor sleep environment or routine
Good sleep hygiene includes keeping your bedroom dark, quiet, and cool at night, and using it only for sleeping and sex.
Avoid drinking caffeinated beverages less than six hours before bedtime, and limit alcohol and heavy or spicy foods at least two hours before bedtime. Alcohol can prevent deep sleep, and such foods can cause digestive issues that interfere with restorative sleep.
7. Problems from your partner
“The person you sleep with (or your pet) has a huge impact on how well you sleep,” Martin says.
Maybe your partner has trouble sleeping and snores or tosses and turns, or maybe he or she has a different schedule that’s disrupting your sleep. Pets can also disrupt your sleep schedule, since they don’t have the same sleep patterns as humans, she adds.
“The most important thing, if your partner snores, is to take them to a sleep specialist and have them evaluated for sleep apnea,” Martin says. Sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing stops and starts while you sleep, is common in people who snore, she adds.
8. Sleep disorders
Barnes said that in this regard, sleep disorders are another factor that can significantly reduce the quality of sleep.
He added that people with sleep apnea may wake up 50, 100 or more times throughout the night.
“When you wake up, you no longer have deep sleep, and you typically don’t fall into deep sleep right away,” Barnes says. “Pulling people out of that deepest sleep stage by waking them up results in generally less time spent in the deepest sleep stage.”
Other sleep disorders that can affect daily energy levels include narcolepsy and restless legs syndrome, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The best way to track the quality and quantity of your sleep, Barnes says, especially if you think you may have been diagnosed with a sleep disorder, is to undergo a polysomnography test at a sleep clinic.
Apps and wearables, such as watches or rings, that measure sleep aren’t as accurate as clinical tests, Barnes said, but still provide enough information for healthy adults. “I would like to know if it’s been developed and validated against other, more accurate devices,” he said.