Why Am I Still Tired After Sleeping?

We all know the feeling - when your alarm goes off in the morning you have to yawn yourself awake. Usually even that doesn’t help, and you’re left stumbling into the kitchen to make that sorely needed first coffee of the morning.

And it’s still the same when you haven’t had a restless sleep. Even if you sleep like a log for a good 8 hours or more you can still wake up feeling very tired. The question is why, and this is what this article is going to explore. And better yet, later on the article we’re going to talk about what you can do about it.

Here it goes!

List Of Reasons Why You May Still Be Tired Even After A Full Night’s Sleep

Your tiredness on waking up may be attributed to one or more potential reasons. We’re going to list a few here, so you can think about whether any of these reasons might apply to you. (They’re not listed in any particular order.)

• Lack of exercise
• Being dehydrated
• Feeling depressed
• Drinking alcohol
• Drinking coffee in the evening
• Too much blue light before bed
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Feeling anxious
• Hormone disorders
• Sleep disorder

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and there may be factors that we haven’t covered here. But these are the more common culprits. You’ve probably already spotted one of your potential culprits in there.

Transitioning From Sleep To Wakefulness

In fact, very few people are often suddenly wide awake after a night’s sleep. For most people, transitioning from sleep to wakefulness is a gradual process.

And even if you feel wide awake before you get out of bed, moving around the house requires more energy, which can get you yawning all over again.

This is completely normal, and is not normally something to be concerned about.

But, if your tiredness is severe and it drastically affects your day-to-day life, then you must identify the specific cause in order to know how best to treat it.

Getting Better Sleep With Good “Sleep Hygiene”

But, before you start panicking and calling the doctor about how tired you feel in the mornings, it’s best to try to eliminate potential causes of your tiredness, in order to consider whether or not you may have a specific disorder that affects your sleep.

To do this may require some lifestyle changes. But these lifestyle changes often have other benefits besides getting better quality sleep. Here are some of the things you can do:

Help Your Circadian Rhythms

Your body works to it’s one natural rhythms. That’s where the phrase “bodyclock” comes from. You can train your body to go to sleep and to wake up at certain times.

In order to get better quality sleep you can take advantage of your body’s circadian rhythm so that you’re awake during the day, and you can catch up on your sleep at night.

Get Plenty of Daylight

You can help your circadian rhythm to achieve this by seeing plenty of daylight throughout the day. Much better than staying stuck in. And you get fresh air too.

Avoid Blue Light Late At Night

But, one of the biggest mischief makers to your sleep hygiene comes from artificial “blue light”. This is the light emitted from modern gadgets, such as laptops, TVs and devices such as smartphones and tablets.

While this shouldn’t cause too much of a problem during the morning and afternoon, carrying this on through to the evening could impact your circadian rhythms, and cause you to stay more awake for longer than intended, and have you going to sleep at a far later time.

You can easily remedy this by limiting your screen time in the evening.

Limit Your Coffee And Alcohol Intake

Coffee

Coffee has long been known to promote wakefulness, thanks to its relatively high caffeine offering. Black tea also has caffeine, but usually has less than coffee.

And due to the links between coffee and wakefulness, it’s strongly recommended that you don’t drink any coffee in the last few hours before bed. Just at what time you should stop is still heavily debated however. Though there are some experts out there who say you shouldn’t drink coffee after 2pm.

If you can’t imagine going without coffee entirely, why not consider switching to decaffeinated coffee. It’s readily available in most grocery stores and superstores, or you can order some online. You’ll find that decaf often tastes very similar to the caffeinated variety, and you may not even notice the difference.

Alcohol

Sure in many cases alcohol can help you drift off to sleep. However, you might find that drinking alcohol can disrupt your sleep cycle. And sometimes it can have the opposite effect.

Get Some Exercise

If you’re not getting good quality sleep, this could be because you’re not sufficiently exhausted. If you make a point of getting some cardio exercise every day, you could find that this changes for you. And it comes with extra benefits!

Quiet Your Anxiety

If you’re not getting good quality sleep, it may be because you’re anxious. You can often treat anxiety by practicing mindfulness, which is a kind of accessible meditation.

Seeking Further Help

If you make all the lifestyle changes mentioned here, and you still feel that your tiredness is excessive and not letting up, we strongly encourage you to seek further assistance from a medical professional.

A doctor, for example, could arrange for you to have different blood tests, which could help identify whether you have a hormonal problem or sleep disorder that’s making you so tired.

Wrap Up

It’s not always possible from the get-go to work out why you’re still tired after sleeping. But, you can work to boost your quality of sleep. If after making all the changes you can, you find you’re still having problems with tiredness after sleeping, then our advice to you would be to speak with a medical professional.

Our overall message here is one of hope. You can determine what’s wrong, and you can do something about it.