Are You Feeling Constantly Exhausted?

If you are always tired, you might be experiencing fatigue... But, Happio can help!

👆What is fatigue? Fatigue has been defined as severe mental or physical exhaustion (NICE 2021). Experiencing fatigue involves feeling constantly tired and having a lack of energy. Experiencing fatigue can happen to anyone, it is a very common complaint in primary healthcare settings! People who are experiencing fatigue have reported some common problems. Think about your responses to the following questions. If you are answering yes, you may be experiencing fatigue… 🔷 Are you mentally exhausted? 🔷 Do you have a lack of energy? 🔷 Does it take you a long time to recover after physical exertion? 🔷 Do you have poor muscle endurance? 🔷 Are you having a nonrestorative sleep?

👆What are the effects of fatigue? Fatigue can adversely affect your mental health. It has been reported to increase your risk of anxiety and depression (NICE 2021). Fatigue can also adversely affect your quality of life, physical health, family life, social relationships, and work life (NICE 2021).

❌ Fatigue could also lead to you experiencing burnout! Developing burnout has incredibly detrimental effects and can be life-changing for the individual. It is really important if you are experiencing fatigue that this doesn’t develop into burnout which can lead to an overall negative outlook on life, feeling numb, experiencing anxiety, and feeling like you have a lack of purpose, as well as being fatigued❌

👆What causes fatigue? 🔶 Poor sleep. 🔶 Are you engaging in an all-work-no-play lifestyle? Long hours spent at work/working night shifts/high amounts of stress at work can lead to fatigue. You may even be experiencing burnout. Please refer to the previous burnout post for more information. 🔶 Putting everyone else's needs before your own. Your needs are important and when you constantly put yourself last and cram too much into your day, this can be extremely tiring. 🔶 Drinking alcohol and caffeine can reduce the quality of your sleep. 🔶 Too little or too much exercise. 🔶 Life events (e.g., relationship breakdown) 🔶 High amounts of stress 🔶 Poor diet choices (sugary/high-fat snacks) 🔶 There are also physical causes such as iron deficiency anemia, cancer treatments, and being under or overweight. (NHS 2021).

👆Sleep and Fatigue. Sleep is super important. A mountain of research shows that sleep is essential to every process in the body! It’s key for your mental and physical functioning, your ability to develop immunity and fight diseases, and your metabolism and chronic disease risk (Jansen 2020).

✍️ How much sleep should you be getting a night?🛏😴 The duration of sleep a person requires is individual to the person. There are different factors to consider when identifying how much sleep you should get per night. For example, your age, if you are taking medication that affects your sleep if you have a physical or mental health disorder or if you are pregnant, etc., However, the National Sleep Foundation Guidelines have recommended the following for a healthy individual with normal sleep (e.g., no sleep disorder) ❇️ Young adult (18-25 years old) = 7 to 9 hours per night💤 ❇️ Adult (26-64 years old) = 7 to 9 hours per night💤 ❇️ Older adult (65+ years old) = 7-8 hours per night💤 (Hirshkowitz et al. 2015)

👉 Fatigue example: John constantly put the needs of others above his own. This led to him feeling increasingly anxious and overwhelmed by the amount he had on his plate. John didn’t have time to properly care for himself. He had a poor sleep schedule because he felt he just didn’t have enough hours in the day to achieve everything he needed to do. He had a poor diet, he would eat what was fast and convenient rather than trying to nourish his body. He also drank a substantial amount of caffeine in an attempt to give him the energy he needed to do his tasks. John constantly felt fatigued. He was also engaging in the all-work-no-play lifestyle, and he was feeling extremely stressed by his workload at work. This led to John beginning to have a very cynical outlook on life. John was beginning to develop symptoms of burnout. Mary recognised that she was beginning to feel fatigued. Mary identified which of her lifestyle habits could be causing this and decided to take a positive step in changing these to help minimise her feelings of fatigue. Mary realised that staying up and checking her work emails on her phone was keeping her up a lot later than she originally thought. Mary was only getting a couple of hours of sleep a night. Mary decided that she needed to put her effort into keeping a work-life balance as this was now beginning to adversely affect her. To do this, Mary decided she would use a clock for her alarm rather than her phone. This enabled Mary to keep her phone on charge downstairs to reduce the temptation of taking a “quick” look.

✍️ Activity: Improving The Quality and Quantity of Your Sleep. Think about your responses to these questions and any behavioural changes you can enforce to improve your sleep.

✍️ What time do you go to bed? Going to bed at a similar time each night has previously been demonstrated by research to be associated with improved sleep patterns. If you have an irregular bedtime, for the next week try and set yourself a bedtime and stick to it. ✍️ Once you are in bed, what do you do? After people get into bed, they sometimes do things other than sleep. For example, checking your social media/emails on your phone. The blue light on the screen of your phone restrains melatonin production. This is the hormone that is responsible for your circadian rhythm, so when its production is restrained it can make it more difficult for you to both fall asleep and wake up the following morning. Furthermore, what you are engaging with on your phone can be stimulating. This can make you feel more awake and time can get away from you, resulting in you falling asleep later than you planned. For the next week try and avoid doing activities like playing on your phone, watching TV, and listening to the radio once you’re in bed. ✍️ Do you struggle to fall asleep once you’re in bed? If so, try and pinpoint why this is and think about what changes you can implement over the following week. For example, you may struggle with something related to your mental health. If you are lying awake at night worrying you may be experiencing some anxiety. So, it could be useful to practice some mindfulness before going to bed. At the end of the week once you have made your positive changes to improve your sleep. You can think about any changes in your mental and physical well-being. Note these changes down, so when you are facing difficulty with sticking to a healthy sleep routine, they can be used as motivation to continue on your journey of improving your sleep👏 ✨

🤗 If you have resonated with this post and are concerned you may be experiencing fatigue. You can use Happio’s Check-up feature to check if you are showing signs of fatigue or burnout. 🤗