Thursday, September 16, 2010

Are you tired all the time? Do you feel like everyone around you has a million times more energy than you do? Do you wake up in the morning to your alarm clock and want nothing more than be able to go back to sleep for the rest of the day? Well, the causes of feeling tired and the contributing factors to your fatigue are specific and exclusive to your individual self. However, here are a few fundamental tips to help battle tiredness. You can stop feeling always tired.
1. OVERSLEEPING does not help
Sleeping extra hours per night is not the solution to feeling tired all the time. Oversleeping is a contributing factor and one of the many causes of feeling tired. What is important is one's quality of sleep, not quantity. It is important to evaluate sleep cycle's and your body's rhythm. Oversleeping disturbs your body's natural rhythm and is counterproductive in battling fatigue.
2. CAFFEINE and other artificial stimulants (i.e. energy drinks) do not help
The human body clashes with the intake of caffeine and other artificial stimulants. If you are a coffee drinker and are puzzled by why you are still tired all the time despite drinking coffee all day long, you may want to take this to heart. To put it short, caffeine causes unnecessary adrenaline production within the brain. Why would you want adrenaline pumping just to sit at your desk in the office all day? You don't need that. It is much more important to harness natural energy rather than artificial.
3. DIET & EXERCISE
I'm sure you hear these all the time in regards to just about anything health related. If you are seeking the causes of feeling tired that affect you, you may want to turn towards these factors. Exercise is important to allow your body time for work and time for rest. Engaging in no physical activity throughout the day is not healthy and may be a triggering factor in why you are constantly fatigued. Your diet is also extremely important. What you put into your body is hugely influential and may be your cause of feeling tired. Maintaining a healthy, consistent diet is critical in helping you to battle chronic tiredness.
These 3 tips are fundamental and the foundation of your action plan. You are unique and so are your causes of feeling tired. Starting with these suggestions, however, is a good way to begin analyzing what exactly is contributing to your tiredness. A personalized regimen may be needed if these ideas don't fully work for you.

Are you feeling always fatigued?

You know that the thyroid gland produces hormones; you also know that when the body lacks energy we feel fatigued. But when you are told that you are suffering from thyroid fatigue, what do you make out of it? What is the relationship between your thyroid and feeling fatigued?
Energy is perhaps the only quintessential element needed to sustain life. We not only need energy to do activities but also during our sleep, some kind of energy is produced and utilized. Thyroid hormones have a major impact on the way this vital life force is generated and distributed in our body. But all fatigues are not necessarily related to thyroid malfunction.
One of the most important functions of the thyroid hormone is it controls the metabolism. This is like the engine of a car running even when it is idle. This critical energy is at the root of all other energy and hormone production and any disturbance at this basic level can alter the entire energy system in the body, including being affected by thyroid fatigue.
In case you have thyroid which functions sub-optimally, you can still do your normal daily activities, as your adrenaline secretion is responsible to keep you going. Although you may feel always tired. But you would notice that your tiredness is calling for more stimulants like coffee, sugar or even cigarettes. Here are some causes and symptoms for thyroid fatigue:
  • Tiredness from usual activities is normal; the reason why we need to sleep. But a poor lifestyle or certain sleep disorders like sleep apnea which do not allow you to sleep more than 7 hours a day, can result in thyroid fatigue.
  • The condition shows up with gradual reduction of energy levels. For example, when due to sleep apnea, you are deprived of good sleep day after day; you would start to feel fatigued as the thyroid hormones are unable to produce the required level of energy for you to carry on.
  • Some amount of physical exercises is necessary for optimizing the functioning of thyroids. Lack of exercise can jeopardize its proper functioning.
  • Your chances of feeling thyroid fatigue would be significantly less if you exercise your muscles properly. The fitter they are, the lesser are your chances to be fatigued.
  • Muscle weakness is a typical symptom of thyroid fatigue. You just do not have the energy to get up and do any physical activity.
  • Heaviness of the head is another classical symptom of malfunctioning of the thyroid. This is different from the reeling of the head that you might get as you try to diet and not eat for long hours. The head simply lacks the ability to think clearly, you feel depressed and you want to sleep all the time, even when you know that sleep apnea is not going to allow you to sleep properly.
  • Lab tests for thyroid functioning may not always reveal the truth about thyroid fatigue. However, your symptoms are the only guidelines your doctor relies on, for proper diagnosis.

Constantly feeling fatigued

These days, feeling fatigued is a familiar state for many. A new study offers some good news in our increasingly over-scheduled, under-rested, 24/7 world - you can bank sleep, and store it up for a tiring event in the future.
This finding comes from work in the U.S. on a group of volunteers who were willing to adjust their sleep patterns so they could be monitored.
For seven days, one half of the group was given extra sleep, while the others were told to make no changes to their sleeping patterns. They were always tired
The next week they were all sleep deprived. "After this week of either extended or habitual sleep per night, all the volunteers came to the lab and they were allowed only three hours of sleep, per night, for a week," explained award-winning researcher Tracy Rupp from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Next, both groups were given tasks of varying complexity - tests showed that subjects who had banked sleep the week before were better off during the sleep restriction.
Those who banked sleep didn't lose reaction time and alertness like the group who'd slept normally. Even a week after the experiment, the sleepers who banked sleep were recovering better from being deprived of sleep than those who had slept as usual.
The research team isn't able to say just how much sleep you need to bank for maximum effect. Like the amount of sleep each of us needs, the amount to bank is likely very individualized.
Of course so many of us know well the feeling of going to bed early before a big day and not being able to fall off to sleep. This is where good sleep habits can truly make a difference, especially relaxation techniques, in helping you slow your thoughts and let go so you can slip into sleep easily.
And though the latest work didn't look at napping, the researchers point out that short rests during the day have been shown to improve performance, at least in the short term.
Earlier work has found that those who suffer with chronic sleep deprivation might be able to function just fine just after waking, but experience slower reaction times as the day goes on... even if they tried to catch up the night before. Chronic sleep deprivation appears to take some time and effort to fix.
Not only does this sleep banking idea have implications for business people, but also for the military where it could be a lifesaver. The idea, if supported after some more testing, could become a part of pre-tour routines for armed forces.
The next step is to find out why the extra sleep can be banked and to identify just what's happening in the brain - something that we can be observed with advanced brain-imaging machines.
According to the National Institutes of Health, 50 to 70 million Americans deal with chronic sleep disorders and sleep problems that can truly affect health, not to mention alertness and safety.
Sleep disorders that don't get treated have been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, depression, diabetes and other chronic conditions. The trouble for many of us is that we overlook or ignore our sleep problems and don't mention feeling fatigued to our doctor.