Are you always asking “Why am I so tired?” Are you having trouble staying awake during watching your evening TV shows? Most of us know what it’s like to be tired, especially when we have a cold, flu, or some other viral infection. But when you suffer from a constant lack of energy and ongoing fatigue, it may be time to check with your doctor.
Fatigue is a lingering tiredness that is constant and limiting. With fatigue, you have unexplained, persistent, and relapsing exhaustion. It’s similar to how you feel when you have the flu or have missed a lot of sleep. If you have chronic fatigue, you may wake in the morning feeling as though you’ve not slept. Or you may be unable to function at work or be productive at home. You may be too exhausted even to manage your daily affairs.
In most cases, there’s a reason for the fatigue. Here are 9 reasons why you might be tired:
1. You drink too much coffee
If you rely on caffeine to get through your day, you can develop a dependence—so without it you can go into withdrawl, needing several cups of coffee or tea just to feel “normal.” And the worst point of withdrawl? Right in the morning. To make matters worse, caffeine can still course through your system when you’re sleeping if you’ve had any coffee or tea in the evening, which can interfere with normal REM sleep and leave you feeling even more tired. An easy solution is to cut back on the amount of caffeine you consume during the day and steer clear of caffeinated beverages within hours of your bedtime.
2. You don’t eat breakfast
There’s a reason that breakfast is called the most important meal of the day, and everyone has told you not to forget it—from your doctor to your mother, to probably every teacher you’ve ever had. And yet so many of us still skip it on a regular basis, or just cram down a few pieces of toast before heading out the door. Take the time to fit in breakfast every morning and it will help you avoid that mid-afternoon crash.
3. You don’t exercise
It may seem counter intuitive, but exercising produces all kinds of helpful biochemicals that ward off fatigue and help you feel upbeat the rest of the time. Think of it as positive feedback: the more energy you put in, the more you get out.
Posts tagged as “Diabetes”
There are many benefits to finding ways to reverse type 2 diabetes. A big one is its expense. According to the American Diabetes Association, the combined cost of medical care and lost productivity due to diabetes in the United States exceeded $174 billion in 2007.
People with diabetes pay 2.3 times as much for health care as non-diabetics, and $1 in every $10 spent for health care is attributable to diabetes.
Sadly, even though type 2 diabetes was once considered an adult disease, so many children now receive this diagnosis that it is no longer referred to as adult onset.
Recent guidelines from the American Diabetes Association advise that some new patients try healthy eating and exercise before they begin medication. Now, the latest science reveals that fine-tuning many long-held health habits may lead to even better results.
1. Eat fruits and vegetables. They can reduce your diabetes risk and protect your heart. In a new study, people who ate at least 12 types each week had a lower diabetes risk than those who ate a less diverse mix—regardless of overall quantity. Mix arugula with your romaine, snack on fruit salad, pile new veggies onto your sandwich.
2. Lose weight—even just a little—for better blood sugar control. Don’t worry if it’s taking a while to slim down. In a 2012 review paper, Sheri Colberg-Ochs, PhD, noted that exercise alone improved the ability of previously sedentary, middle-aged adults to metabolize sugars, regardless of whether they lost any weight. Their total cholesterol dropped too.
Comedian Sherri Shepherd, co-host of The View, says type 2 diabetes could have killed her, but instead it saved her life.
“If I didn’t have diabetes, I would probably be at the International House of Pancakes eating a stack of pancakes with butter and syrup,” says Shepherd, 46. “I would probably be 250 pounds. I would not be going to the doctor. I probably wouldn’t be married to my husband, Lamar Sally. I wouldn’t be healthy for my son, Jeffrey.”
At 5-foot-1, she now weighs 157 pounds, down from 197 pounds several years ago. Once she was taking three medications for diabetes, but now that she’s eating healthier, exercising regularly and keeping her blood sugar in the right range, the doctor has taken her off all medications for the disease.
Shepherd details her struggles with diabetes and the changes she made in her life in her new book, Plan D: How to Lose Weight and Beat Diabetes (Even If You Don’t Have It), written with Billie Fitzpatrick.
Almost 26 million U.S. adults and children have diabetes, in which the body does not make enough of the hormone insulin, or doesn’t use it properly. Insulin helps glucose (sugar) get into cells, where it is used for energy. If there’s an insulin problem, sugar builds up in the blood, damaging nerves and blood vessels. There are two major forms: type 1 and type 2. In adults, type 2 diabetes accounts for 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases.
Symptoms of type 2 diabetes include thirst, hunger, tiredness, blurry vision, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, healing problems and frequent urination. The disease may lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, foot and leg amputations and blindness.
Shepherd has a family history of type 2 diabetes — both of her sisters have it and her mother died at age 41 from complications of the disease.
Shepherd says she was in denial after she was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. “That said to me I’m not diabetic so I can eat the way I want” including barbecue, mac and cheese, pasta, pancakes and waffles, she says.
But then in 2007, she was formally diagnosed. At the time, she says, she had no energy, had numbness in her feet, had blurred vision, was thirsty all the time and had to go to the bathroom frequently. Her blood sugar was way too high.
She says her doctor was blunt. “She said, ‘Sherri, you love wearing those shoes, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do’. She said, ‘You won’t be wearing them with your foot cut off, because if you keep eating the way you are eating, that’s where you’re headed.’ “