Why Am I So Tired? 5 Common Causes

There’s nothing more frustrating than going to sleep at night and waking up the next morning feeling even more tired than when you went to bed.

Do you feel like you are always tired? Then your daily life can suffer greatly. You feel tired, cranky, unproductive and have no energy for anything.

Many of you feel tired every day. You too? As a result, I am increasingly asked the question ” Vera, why am I so tired lately?” ” (Josephine’s question) and “ Can you help me? Why am I always so tired? ” (question from Rosa).

Going through life without vague complaints of fatigue is easier than you think. After reading this article you will know more about the possible causes of your fatigue.

So read on and take the first step towards a more energetic life!

Table of contents

Why am I always so tired? 9 most common causes

1. Unhealthy lifestyle
2. Your sleep ritual is not good
3. Depression
4. Iron deficiency
5. Chronic fatigue syndrome
6. Pregnancy
7. Sleep apnea
8. Diabetes
9. Underactive thyroid gland

3 tips to resolve fatigue complaints

Tip 1: Improve your sleep quality

Tip 2: Healthier lifestyle

Tip 3: Find out why you feel tired

Purpose of this article: First, we discuss common explanations for why you may be so tired. I will also give you 3 simple tips that you can apply immediately to resolve fatigue complaints.

Why am I always so tired? 9 most common causes

There are several possible causes why you are tired. All these causes are individual.

So if you also wonder ‘Why am I so tired?’, you should first look at yourself.

Look at your daily activities, health, exercise, diet, and so on. Ask yourself what you can change to sleep better.

Have you been suffering from severe fatigue for a long time? Read the causes of fatigue below . Do you recognize something about yourself?

Take the Free Anxiety Test

Answer 14 multiple choice questions and find out to what extent Fear determines your life.

Take The Anxiety Test >>

You may need to make an appointment with your doctor for possible next steps to relieve your fatigue.

1. Unhealthy lifestyle

I’ll start with the most common cause of poor sleep, namely an unhealthy lifestyle. It is a fact that healthy people sleep better than unhealthy people.

Do you recognize the following in yourself? Then you have to work on this and your sleep quality will also improve.

1. Unhealthy diet, with lots of fats and junk food.
2. Little exercise and obesity.
3. High alcohol consumption. This means you sleep less deeply, which means you rest less.
4. You don’t drinkenough water per day.

Do you lie awake in bed for several hours before falling asleep? You may be drinking too much coffee, which keeps your brain active when you’re in bed.

This means you drink too much coffee. The amount of caffeine that is good for a person varies from person to person. I recommend that you limit the number of cups of coffee to 2 per day and do not drink coffee after 6 p.m. Does this have a positive effect?

Note: A lot of tea contains theine. Do you lie awake for a long time before falling asleep? Then consider drinking tea without theine in the evening.

2. Your sleep ritual is not good

This is an important question. Do you actually sleep enough?

It varies per person how much sleep he/she needs. That is why it is good to investigate for yourself how much sleep your body needs to function properly during the day.

On average, an adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. This varies per person. The amount of sleep depends on our biorhythm, but also on various factors in our body, such as body temperature.

Your sleep history largely determines how much sleep you need. What are you used to? Although there is a small chance that your body will need less than 7 hours per night.

Other important factors relate to how your day was, such as:  exercise ,  stress ,  health  and whether you  had a hard day .

If you exercise enough, are healthy, lead a healthy life, experience little stress and have had a busy day, you generally sleep better.

Yep, every person has a sleep ritual. These are the things you do before you fall asleep. What is your sleep ritual?

Please note: You cannot ‘catch up’ on sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation can therefore lead to chronic fatigue.

A wrong sleep ritual is a sleep ritual that does not work for you. Your sleep ritual has to do with the time you go to bed, rhythm, your bedroom and other activities to prepare your body and brain for sleep.

3. Depression

Depression can make you feel very tired. Feelings of depression can also cause you to have trouble falling asleep or waking up early.

Depression can cause feelings of anxiety, pain, mood swings, worry and hopelessness, which can then negatively affect your sleep.

Scientifically Researched: Many people have depression. It is estimated that around 800,000 people in the Netherlands have depression, the  Trimbos Institute has researched. That is 1 in 20 people. About 24% of women have experienced depression at some point in their lives.

Read my tips for dealing with depression here >>>

4. Iron deficiency

This is also called anemia. This can make you feel very tired and exhausted.

Due to an iron deficiency, not enough red blood cells are produced, which means that organs do not receive enough oxygen to function properly.

Anemia can also lead to palpitations, shortness of breath and a pale face.

An iron deficiency is particularly common in:

• Women who menstruate
• About 1 in 20 men
• Postmenopausal women

According to the American Association of Hematology (ASH), many people do not realize that they have an iron deficiency or anemia, but they do experience complaints including fatigue. That is why it is important to have a blood test performed.

Read my tips here to supplement your iron deficiency when you are tired .

5. Chronic fatigue syndrome

Have you been tired for a long time and have you been trying to improve your fatigue for a long time?

But nothing works?

You may have chronic fatigue syndrome. Even after a good night’s sleep, people with chronic fatigue syndrome still feel tired.

This is a very unpleasant syndrome, partly because there is little recognition of it by family members, friends and even doctors. You can walk around with it for a long time, without any sympathy or a solution.

With chronic fatigue syndrome you can also experience the following complaints:

• Headache
• A sore throat
• muscle strain
• Joint pain

Have you taken far-reaching measures to improve your night’s sleep, but are you still very tired? Then make an appointment with your doctor for further help.

And read my tips for overcoming chronic fatigue >>>

6. Pregnancy

Are you a woman of childbearing age? Then it is important that you read this carefully.

One of the first symptoms pregnant women experience is fatigue. Your body produces a lot of progesterone in the first trimester. This hormone causes fatigue complaints.

Are you very tired, but at the same time do you suffer from nausea , a sore breast , do you have to urinate often and have you missed a period ? Then you may be pregnant.

7. Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea can also cause severe fatigue, making you feel tired often.

With sleep apnea, your throat narrows or closes in your sleep for about 10 seconds or even longer. This interrupts your breathing.

This causes you to wake up during the night because your body reacts to the interruption of breathing. You don’t always realize that you have sleep apnea and that it wakes you up.

And as you understand, you feel very tired during the day if your sleep is often interrupted at night. Sleep apnea is especially common in overweight men, but not exclusively. The solution is to undergo a sleep study, for example at the hospital
.

8. Diabetes

Being tired is also a symptom of diabetes. With type 2 diabetes you have too much sugar in your blood. People with diabetes often have infections and inflammations that they don’t know about.

Infections, such as a urinary tract infection, take your body energy to fight, which can cause fatigue and increase blood sugar levels.

This should also be revealed by a blood test. Therefore, go to your doctor to do a blood test.

9. Underactive thyroid gland

Other symptoms of an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) include:

• Depression
• Weight gain
• muscle strain

These symptoms come on slowly, but indicate problems with the thyroid gland.

A GP can measure hormone levels with a blood test to make a diagnosis. An underactive thyroid gland mainly occurs in women and seniors.

There are various causes of fatigue, both medical and non-medical. Read more causes of stress here  >>>

3 tips to resolve fatigue complaints

Now that you know why you are so tired, you can work on the cause. Here are 3 simple tips that you can apply immediately:

Tip 1: Improve your sleep quality

This is a very obvious tip, but I’m sure this tip will help most of you with fatigue.

Falling asleep is the process by which your body and mind relax after a stressful day.

Looking at screens such as your laptop or smartphone strains your eyes and prevents your body from producing melatonin. The body’s own substance  melatonin is also called the sleep hormone and is responsible for our sleep-wake rhythm.

Work on your sleep ritual to improve the quality of your night’s sleep.

1. Don’t eatanything after 9 p.m.
2. Start your sleep ritual30 to 60 minutes before you want to go to sleep .
3. Avoid looking at a screen, such as a TV, computer, tablet or phone, 30 to 60 minutes before you want to sleep. Then your brain can prepare for a night’s sleep. Your brain remains active due to the light from these screens.
4. Create a comfortable bedroomwhere you can relax.
   1. Plenty of silence. If necessary, use earplugs so that you are not woken up by noise.
   2. Plenty of darkness. Some people sleep better with some light coming into the room.
   3. The perfect temperature, not too cold and not too hot, about 16 and 19 °C.
   4. Sufficient ventilation, so that you can also breathe fresh air and oxygen at night.
   5. Remove unsettling thingsfrom your bedroom, such as clutter, paintings or open cupboards.
   6. Buy a nice bedwith a good and comfortable mattress.
   7. Do you wake up at night from thirst? Then place a bottle or glass of fresh waternext to your bed.

Tip: decorate your bedroom with feng shui. Similar to Zen and Feng Shui, a minimalist lifestyle is all about removing clutter, unnecessary and useless items and objects from our lives and therefore from our minds.

5. Tip: Read a bookin bed to relax your body and brain.
6. Ensure a fixed sleep rhythm: Go to sleep at the same time every day and get up at the same time. My advice: Sleep every night between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m., including weekends.
7. Don’t snoozefor a long time in the morning , but get up straight away. How? Read my tips to wake up full of energy.
8. Sleep well!

Tip 2: Healthier lifestyle

If you live a healthier life, you will sleep better. Pay particular attention to this:

1. Sufficient exercise. Exercise gives your body energy, but your body is also tired enough to sleep.
2. Sufficient sunlight. Open the curtains and walk outside in the afternoon for vitamin D. A lack of sunlight stimulates the production of the hormone melatonin, which can make you feel tired. Sunlight makes you feel more energetic immediately.
3. Drink plenty of water. Dehydration causes a tired feeling.
4. Eat enough vegetables and fruit. The vitamins and minerals give you energy.
5. Domindfulness exercises especially before sleeping. A very good habit.

Caffeine also affects your body for 4-12 hours after ingestion. This means that drinking coffee at lunch can affect your sleep, even though they are quite apart. Eating can just as easily have an effect on your sleep.

Try not to eat anything for the last 2 hours before bedtime. You can still drink some water if necessary. Getting the right nutrients has a big impact on your life, so it’s always worth finding out.

Tip 3: Find out why you feel tired

We are often too busy with our lives, obligations and expectations that we completely ignore the real cause.

Sit quietly and ask yourself where your tiredness could be coming from. Ask yourself: Why am I so tired?

• Unnecessary naps?
• Excessive use of coffee or alcohol?
• Medical causes?
• Are you woken up by a snoring partner, children or a pet?
• Do you have a lot of stress, which makes it difficult for you to sleep?
• Is your bed uncomfortable, causing you to wake up with back or neck pain?

Take my free Stress test and discover where your tiredness comes from.

What is the cause? Then you need to tackle this cause of fatigue. Grab the bull by the horns!