Tired? No energy? Do you find yourself feeling tired all the time and asking "why am I so tired?". You are not alone! Lack of energy and constant tiredness is an epidemic in our modern society as our natural sleep patterns and diet change so radically to what our species used to do. So why am I so tired you still ask? Let’s take a closer look.

For the vast majority of human history we had a very different way of living and sleeping, our bodies, though adaptable were geared to a particular type of lifestyle that we have completely changed in modern years. For example, when was the last time you went to bed when you first started getting tired instead of staying up to finish that movie, or read a few more chapters of that book? With the ability to work and be entertained long into the night we tend to stay up a lot later and mix up our sleep cycles. Then we also have an alarm clock that wakes us up instead of letting our natural cycle decide destroying another natural aspect of natural sleep. The modern world has provided us with an amazing amount of benefit but we often push our bodies beyond what they should be doing for too long and we end up suffering for it, but to understand our seeming state of perpetual tiredness we need to look at how sleep works.

Stages of sleep
The body has 5 stages of sleep that is goes through multiple times a night. The stages of sleep get progressively deeper and deeper and then returns to a lighter stage and then repeats. Each persons sleep cycle may vary in length but most people tend to have a 4 hour cycle thus 8 hours sleep being a standard. When we are woken in the middle of a sleep cycle we feel drowsy and tired as our body has not gone through all the processes it needs to do for proper rest. When we wake naturally at the end of a cycle we get that great refreshed feeling we all want. Too often we change our sleeping habits and wake up at bad times and never get a chance to recover that lost sleep later in the day.

Sleep window
Not only do we have a sleep cycle we also have a sleep window. This is a "window" of time that the body is at its optimal time to get to sleep, your body is telling you it is ready now! We often ignore this, get a coffee and continue doing things and miss this window though and end up taking a long time to get to sleep when we do go to bed as our brains start whirring to life again instead of slowing down for sleep. Many people claim to do their best work at night and with no distractions and an active mind it can be very good for this but the cost to your health can be terrible. When we choose to override out bodies natural urges we have to live with the consequences

Sleep is only one part of the issue of tiredness however and factors such as diet and exercise also play a big part in how we feel. Simply put however, modern society with its work and family commitments and its 24 hour entertainment has caused most of us to deviate from humans natural sleeping, eating and exercising habits and no amount of coffee or energy drinks can cure this. To be able to never say "why am I so tired" ever again we must learn to respect our bodies more and understand the restrictions they have that our 24 hour society does not. Once we can do this we can sleep LESS but with more quality and enjoy everything in life more as we no longer feel run down by life!