What to do if you sleep a lot and don’t get enough sleep: how to get rid of the problem quickly and effectively

Causes of fatigue after a long sleep

The causes of drowsiness even after a full night's rest can be constant disturbances in sleep and wakefulness - this happens if a person regularly goes to bed and wakes up at different times. Another common cause of this phenomenon is poor nutrition. Insufficient amounts of vitamins in food contribute to the development of immunodeficiency conditions. At the same time, people often feel drowsy - the body does not have enough energy, it begins to work in “economy mode”.

Sleep patterns affect a person's state during the day

Low blood pressure can provoke weakness after a full night's sleep. If blood pressure does not exceed 100/60, then most likely this is the reason. In this case, the blood circulates more slowly, many tissues experience a lack of oxygen, which provokes drowsiness.

If you sleep and don’t get enough sleep even if you follow a healthy lifestyle, routine and diet, you can suspect the following circumstances:

• pregnancy (in the first trimester, sleeping a lot and not getting enough sleep is a physiological norm);
• premenstrual syndrome - fluctuations in the hormone progesterone may well give the feeling that you are sleeping a lot, but not getting enough sleep;
• chronic fatigue syndrome, which is also accompanied by loss of strength and decreased concentration;
• cerebrovascular accident, trauma and other brain damage, accompanied by severe symptoms (dizziness, fainting, nausea, etc.);
• depressive disorders accompanied by decreased mood and weakness;
• diseases and conditions associated with immunodeficiency (acute and chronic systemic diseases, pregnancy, etc.);
• inflammatory processes in the body that occur in an acute form (the body spends all its energy fighting them, and the person feels that he sleeps a lot and does not get enough sleep);
• lack of physical activity or, conversely, loads exceeding the physiological norm for a particular person;
• taking anti-anxiety medications (Valerian, Novo-Passit, Persen, etc.);
• use of sedative folk remedies (teas, decoctions, etc.);
• osteochondrosis of the cervical spine, which impairs blood circulation;
• vegetative-vascular dystonia - systemic discoordination of the cardiovascular and nervous systems of the body;
• alcohol abuse;
• intoxication (poisoning).

Calming tea may cause drowsiness

Why a person can sleep a lot, but cannot get enough sleep - video

Dream, come here

We constantly read about how important good sleep is.
Eight hours - and not a minute less! Articles and entire books are written about this, and TED lectures are given. Perhaps you or one of your friends even has a sleep gadget or special applications installed. In a popular video, a night's rest is generally called a superpower. And that's the problem.

If our sleep does not correspond to the ideal, we are promised various horrors - both for the brain and for the whole body.

The speaker declares that catastrophic harm is caused to health, and the audience listens to him more attentively. And lack of sleep adds an extra ten years.

The video received a million views within the first 72 hours of being uploaded and contributed to the spread of several myths. The speaker talks about an experiment in which two groups of participants were studied. Some slept for 8 hours, others spent the night in the laboratory without sleeping a wink. The next day, they were given a task in which they had to memorize facts, and the second group performed 40% worse. The researcher draws a disappointing conclusion: the participants lost the ability to retain new information in their heads.

The methodology of the experiment raises questions, as do the conclusions reached by the organizers. Firstly, a drop in results the next day does not mean that, for example, the ability will not be restored after a week, so the problem may be local. Secondly, the results of one experiment are clearly not enough to build your life strategy.

People are too busy looking for simple recipes to accept the complexity of the world. They feed us clickbait and we fall for it.

“Sleep is nature’s attempt to give us immortality” - similar slogans that can be found in books about sleep have the desired effect on the audience, but do not convince.

The mentioned “nature’s attempt” will fail 100% of the time: even with perfect sleep every single day, no person will live forever.

Ideas are packaged simply and brightly so that we follow links, like, experience emotions and share information. Moreover, there is no immunity to clickbait. You might be thinking, yeah, it's a terrible title, a crappy teaser, but I'll just take a look and spend an extra couple of seconds to see if there's important information there. The authors do not set a goal to make fun of us, but simply strive to please the algorithms of social networks, but at the same time shake our psychological state. We fall into the trap of cognitive distortions, catastrophize the situation and begin to experience anxiety. And she is already interfering with sleep.

How to start getting enough sleep

To avoid feeling sleepy during the day, it is important to go to bed and wake up at the same time. In addition, you need to rest at least 7–8 hours at night. You should go to bed no later than 11 pm.

The following recommendations may also help:

1. To normalize sleep with chronic fatigue syndrome, it is important to set aside at least an hour during the day for rest.
2. Normalize your diet: eat more vegetables and fruits, wholesome, healthy foods. Don't get too carried away with coffee or tea; if you abuse the tonic drink, you can get the opposite effect.
3. In cases where deficiencies in the circulatory system are established, take medications to improve cerebral circulation (Noopept, Nootropil, etc.), but only after consulting a doctor.
4. If the cause is depressive disorders, then psychotherapy in combination with antidepressant medications will help (exclusively as prescribed by a specialist).
5. Avoid alcohol abuse.
6. Take immunomodulators in a short course if the body’s defenses deteriorate (frequent colds, exacerbation of chronic diseases, etc.). To boost immunity, you can use natural remedies: chamomile tea, honey, ginger, turmeric, etc.
7. Regularly perform feasible physical exercises (morning exercises, jogging during the day, yoga or other sports - depending on your interests).
8. Do not take sedative medications without a doctor's prescription.
9. Treat acute and chronic diseases in a timely manner, following the doctor’s instructions.
10. With low blood pressure, move more and be in the fresh air. Take stimulant medications (Eleutherococcus, ginseng extract, etc.) after consulting a doctor.

Coffee produces the opposite tonic effect when consumed frequently.

For a good night's rest, it is recommended to choose the right mattress. It shouldn't be too soft. It is important to pay attention to the pillow. It is better to give preference to low options. It is also recommended to ventilate the room before going to bed.

Reasons why pregnant women constantly want to sleep

Pregnancy is a special period in a woman’s life during which she experiences not only unusual emotions, but also significant physiological changes. One of them is the desire to sleep longer in the morning. This is especially true during the first three months of pregnancy. Why does drowsiness occur? Is it good for pregnant women to sleep a lot?

USEFUL INFORMATION: The norm of slow sleep for an adult: how long should the slow sleep phase last

There are three main causes of physiological hyperesomnia in pregnant women:

• The body goes into energy saving mode. In the first three months of pregnancy, the body experiences a global reorganization, the purpose of which is to provide the necessary conditions for the formation and growth of the fetus. This process takes the lion's share of a woman's energy resources. Therefore, in order to save energy, the nervous system “invites” the expectant mother to sleep longer.
• Hormonal levels change. This process is characterized by a decrease in the number of female hormones and an increase in progesterone, which helps maintain pregnancy.
• Frequent interruption of sleep at night due to toxicosis, trips to the toilet, pain in the legs, etc.

The conclusion from all of the above is the following: sleeping a lot during pregnancy is not only useful, but also necessary.

Body lotion

This LUSH brand product with a pleasant aroma of lavender, vanilla and sugar will relax you and help you fall asleep. The composition of the lotion is completely natural: oatmeal, lavender water, almond oil. The brand does not test cosmetics on animals, so even vegans can safely use its products.

How to use: before going to bed, apply a small amount of lotion to the body - preferably to the arms and legs. Rub it in, wait until it is absorbed. Go to bed, inhaling the delicate aroma - and sleep will not take long to come.

Where to buy: Lush

Sleep mask with gel

A mask is needed to protect from light and sun rays - after all, it gets lighter early in the summer. Inside the mask is a gel pad that can be cooled in the refrigerator and heated in hot water. In the first case, it works as a patch for swelling, in the second, it relieves tension from the eyes, relaxes the facial muscles and helps you fall asleep faster.

How to use: Remove the gel pad from the mask, put it in hot water for 5-10 minutes, then put it into the mask and put the mask on your eyes. The duration of the warming compress is 5 minutes. After this procedure, you will relax and be able to quickly fall asleep.

Where to buy: on Wildberries

Long sleep is worse than lack of sleep

And here’s the sudden news: sleeping more than 8 hours turns out to be very harmful. Sometimes it's deadly! And it’s better to sleep no more than 7 hours. Professor Sean Youngstedt from Arizona, who studies the influence of sleep on the human body, has found out through many experiments: people who sleep no more than seven hours a day have the lowest threshold for morbidity and mortality, given the same other initial conditions as other study participants. California psychiatrist Daniel Kripke confirmed these findings by conducting similar trials involving more than a million volunteers over six years.

I can't sleep!

Drowsiness often haunts people in winter, when thinner air contains less oxygen, which is not enough for active human activity. Winter vitamin deficiency should also be taken into account due to the reduced possibility of consuming vegetables and fruits. As a result, metabolism slows down and the whole body feels tired. Accordingly, brain activity decreases and the desire to sleep arises. The same thing, by the way, can also happen when there is a lack of oxygen in the room, which happens in winter, when radiators and heaters constantly dry out the air. There is a solution here - frequent ventilation.

It also makes you sleepy during rain, when the atmospheric pressure decreases, again reducing the oxygen content in the air.

Naturally, the direct reason that I cannot get enough sleep is chronic lack of sleep, when a person, for some reason, leaves little time for sleep. The biological clock, which measures circadian cycles, causes a person to sleep, or at least experience a sleepy state, after about fifteen hours of wakefulness.

Rules for good sleep

Following simple recommendations will help normalize night rest and get rid of the problem of lack of sleep:

1. Going to bed on an empty stomach: dinner should be at least 3 hours before the night's rest. In addition to the problem of active functioning of the digestive organs, a full stomach interferes with normal breathing and disrupts the functioning of the cardiovascular system.
2. Avoiding consumption of caffeine-containing products before falling asleep: tea, coffee, chocolate, energy drinks.
3. Comfortable bed. A bed that is too soft prevents muscle relaxation, and a bed that is too hard leads to strong pressure on the skeleton and muscles. You should also not place a pillow under your shoulders or allow your head to hang off the bed: this can lead to poor circulation.
4. Complete relaxation of the body. If the muscles are completely relaxed, they become warm and the body becomes “heavier.”
5. Ventilated room.
6. Avoiding heavy mental stress and spending time in front of the computer a few hours before going to bed.

For quality rest in the room, it is necessary to completely turn off the lights, otherwise sleep will be superficial and will not allow the body to fully recover.

Causes of lack of sleep

However, increased sleepiness can also be a symptom of a number of mental illnesses. These may be somatoform disorders, minor depression with seasonal affective disorder, dysthymia. Self-medication and unjustified use of benzodiazepine tranquilizers, antiallergic drugs, beta blockers, and blood pressure lowering agents can also cause unhealthy drowsiness.

If you feel sleepy after a heavy lunch, then the cause of this condition is a rush of blood to the intestines and stomach, and the brain does not receive enough of its dose. At the same time, brain cells function at half capacity, and the person becomes sleepy. The opposite state is severe overexcitation, which causes a rush of blood to the brain, here the person can no longer sleep. This happens as a result of a nervous disorder, or before expected nervous tension, for example, a wedding, an exam, or the purchase of a long-awaited expensive item. Here, the intense work of brain cells prevents you from falling asleep.

Why does a person sleep a lot and not get enough sleep?

Sleeping for 12 hours is a sign of a serious condition of the central nervous system; in this case, a person sleeps for a long time and does not get enough sleep. There are several provoking factors:

1. Violation of the regime.
   You should go to bed no later than 23.00. With the onset of darkness, the hormone melatonin begins to be produced, which regulates sleep and wakefulness. Its active production occurs until 24.00. If this time period is missed, hormonal imbalance begins.
2. Nervous.
   A condition where people sleep for more than 12 hours may be associated with an unfavorable psycho-emotional environment. Severe stress initially causes insomnia, and then drowsiness. In some cases, you just need to get a good night's sleep, since nerve cells are restored only during dreams; in others, prolonged rest only worsens the psychological state. To get rid of this, special treatment is required.
3. Gastrointestinal diseases
   . Sleep problems are often associated with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. When digestion is disrupted, dreams become anxious and nightmares occur. Problems with the gastrointestinal tract are confirmed by bad breath, coating on the tongue, sour or bitter taste, drowsiness, lethargy. A person does not get enough sleep, even if he sleeps longer than usual.
4. Dust mites.
   Most of them accumulate in feather pillows, mattresses, and blankets. If they are not washed or dry cleaned for a long time, resting in such a bed becomes hazardous to health. After a long sleep in the morning, you feel a headache, fatigue, and symptoms of an allergic reaction arise - itching on the skin, watery eyes, coughing, sneezing, rhinitis.

The reasons why you can’t get a good night’s sleep are divided into physiological and pathological. In the first case, you just need to sleep off, in the second, start therapy.

Sleep and its role

A person, closing his eyes, switches off and thus protects himself from life’s troubles. This theory is confirmed by the fact that as soon as life shows a person the bright side - success, money, or an interesting activity, debilitating drowsiness immediately disappears. This kind of drowsiness can be observed at boring meetings, in queues, and in train station waiting rooms.

The depth of this form of drowsiness depends on the intensity of the total number of troubles, conflicts and dull everyday life that haunt a person. On the other hand, the lack of desire to resolve these situations increases drowsiness. This is the connection between a life situation and sleep attacks, which a person is often not aware of.

Overcoming restless sleep syndrome: treatment and prevention

If the time of night rest is constantly increasing and is already ten, or even twelve hours, but it does not bring relief, then you should try to find out the cause of the violation and first eliminate it yourself. To do this you need to do the following:

• adjust your diet by enriching your diet with healthy dishes;
• to refuse from bad habits;
• periodically take vitamin complexes;
• increase physical activity;
• undergo examination and treat existing diseases;
• create comfortable sleeping conditions;
• start practicing various meditations and relaxation techniques;
• do what you love – singing, sewing, drawing, embroidery, knitting.