If you’re a dad and the years are passing by, you might think that feeling tired all the time is just a part of the ageing process. Older people just look more tired. Bags under the eyes and dark lines around the mouth give the impression that you haven’t slept for a month or more.

Getting old, though, doesn’t automatically mean that you should feel tired every day. It’s usually a sign that something has gone wrong with your health or lifestyle.

Feeling chronically tired is a scourge of the modern world. What’s more, the root of the problem is practically never what you think it is. All kinds of things can cause you to feel tired all the time, so pinpointing the precise cause is a challenge. To get to the root of the issue, you’ll have to do some digging – just what you don’t want to do if you’re feeling tired at the end of a long day at work.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at some of the reasons you feel tired. You’ll want to read on if you get your eight hours of sleep but still feel terrible in the morning.

You Suffer From Excess Stress

Our bodies evolved stress as a tool to motivate us to do things which would guarantee our survival. Stress during our evolution was something that came along once in a while to force us to go out and hunt or defend our homes. We don’t need to do that anymore in the modern world, but stress is still a significant part of our lives.

Image captured by Deano Moore Photography.

Worse still, the modern world conspires against our stress-generating mechanisms. Unlike in the past, most of us have to go to our places of work every day and face the same horrible relationships. There’s no escape from the daily torment, leaving us feeling exhausted.

So, how do you deal with the stress?

The first place to look is the source. What’s generating all the stress? It could be work, relationships, or even your family history.

The next thing is to keep a stress journal. Journalling helps you to identify when you’re at the highest risk of experiencing a high-stress episode.

You’ll also want to talk to somebody about your concerns. Just offloading how you’re feeling to another person can help reduce your stress levels enormously.

You can also look at the bigger picture. Sometimes the things that stress us out are small in comparison to what matters in life. The little things, like your colleague making bad jokes or traffic on the way to work, shouldn’t ruin your life. A lot of what we feel stressed about doesn’t matter all that much.

You’ve Got A Medical Condition

All kinds of medical conditions can leave you feeling tired and worn out. What’s more, many of these diseases do not have apparent symptoms. You feel tired, but you don’t know why.

This is the part, unfortunately, where you’ll have to pay a visit to your doctor. All sorts of things can cause tiredness from anaemia to STIs. You can read more here about the specifics.

It’s not a medical condition as such, but vitamin and mineral deficiencies can also lead to tiredness. If you lack B vitamins (like folate), then you can feel a little under the weather. You can suffer from a B12 deficiency if you don’t supplement on a vegan diet. And many people are low on minerals like iodine and selenium, just because they’re not found in regular foods that most people eat. Our average consumption of brazil nuts for selenium and seaweed for iodine is pretty low!

You’ve Got A Food Intolerance

Food intolerances are nasty things. A food intolerance is essentially where your body’s immune system treats a specific food as an invader, believing that it’s a threat. So every time you eat a problem food (like celery or soy) your immune system goes into overdrive, causing you to feel lousy.

The problem with food intolerances is that they are tough to identify. A person would rarely eat nothing but celery for a meal. You often eat foods in combination with each other, making identification of the culprit tricky. Researchers believe that there may be more than fifty food allergies and you could have a mix of many.

The best way to find out what you’re intolerant to is to go and have a test. Sometimes you’ll be intolerant to foods according to the analysis, but not experience any drowsiness after a meal containing them. At others, you’ll be amazed just how much more energy you have cutting foods out of your diet.

You’re Sitting Down All Day

If you’ve had an active week, then having a day off to do nothing is okay. You’ve pushed your body to the limit, and now you need a bit of time to recover. That’s perfectly normal, especially as we age.

Sitting down day in, day out, however, isn’t good for your body and can make you feel more tired. Resting is great, but excessive rest can have the opposite effect.

The good news is that if a lack of movement is the problem, there’s an easy solution. Stand up and move about for a few minutes every hour, and take regular breaks from the screen.

Studies by the Unversity of Georgia found that a simple 20-minute bout of exercise at lunchtime was enough to boost energy levels and make people feel more alert substantially. When it comes to movement, you don’t have to do much: just do something.

Your Diet Is Appalling

How exactly your diet is making you tired depends on how much you eat and the food types in your meals.

Let’s start with diets of excess. We all know that if we sit down and have a big meal at lunchtime, we feel sleepy in the afternoon. Large meals put our bodies into a “post-prandial” state where they divert resources to processing the meal. The more we eat, the more resources we need to redirect, making us feel tired. It’s a natural response to consuming a large number of calories.

The problem is that the majority of us don’t need a lot of calories. We’re not trying to fatten ourselves up to survive the winter months. Large meals shouldn’t be a part of modern life. Worse still, if you eat a lot of calories all the time, you’ll feel more sluggish. If you have an office job, you don’t need to eat like a marathon runner.

At the other end of the spectrum are low-calorie diets. Again, eating too little can make you feel tired (and stressed). Eating too few calories or not getting enough nutrients puts your body into conservation mode. You avoid as much activity as possible, and your brain doesn’t work as well. You struggle to think your way through problems and perform at work.

Eating a rice cake for breakfast and an apple for lunch provides about 150 calories. Your brain uses about that many calories by itself in the course of a typical morning at work, so if you’re not getting enough food, it’s no surprise you feel tired.

The best approach is to choose a slow-release, whole food breakfast. Oats are probably the best option, mixed with some berries, fruit, nuts and seeds – whatever you fancy really. This combination gives you all the energy you need while making it impossible for you to overstuff yourself to the point of feeling lethargic. Avoid sugary syrups where possible.