The clock strikes 3 pm and you get hit with a wave of tiredness. All you want to do is lie down on the sofa and take a nap. The crazy thing is, you got a decent night’s sleep the evening before and felt relatively refreshed in the morning. As the day’s gone on, you’ve felt the tiredness creeping in until boom, it hits you like a ton of bricks mid-afternoon.
Even weirder is that this happens all the time.
It’s become part of your daily routine and you’re getting worried. Before you consider seeing a doctor for persistent tiredness, try to figure out why the fatigue always kicks in at this time of the day. It might be down to one of these three hidden reasons:
A lack of iron
Your tiredness might be down to a nutritional deficiency. A lack of iron is known to cause fatigue, particularly in the afternoons as your body requires a little boost of energy but fails to get some. Think about your diet and consider if you’re eating a lot of red meat or leafy greens. If the answer is no, it could be worth getting your blood checked to see your iron levels. Particularly if your fatigue is joined by periods of dizziness or lightheadedness when you stand up.
Birth control
Are you currently taking birth control pills? If so, there’s a strong likelihood it’s causing your daily fatigue in the afternoon. Why? Because pills like these act as hormonal birth control; they actively change the balance of your hormones to help prevent you from getting pregnant, but this also changes the way you feel and act. The hormonal imbalances are strongly linked with feelings of fatigue – and they’re more likely to happen around the 3 pm mark because your body starts using up its morning energy. If you’re not on the pill, you can immediately rule this out as a cause and move on to the next possibility.
Blood sugar crashes
Have you noticed that these dips in energy happen a couple of hours after having lunch? This could indicate a link between what you eat for lunch and your blood sugar levels. Meals that are quite heavy and full of carbs and sugar are going to cause an insane blood sugar spike immediately after. Your levels rise and feel a bit energetic after lunch, but then there’s a crash. Blood sugar levels drop quite dramatically and this makes you feel incredibly lethargic. Look at what you eat for lunch and think about switching it up to less carb-heavy meals. Doing things like swapping from a white-bread sandwich to a brown one helps as well; it massively decreases the sugar levels in your meal.
Do you think any of these things may be causing your afternoon fatigue? One of them will likely be the reason behind your urge to sleep. Test things out by making changes to your diet and you’ll soon reach a conclusion. If the tiredness persists, then it’s time to see a doctor and get a few tests done.
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