Discover What Causes Fatigue and How You Can Stop It

Mar 17

Written By Ananga

Do you have days where you feel to tired to move, or when your mind feels so overwhelmed and exhausted that you can't concentrate on the simplest task? If you do, you're not alone, a recent survey revealed that more than half the population of America frequently feels that way.

What causes fatigue? The culprit is stress. With a busy lifestyle full of multi-tasking, never ending to-do lists and noise pollution most of us are experiencing stress, to varying degrees, all day long. This chronic stress is making us tired - here's how:

Stress Stops You Getting Goodness from Your Food
When your stressed your adrenal system pumps adrenaline and cortisol into your blood. These chemicals prime you for action, and they put your metabolism and digestion on hold. Nobody can properly digest and benefit from what they eat if they are stressed. Therefore if you are always on the go and feeling even slightly stressed you are not getting the nutritional value you should be from your primary source of energy - your food.

Stress Interferes with Oxygen Getting to Your Brain
When you are stressed you don't breath well. You may be breathing too quickly, or breathing shallow and not filling your lungs properly with air. And it's likely that you don't even notice it. Your attention is far away from your breath as you rush about and your energy reserves leak away.

Stress Makes You Use More Energy To Get Things Done
When you are stressed you burn energy faster. This double negative of losing energy due to the tension and anxiety caused by stress and poor recharging due to hindered digestion and breathing leads too physical and mental fatigue. Before you know it you're dragging yourself around using coffee or quick snacks to try and wake yourself up and haul yourself through the days tasks before you collapse into bed feeling completely washed out.

How to Stop Stress Fatigue Ruining Your Life

Ayurveda teaches that we should try not to operate to the point of exhaustion. If we do, we have to recover before we can get back into healthy balanced functioning. If you are experiencing stress everyday then recovery is unlikely and you can soon find yourself getting deeper and deeper into energy debt.

The key to fending off fatigue and keeping your energy levels high requires a little adjustment but it needn't be hard or time consuming - all that's required is a commitment to change how you handle stress and see if you can fit in a few minutes to let off steam here and there during your day. Here are a three simple ideas to try to stop stress making you tired.

1. Breathing Breaks
Instead of letting stress build up during the day, you can learn a simple breathing meditation that only takes 5 minutes and will help you quickly relax and refresh your mind. By stopping for quick stress buster breaks during your day you can improve your breathing and oxygenation of your entire body. This will help you stop stress by activating the relaxation response and boost your energy levels by bringing fresh oxygen into your blood for the benefit of your brain and your entire body.

If you feel too busy to try this, don't worry - research shows that people who take breathing breaks actually get more done than those who keep on rushing, they work smarter too.

2. Stretch Prompts
Use something like the phone ringing to prompt you to take care of yourself. Every time the phone rings take a deep breath and stretch as you reach to answer it. It takes a second - just one ring longer - and at the end of the day you will feel the difference.

3. Fuel Stops
I know you've heard it all before, but eating on the go is useless. It's like trying to put petrol in your car without taking the trouble to stop first. You are wasting energy instead of gaining energy. Choose fresh foods, sit down, take a deep cleansing breath to stop stress and fire up your digestion before you start eating and chew every mouthful. You can read more on this in the related articles area below.

Finally for a super relaxing and sleep promoting end to the day I recommend you try one of our stress relief downloads - they're the price of a latte and will make you feel really good.

About the Author: Ananga Sivyer is the editor of Living by Design and the life coach behind Inner Calm Audio, she is also the author of the EFT workbook The Art & Science of Emotional Freedom. Get more from Ananga on Facebook or Twitter.

Photo for "What Causes fatigue" by marwho