I seem to have a strange response to physical fatigue…or maybe not. Today, I spent the day helping my SIL fix her house (she had been renting it out, as they had moved out of state). The tenants left the usual damage and dirt-I painted several rooms, replaced some broken door locks, replaced some light fixtures, etc. There were 6 of us working, so we got a lot done. Anyway, I had worked from 8 AM to 3 PM, with a few short breaks-I came home and felt very tired-I almost fell asleep. However, I stayed up and watched TV-after about an hour, I didn’t feel tired anymore-I went to another relative’s hose for dinner. It seems to me that if you get through your initial fatigue, you get a “second wind”-is this true? I really felt (3 PM) like I could fall asleep-but by 4 PM, I was ready to go-do most people have this reaction?
I do too, but I have significant sleep issues. I have come to realize, though, for me fatigue is most commonly a side effect of low blood sugar, so eating dinner is enough to shake it.
Yes. I just got back from a 30-hour film marathon where I got a total of like 4 hours of sleep in the form of quick naps over 2 days, and I am finding it hard to make myself go to bed.
Yes, I get the second wind. Then, ultimately, I reach a period where I can feel parts of my brain shutting down: I become lost for words, I start to stare off into space while my mind is a complete blank, and my thoughts generally stop making sense. I can feel little hits of energy flowing through me and leaving me, and the act of staying awake starts to make me feel physically ill. At that point I’m done.
It’s such a common experience that it has its own name (“second wind”), which you use in the OP, so I feel like I’m not understanding your question.
But yes, I do experience that. My WAG is that when I’m in that zombiesque fatigue state, my brain is experiencing some of those brainwaves it does while one sleeps, and when it gets done with that, I no longer feel so sleepy. We’d have to hook up an EEG and see, but that’s my theory.
Happens all the time. It feels similar to what happened when I stayed up all night in college. I’d be getting really tired right before time to wake up, but, once I got moving, I wasn’t tired. Then, when the normal afternoon blahs would kick in, I’d completely crash.
Heck, it happened to me today. I was going to take a shower then go to bed. I was actually considering skipping the shower, I was so tired. I took the shower, and I lost all desire to go to sleep by the time I was finished.