For much of my life, I’ve noticed that on days where I have to get up around 6 am for school/work/etc, I’m pretty good until around 1 or 2 pm. Then, unless I’m walking around or performing some kind of physical activity, I start to get very tired and it’s a struggle to stay awake. On days when I have morning classes, this isn’t a problem as I can just find a quiet spot and take a nap. However, I have one class during that period and it sometimes becomes a problem(paticulary since it’s a small class, so falling asleep is going to be noticed). This is true even after good nights when I’ve had 7 or so hours of sleep(it’s hard to get much more then that because of other things I have to do).
I’ve pretty much always had this problem. Is there a reason why? And what can be done about it?
My mother and I both do this. I’ve had physical fitness trainers tell me it’s because I’m fat. May be true. Seeing as all of Italy shuts down so folks can go home and rest about that time of day, maybe body weight has nothing to do with it.
The only cure I’ve found is to knit in class. Eating works to a degree, but see above. When it gets really bad, I just go and stand in the back of class. Probably not an option in a small discussion group, but maybe you can pass it off as just needing to stretch after sitting all day.
A lot of people I know, of widely varying body weights, are zombies around mid-afternoon. Me, too. I think many people are just doing way beyond what their energy reserves can handle during the day. Maybe start carrying around some healthy energy boosters like an organic energy bar, or take a coffee break in the afternoon and go get or make some yerba mate tea. Might help.
Is this always after you eat lunch? You may be eating a lot of carbs, which can cause an insulin spike and then a crash, causing you to feel sleepy. Or maybe you just need more than 7 hours of sleep- some do.
Do you drink a lot sugar beverages in the morning? If so, you might be crashing on sugar. Or if you drink a lot of caffeinated beverages in the morning, or before bed? You could be crashing off that as well. If so, avoid…
I agree with Trubl that this could be caused by an insulin spike but another reason that is very common but not widely known is dehydration.
If you don’t have enough fluid in your system your body and therefore brain become dehydrated causing drowsiness. From personal experience I have found a very good increase in awareness in the afternoons at work simply from increasing my water intake.
I second the idea about cutting out sugary drinks, use sweetners if necessary.
I would recomend increasing your water intake (multiple cites on web re 1.5 litre recomendation for person of 65kg body mass).
If that fails see your doctor for a urine test re diabetes.
Do you eat a heavy lunch? You’d be surprised how much physical energy goes into digesting food. Try eating less at lunch and see if that works. Maybe yu cuold take a walk at lunchhour.
I find that eating dairy products always makes me sleepy.
Anyway, becoming sleepy in mid-afternoon is so common they even taught me about it in my time-management class. They advised me to study in the morning and plan meetings in th eafternoon, (as long as they were active, small meetings). But that’s basically what your classes are, so that probably isn’t much help to you.
The natural circadian rhythm of your body has a low energy point in the early afternoon and a deeper one in the early hours of the morning. This is why it can be difficult to get good sleep if you’re working night shifts. You may be dog tired but if you are trying to sleep at 11:00 in the morning, you will likely struggle. By comparison, you may find it difficult to stay awake in the early afternoon.
2:30pm would be my flagging period, and I could always put it down to carb-heavy meals in the canteen. Lighter lunches would lead to slightly perkier afternoons.
Insulin spikes are a fairly recent phenomenon, and go with the average contemporary Western diet. Avoid processed carbs, large amounts of starchy food (potatos, rice etc) and refined sugar if you don’t want a guaranteed insulin spike after digestion. Of course, you also miss out on that lovely blood-sugar rush just before the insulin spike…
They occur because our blood-sugar regulation system can only cope with limited input stimuli from carbs and sugars, and too much will produce an unstable output, with maybe a series of sugar spikes/crashes before the endocrine system settles to a steady state. Keep the carb/sugar input in the normal working range and you’ll have pretty stable energy levels throughout the day.
Interesting point about circadian rhythms too - I wasn’t aware there was a mid-afternoon lull. There’s certainly one at about 4AM, which is when the police like to do their raids on sleeping people.
When running courses or giving presentations, the first hour after lunch is known as the graveyard slot.
Now a teacher, I am very aware (as are all teachers, I imagine), the hour after lunch if the most difficult time to keep the children’s attention, so it is good to put practical activities here (eg: painting, PE, drama). School classes in England run from about 8:50 to 3:10.
Teachers often open windows straght after lunch in the keep the class cool and awake.
Many societies take naps at noon (or used too), it is natural and most likely comes from the time when we napped durring the strongest heat of the day in warm climates. If you can get in a nap it will work great (YMMV however). if not taking a full lunch hour, and getting work totally out of mind may help, as well as coffee, as long as you are not drinking it throughout the day.
I have had this problem all my life as well. Previous night sleep and diet never seemed to help. I switched to a desk job and found it almost unbearable. With me it can hit at evening too. I find in a night class that I can’t stay awake. The only thing I found to help at all is to workout reguarly. I try to do 20-30 minutes of good cardio every other day. This seems to help.
It’s not an insulin spike, but a blood glucose spike. If your lunch includes food low on the glycemic index (e.g. protein, certain vegetables), your blood glucose will rise gradually, and your body’s insulin will assist it in getting to places where it’s needed. But if your lunch includes too many carbs, especially refined carbs like sugar, your glucose will spike, and your pancreas won’t be able to keep up producing sufficient insulin. Among other things, you’ll feel sleepy and sluggish and have a lessened ability to concentrate.
If changing your diet doesn’t help, you might want to tell your doctor about this. It might be signs of diabetes, which is totally treatable.
This isn’t a new problem. I once read a saying attributed to medieval monks: “The morning is the Lord’s and the evening is the angels’ but the afternoon is the Devil’s.”
It’s also one reason some cultures take a siesta or extra-long lunch or otherwise knock off work in the early afternoon, resuming work later. The other reason to do this (and the reason this practice is more common in hot climates) is that the early afternoon hours are the hottest of the day.
If you do find a reliable solution for it, let me know. Fewer carbs at lunch helps; caffeine helps; if possible, doing the more interesting or physical parts of your job right after lunch is helpful (provided the more physical work isn’t so physical as to make you throw up if done on a full stomach). But I’ve never found a cure, only ways to work around it.
There are two main downturns in our circadian rhythms, spread about 12 hours apart. Even in time isolation studies where people don’t have external cues as to time of day, and sleep when they’re tired and eat when they’re hungry, the subjects will get sleepy in the “afternoon” part of their cycle. It’s natural and essentially unavoidable to get sleepy in the afternoon.
Taking a short nap can be good for you and probably won’t take a big chunk out of your day.
On the other hand, about 50% of Americans are estimated to be sleep-deprived, so you might sleep longer than that if you haven’t been getting enough rest normally.
In times past, it was common to have a divided sleep schedule. An article I read in Smithsonian Magazine about a book called A Day’s Close by A. Roger Ekirch presented some information from the book. Before gas lamps or electric lights basically broke the dark-light cycle, people usually slept for a while at night and then woke up for a few hours and found something to do. They’d sleep for a little while more before waking up to go about the day’s business and might even nap in the afternoon.
Our modern society’s practice of sleeping several hours only once a day is the aberration, not the norm.