IANAD.
My first two thoughts were:
I had a great uncle that fell asleep every time he sat down for more than a couple of minutes. I don’t remember the name of his heart condition, but that’s what was doing it.
Don’t drink? Don’t smoke? What do you do?
Junk food? Sugar?
Drinking enough water?
Exercise?
Chronic pain will do it, too, big time.
Ever tried Ginseng?
Have you been evaluated for chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia?
Let’s do the wave for the natural-cycle thingee!
My natural sleeping hours are 9/10pm to 5/6am. If I stay up beyond midnight, it’s better for me to just not sleep than go to bed (so long as it’s one night).
My sister in law is a doctor, she’s currently finishing her resident years. It wasn’t until she started her residence that she learned to sleep at the hours her body wants, whenever possible: 1am to 9am. All through her student years she’d force herself up at 7:30 to study but not be able to concentrate until 10am or so; she’d get into bed at 10pm but be unable to sleep for 3 hours - blagh!
Another thing to try: proteins for breakfast. Most americans have cereal, but that’s a metabolic no-no! Carbs make you sleepy. The first time I heard it I thought it was a joke, but all through my childhood Dad and us kids had proteiny breakfasts and were awake when we left home, whereas Mom had carbs (fruit mostly, but still carbs) and was sluggish until midmorning, so we ran some home tests and it worked.
Starting the day with a piece of ham and a large cup of cold cocoa milk, or with a fried egg (which is not as bad for cholesterol as we’ve been told for years) and a glass of OJ is much better.
My brother and I were just talking about this the other day.
I literally can’t remember the last time that I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to face the day. It must’ve been sometime in elementary school.
Much like the OP, it doesn’t matter if I get 4 hours of sleep, or 14 hours, or anything in between. I’m pretty much always tired.
I’m underweight, have a hard time tanning, have perpetual dark circles under my eyes, and tend to crash HARD after eating, especially if I eat a lot or eat something particularly sweet. Does this sound like anemia?
At one point I was convinced I had diabetes but I asked 2 different doctors about it and they both immediately dismissed any possibility of it and refused to test me.
I’ve had an EKG but never an echocardiogram. My husband gets them all the time, maybe I should horn in sometime!
That’s one suggestion I’ve never heard. I had thought of sleep apnea, but my doctors have pooh-poohed the idea.
And I’ve never had mono. Can I get Epstein Barr without having mono? EB is the one they think might be responsible for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, right?
I wonder, I have major sinus problems, have since I was a kid. I pretty much can’t breath through my nose if I’m lying down. Even if I don’t have sleep apnea, could that be interfering with my sleep patterns all these years?
I’m looking at the suggestions in this thread and realizing there are a few tests that I’ve never had, which makes me… well… tired. 
Can you go to a diabetes screening somewhere just to get your finger poked? I don’t know anything about anemia, but getting a blood glucose test won’t require a doctor for that first screening. If you have a diabetic friend who monitors, they might be able to test you. Again, this is just a screening, and you should try to do it fasting if you can. Or even better, once fasting and once an hour after eating. Pay attention to high readings but also to low ones. I think most people would feel symptomatic if it falls below 50. High blood sugar doesn’t necessarily cause a lot of symptoms in people.
As is overwhelmingly obvious, I’m not a doctor. I’m just going from my husband’s experiences with diabetes.
Yup. Most people, whether they’ve had mono or not, are EBV carriers. See http://my.webmd.com/hw/health_guide_atoz/ste122094.asp?navbar=hw5179 .
I’m tired all the time, unless I booze heavily. When I’m on SSRIs it gets worse. Interesting to hear about the possible chronic fatigue-EBV connection; I ended up in the hospital this summer for what they think was some sort of EBV fluke (never have had mono)–they did blood work, spinal tap, checked for everything from HIV to West Nile to mono to Lyme and more, nothing. Blood tests results, for about a week, fit the profile of some sort of fairly advanced immuno-supression disorder, low platelates, white blood cells destroyed… and then it went away. Very strange.
If you haven’t already done so, have them take a look at your ANA (Anti-Nuclear Antibody) level. It may have already been done in a routine blood work-up. My girlfriend was recently diagnosed with lupus (SLE) and one of the symptoms of that, in her case at least, is fatigue.
You’ve got some really freaky doctors there. My aunt had sleep apnea for years, but didn’t realize it until her husband died. (They had a really weird symbiotic sleep thing where she couldn’t sleep if he wasn’t touching her and he was touching her to make sure she was still breathing.) The doctor reworked her badly diviated septum and removed her tonsils and adenoids when she was nearly 60 years old. She said it was the best thing she ever did, calling it the “miracle of sleep”. Twenty years later, she sleeps with a CPAP machine but is still around.
I’m usually exhausted all winter long, no matter how much I sleep. I usually don’t get other depressive symptoms, but I’m pretty sure it is seasonal affective depression. I just recently bought a light box, so I’m hoping that helps. Nothing makes me more upset than being tired ALL THE TIME.
So here’s hoping you find a solution too. I at least have summers to look forward to.
I’ve gone to doctors repeatedly about the sinus thing, and they always just hand me some antibiotics and send me on my way. Finally, I got a doctor who took me a little more seriously and he sent me for a CT scan of my sinuses and gave me antihistamines. Well, antihistamines didn’t work at all, though they did put me to sleep, big surprise. The results of teh CT scan? Nothing apparently wrong.
Want to hear something funny? Or, at least, I thought it was funny.
Then I read a TMI thread here about tonsils. And, I realized upon reading said thread that I didn’t even know where my tonsils are. I felt like a complete doofus, but I’m spelunking around on the web to figure out what a tonsil actually is, and then did a lot of making faces at myself in the mirror. Those things are tonsils? I’m 33 years old and I didn’t know a tonsil from a hole in the ground.
Anyway, I wondered about adenoids too. I need to find out if a CT sinus scan would show a problem with adenoids.
What I really need is a doctor who cares about my fatigue. Seriously, they’ll run all sorts of tests and rule things out, but then sort of pat me on the head and say they’ve ruled things out, buh-bye. Fatigue just doesn’t seem to register as a valid complaint. Every single one just learns that I’m tired and am always cold and they immediately send me for a thyroid test even though I’ve had dozens of thyroid tests and never an abnormal reading. Bah.
And one doctor gave me a one-week supply of anti-depressants and told me to come back when they were gone. Zoloft, I think. I went back and said I hadn’t noticed a change, and he said, “Oh, it must not be depression, then.” Even I know better than that! (I found a new doctor very quickly.)
My aunt’s tonsils, adenoids and soft palate were causing an obstruction that made it impossible for her to breathe when she laid on her back. My brother has the same thing. His doctor poo-poo’d the idea that someone so young would have sleep apnea. *Finally * he went in for a sleep study when he turned 30. He now uses a CPAP machine but he’s not nearly as tired as he used to be. (And he got a new doctor.)
I’m always exhausted too. I get about 7.5 hours of sleep–12-7:30 every day, except on the weekends. On the weekends I get anywhere from 9-12. Usually the only thing that drives me out of bed (at noon) is the fact that I’m starving. Yawn
When I started Atkins, everybody on a low carb forum I frequent raved about how much energy they have now, how they’re never tired or exhausted, how much I’m going to love it. It’s true that I feel better during the day, I used to get sluggish and downright mean around 1 or 2, but I’m still very tired.
Last year, my bosses compelled me to go to the doctor to make sure I didn’t have some sort of virus I was so exhausted at work. Nothing came from it. This year is slightly better, but not a lot.
If I had my way, I would stay up until 3 and sleep until noon. That’s my schedule in the summer, and it always works for me. Maybe I’ll arrange my work and school schedule next semester so I can pull that off…
Take caffeine, and lots of it. Or if caffeines too weak, methamphetamines. Of course if you dont wanna do street drugs you might be able to get some legal meth from your doctor. Or at least just some milder equivlent.
Fatigue sucks. I too live with constant fatigue.
Of course: I have a full-time job, two very high-needs kids, and a sleep disorder (Restless Legs Syndrome ) so it’s no wonder I’m tired 
My sleep disorder has the effect of rendering sleep largely ineffective. I can sleep 8-10 hours and wake up feeling pretty much as tired as when I went to bed.
Do you have a sleeping partner? Does s/he report that you move your legs a lot when you sleep?
Also - like others have suggested, sleep apnea can totally mess up the quality of your sleep. Does that hypothetical sleep partner report that you snore? or seem to stop breathing at all during the night?
Have you had a sleep study yet? That’s the thing where you go to a strange place, get wires and electrodes attached to assorted places, and are told to go to sleep on demand on a rock-hard mattress, by staff who seem surprised that you can’t fall asleep easily on demand. Anyway, if you do manage to get any sleep at such a place the results can be informative in diagnosing apnea and other quality-of-sleep issues.
That’s what I was going to say? I have both of those and I’m really tired and in pain all the time.
There are a lot of autoimmune system viruses that can cause the kind of tiredness you are describing. Another one that comes to mind is Lyme Desease.
Hang in there until you find a dr. who will take you seriously.
Kathy
I just read an article, okay it was in SELF Magazine (yes, I read women’s magazines), but it was based of a study from the Archives or Internal Medicine that stated that 90% of people who say they have a sinuse headache actually have a migraine. According to the study, the people thought they were having sinus troubles because the pain accompanied a runny nose. Do you think you might be having migraines instead of sinus problems?
Also, I have to agree that your doctor is an ass for “pooh-poohing” a potential sleep disorder. My husband is 30 and quite fit, yet he has sleep apnea and a problem with acid reflux.
Additionally, I’d visit a doctor and ask some questions about chronic fatigue syndrome, too. Here’s some information about it from the University of Maryland Medical School: link. I’m not sure how helpful this will be - lots of doctors think the syndrome is a combination of psychological and physical problems, but it might be worth looking into.
It’s possible, since anything is possible. My headaches do respond to sinus decongestants, though, and really do feel different than the migraines I get on very rare occasions. I’m also very prone to ear infections and sinus infections.
I don’t move hardly at all in my sleep. I can often wake up sore from staying in one position too long. I’ve actually slept for eight hours with a half-full cup of tea in my hand before.
When I go to bed, I can fall asleep almost instantly. I rarely wake up in the night and I rarely remember my dreams. A few years ago, I was snuggling with my cat and he stuck his foot in my eye. It hurt like crazy and I staggered downstairs and asked my husband if I was bleeding or if it looked nasty. He said he couldn’t see anything, so I went to bed and slept.
At the doctor the next day (when I woke up my eye wouldn’t open), they were flabbergasted that I had simply gone to sleep afterward. My eye was very badly scratched.
I guess that shows I can sleep under almost any circumstances, but I’m obviously not normal, huh?
Same here, but alas, the rest of the world seems to think 6 AM is a fine and dandy time to wake up, and that being at work by 8:30 is actually considered a little later than normal. Ugh. At least when I move in the spring I’ll avoid an hour long commute and can add that time to my sleep.