Lately I have noticed that I have been getting extremly sleepy from about 2:00pm to about 4:00pm in the day, every day, except the weekends. This is undoubtedly because of the workplace that I work in, small engineering company, only person here at that time, etc.
I seem to remember, however, that many people experience this phenomenon, and that it is attributable to what we consume at lunch. The number of calories amount of protein, sugars, etc.
Does anyone else know anything about this?
Eat lower-carb at lunch–you won’t have that blood sugar spike-crash after lunch. In short, meals with more carbohydrates (and even more so when those meals have lots of simple sugars) tend to cause a spike in blood sugar as the sugars are digested, followed by a spike in insulin as your body tries to bring down the blood sugar to normal levels, followed by a crash in blood sugar levels, since the insulin cycle often over-compensates for elevated blood sugar. That’s when you feel sleepy. If you consume few carbohydrates at lunch (say, a salad with grilled chicken, hold the breadsticks and pasta, etc.), your blood sugar never spikes in the first place, so you never experience the later crash.
Recent thread discussing exactly this phenomenon.
(IMHO response) I’ve found this happens if I’m in a stuffy office, bored, and not getting enough air. The combination of that and post-lunch food coma is deadly.
Also, make sure you drink plenty of water. I know that if I haven’t been diligent with getting my water, I get very sleepy around 2:00-4:00pm. If I drink about 8-10 ozs of water, I’m reasonably chipper.
Look up “glycemic index,” and choose foods that have a low number. And if you’re diabetic or pre-diabetic (and you might not know that you are), you’ll experience sleepiness during the initial blood-sugar spike, not the crash.