Feeling Sluggish in the Morning? Here Are a Few Posibilities

Feeling Sluggish Sleep
20 Nov

Last Updated on October 3, 2024 by Michael Brockbank

Ever wake up and just don’t seem to have your head together? Perhaps your body aches and it’s difficult to get yourself moving. In any case, feeling sluggish in the morning happens to all of us at some point. The trick is to identify what’s causing the issue so you can wake up in the morning feeling well rested. Here area a few possibilities you may want to consider.

Causes for Feeling Sluggish in the Morning

Because everyone is different, it’s difficult to say with certainty what impacts your sleeping patterns. What I can show you is how my sleep is affected by my own surroundings and activities from the night before.

Perhaps you’ll discover something that can help you sleep better.

Temperature May Be Too Warm

A lot of people are affected by warm temperatures in the night. In some cases, heat will affect the body’s ability to enter a deep sleep and make you restless.

Personally, I tend to sleep better when the surrounding temperature is much, much cooler. It’s suspected that 65 degrees is the ideal temperature for sleep. Which is probably why you don’t get enough rest during the summer if you live in exceptionally warm and humid climates.

When I have a hard time because of temperature, I’ll crack the window a bit – even in the winter. You don’t want to freeze yourself or others in the house, but you may need to otherwise drop the level of heat if you want to get a good rest.

Ambient Background Sounds

Brain PowerThis is based on a case study I’ve done on myself so far. Since the temperatures outside have dropped here in Colorado, my roommate and I have turned on the heater. The unit is next to my room and the air intake is actually on the base of one of my bedroom walls.

This creates a great deal of noise in the middle of the night. According to my Fitbit, my sleep has been greatly broken up since activating the heater. Although I don’t hear it directly in the middle of the night, it seems to still impact my ability to enter a deep sleep.

Some research available shows a link between sound and sleep interference. In fact, sounds below 30 decibels are capable of affecting your sleep. Of course, this is dependent on the person.

I know a lot of people who can sleep comfortably while a train runs right past them.

Snacking Before Bed

Snacking before bed is a common occurrence for many, including myself. The food you eat an hour before you lay down can have severe repercussions on your rest. Some people will go as far as to have nightmares or ultra-vivid dreams because of something they ate.

It’s relatively common that consuming stimulants like caffeine will affect your sleep cycles. But have you thought about elements like nicotine or spicy foods? Depending on what your body is sensitive to, you might have sleeping issues because of all kinds of things you eat.

If you want to do a bit of research on yourself, tools like MyFitnessPal are quite handy. This is a free food and fitness tracking app you can run from almost any phone. Monitor what foods you eat and see if you can find a correlation between your diet and how you feel the next day.

Poor Air Circulation

Air PollutionPoor air circulation in your room can lead to a variety of issues while sleeping. For instance, I get terrible headaches in the morning if I leave my door shut at night. Probably because the heater intake pulls all the oxygen out of the room.

Studies show how air pollution affects sleeping patterns. But what’s to say the quality of the oxygen in your room is any better than outside? You could be sensitive to things like dust, pollen, pet dander or in my case, a simple lack of oxygen.

The quality of air you breath at night will impact feeling sluggish the next day. It just depends on what your body can handle. Remember, everyone is different. What affects one person may not affect another.

This is one of the reasons why I like to crack my door or the window. The better the air quality, the better you’ll sleep. I also know people who rest better by increasing the humidity of the room.

Exercising at Night

A lot of people will work out right before bed to wear themselves out. However, this can have the opposite effect on others. Exercising increases your heart rate, which fuels more oxygen to the brain. This increase then makes your mind more alert and focused.

Unfortunately, this improvement of brain power through exercise also means it’s more difficult to “switch off” and go to bed.

This is why a lot of people will exercise the first thing in the morning: to be more alert at work.

If you exercise at night and have trouble sleeping, try moving your routines to earlier in the day. It may help prevent feeling sluggish early in the morning.

Watching TV or Playing Games

LazinessHere is one I am guilty of. Watching TV or playing with other visual electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets, may rob you of sleep. In one study, certain wavelengths of light reduce the brain’s ability to create melatonin, the hormone which puts us to bed at night.

Digital entertainment is such a prevalent thing in today’s world, I’m not convinced people would be able to sacrifice chatting on Facebook for a good night’s rest. However, it may very well be what’s causing you to feel like sludge when you get up in the morning.

I am so intrigued by this study, I think I am going to give it a try. It would make a good case study for myself to see how much of an impact technology makes on my sleeping patterns.

Avoid Feeling Sluggish from No Sleep

A lack of sleep will impact everything from stress levels to blood pressure. In one instance, I even hallucinated at work because of sleep deprivation. It’s not something you should take lightly and will have an overall affect on your life. Discover why you can’t sleep at night and do something to fix the problem.

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