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I've lived as a night owl "successfully" for a about 10 years now... Honor student while at university, and established a decently paying career working from home as a dev. Since I've lived this way, I want to point out an important distinction. I stay up late as an introvert / creative, exclusively because when the world is asleep, I regain a deep sense of freedom / boundaries that I do not get during the day time due to my home circumstances / environment / people (won't go into details, but in short, I'm a caretaker for someone mentally handicapped). I can keep my door shut, dance, be silly, keep my headphones on, binge healthy gamer, pick my nose and fling the booger or watch questionable anime (jk), and no one will judge me. I realized when I traveled a couple times and lived on my own, I maintained normal hours without effort, as I already felt free / liberated, but when I'd return back to my environment, I'd just unconsciously gravitate towards the night, to mitigate whatever stressors / people / situations I have to deal with during the day. Parents actually do this a lot. After they've put their kids to bed, they might stay up later, to regain the same sense of freedom / recharge. This is not a Circadian disorder in this case, nor is it to be selfish or anti-social, but to try to 'balance' out something that is tipped over too far on one end, or to fill one's cup again so they can continue to be there for others until the circumstances change.
One of the terms associated with this is called 'Revenge bedtime procrastination', where people deliberately stay up late in order to do things they cannot during the day.
this is precisely the reason I've become a night owl back when I got into puberty. I'm afraid I might have asperger's and the people I live with are so loud and short-tempered that living through the day with them was exhausting, so I ended up fucking up my sleep cycle so I could have some hours of peace and quiet. Unfortunately I'm not even close to financial independence so I'll have to keep enduring a routine that is detrimental to my own health.
sheesh that sounds all too familiar. Normally if I don't stay up like I normally would, I start to feel like I didn't get enough me time to just do whatever I wanted.
This is a form of revenge bedtime procrastination. If you can manage it, going to bed really early and getting up really early is even better, because you get to _start_ your day with that amazing sense of freedom. But I understand not everyone can do that especially when you’re avoiding people in your household who need you awake until the moment of their (fairly late) bedtime. I used to be up until at the earliest 2-3 AM, but sometimes 4, 6, or even 8. It was nice watching the sun rise.
@@imacds if you're willing to do 10:30 and 5:30 instead - you get up to 7 without too much of a change in when you go to bed. How long did it take you to finalize the changes in schedule?
You also might not actually be so much of a night owl if waking up early nice. I obviously don’t know anything about your life from a comment but do what makes you feel best
@@anikarix7736 The waking up still sucks and I still get little done for the first few hours in the morning. What I like about it is it causes me to get my peak energy earlier in the day so I can do more things with it.
The sheer volume of exceptional info on this channel is a godsend. I am 50 and wish I had this info as a teen or in my 20s but I am still benefitting from it today. Thank you for sharing this and helping all of us get healthier!
Hey there, your comment is about a year old now. But I'm about 25 now! Is there one piece of advice you would give to your own 25 year old self? Thanks! :D
I need 9 hours of sleep and I'm tired of people telling me that I don't. My psychiatrist even told me that the reason I experienced "sleep drunkenness" (I yell nonsense and try to hit people with no memory of it) every morning was because I was waking up mid-cycle. Some need 6, some need 8, some need 9, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Me too actually. At first, it was a psychological issue that I wasn't getting as much time in my awake hours. But honestly, being more energetic with a little less time is better than being awake longer with low energy
Me too. Whenever I don't set an alarm I sleep somewhere between 9-10 hours and I feel great every time. And it feels like I am sleep deprived when I sleep 7-8 hours :'). And that sucks, because If I want to wake up early (5 am), I have to be asleep by like 8 pm...
i did that one time and woke up standing up yelling and crying and was so fucking confused... so weird to expereince. i was strung out pretty bad the days before that which probably is why it happened but damn i felt sop like fucked up after that idk how to explain it.
Omg illustrating the circadian rhythm disorder blew my mind this is exactly what I've been really struggling with in my life for the last couple years, thank you so much for talking about this Dr.K, so many talk about the importance of rest and sleep but no one really talks about it this way, let alone have systems to support people in the workplace and school suffering with these issues
Yeah I always had a feeling that my circadian rhythm was messed up but his explanation made so much sense. Unfortunately when he said being productive at 4-6am means you have a normal rhythm, you just need to wake up earlier, I was disappointed because I am most productive between 8pm and 2am. At 4-6am I am completely useless. You won’t get me to be productive until around 10am at all. And even then I’ll still feel tired. I actually already do a lot of the things he says - I eat a small snack only in the mornings with only decaf coffee. Small to medium lunch mostly salads and soups, not carb heavy. I drink a coffee about half an hour or an hour after lunch. And it’s ok but I feel tired every day. And then I get home and around 8pm I’m suddenly wide awake and have all this energy. I used to go to the gym after work which helped a little to make me more tired earlier in the evening but I’ve never in my life managed to fall asleep before midnight and usually not before 1am. When I work overtime on weekends, I sleep until 11am or noon, start work at around 3pm and finish around midnight (or 2am if really busy) and I’m so much more productive and happy. Wish that was an option.
@@soupz5510 The only way I found to really make the most of it is to go my own way in creative industries, freelance work and non typical hours. I prefer jobs where I can stay up all night and then not work for a week or more. Or gig work where you do a months work as hard as you can and have your money saved for the year. Or starting a small business where you are in charge of your success. So you have to make a life where 8-2am has no consequences and you can take advantage of your peak hours of attention. Think about it. Some people had to guard the tribes while the rest of mankind slept. Night owls have existed since the dawn of mankind, and are not flawed but have a distinct survival advantage in a world where predators come out at night.
@@soupz5510 Lately I can't fall asleep til it's 2 to 4 am. Send help. I'm pretty sure I'm a night owl but because of work, I'm not allowed to find what works best.
Same. Saw the graph and thought this is exactly my situation. I've been trying very hard to get used to day shifts over the last few years, avoiding sleeping late on weekends and always getting 7-8 hours of sleep. It helps regulate waking up early naturally, but I feel more and more like a dead body going through the day, like it is just slowly killing me.
It's worth going to multiple doctors if you can afford it. My blood tests always came up normal for years but apparently the general practitioners had no idea what they were doing because as soon as I had blood tested for a sleep evaluation they caught the vitamin D deficiency (and mild apnea). Fixing those has been a game-changer. Beyond that the next biggest thing has been sitting for 5 seconds when I'm about to go on social media or RUclips and thinking what will the consequences of this be? I drained so much of myself every day on that stuff, trying to pay attention to compilations or let's plays while at my job. Making that stuff a treat instead of background noise to numb my ADHD has been a big deal.
It obviously won't solve everyone's problems but drinking a 16 oz glass of water first thing in the morning has changed my life. It feels like it activates something within my metabolism that results in a drive to move forward with the day. It's way too simple to work for everyone, but getting hydrated first thing in the AM before coffee/food is a huge thing for your body.
Also another thing that Dr k has mentioned is trying to stay off your phone for at least an hour after you wake up, Additionally I've experienced putting off caffeine for an hour or two after waking up helps with energy
Andrew Huberman also suggests putting a bit of salt in your water in the morning to assist neurons to fire more effectively. Helps with focus and mitigate mental fatigue. It's been a daily practice for me ever since I heard it. Highly recommend.
@@CarefulHowYouStep I mean, I don't know what to tell you lol, of course it's not logical. I wake up and know I should drink something to feel awake, but getting up seems like too much effort so I just fall asleep again, making it worse. When I eventually do get up I first need to autopilot a shower to be awake enough and immediately drink almost a full litre of water. FWIW that was when I was also pretty depressed, I actually fixed my sleeping problems with something totally unrelated.
i am really suprised, but yt algorithm suggested me this video and after i watched it, it felt to me like i suddenly understood huge part of my life. the interesting thing is i went through the list of videos on exhaustion and that is the only one i found that didn't recommend physical exercise as only or main solution. i'm glad i have seen this video and channel ♥
This happened to me when yt first suggested me the channel too, and I follow every video ever since, they are all great! I've learned so much with dr K, you have no idea, I really suggest you to subscribe
Literally just last night I was searching the net to figure out why I get sleepy so early even though I sleep plenty and don't expend all that much energy. Always perfect timing, Dr K.
I genuinely believe the perfect timing is him and his team scrolling through reddit/youtube and discord feedback to see what people need the most at the moment. If it were only coincidence I'd be surprised
I'm exhausted all day everyday and have significant crash in the afternoon. At this point I think I'm just dying. Not sure how long I can continue like this either. Been years feeling this way everyday.
If it feels that severe and it's been happening for a while you should really try to see a doctor. You might have something like anemia or a vitamin deficiency which can be easily fixed (hoping that's what it is for you). I have fibromyalgia which is not fixable (just lifestyle management) and makes me severely tired
I find my blood sugar tends to crash after lunch, which was making me delirious in the afternoon for years. Maybe try skipping lunch one time and see if that's the issue, and if so there are ways to mitigate blood sugar spikes besides fasting.
I’ve been feeling the same way since I had my first panic attack 2 years ago. Since then, my life changed 100%. I’ve felt like I don’t deal real anymore, head pressure, a tingling feeling around my head like it’s floating. I have no idea even how to describe it..
Everytime I hear about these 'morning routine' things I'm just blown away that a person can be that consistent. With ADHD I wake up at different times every day, sleep at different times, can't remember what I've eaten earlier today or if at all, much less yesterday or the day before. If I feel something, I react. Simple as that. I know I'm 'supposed' to be able to be a routine based, effective 'farmer' adult at 33 but that's just never been a seemingly feasible reality for me, even with ADHD meds. What I do find helps is when I can make better decisions about what exists in the house from the store. I wish so much I could just sign up to have a week of pre-selected food show up every week and I eat it based on a schedule designed by someone else. If someone is going to expect healthy actions from me, I know for a fact I cannot be trusted to be responsible for that. At least not spontaneously after a lifetime of undiagnosed ADHD habits and a family culture I was raised in that did not and does not educate or support this lifestyle. maybe some psychedelic therapy re-wiring could help, but we still have to wait on that being available. I simply believe that many people, especially the ADHD and other neurologically divergent population, straight-up do not have the strengths that nutritionists, therapists, etc expect when speaking about these topics. And the judgement for this is EXTREMELY harsh from basically the entire world since you carry the signs of poor nutritional education and habits on your body everywhere (obesity) with you like a giant vulnerability flag and very few people want to combat their knee-jerk reaction to someone being, looking, valuing, and thinking differently than them. I can take care of myself fine. I cannot, absolutely cannot, keep myself healthy in the way others act is 'so easy' for them. I have been at relatively 'healthy' lifestyle points at various times where I'm losing weight, feeling good, etc, and times where I'm emotionally binging half a pizza one day and the rest in the morning. Changing things to meet others' standards of 'healthy' the project onto me would mean I have to restructure my ENTIRE life from 12am to 12am, extreme effort to track all of this every minute and if that's 'easy' for you, congrats, but this is not a reality for many. Outside of a complete reset in a month long retreat, most people simply cannot 'clean break' their functional for their life, if not longevity based, daily routine to make such a drastic turn. And almost everyone in the US sure can't afford to take even a few days off, lol.
Hey I have adhd and struggle with some of the same problems and here is my opinion on the subject. I think that sometimes when we look at other people that have healthy lifestyles that we struggle to get close to maintaining, we think of it as an all or nothing thing, in my experience especially in the last year this is just not the right approach. I think a healthy lifestyle is built on a number of healthy habits that are just that, habits. My approach has been to over time add more healthy habits to my toolbelt. The first one was wake up time. Dr K talked about this before but it really resonated with me. Something along the lines of, "if you want to fix your sleep schedule you have to get up at the same time before you can go to sleep at the same time". Anyways, the way I did that was with an app called alarmy. I have it set to only be turned off by scanning the bar code on the bottle of mouthwash in my bathroom. I also keep my phone away from my bed, so when it goes off I get out of bed, go to the bathroom to turn it off, then to the kitchen and don't go back to bed. For nearly my entire life I've been the type that during summer vacation I would end up sleeping in until 11, then noon, then 2, 3 4... Now I get up consistently around 8:15-:9:15 depending on the day. My younger self wouldn't believe me. My point is though that yes, I do have adhd which is a significant roadblock, but using this app as well as being consistent with it over time has helped me to build it from something very difficult into a daily habit that I don't think too much of. Another habit I picked up was moving from energy drinks to green tea in the morning. I'm not perfect so yes, I'll have a week where I find myself craving one, but because I am building on top of my other healthy habits, it is a pyramid with a strong foundation, and not a structure which is prone to all come tumbling down at once. In terms of food, I'm right there with you. I have to remind myself that although adhd does make it more difficult to have healthy habits, I can't frame it as impossible or else what is even the point? Also the expectations of your health put on you by other people are super unfair. Fuck em. Don't do it for them, do it for yourself. Not even to prove them wrong just because you're worth putting the (extra extra) effort towards self improvement. Some people have it easier, but even for those people it won't be apparent from the outside when they are struggling. It's easy to construct an idea in our minds of "if only we had this trait that they have, it would be so much easier", but at the end of the day it just isn't a productive way to frame the whole thing to yourself. Best of luck though I hope maybe something here will give you something to think about.
I kept hearing that ADHDers thrive o routine while it's so so hard to set up and stick to at first. And I couldn't make sense of it. Then someone said something and it clicked. The reason why routines work for ADHDers is none other than automation! And we neeeed automation because of how we regulate attention differently. We need automation to have less cognitive load on the many small and big daily tasks. So, don't think of routimes the same way neurotypicals present them. We need them in a different way and thus ADHD routines are different. I think it's mostly about optimizing our environment so that the good stuff is super easy and the bad stuff is super hard but also having several scenarios of action already thought through and prepared. What helps you in terms of actions and what helps you in terms of environment - automate that as much as possible. That' the ADHD way of routines. That's how I make sense of it.
Don't worry about "supposed" to. A person with ADHD can hold a routine generally, but a person with ADHD will have their routine very easily interrupted. The biggest challenge for a person with ADHD in holding a routine is the feeling of shame and failure that happens when that routine is interrupted. So maybe you try to follow a routine for 5 days, and you are successful, then the 6th day something comes up that makes you forget it, then the 7th day you don't do it too. On the 8th day you remember, but you feel like a worthless loser who can never do anything right and how could you be so stupid to think you could follow a routine, so since you've failed now, you give up. Or you force yourself to try again on the 8th day, and it's super hard, and the 9th day it's harder, and all the while you know you'll never keep up with it. There's a couple of things happening here. One is that we easily get swept up in things that really captivate us. This not only pulls us from our routine, it causes us to screw up our sleep, it causes us to use up our mental stores, we essentially crash afterwards, and after a crash, that drained feeling itself can cause us to tend to feel kind of just "bad". If we already have a tendency to feel ashamed and worthless, this bad feeling will feed into that super easily. It's also going to want to push us to be inactive to recharge, and hating ourselves and telling ourselves we've failed and shouldn't bother is a pretty effective way to stop trying, and stopping trying will fill that need to be inactive, so we will get into THAT habit. The other thing is that it's just that we have a tendency to put ourselves into a sort of fight or flight mindset a lot, we do this to push us to act sometimes, using deadlines and caffeine and intense situations to control our ability to focus, because it's hard to control our focus when things aren't threatening us. When in this mental state we have a tendency towards black and white thinking, we're either passing or failing, and we will consider that we fail. Such as "know for a fact that I cannot be trusted to be responsible for healthy actions". We can easily be doomers. When you say something like "know for a fact that I can't" it's a cop-out. It means you have decided you don't need to try anything different and you've built this as a justification. Any suggestions will be shot down out of pessimism, and you won't bother looking for solutions any more yourself. You've failed too many times already and feel bad about it, and you're afraid that trying again will just be another failure. It's not worth trying. A lot of this comes from comparison. You think that other things that other people do are "so easy" for them. It's not fair. So why try? It might be hard for you. It might be unfair. But we can do hard and unfair things. And things that we practice get easier. Will it get as easy as someone else? Probably not. There's more extreme language. To meet others standards of healthy they project on to me, I would have to restructure my ENTIRE life, 24 hours a day, track EVRY MINUTE. This is not really true. Most people are actually bad at being healthy. With ADHD we are really sensitive to the judgment of others, because we feel like we're failures. But for ANYONE to meet the healthy standard that you imagine is being demanded of you, it would be nearly impossible. Similarly, if you want to brush your teeth every day, does this mean you need to restructure your entire 24 day and track every minute of your life to do it? Of course not. Does this make you the paragon of perfect health? No. But is it possible to do something without being perfect and not feel like a failure? A secret about how people without ADHD handle things: They spend less energy worrying about the things we do. If they forget to brush their teeth for a few days because they're busy, they have bad breath, and then they brush their teeth when they remember. If we forget to brush our teeth for a few days, we feel like a complete failure who can't do the basic things that everyone else finds simple, and when we go to brush our teeth, we think, "what's the point, I'm never going to keep this routine up anyways, I'm completely hopeless, and this is so painful to force myself to do, I've got to fix myself, and then I'll be able to brush my teeth, but fixing myself is impossible, I wish it was just easy like everyone else." There's this combined with the fact that we're far more likely to forget to brush our teeth for a few days, and maybe it ends up being weeks instead of days, or months. But it's not just the forgetting, its the hating ourselves that comes after. Or the new strategy we try to fix it for real this time. Or the worrying about how it's easy for other people and hard for us. For other people, it's just brushing teeth, there's no internal existential crisis. But look at the people without ADHD, they're not all as successful, as healthy, as thin and perfect as you expect yourself to be if not for the condition. In fact, I think they're pretty much in line with most people with ADHD. An external evaluation of an individual with ADHD won't show them to be much different than the general population, there's people without ADHD who perform worse than people with ADHD, there's people without ADHD who are fatter, who are underweight, who don't get in a relationship, who are unemployed, who get fired, who don't graduate college, whatever. The person with ADHD is right on the same curve as everyone else. The biggest difference here is that I would say universally that the people with ADHD feel ashamed. They feel like regardless of where they are on the curve, the SHOULD be higher up. I'm healthy, but I SHOULD be healthier. I'm employed but I SHOULD be performing better. I graduated, but I SHOULD have been able to do it with less effort or luck. I'm not overweight, but I SHOULD be able to work out to have a 6 pack. Or I'm not morbidly obese, but I SHOULD be a healthy weight. I graduated high school but I SHOULD have been able to graduate college. I'm unemployed but I SHOULD be employed. I'm unhealthy, but I SHOULD be healthy. It's hard with ADHD. We fall into the hole, and we panic, we feel ashamed and we start with the black and white thinking. All or nothing. Perfect or failure. Intense sensitivity to any acknowledgement of our faults. A fault means we're worthless. If you want to start a routine, I can tell you how. Get a notebook, write down the thing you are going to do on a line. Now do the thing, and to the right of that word, put a check mark. If you want, above that check mark, you can write the date. Now, decide you're going to do that again, and the next time you think about it, do the thing and put a check mark on to the right of the first one, write the date above if you want. Put the notebook in a place where you will be doing the thing, or where you will be generally going past. Sometimes you will remember to do the thing at an awkward time. Like maybe you're remembering to do the thing just before you should leave for work. You can choose to do it anyways and be late for work, you can choose not to, both is ok. Maybe you intended to do it in the morning and you forget until you get home, you can do it then, or you can not. I like to suggest that you don't put a date on. If you have a date on it, you see how many times you failed. Instead, just farm check marks. If you see the old book sitting with an inch of dust on it don't feel ashamed that you failed to maintain yet another routine, just go do the thing and put down another check mark. This isn't a way to maintain a routine at 100% adherence. But this is really the first thing, don't try to. If you only do the thing on 10% of the days, you did it 10% of the days. I've been working out for like 4 years on a 3 day a week schedule. The past 5 weeks I've worked out 2 times. The schedule is still the same. The thing is I am doing it with a workout partner who doesn't have ADHD, and he has missed the same number as I have. There's a lot of work that I do to not feel like a complete failure for it, while he doesn't think about it. He's actually grateful for ME for keeping HIM working out all this time. The big difference is I think I SHOULD be able to work out regularly on routine 3 times a week like a normal person, and he doesn't think about it.
So you're the target demographic for those food prepping and delivery servies that would make absolutely no sense in the past :D If you have the money then by all means sign up to live like Winston Churchill. IMO the best meals are ones cooked for you by family, significant other, friends etc. No ammount of money can purchase the good energy and love people put in their cooking for you, and so is the feeling of serving and cooking for family and friends. I think what you call strengths that therapists require would be better termed personal responsabilities. Just because some have it naturally or easier doesn't mean they are better as a human in any way, they may be a better adult, yes, but this is stuff you can learn, and learning isn't one straight preselected path. How you learn can look completely backwards to how I learn yet you may get the same or better results as I. A good point and well articulated by another commenter zeidrichthorene, is to not compare your routines or lack of routines with others, these sorts of comparisons only end badly.
I have extreme ADHD as well, and reading a wall of text like that takes me forever. Keep it short. Also, my cardiologist told me ADHD meds are terrible for your heart. Just a heads up.
Can't help but notice how the typical modern work cycle in my country is in the way of doing anything healthy. Wake up and eat breakfast, just to have a glucose crash right when we're about to start working. So everyone drink a lot of coffee to make it to lunch time, which results in another glucose crash as the circadian rhythm also says we should take a nap, and that's the moment we all go back to work, so we drink more coffee to make it to the end of the day.
Capitalism, my man. Millionaires sell solutions, billionaires create a problem and sell the solution, but neither want to solve the problem or they can't make money anymore. So, yeah I think you're right in noticing this
One of the best things I did in terms of tiredness is to get up much earlier than I'm forced to. But I think this is mainly tied to emotional tiredness, because no one likes being forced to wake up for something they don't particularly want to do. I get up about 4 hours before I have to leave for work. Gives me time to chill and be free to do what I want with a little bit of getting ready through it all. I feel very energised that way! If I don't get up at least 2 hours before having to leave I get very dysfunctional and exhausted and miserable. Heck even with the 2 hours I feel rushed. I think it's also about how I am physiologically: I'm a very slow starter, so even if I get to just wake up when I feel like it I'll still need 3-4 hours to get productive. So I wouldn't call myself an early bird at all, but I kinda have to get up early if I want my productive hours to be aligned with the rest of society
same. i think this isrelated to the ayurvedic system of the Kapha or earth/water dosha. slow starting, desirable to try and wake up at 6 am or earlier. i don'tk know if i can do it but i want to
Same. I have to leave at 7:30 am so I get up at 5:30 putter around drink decaf scroll my phone read light candles talk to my man. Just the fact that I don’t have to do the whole getting ready routine all at once makes it easier to get up. Then, in bed after some magnesium glycinate, by 10:15 or so. As good as it gets to better align with civilization.
I’m not sleepy but chronically fatigued mentally and physically but I have trauma history and mental health problems for sure. I think it comes from when your nervous system is off balance
I can second that experience, I'm currently finding ways to restore nervous system functionality through rest, relaxation and breath work, as well as being regularly active and eating healthy/no alcohol or caffeine, but it's still a battle Hope you're doing well
I started buproprion (Wellbutrin) in same kind of situation and got energy immediately. And if you have also gained weight and your legs are heavy, this medicine might be accurate. Also Mysimba has buproprion and naltrexone, which helps with trauma dissociation. And helps loose gained weight.
I read a research summary about how people with ADHD seem to have a melatonin reaction lag which is why we tend to be night owls. And what this means is that I take my melatonin supplements 2-3 hours before bed and it actually does help me sleep. When I tried taking it a half hour before bed like neurotypicals do it didn't work but when I adjusted it for my neurotype it worked great
One thing that I think is missing from the physiological is your energy use. The your body is very adaptive, the less energy you tend to use the less energy you have. Paradoxically this means that sometimes spending more energy (eg on exercise) can make you feel less tired overall.
Also, exercise triggers the release of endorphins and adrenaline which energize you. Exercise also causes some damage to your body that must be repaired during sleep, so you sleep more deeply after exercise. So you are less drowsy in the morning. Exercise is a cure for so many things. Sometimes we don’t wanna admit the cure is simple.
I’m more tired in the days where i had more physical activity like working out. The advice to spend more energy to get more energy does not seem to work for me. Been trying for years.
@@iromanovsky It just sounds to me like normal fatigue. Like, yes if you work out you'll have less energy afterwards, your blood sugar dips and your ion channels in muscles are depleted. But with regular work out you should have overall more energy than if you didn't work out regularly. If not, it could be an actual health issue.
Another way I found to make myself less sleepy (not in the morning but more happening in the afternoon), if you suddenly feel tired, think back what pressure others have been projecting on you, what "necessary" things you have to do that actually are a disguise of demands from others perhaps you are simply trying to make them happy (you are a people pleaser or simply a pride hard worker), then destroy them in your head, I have done this multiple times, I feel guilty afterwards as it feels like I'm forgetting or betraying everyone around me as they have demands on me to do stuff, but it feels freeing, almost feel like I am floating and my brain suddenly become normal again instead of being sleepy
I sort of do that. I also stop and analyze if the task will benefit me as well. It usually does. For example, the couch is dirty and I'm embarrassed about guests sitting on it. After some thought, I realize that I don't like sitting on the dirty couch myself, so I do it. I'm actually glad to do it once I realize it's not people pleasing and I want the couch to be clean for me.
I got to the doctor complaining about getting really tired early on the morning and not having energy during the day... After a bunch of tests, turns out I'm almost always dehydrated and the body doesn't work properly like that, so they suggested I have two glasses of water as soon as I wake up... Problem fixed, so yeah there could be many reasons why you don't have enough energy during the day, could be diet, unhealthy sleep pattern, stress, anxiety, depression, dehydration, hormonal issues, etc, if you're concerned, go see a professional
Just curious, when you were low energy and dehydrated, how often did you urinate and what color was your urine generally? Was it a clear or light yellow color? Or was it pretty dark color, smelly, cloudy, etc?
@@TominationTime toilet needs in general were one a day or one every two days (I thought it was normal) urine dark yellow, and most of the time I'd struggle with getting any appetite at all, I just ate because I knew I had to and felt heavy and a lot of nausea afterwards (that appetite thing is what led doctors to believe maybe I was dehydrated or malnourished and checked those two things first)
One thing that solidified me as a "night owl" since my teens is that I tend to be unable to do interesting (subjectively speaking) stuff otherwise. Wake up, eat, work, eat, work, exercise (actually moved it to be intersperced throughout the day recently, but you get the point), eat... and then you get like an hour left to LIVE. So if I want to learn a new skill or just be potato while conscious for a while - tough luck... I guess, I could move personal time to the front if I woke up at 5-6 AM, but there I have a psychological block, where if I really dig into it - it's really hard to let go and go be "productive" member of society :(
It's hard for me to make life changes without knowing why I'm doing it. I've been doing a great job with my sleep schedule lately, and all this info is starting to finally all make sense. This is absolutely my favorite video on this channel so far, and I've become so much happier in the past year from watching and applying the lessons learned here
I'm tried in so many ways. My emotions are driving me to be this. It's not that emotions make you tired which they do but that emotions can lead you to do things that make you even more tired. This is one of the reasons people eat terribly. I know because I do it. It's also can lead you to not getting enough sleep. I have not been getting good sleep on regular basis for a while now. My diet has been trash. This has been fueled by my anxiety and depression. This can be vicious cycle. I'm sorry if I'm bringing anyone down. I feel hopeless right now. So much is bubbling up to the top. Dr K please do a video about food as a drug... emotional eating. This is much needed...thanks.
Wow. This explains how my sleep apnea rolls into my caffeine consumption, into loss of appetite, into stuffing myself at dinner and before bed late at night. Definitely have some changes that need to be made
I was physcically exhausted all the time. Then I dialed in my diet and I felt far less tired. Then I found a sense of purpose and I felt even less tired.
@@melliegotsoul it is incredibly hard to explain, but it boils down to making sure those around me remember me positively. Living each day as if this is the last time I’ll see someone.
Also talk to your doctor and get routine blood work done! I did mine and was just slightly low in vitamin B12. After adding a B12 supplement to my diet it helped my daily energy maintenance tremendously. I still struggle with being a light sleeper and adhd issues, but it’s really been a game changer!
I would love for you to talk about this from a female body perspective metabolically speaking as well as how cigarrette or other addictions mess with your energy
Contracting covid back in 2020 left me chronically tired. I miss my old self so so much. 😢 I can barely function as it is, and no doctor I've talked to know how to help me.
Dr. K, I'm not even sure how I stumbled across your channel but have been binge watching ever since. Your videos provide new perspectives and find the way you explain things to be very comforting and informative during difficult times. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and and what you are providing for the community. You are a blessing. ❤
Ain’t no way you just uploaded this when I was just googling this yesterday… it’s my last week of school and I can’t seem to find the energy to finish, Thank You!
Exhaustion for me usually exists in the below forms (pattern): 1) Not having a firm foundation of living or a place to call home (between living situations for one reason or another, IE Job change, roommate issues, etc.). 2) Pending resolved feuds. (Those friends you shouldn’t have been friends with and resulted in lawsuits to get free. IE do not entangle assets). Drain on subconscious mental energy until it ends. 3) Sick or a physical ailment 4) Sleeping poorly and neck pain due to traveling and/or terrible pillows and terrible beds. 😂 5) Loneliness or depression (this happens less, but it can happen from working remotely and not having enough social outlet after work to balance the isolation.) 6) Overworking (because I have a full-time day job + own a startup company). I push through the exhaustion due to my work ethic, but damn I’m tired. I’m working on it!
Damn that does also sound extreme and abnormal. Having to deal with ex friends who you can't get away from without a lawsuit would be draining for anyone, as well as not having a stable living situation. I hope you get to a more stable place soon and are able to get some rest.
The first point is big. I do have a home, but I share my space with two other people and this takes away all potential for relaxation in my case. Having space for oneself is a very underrated need in my opinion.
Omg this is so comprehensive thank you! I'll have to rewatch multiple times tho, cus exhaustion and memory/concentration issues. And thank you for the timestamps - really necessary in a video like this one. Please, please would you consider doing a video on CFS? 🙏
What are your symptoms, and how did you get diagnosed? Is it related to Epstein Barr? I've felt exhausted for years, but tested negative for sleep apnea. I'm at a loss.
Awesome video. I started intermittent fasting a month ago and couldn't explain why I felt less tired to people who asked. General understanding is food=energy. It's much more than that.
What an excellent video again, the way you explain these things is so good. I have been a night owl since I was a teen, it initially started out by wanting to procrastinate going to school because I hated it, but it became a way of life as that I enjoy the night time so much when it's quiet, when people and the sun don't suck out your energy, it's where I am the most productive. There's also this phenomenon that the day does not have enough hours for me, so my rhythm often keeps turning ahead. If the day had 26h instead of 24h it would be a lot easier for me to keep a rhythm. I had no big problem functioning during the day during uni times, but I get tired a lot quicker during the day and it's not what I prefer. Also, getting up early is something I really dislike. I don't feel great when I get up anywhere during the first 12 hours of a day, I feel a lot better when I get up at early to mid afternoon. So what I like the most is going to bed before the sun comes up and waking up at some point after noon.
I had this same thing very badly through my 20s and 30s. My cycles went 26-28 hours, so getting up at the same time every day was impossible. Being a night owl you can at least get a 2nd or 3rd shift job.
0:00 Intro/ what is tiredness/ types of tiredness 1:32 physiology of tiredness 3:34 what to do/approach to tiredness 6:06 differential diagnosis of tiredness 6:10 sleep apnea 7:40 circadian rhythm disorders 10:12 symptoms and solutions for sleep apnea 11:35 causes and solutions for circadian rhythm disorders 19:05 metabolism 19:10 caffeine, ATP and adenosine 22:14 glucose balance 24:49 intermittent fasting 26:40 inflammation (gluten, processed food, etc..) 29:32 gut bacteria (why we have inflammation) 30:55 exercise (impact on insulin metabolism and food cravings) 31:40 insulin/what to do if we're tired 31:45 1. complex carbohydrates 32:29 2. Fruits and vegies and correlation with hunger 34:37 integration of topics 36:34 3 reasons why we have afternoon crashes 37:40 what to do to not to get an afternoon crash 38:05 summary
I’m always tired and have been my whole life. A few days ago I realized that I’m autistic. It all made so much sense. I’m spending so much energy every day just trying to deal with sensory inputs and communicating that it takes me out.
Reading these comments I didn't know this phenomenon was so common I'm big on self improvement so I like to watch educational content like this to help keep myself informed on what im doing on a daily basis but yall got it bad for real good luck to all of you Thank you Dr.K your doing great work putting information out that is hard to find elsewhere great content
I know I’m a exception from the rule here but I work overnight at a hospital and would love to see something similar to this with a focus on night shift workers
Incredible, I'd literally just been worried that I've somehow developed a gluten allergy but the inflammation response to my recently exceptionally poor eating habits makes so much more sense
If you get whole wheat berries (or other grains) and mill them fresh, then make bread from scratch (how people did it for thousands of years) then it's much healthier for your system and probably won't have a problem with gluten. The modern way flour is processed and made into bread is a big part of many health problems.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to get into nutrition. Food and sleep are some of the oldest medicines we know, but we know so very little about them from a scientific standpoint for something so intimate in our lives. It's utterly bizarre. If anything, all of this has really illustrated the importance of mindfulness and the acknowledgement that our bodies are not simply braincases with legs. They are animal and animals have needs. Choosing the be mindful of that, exploring what works, and acting accordingly can literally be life changing. The perspective and commitment required is a small price to pay, by comparison.
I've watched this at least 3 times and then I go off coffee and start working out every other day and I sleep amazingly well for like 3 weeks then I forget and have to watch it again.
I think this video explained my tiredness way better then anything I’ve ever heard. Now I’ve gotta figure out how to tackle it and get on track. Thank you for this Dr. K
One thing I’ve noticed, when I wake up after 5 hours of sleep let’s say (end of sleep cycle) yeah I’ll wake up feeling energized, but as the day progresses, I’ll feel physically tired. Waking up groggy (sleeping 8 hours for example) you’ll feel energized as the day continues
all this seems so overwhelming to consider. I'm in college right now (late bloomer ~34 years) also juggling with a full time job and i barely have time to exist between these 2. I always feel defeated and exhausted + recent breakup, and I feel like crying whenever I stop to think for a minute. I don't know what to do, I feel stuck and I live in constant fear that it will all crumble down.
I feel you, similar boat here. I hope you’re feeling better since you left this comment but just in case you’re not-take a deep breath. You got this, and even on days when you don’t got this that’s okay too. You’re going to be okay. 💚 If you want, you can write down all this stuff as a checklist, right. Heck, if you’re too tired to do that I’ll reply with the list so you can just copy and paste. And then just start with whichever one seems most interesting or has the most potential for benefit and start with a 30 day trial. One thing at a time. One foot in front of the other.
it may be rough now but your building twards a better future! its never easy to get the things we want in life but they are worth it :) you can pull through just keep up the hard work! also its ok to have bad days and cry or have the occasional meltdown, it helps get the stress buildup out of our system so dont feel like your weak for that, your already doing alot! something i heard that made me feel a little better was "your doing the best you possibly can at any moment" some days better than others but your still trying no matter what
I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (3-4AM bedtime), Hypersomnia (triggers: day bef period starts, day aft period ends, around ovulation, getting allergy shot, allergy overload, needing chiropractor adjustment real bad, getting chiro adjustment, massage, eating…especially carbs, stress…etc), and sleep apnea…! I also have Fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, asthma, food allergies, environmental allergies, moderate scoliosis, mild arthritis, depression, anxiety, Somatization disorder, mild cognitive disorder, Hypertension, prediabetes…. I’m tired ALL the time…! My friends don’t even comment anymore because they’re used to me just going up and down like a rollercoaster…so when I’m down and kind of out of it they notice but done say anything. At times I’ve had period where 7 alarm clocks couldn’t wake me…! I regularly wake up to an alarm (might take 45 mins) and then call back asleep and wake up 2 hours later (most days I don’t set alarms…when I do set alarms…it’s no guarantee that I will actually wake up for it). My mother was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Some of my maternal aunts have Lupus, MS, Fibromyalgia, etc… Before I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia I had two Brain MRIs because several Drs thought I had MS… Thursday…I thought I would wake up around noon like I did the day bef…I didn’t wake up until almost 2pm…and then the next thing I knew it was 530pm…and then my period started at 11pm…Hypersomnia… Also…I tend to get one side of my face feeling hot and looking red (can be up to 4 degrees difference between my cheeks) when I get Hypersomnia…and I found out recently that may be Histamine Dumping…. My face will especially do the one sided redness if the Hypersomnia is being trigger by hormones rising or falling. If I’m woken up too soon I have real bad sleep inertia…it can lay HOURS…or all day… Caffeine makes me sleepy…then keeps me up HOURS later. My DNA said I’m a slow caffeine metabolizer… I also have a VERY slow metabolism…🎉I can’t lose weight…I get food comas a lot… Oh…and I have ADHD…
The content in this video is so important to learn. As a college student, my peers (and I) have been struggling with exhaustion, and have been using unhealthy coping mechanisms or just not accounting for potential issues (napping in the day without accounting for circadian rhythm, staying up at night staring at blue light just before going to bed, etc). In my experience, I have been going back-to-back with my therapist and psychiatrist on how to fix my sleep schedule, because over half of the week every week, I had been exhausted throughout the whole day. While taking melatonin an hour before bed and using blue light glasses helps mediate my sleep schedule, the worst issue I had was being able to get out of bed in the morning. I've learned that I should expect to always be groggy right when I get up, but that it's better to be groggy and get up than be groggy and having hit the snooze button several times, or have more hours lost of my day. In addition to this, I realized ways I could mediate morning grogginess through this video (wait to eat to avoid food comas and drink caffeine). I also thought it was interesting that Dr. K brought up how metabolism affects exhaustion because my metabolic biochemistry professor is adamant on how processed foods (he calls it "garbage") have not been coevolving with us like the foods that our ancestors have eaten. Overall, I appreciate that this video provides a lot of ideas that you can build on to tackle exhaustion.
So many layers to tiredness and fatigue which aren’t the same things. We can be physically tired and/or fatigued, mentally tired and/or fatigued, emotionally tired and/or fatigued, as well as cellularly tired and/or fatigued. I’ve been learning this for 10 years since I was poisoned by indoor molds then got another tick bite that gave me a handful of infections that never go away. So many layers to this and many layers to pain. I work at 10am and I wake at 5am. I sleep like shit pretty much every night. I’m usually in bed by 10/11pm. Sometimes I can fall asleep right away, sometimes I’m awake for hours. Usually I wake multiple times during the night. Also have sleep apnea and use a cpap that I often rip off my face in my sleep. Caffeine is my best friend lol. Without it I cannot function. I pay close attention to diet and lifestyle choices and make changes as necessary to keep my functioning as well as possible. Wish I could fix my sleep tho. Have tried melatonin and a couple natural & prescription sleep meds over the years but nothing works longer than a week or two. My sleep has been messed up pretty much my whole life. Drs have been no help with my sleep issues except to prescribe a cpap. So I just deal with it and try the best I can to figure things out for myself.
Good advice. This will actually help people that are already so annoyed and tired of the "gotta go to the gym" crowd. If you can improve your health. You are helping society.
I was chronically exhausted for the past 6 months. Finally went to a doctor for bathroom issues last week and found out I have Crohn’s. Ever since I’m on meds I’ve been waking up refreshed. Go get checked at the doctor’s if you can afford it! You really never know
It's amazing that with all the doctors and specialists I've seen, especially for sleep, including going to a sleep clinic to get studies done, and a sleep counselor...I never learned any of this...wtf is wrong with the medical community? Why do I have to find this shit out on youtube for free instead of at any of those appointments they are billing my insurance so much money for?
Very interesting about the religious connection to circadian rhythm at 5am. I only needed to wake up at 5am to take a friend to work for a week, and I’d come back home and sleep right after. EVERY time, I would have sleep paralysis. It happens any other time a similar thing happens, where I wake up at 5am, stay up for a while, then go back to sleep.
Holy crap! Great videos. ✨🤗my daughter sent me your videos channel and the circadian rhythm makes soooo much sense why im waking up in the middle of the night now journaling, doing my prayers and feel totally creative.. Then i go back to sleep and have my second sleep for a couple hours . That one is a deep sleep.. I was like wth is going on?? Im trying to figure out my soul crushing chronic fatigue that has accompanied my fibromyalgia.. Im always researching and trying to figure out ways to alleviate.. Adp was another route i was looking at as well. Thanks! For your awesome info... :)
Love that you are totally “see what works for your body” about most things in this video. You seem to treat calories differently though. Not everyone can handle 1800 calories a day even in optimal circumstances. I suggest listening to the podcast Maintenance Phase and their calorie episode as they have done a lot of research and some of their content aligns with yours and some of it does not.
It doesn't matter how much sleep I get, I can execute everything perfectly, wake up in the morning, and be tired all day, then when it's time to sleep I'm not tired any more. When or how much I sleep doesn't make a difference, I'm just always alert at night and sleepy in the day.
I used to say to my friends all the time when they asked how I was "I'm tired" and it became a joke of "when was the last time you weren't tired?" Or somebody would ask me how I was and somebody else in the group would reply "Oh I know I know! Tired!" Now I'm realizing I wasn't actually tired like sleepy tired, I was just tired of existing.....
Sleep Apnea is severe. I got diagnosed a year ago and it's life-changing. I went from constantly groggy in the morning, to sleeping all day and just tired in general to wake up refreshed and with energy in my mornings and afternoons.
I just started getting treated for sleep apnea this year. It was bad, I was having like 120 episodes an HOUR. The mask is hard to get accustomed to but since getting treatment, my headaches and acid reflux issues went away completely. But unfortunately I still have circadian issues. Even if I'm responsible and go to bed, I'll stay awake for hours before I actually fall asleep.
I cannot believe some people have to live with this kind of burden, only because I seemingly cannot run out of energy, though i will feel physically tired if I skip the gym for a few days. I wish all of you luck and a prosperous healthy and energetic life❤
I lift weights, hard, five days a week, do endurance cardio twice, eat high protein, high fiber, low added sugar, and hydrate well. It took years to figure out, but my physical energy levels are better than they’ve ever been. Grad school still makes me feel tired, though. It’s the weirdest thing.
Thank you for this awsome content. I originally though this was exclusively for gamers (which I am not), but the advise here is great for everyone. I am also introducing my kids to all your content. Really well-informed and thoughtful. Your content is also easy to digest. You and Andrew Huberman are superheroes.
Circadian rhythm disorder really messed me up during school. My body's internal clock had its optimal sleep hour set to 4am, then shifted even further during my last year of high school. I had to miss so much school because I would go days with only 2 hours of sleep per night maximum. I wish there were more resources available to help me during that time in my life. Nobody took me seriously and told me I was just lazy.
The quality of your videos, especially this one is nothing short of exceptional. I am so glad i can learn so much and finally trust somebody. Thank you for everything, i am deeply thankful for your work.
So smart. To not be tired eat modestly and sleep well. However you need to be optimistic and desire to take interest in your tasks. There's always something to gain in overcoming obstacles. Knowledge, discipline... etc. 💪
Interesting about gluten. I too felt better energy and moodwise avoiding gluten. I also shed 30 lbs in 4 weeks without exercise when I went gluten-free as a trial. But I was always hungry and miserable because of it.
Awesome timing! When there's winter I'm exhausted and cannot get up easily in the morning. I supplement vitamin D3, yet it seems to no avail 😬 My university timetable doesn't help, either. I'll watch this video as soon as my toxicology lecture ends in ~3 hours 😭 Edit: I've listed to the video. I think I'll come back to IF and low carbohydrate diet - it's helped me last year. However it was pretty difficult to keep the carbs low in the long run 😬
I noticed that the last 1-2 months that the day has gotten much smaller, I have trouble waking up even though I sleep 7/8 hours a day and lazy, tired or lethargic almost every day. During the summer it was the opposite, I got the same amount of sleep and did pretty much the same activities but felt fine.
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I've lived as a night owl "successfully" for a about 10 years now... Honor student while at university, and established a decently paying career working from home as a dev. Since I've lived this way, I want to point out an important distinction. I stay up late as an introvert / creative, exclusively because when the world is asleep, I regain a deep sense of freedom / boundaries that I do not get during the day time due to my home circumstances / environment / people (won't go into details, but in short, I'm a caretaker for someone mentally handicapped). I can keep my door shut, dance, be silly, keep my headphones on, binge healthy gamer, pick my nose and fling the booger or watch questionable anime (jk), and no one will judge me. I realized when I traveled a couple times and lived on my own, I maintained normal hours without effort, as I already felt free / liberated, but when I'd return back to my environment, I'd just unconsciously gravitate towards the night, to mitigate whatever stressors / people / situations I have to deal with during the day. Parents actually do this a lot. After they've put their kids to bed, they might stay up later, to regain the same sense of freedom / recharge. This is not a Circadian disorder in this case, nor is it to be selfish or anti-social, but to try to 'balance' out something that is tipped over too far on one end, or to fill one's cup again so they can continue to be there for others until the circumstances change.
One of the terms associated with this is called 'Revenge bedtime procrastination', where people deliberately stay up late in order to do things they cannot during the day.
this is precisely the reason I've become a night owl back when I got into puberty. I'm afraid I might have asperger's and the people I live with are so loud and short-tempered that living through the day with them was exhausting, so I ended up fucking up my sleep cycle so I could have some hours of peace and quiet. Unfortunately I'm not even close to financial independence so I'll have to keep enduring a routine that is detrimental to my own health.
sheesh that sounds all too familiar. Normally if I don't stay up like I normally would, I start to feel like I didn't get enough me time to just do whatever I wanted.
Sounds like my relationship with my neighbors
This is a form of revenge bedtime procrastination. If you can manage it, going to bed really early and getting up really early is even better, because you get to _start_ your day with that amazing sense of freedom. But I understand not everyone can do that especially when you’re avoiding people in your household who need you awake until the moment of their (fairly late) bedtime. I used to be up until at the earliest 2-3 AM, but sometimes 4, 6, or even 8. It was nice watching the sun rise.
It actually feels really nice waking up super early as a night owl. It feels like it makes my peak night hours occur much earlier in the day.
What time do you go to bed and what time do you wake up?
@@BOSSDONMAN I went from 1am-7am to 11pm-5am on week days. Still not 8 hours, I know. :(
@@imacds if you're willing to do 10:30 and 5:30 instead - you get up to 7 without too much of a change in when you go to bed. How long did it take you to finalize the changes in schedule?
You also might not actually be so much of a night owl if waking up early nice. I obviously don’t know anything about your life from a comment but do what makes you feel best
@@anikarix7736 The waking up still sucks and I still get little done for the first few hours in the morning. What I like about it is it causes me to get my peak energy earlier in the day so I can do more things with it.
The sheer volume of exceptional info on this channel is a godsend. I am 50 and wish I had this info as a teen or in my 20s but I am still benefitting from it today. Thank you for sharing this and helping all of us get healthier!
Better late than never. Maybe this is a bad vibe, but how fortunate would it be to die as the healthiest, most you version of you?
500th Like! 🙌🇨🇦
Hey there, your comment is about a year old now. But I'm about 25 now! Is there one piece of advice you would give to your own 25 year old self? Thanks! :D
are you from project veritas?
Clinical depression was the major cause of my physical exhaustion. Like sitting in a chair was too much. Antidepressants and therapy helped :)
I'm glad to hear you've been able to manage your depression, I'm still trying to get there
I’m so glad I found this channel, I’ve been drowning in my own finally diagnosed, yet untreated adhd brain. Like GREAT WHAT NOW
I need 9 hours of sleep and I'm tired of people telling me that I don't. My psychiatrist even told me that the reason I experienced "sleep drunkenness" (I yell nonsense and try to hit people with no memory of it) every morning was because I was waking up mid-cycle. Some need 6, some need 8, some need 9, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Me too actually. At first, it was a psychological issue that I wasn't getting as much time in my awake hours. But honestly, being more energetic with a little less time is better than being awake longer with low energy
It’s literally so aggravating to have people telling you how much sleep you DON’T need. My friends make fun of me for needing 8 or 9 hours
Me too. Whenever I don't set an alarm I sleep somewhere between 9-10 hours and I feel great every time. And it feels like I am sleep deprived when I sleep 7-8 hours :'). And that sucks, because If I want to wake up early (5 am), I have to be asleep by like 8 pm...
Same here, without 8-9 hours sleep i feel terrible and hate the world lol.
i did that one time and woke up standing up yelling and crying and was so fucking confused... so weird to expereince. i was strung out pretty bad the days before that which probably is why it happened but damn i felt sop like fucked up after that idk how to explain it.
Omg illustrating the circadian rhythm disorder blew my mind this is exactly what I've been really struggling with in my life for the last couple years, thank you so much for talking about this Dr.K, so many talk about the importance of rest and sleep but no one really talks about it this way, let alone have systems to support people in the workplace and school suffering with these issues
Yeah I always had a feeling that my circadian rhythm was messed up but his explanation made so much sense. Unfortunately when he said being productive at 4-6am means you have a normal rhythm, you just need to wake up earlier, I was disappointed because I am most productive between 8pm and 2am. At 4-6am I am completely useless. You won’t get me to be productive until around 10am at all. And even then I’ll still feel tired.
I actually already do a lot of the things he says - I eat a small snack only in the mornings with only decaf coffee. Small to medium lunch mostly salads and soups, not carb heavy. I drink a coffee about half an hour or an hour after lunch. And it’s ok but I feel tired every day. And then I get home and around 8pm I’m suddenly wide awake and have all this energy. I used to go to the gym after work which helped a little to make me more tired earlier in the evening but I’ve never in my life managed to fall asleep before midnight and usually not before 1am. When I work overtime on weekends, I sleep until 11am or noon, start work at around 3pm and finish around midnight (or 2am if really busy) and I’m so much more productive and happy. Wish that was an option.
@@soupz5510 The only way I found to really make the most of it is to go my own way in creative industries, freelance work and non typical hours. I prefer jobs where I can stay up all night and then not work for a week or more. Or gig work where you do a months work as hard as you can and have your money saved for the year. Or starting a small business where you are in charge of your success. So you have to make a life where 8-2am has no consequences and you can take advantage of your peak hours of attention. Think about it. Some people had to guard the tribes while the rest of mankind slept. Night owls have existed since the dawn of mankind, and are not flawed but have a distinct survival advantage in a world where predators come out at night.
@@soupz5510 Lately I can't fall asleep til it's 2 to 4 am. Send help.
I'm pretty sure I'm a night owl but because of work, I'm not allowed to find what works best.
Same. Saw the graph and thought this is exactly my situation. I've been trying very hard to get used to day shifts over the last few years, avoiding sleeping late on weekends and always getting 7-8 hours of sleep. It helps regulate waking up early naturally, but I feel more and more like a dead body going through the day, like it is just slowly killing me.
It's worth going to multiple doctors if you can afford it. My blood tests always came up normal for years but apparently the general practitioners had no idea what they were doing because as soon as I had blood tested for a sleep evaluation they caught the vitamin D deficiency (and mild apnea). Fixing those has been a game-changer.
Beyond that the next biggest thing has been sitting for 5 seconds when I'm about to go on social media or RUclips and thinking what will the consequences of this be? I drained so much of myself every day on that stuff, trying to pay attention to compilations or let's plays while at my job. Making that stuff a treat instead of background noise to numb my ADHD has been a big deal.
Can you expand further? So scrolling made it worse ?
How did you let your mind just be? And was this with meds?
It obviously won't solve everyone's problems but drinking a 16 oz glass of water first thing in the morning has changed my life. It feels like it activates something within my metabolism that results in a drive to move forward with the day. It's way too simple to work for everyone, but getting hydrated first thing in the AM before coffee/food is a huge thing for your body.
Also another thing that Dr k has mentioned is trying to stay off your phone for at least an hour after you wake up, Additionally I've experienced putting off caffeine for an hour or two after waking up helps with energy
Same, but when I wake up I'm usually so dehydrated that getting some water seems like too much work
Andrew Huberman also suggests putting a bit of salt in your water in the morning to assist neurons to fire more effectively. Helps with focus and mitigate mental fatigue. It's been a daily practice for me ever since I heard it. Highly recommend.
@@ANameIDontKnow that doesnt make sense. if anything it should be a higher priority.
@@CarefulHowYouStep I mean, I don't know what to tell you lol, of course it's not logical. I wake up and know I should drink something to feel awake, but getting up seems like too much effort so I just fall asleep again, making it worse. When I eventually do get up I first need to autopilot a shower to be awake enough and immediately drink almost a full litre of water.
FWIW that was when I was also pretty depressed, I actually fixed my sleeping problems with something totally unrelated.
i am really suprised, but yt algorithm suggested me this video and after i watched it, it felt to me like i suddenly understood huge part of my life. the interesting thing is i went through the list of videos on exhaustion and that is the only one i found that didn't recommend physical exercise as only or main solution. i'm glad i have seen this video and channel ♥
This happened to me when yt first suggested me the channel too, and I follow every video ever since, they are all great! I've learned so much with dr K, you have no idea, I really suggest you to subscribe
Welcome!
Literally just last night I was searching the net to figure out why I get sleepy so early even though I sleep plenty and don't expend all that much energy. Always perfect timing, Dr K.
Might also want to get checked for sleep apnea. Sometimes you can "sleep" for 12 hours and get no real rest.
I genuinely believe the perfect timing is him and his team scrolling through reddit/youtube and discord feedback to see what people need the most at the moment. If it were only coincidence I'd be surprised
@@cosmictraveler731 did you even watch the video? 💀
You'll also have more energy if you work out.
@@shaysc5896 True, but I don't usually post on those things :P coincidence for me, at the least
I'm exhausted all day everyday and have significant crash in the afternoon. At this point I think I'm just dying. Not sure how long I can continue like this either. Been years feeling this way everyday.
🫂
If it feels that severe and it's been happening for a while you should really try to see a doctor. You might have something like anemia or a vitamin deficiency which can be easily fixed (hoping that's what it is for you). I have fibromyalgia which is not fixable (just lifestyle management) and makes me severely tired
Me too :(
it's been for years, morning is the best time, but all of the rest time from noon is hell for me. Like a quest for survavability
I find my blood sugar tends to crash after lunch, which was making me delirious in the afternoon for years. Maybe try skipping lunch one time and see if that's the issue, and if so there are ways to mitigate blood sugar spikes besides fasting.
I’ve been feeling the same way since I had my first panic attack 2 years ago. Since then, my life changed 100%. I’ve felt like I don’t deal real anymore, head pressure, a tingling feeling around my head like it’s floating. I have no idea even how to describe it..
Everytime I hear about these 'morning routine' things I'm just blown away that a person can be that consistent. With ADHD I wake up at different times every day, sleep at different times, can't remember what I've eaten earlier today or if at all, much less yesterday or the day before. If I feel something, I react. Simple as that. I know I'm 'supposed' to be able to be a routine based, effective 'farmer' adult at 33 but that's just never been a seemingly feasible reality for me, even with ADHD meds. What I do find helps is when I can make better decisions about what exists in the house from the store. I wish so much I could just sign up to have a week of pre-selected food show up every week and I eat it based on a schedule designed by someone else. If someone is going to expect healthy actions from me, I know for a fact I cannot be trusted to be responsible for that. At least not spontaneously after a lifetime of undiagnosed ADHD habits and a family culture I was raised in that did not and does not educate or support this lifestyle. maybe some psychedelic therapy re-wiring could help, but we still have to wait on that being available.
I simply believe that many people, especially the ADHD and other neurologically divergent population, straight-up do not have the strengths that nutritionists, therapists, etc expect when speaking about these topics. And the judgement for this is EXTREMELY harsh from basically the entire world since you carry the signs of poor nutritional education and habits on your body everywhere (obesity) with you like a giant vulnerability flag and very few people want to combat their knee-jerk reaction to someone being, looking, valuing, and thinking differently than them.
I can take care of myself fine. I cannot, absolutely cannot, keep myself healthy in the way others act is 'so easy' for them. I have been at relatively 'healthy' lifestyle points at various times where I'm losing weight, feeling good, etc, and times where I'm emotionally binging half a pizza one day and the rest in the morning. Changing things to meet others' standards of 'healthy' the project onto me would mean I have to restructure my ENTIRE life from 12am to 12am, extreme effort to track all of this every minute and if that's 'easy' for you, congrats, but this is not a reality for many. Outside of a complete reset in a month long retreat, most people simply cannot 'clean break' their functional for their life, if not longevity based, daily routine to make such a drastic turn. And almost everyone in the US sure can't afford to take even a few days off, lol.
Hey I have adhd and struggle with some of the same problems and here is my opinion on the subject. I think that sometimes when we look at other people that have healthy lifestyles that we struggle to get close to maintaining, we think of it as an all or nothing thing, in my experience especially in the last year this is just not the right approach. I think a healthy lifestyle is built on a number of healthy habits that are just that, habits. My approach has been to over time add more healthy habits to my toolbelt. The first one was wake up time. Dr K talked about this before but it really resonated with me. Something along the lines of, "if you want to fix your sleep schedule you have to get up at the same time before you can go to sleep at the same time". Anyways, the way I did that was with an app called alarmy. I have it set to only be turned off by scanning the bar code on the bottle of mouthwash in my bathroom. I also keep my phone away from my bed, so when it goes off I get out of bed, go to the bathroom to turn it off, then to the kitchen and don't go back to bed. For nearly my entire life I've been the type that during summer vacation I would end up sleeping in until 11, then noon, then 2, 3 4... Now I get up consistently around 8:15-:9:15 depending on the day. My younger self wouldn't believe me.
My point is though that yes, I do have adhd which is a significant roadblock, but using this app as well as being consistent with it over time has helped me to build it from something very difficult into a daily habit that I don't think too much of. Another habit I picked up was moving from energy drinks to green tea in the morning. I'm not perfect so yes, I'll have a week where I find myself craving one, but because I am building on top of my other healthy habits, it is a pyramid with a strong foundation, and not a structure which is prone to all come tumbling down at once.
In terms of food, I'm right there with you. I have to remind myself that although adhd does make it more difficult to have healthy habits, I can't frame it as impossible or else what is even the point? Also the expectations of your health put on you by other people are super unfair. Fuck em. Don't do it for them, do it for yourself. Not even to prove them wrong just because you're worth putting the (extra extra) effort towards self improvement.
Some people have it easier, but even for those people it won't be apparent from the outside when they are struggling. It's easy to construct an idea in our minds of "if only we had this trait that they have, it would be so much easier", but at the end of the day it just isn't a productive way to frame the whole thing to yourself.
Best of luck though I hope maybe something here will give you something to think about.
I kept hearing that ADHDers thrive o routine while it's so so hard to set up and stick to at first. And I couldn't make sense of it. Then someone said something and it clicked. The reason why routines work for ADHDers is none other than automation! And we neeeed automation because of how we regulate attention differently. We need automation to have less cognitive load on the many small and big daily tasks. So, don't think of routimes the same way neurotypicals present them. We need them in a different way and thus ADHD routines are different. I think it's mostly about optimizing our environment so that the good stuff is super easy and the bad stuff is super hard but also having several scenarios of action already thought through and prepared. What helps you in terms of actions and what helps you in terms of environment - automate that as much as possible. That' the ADHD way of routines. That's how I make sense of it.
Don't worry about "supposed" to. A person with ADHD can hold a routine generally, but a person with ADHD will have their routine very easily interrupted. The biggest challenge for a person with ADHD in holding a routine is the feeling of shame and failure that happens when that routine is interrupted. So maybe you try to follow a routine for 5 days, and you are successful, then the 6th day something comes up that makes you forget it, then the 7th day you don't do it too. On the 8th day you remember, but you feel like a worthless loser who can never do anything right and how could you be so stupid to think you could follow a routine, so since you've failed now, you give up. Or you force yourself to try again on the 8th day, and it's super hard, and the 9th day it's harder, and all the while you know you'll never keep up with it.
There's a couple of things happening here. One is that we easily get swept up in things that really captivate us. This not only pulls us from our routine, it causes us to screw up our sleep, it causes us to use up our mental stores, we essentially crash afterwards, and after a crash, that drained feeling itself can cause us to tend to feel kind of just "bad". If we already have a tendency to feel ashamed and worthless, this bad feeling will feed into that super easily. It's also going to want to push us to be inactive to recharge, and hating ourselves and telling ourselves we've failed and shouldn't bother is a pretty effective way to stop trying, and stopping trying will fill that need to be inactive, so we will get into THAT habit. The other thing is that it's just that we have a tendency to put ourselves into a sort of fight or flight mindset a lot, we do this to push us to act sometimes, using deadlines and caffeine and intense situations to control our ability to focus, because it's hard to control our focus when things aren't threatening us. When in this mental state we have a tendency towards black and white thinking, we're either passing or failing, and we will consider that we fail. Such as "know for a fact that I cannot be trusted to be responsible for healthy actions". We can easily be doomers.
When you say something like "know for a fact that I can't" it's a cop-out. It means you have decided you don't need to try anything different and you've built this as a justification. Any suggestions will be shot down out of pessimism, and you won't bother looking for solutions any more yourself. You've failed too many times already and feel bad about it, and you're afraid that trying again will just be another failure. It's not worth trying.
A lot of this comes from comparison. You think that other things that other people do are "so easy" for them. It's not fair. So why try? It might be hard for you. It might be unfair. But we can do hard and unfair things. And things that we practice get easier. Will it get as easy as someone else? Probably not.
There's more extreme language. To meet others standards of healthy they project on to me, I would have to restructure my ENTIRE life, 24 hours a day, track EVRY MINUTE. This is not really true. Most people are actually bad at being healthy. With ADHD we are really sensitive to the judgment of others, because we feel like we're failures. But for ANYONE to meet the healthy standard that you imagine is being demanded of you, it would be nearly impossible. Similarly, if you want to brush your teeth every day, does this mean you need to restructure your entire 24 day and track every minute of your life to do it? Of course not. Does this make you the paragon of perfect health? No. But is it possible to do something without being perfect and not feel like a failure?
A secret about how people without ADHD handle things: They spend less energy worrying about the things we do. If they forget to brush their teeth for a few days because they're busy, they have bad breath, and then they brush their teeth when they remember. If we forget to brush our teeth for a few days, we feel like a complete failure who can't do the basic things that everyone else finds simple, and when we go to brush our teeth, we think, "what's the point, I'm never going to keep this routine up anyways, I'm completely hopeless, and this is so painful to force myself to do, I've got to fix myself, and then I'll be able to brush my teeth, but fixing myself is impossible, I wish it was just easy like everyone else." There's this combined with the fact that we're far more likely to forget to brush our teeth for a few days, and maybe it ends up being weeks instead of days, or months. But it's not just the forgetting, its the hating ourselves that comes after. Or the new strategy we try to fix it for real this time. Or the worrying about how it's easy for other people and hard for us. For other people, it's just brushing teeth, there's no internal existential crisis.
But look at the people without ADHD, they're not all as successful, as healthy, as thin and perfect as you expect yourself to be if not for the condition. In fact, I think they're pretty much in line with most people with ADHD. An external evaluation of an individual with ADHD won't show them to be much different than the general population, there's people without ADHD who perform worse than people with ADHD, there's people without ADHD who are fatter, who are underweight, who don't get in a relationship, who are unemployed, who get fired, who don't graduate college, whatever. The person with ADHD is right on the same curve as everyone else. The biggest difference here is that I would say universally that the people with ADHD feel ashamed. They feel like regardless of where they are on the curve, the SHOULD be higher up. I'm healthy, but I SHOULD be healthier. I'm employed but I SHOULD be performing better. I graduated, but I SHOULD have been able to do it with less effort or luck. I'm not overweight, but I SHOULD be able to work out to have a 6 pack. Or I'm not morbidly obese, but I SHOULD be a healthy weight. I graduated high school but I SHOULD have been able to graduate college. I'm unemployed but I SHOULD be employed. I'm unhealthy, but I SHOULD be healthy.
It's hard with ADHD. We fall into the hole, and we panic, we feel ashamed and we start with the black and white thinking. All or nothing. Perfect or failure. Intense sensitivity to any acknowledgement of our faults. A fault means we're worthless.
If you want to start a routine, I can tell you how. Get a notebook, write down the thing you are going to do on a line. Now do the thing, and to the right of that word, put a check mark. If you want, above that check mark, you can write the date. Now, decide you're going to do that again, and the next time you think about it, do the thing and put a check mark on to the right of the first one, write the date above if you want. Put the notebook in a place where you will be doing the thing, or where you will be generally going past. Sometimes you will remember to do the thing at an awkward time. Like maybe you're remembering to do the thing just before you should leave for work. You can choose to do it anyways and be late for work, you can choose not to, both is ok. Maybe you intended to do it in the morning and you forget until you get home, you can do it then, or you can not. I like to suggest that you don't put a date on. If you have a date on it, you see how many times you failed. Instead, just farm check marks. If you see the old book sitting with an inch of dust on it don't feel ashamed that you failed to maintain yet another routine, just go do the thing and put down another check mark.
This isn't a way to maintain a routine at 100% adherence. But this is really the first thing, don't try to. If you only do the thing on 10% of the days, you did it 10% of the days. I've been working out for like 4 years on a 3 day a week schedule. The past 5 weeks I've worked out 2 times. The schedule is still the same. The thing is I am doing it with a workout partner who doesn't have ADHD, and he has missed the same number as I have. There's a lot of work that I do to not feel like a complete failure for it, while he doesn't think about it. He's actually grateful for ME for keeping HIM working out all this time. The big difference is I think I SHOULD be able to work out regularly on routine 3 times a week like a normal person, and he doesn't think about it.
So you're the target demographic for those food prepping and delivery servies that would make absolutely no sense in the past :D
If you have the money then by all means sign up to live like Winston Churchill. IMO the best meals are ones cooked for you by family, significant other, friends etc. No ammount of money can purchase the good energy and love people put in their cooking for you, and so is the feeling of serving and cooking for family and friends.
I think what you call strengths that therapists require would be better termed personal responsabilities. Just because some have it naturally or easier doesn't mean they are better as a human in any way, they may be a better adult, yes, but this is stuff you can learn, and learning isn't one straight preselected path. How you learn can look completely backwards to how I learn yet you may get the same or better results as I.
A good point and well articulated by another commenter zeidrichthorene, is to not compare your routines or lack of routines with others, these sorts of comparisons only end badly.
I have extreme ADHD as well, and reading a wall of text like that takes me forever. Keep it short. Also, my cardiologist told me ADHD meds are terrible for your heart. Just a heads up.
Can't help but notice how the typical modern work cycle in my country is in the way of doing anything healthy. Wake up and eat breakfast, just to have a glucose crash right when we're about to start working. So everyone drink a lot of coffee to make it to lunch time, which results in another glucose crash as the circadian rhythm also says we should take a nap, and that's the moment we all go back to work, so we drink more coffee to make it to the end of the day.
Delicious!
How... does drinking coffee result in a glucose crash? Coffee doesn't have glucose in it by default.
I think he means lunch. The coffee was consumed to make it to lunch time. Lunch is what gives the next glucose crash
Capitalism, my man. Millionaires sell solutions, billionaires create a problem and sell the solution, but neither want to solve the problem or they can't make money anymore.
So, yeah I think you're right in noticing this
One of the best things I did in terms of tiredness is to get up much earlier than I'm forced to. But I think this is mainly tied to emotional tiredness, because no one likes being forced to wake up for something they don't particularly want to do.
I get up about 4 hours before I have to leave for work. Gives me time to chill and be free to do what I want with a little bit of getting ready through it all. I feel very energised that way!
If I don't get up at least 2 hours before having to leave I get very dysfunctional and exhausted and miserable. Heck even with the 2 hours I feel rushed.
I think it's also about how I am physiologically: I'm a very slow starter, so even if I get to just wake up when I feel like it I'll still need 3-4 hours to get productive.
So I wouldn't call myself an early bird at all, but I kinda have to get up early if I want my productive hours to be aligned with the rest of society
same. i think this isrelated to the ayurvedic system of the Kapha or earth/water dosha. slow starting, desirable to try and wake up at 6 am or earlier. i don'tk know if i can do it but i want to
Wut
Same. I have to leave at 7:30 am so I get up at 5:30 putter around drink decaf scroll my phone read light candles talk to my man. Just the fact that I don’t have to do the whole getting ready routine all at once makes it easier to get up. Then, in bed after some magnesium glycinate, by 10:15 or so. As good as it gets to better align with civilization.
@@sunshinelivelyThis sounds like something that could really help me… thanks for enacting your wisdom.
Same I do it as well. As it's recommended to do this in Islam.
HOW DO YOU ALWAYS KNOW?! WHERE CAN I OBTAIN THIS POWER?!!
medschool and india xD
ohh wow what a great video to watch & learn from!
*saves to watch later, then goes to sleep*
I’m not sleepy but chronically fatigued mentally and physically but I have trauma history and mental health problems for sure. I think it comes from when your nervous system is off balance
I can second that experience, I'm currently finding ways to restore nervous system functionality through rest, relaxation and breath work, as well as being regularly active and eating healthy/no alcohol or caffeine, but it's still a battle
Hope you're doing well
I started buproprion (Wellbutrin) in same kind of situation and got energy immediately. And if you have also gained weight and your legs are heavy, this medicine might be accurate. Also Mysimba has buproprion and naltrexone, which helps with trauma dissociation. And helps loose gained weight.
I read a research summary about how people with ADHD seem to have a melatonin reaction lag which is why we tend to be night owls. And what this means is that I take my melatonin supplements 2-3 hours before bed and it actually does help me sleep. When I tried taking it a half hour before bed like neurotypicals do it didn't work but when I adjusted it for my neurotype it worked great
Going to try that!
im going to try that as well! just out of curiosity, how much melatonin do you take?:)
Ooh okay, I shall try this
@@Mienarrr usual dose is 3mg/night
@@Mienarrr 5mg. It comes in 2mg, 5mg and 10mg
One thing that I think is missing from the physiological is your energy use. The your body is very adaptive, the less energy you tend to use the less energy you have. Paradoxically this means that sometimes spending more energy (eg on exercise) can make you feel less tired overall.
😮 great info! I didn't know about that, thanks!
can confirm, started running 2-5km everyday, after few days i felt so energetic like if i was constantly drinking redbull or something
Also, exercise triggers the release of endorphins and adrenaline which energize you.
Exercise also causes some damage to your body that must be repaired during sleep, so you sleep more deeply after exercise. So you are less drowsy in the morning.
Exercise is a cure for so many things. Sometimes we don’t wanna admit the cure is simple.
I’m more tired in the days where i had more physical activity like working out. The advice to spend more energy to get more energy does not seem to work for me. Been trying for years.
@@iromanovsky It just sounds to me like normal fatigue. Like, yes if you work out you'll have less energy afterwards, your blood sugar dips and your ion channels in muscles are depleted.
But with regular work out you should have overall more energy than if you didn't work out regularly.
If not, it could be an actual health issue.
Your videos give me the feel of a college lecture, but are so much more interesting and I feel like I learn more actually applicable information.
I'm too exhausted to even finish this sen
Sam
Me t
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Another way I found to make myself less sleepy (not in the morning but more happening in the afternoon), if you suddenly feel tired, think back what pressure others have been projecting on you, what "necessary" things you have to do that actually are a disguise of demands from others perhaps you are simply trying to make them happy (you are a people pleaser or simply a pride hard worker), then destroy them in your head, I have done this multiple times, I feel guilty afterwards as it feels like I'm forgetting or betraying everyone around me as they have demands on me to do stuff, but it feels freeing, almost feel like I am floating and my brain suddenly become normal again instead of being sleepy
I sort of do that. I also stop and analyze if the task will benefit me as well. It usually does. For example, the couch is dirty and I'm embarrassed about guests sitting on it. After some thought, I realize that I don't like sitting on the dirty couch myself, so I do it. I'm actually glad to do it once I realize it's not people pleasing and I want the couch to be clean for me.
I got to the doctor complaining about getting really tired early on the morning and not having energy during the day... After a bunch of tests, turns out I'm almost always dehydrated and the body doesn't work properly like that, so they suggested I have two glasses of water as soon as I wake up... Problem fixed, so yeah there could be many reasons why you don't have enough energy during the day, could be diet, unhealthy sleep pattern, stress, anxiety, depression, dehydration, hormonal issues, etc, if you're concerned, go see a professional
😶
Just curious, when you were low energy and dehydrated, how often did you urinate and what color was your urine generally? Was it a clear or light yellow color? Or was it pretty dark color, smelly, cloudy, etc?
@@TominationTime toilet needs in general were one a day or one every two days (I thought it was normal) urine dark yellow, and most of the time I'd struggle with getting any appetite at all, I just ate because I knew I had to and felt heavy and a lot of nausea afterwards (that appetite thing is what led doctors to believe maybe I was dehydrated or malnourished and checked those two things first)
So that is a metabolism problem like the video explain
@@aquiles846 the basic root was that I forget about my basic needs, but I don't really know if forgetting to drink water would affect the metabolism
I was literally so happy because I was researching about this and you making a video about this actually made me so reliefed.
Reliefed would mean you feel like a carved picture. I think you mean relieved.
@@thegreenxeno9430 i think he meant received
@@deadflesh1000 I think he meant reprieved for sure
@@hugoeriksson983 clearly you are wrong, he meant to say retrieved as in he was taken back after being kidnapped
@@wojciechuy2137 Nah i'm sure he was talking about received
One thing that solidified me as a "night owl" since my teens is that I tend to be unable to do interesting (subjectively speaking) stuff otherwise.
Wake up, eat, work, eat, work, exercise (actually moved it to be intersperced throughout the day recently, but you get the point), eat... and then you get like an hour left to LIVE. So if I want to learn a new skill or just be potato while conscious for a while - tough luck... I guess, I could move personal time to the front if I woke up at 5-6 AM, but there I have a psychological block, where if I really dig into it - it's really hard to let go and go be "productive" member of society :(
It's hard for me to make life changes without knowing why I'm doing it. I've been doing a great job with my sleep schedule lately, and all this info is starting to finally all make sense.
This is absolutely my favorite video on this channel so far, and I've become so much happier in the past year from watching and applying the lessons learned here
I'm tried in so many ways. My emotions are driving me to be this. It's not that emotions make you tired which they do but that emotions can lead you to do things that make you even more tired. This is one of the reasons people eat terribly. I know because I do it. It's also can lead you to not getting enough sleep. I have not been getting good sleep on regular basis for a while now. My diet has been trash. This has been fueled by my anxiety and depression. This can be vicious cycle. I'm sorry if I'm bringing anyone down. I feel hopeless right now. So much is bubbling up to the top.
Dr K please do a video about food as a drug... emotional eating. This is much needed...thanks.
Wow. This explains how my sleep apnea rolls into my caffeine consumption, into loss of appetite, into stuffing myself at dinner and before bed late at night.
Definitely have some changes that need to be made
I was physcically exhausted all the time. Then I dialed in my diet and I felt far less tired. Then I found a sense of purpose and I felt even less tired.
how did you find your sense of purpose?
@@melliegotsoul it is incredibly hard to explain, but it boils down to making sure those around me remember me positively. Living each day as if this is the last time I’ll see someone.
@@Mr.Plant1994how did you shift your mind to live like this?
@@nikkir5115 just try to be more conscious and in the moment.
Also talk to your doctor and get routine blood work done! I did mine and was just slightly low in vitamin B12. After adding a B12 supplement to my diet it helped my daily energy maintenance tremendously.
I still struggle with being a light sleeper and adhd issues, but it’s really been a game changer!
I would love for you to talk about this from a female body perspective metabolically speaking as well as how cigarrette or other addictions mess with your energy
Contracting covid back in 2020 left me chronically tired. I miss my old self so so much. 😢 I can barely function as it is, and no doctor I've talked to know how to help me.
Felt
Pretty sure COVID did that to me also. I didn't get it bad. Just a couple days in bed, coughing. But ever since, just lost my get up and go.
I love how you break down a topic to a tee to be able to make a point without any misconceptions
One thing. Drink enough water. This is by far the most common cause and the most undertalked.
Dr. K, I'm not even sure how I stumbled across your channel but have been binge watching ever since. Your videos provide new perspectives and find the way you explain things to be very comforting and informative during difficult times. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and and what you are providing for the community. You are a blessing. ❤
Ain’t no way you just uploaded this when I was just googling this yesterday… it’s my last week of school and I can’t seem to find the energy to finish, Thank You!
Well, it's past midnight _again_ and here I am watching RUclips. This surely explains part of it.
Exhaustion for me usually exists in the below forms (pattern):
1) Not having a firm foundation of living or a place to call home (between living situations for one reason or another, IE Job change, roommate issues, etc.).
2) Pending resolved feuds. (Those friends you shouldn’t have been friends with and resulted in lawsuits to get free. IE do not entangle assets). Drain on subconscious mental energy until it ends.
3) Sick or a physical ailment
4) Sleeping poorly and neck pain due to traveling and/or terrible pillows and terrible beds. 😂
5) Loneliness or depression (this happens less, but it can happen from working remotely and not having enough social outlet after work to balance the isolation.)
6) Overworking (because I have a full-time day job + own a startup company).
I push through the exhaustion due to my work ethic, but damn I’m tired. I’m working on it!
Damn that does also sound extreme and abnormal. Having to deal with ex friends who you can't get away from without a lawsuit would be draining for anyone, as well as not having a stable living situation.
I hope you get to a more stable place soon and are able to get some rest.
The first point is big. I do have a home, but I share my space with two other people and this takes away all potential for relaxation in my case. Having space for oneself is a very underrated need in my opinion.
I have 1, 3 and 5, sometimes some or all at the same time._
Sounds like you're the problem.
@@ekjdjfjfjf 1. And it took a year and a half to resolve.
Omg this is so comprehensive thank you! I'll have to rewatch multiple times tho, cus exhaustion and memory/concentration issues. And thank you for the timestamps - really necessary in a video like this one.
Please, please would you consider doing a video on CFS? 🙏
Undiagnosed ME/CFS. Now diagnosed! Improvement from stoping the push and crash cycle.
What are your symptoms, and how did you get diagnosed? Is it related to Epstein Barr? I've felt exhausted for years, but tested negative for sleep apnea. I'm at a loss.
@@dedmor1 im curious too
Being cognizant of your own circadian rhythm (and keeping it constant) and doing your most important work at peak energy times is extremely helpful.
Awesome video. I started intermittent fasting a month ago and couldn't explain why I felt less tired to people who asked. General understanding is food=energy. It's much more than that.
Oh wow
Amazing summary on big chunk of information, funny and energetic speech
Where the hell was healthy gamer all my life??
What an excellent video again, the way you explain these things is so good.
I have been a night owl since I was a teen, it initially started out by wanting to procrastinate going to school because I hated it, but it became a way of life as that I enjoy the night time so much when it's quiet, when people and the sun don't suck out your energy, it's where I am the most productive. There's also this phenomenon that the day does not have enough hours for me, so my rhythm often keeps turning ahead. If the day had 26h instead of 24h it would be a lot easier for me to keep a rhythm.
I had no big problem functioning during the day during uni times, but I get tired a lot quicker during the day and it's not what I prefer. Also, getting up early is something I really dislike. I don't feel great when I get up anywhere during the first 12 hours of a day, I feel a lot better when I get up at early to mid afternoon. So what I like the most is going to bed before the sun comes up and waking up at some point after noon.
I had this same thing very badly through my 20s and 30s. My cycles went 26-28 hours, so getting up at the same time every day was impossible. Being a night owl you can at least get a 2nd or 3rd shift job.
0:00 Intro/ what is tiredness/ types of tiredness
1:32 physiology of tiredness
3:34 what to do/approach to tiredness
6:06 differential diagnosis of tiredness
6:10 sleep apnea
7:40 circadian rhythm disorders
10:12 symptoms and solutions for sleep apnea
11:35 causes and solutions for circadian rhythm disorders
19:05 metabolism
19:10 caffeine, ATP and adenosine
22:14 glucose balance
24:49 intermittent fasting
26:40 inflammation (gluten, processed food, etc..)
29:32 gut bacteria (why we have inflammation)
30:55 exercise (impact on insulin metabolism and food cravings)
31:40 insulin/what to do if we're tired
31:45 1. complex carbohydrates
32:29 2. Fruits and vegies and correlation with hunger
34:37 integration of topics
36:34 3 reasons why we have afternoon crashes
37:40 what to do to not to get an afternoon crash
38:05 summary
I’m always tired and have been my whole life. A few days ago I realized that I’m autistic. It all made so much sense. I’m spending so much energy every day just trying to deal with sensory inputs and communicating that it takes me out.
Reading these comments I didn't know this phenomenon was so common I'm big on self improvement so I like to watch educational content like this to help keep myself informed on what im doing on a daily basis but yall got it bad for real good luck to all of you
Thank you Dr.K your doing great work putting information out that is hard to find elsewhere great content
I know I’m a exception from the rule here but I work overnight at a hospital and would love to see something similar to this with a focus on night shift workers
Known carcinogen, work hazard and shown in epidemiological studies repeatedly to shorten lifespan.
This is the best thing I've ever listened to so far in my life. And that's not the first time I've said this listening to Dr. K.
Incredible, I'd literally just been worried that I've somehow developed a gluten allergy but the inflammation response to my recently exceptionally poor eating habits makes so much more sense
If you get whole wheat berries (or other grains) and mill them fresh, then make bread from scratch (how people did it for thousands of years) then it's much healthier for your system and probably won't have a problem with gluten. The modern way flour is processed and made into bread is a big part of many health problems.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to get into nutrition. Food and sleep are some of the oldest medicines we know, but we know so very little about them from a scientific standpoint for something so intimate in our lives. It's utterly bizarre.
If anything, all of this has really illustrated the importance of mindfulness and the acknowledgement that our bodies are not simply braincases with legs. They are animal and animals have needs. Choosing the be mindful of that, exploring what works, and acting accordingly can literally be life changing. The perspective and commitment required is a small price to pay, by comparison.
I've watched this at least 3 times and then I go off coffee and start working out every other day and I sleep amazingly well for like 3 weeks then I forget and have to watch it again.
I think this video explained my tiredness way better then anything I’ve ever heard. Now I’ve gotta figure out how to tackle it and get on track. Thank you for this Dr. K
When I wake up the first thing I wanna do is go back to sleep
One thing I’ve noticed, when I wake up after 5 hours of sleep let’s say (end of sleep cycle) yeah I’ll wake up feeling energized, but as the day progresses, I’ll feel physically tired. Waking up groggy (sleeping 8 hours for example) you’ll feel energized as the day continues
all this seems so overwhelming to consider. I'm in college right now (late bloomer ~34 years) also juggling with a full time job and i barely have time to exist between these 2. I always feel defeated and exhausted + recent breakup, and I feel like crying whenever I stop to think for a minute. I don't know what to do, I feel stuck and I live in constant fear that it will all crumble down.
I feel you, similar boat here. I hope you’re feeling better since you left this comment but just in case you’re not-take a deep breath. You got this, and even on days when you don’t got this that’s okay too. You’re going to be okay. 💚
If you want, you can write down all this stuff as a checklist, right. Heck, if you’re too tired to do that I’ll reply with the list so you can just copy and paste. And then just start with whichever one seems most interesting or has the most potential for benefit and start with a 30 day trial. One thing at a time. One foot in front of the other.
it may be rough now but your building twards a better future! its never easy to get the things we want in life but they are worth it :) you can pull through just keep up the hard work! also its ok to have bad days and cry or have the occasional meltdown, it helps get the stress buildup out of our system so dont feel like your weak for that, your already doing alot! something i heard that made me feel a little better was "your doing the best you possibly can at any moment" some days better than others but your still trying no matter what
I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (3-4AM bedtime), Hypersomnia (triggers: day bef period starts, day aft period ends, around ovulation, getting allergy shot, allergy overload, needing chiropractor adjustment real bad, getting chiro adjustment, massage, eating…especially carbs, stress…etc), and sleep apnea…! I also have Fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, asthma, food allergies, environmental allergies, moderate scoliosis, mild arthritis, depression, anxiety, Somatization disorder, mild cognitive disorder, Hypertension, prediabetes….
I’m tired ALL the time…! My friends don’t even comment anymore because they’re used to me just going up and down like a rollercoaster…so when I’m down and kind of out of it they notice but done say anything. At times I’ve had period where 7 alarm clocks couldn’t wake me…! I regularly wake up to an alarm (might take 45 mins) and then call back asleep and wake up 2 hours later (most days I don’t set alarms…when I do set alarms…it’s no guarantee that I will actually wake up for it).
My mother was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Some of my maternal aunts have Lupus, MS, Fibromyalgia, etc…
Before I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia I had two Brain MRIs because several Drs thought I had MS…
Thursday…I thought I would wake up around noon like I did the day bef…I didn’t wake up until almost 2pm…and then the next thing I knew it was 530pm…and then my period started at 11pm…Hypersomnia…
Also…I tend to get one side of my face feeling hot and looking red (can be up to 4 degrees difference between my cheeks) when I get Hypersomnia…and I found out recently that may be Histamine Dumping….
My face will especially do the one sided redness if the Hypersomnia is being trigger by hormones rising or falling.
If I’m woken up too soon I have real bad sleep inertia…it can lay HOURS…or all day…
Caffeine makes me sleepy…then keeps me up HOURS later. My DNA said I’m a slow caffeine metabolizer…
I also have a VERY slow metabolism…🎉I can’t lose weight…I get food comas a lot…
Oh…and I have ADHD…
Too tired to watch, too adhd to not keep scrolling 😂
Lmao same here 😄
Every night😂
Wow, 100% relate. was kindof hoping for a quick summary comment.
The content in this video is so important to learn. As a college student, my peers (and I) have been struggling with exhaustion, and have been using unhealthy coping mechanisms or just not accounting for potential issues (napping in the day without accounting for circadian rhythm, staying up at night staring at blue light just before going to bed, etc).
In my experience, I have been going back-to-back with my therapist and psychiatrist on how to fix my sleep schedule, because over half of the week every week, I had been exhausted throughout the whole day. While taking melatonin an hour before bed and using blue light glasses helps mediate my sleep schedule, the worst issue I had was being able to get out of bed in the morning.
I've learned that I should expect to always be groggy right when I get up, but that it's better to be groggy and get up than be groggy and having hit the snooze button several times, or have more hours lost of my day.
In addition to this, I realized ways I could mediate morning grogginess through this video (wait to eat to avoid food comas and drink caffeine). I also thought it was interesting that Dr. K brought up how metabolism affects exhaustion because my metabolic biochemistry professor is adamant on how processed foods (he calls it "garbage") have not been coevolving with us like the foods that our ancestors have eaten.
Overall, I appreciate that this video provides a lot of ideas that you can build on to tackle exhaustion.
I'm watching this while very tired in the office today and Guru K. at 4:51 came like a jumpscare.
You're hands down my favorite creator💚
So grateful this channel exists 💓 thank you !
So many layers to tiredness and fatigue which aren’t the same things. We can be physically tired and/or fatigued, mentally tired and/or fatigued, emotionally tired and/or fatigued, as well as cellularly tired and/or fatigued.
I’ve been learning this for 10 years since I was poisoned by indoor molds then got another tick bite that gave me a handful of infections that never go away.
So many layers to this and many layers to pain.
I work at 10am and I wake at 5am. I sleep like shit pretty much every night. I’m usually in bed by 10/11pm. Sometimes I can fall asleep right away, sometimes I’m awake for hours. Usually I wake multiple times during the night. Also have sleep apnea and use a cpap that I often rip off my face in my sleep.
Caffeine is my best friend lol. Without it I cannot function.
I pay close attention to diet and lifestyle choices and make changes as necessary to keep my functioning as well as possible.
Wish I could fix my sleep tho. Have tried melatonin and a couple natural & prescription sleep meds over the years but nothing works longer than a week or two.
My sleep has been messed up pretty much my whole life. Drs have been no help with my sleep issues except to prescribe a cpap. So I just deal with it and try the best I can to figure things out for myself.
Good advice. This will actually help people that are already so annoyed and tired of the "gotta go to the gym" crowd.
If you can improve your health. You are helping society.
I was chronically exhausted for the past 6 months. Finally went to a doctor for bathroom issues last week and found out I have Crohn’s. Ever since I’m on meds I’ve been waking up refreshed.
Go get checked at the doctor’s if you can afford it! You really never know
It's amazing that with all the doctors and specialists I've seen, especially for sleep, including going to a sleep clinic to get studies done, and a sleep counselor...I never learned any of this...wtf is wrong with the medical community? Why do I have to find this shit out on youtube for free instead of at any of those appointments they are billing my insurance so much money for?
Very interesting about the religious connection to circadian rhythm at 5am. I only needed to wake up at 5am to take a friend to work for a week, and I’d come back home and sleep right after. EVERY time, I would have sleep paralysis. It happens any other time a similar thing happens, where I wake up at 5am, stay up for a while, then go back to sleep.
Holy crap! Great videos. ✨🤗my daughter sent me your videos channel and the circadian rhythm makes soooo much sense why im waking up in the middle of the night now journaling, doing my prayers and feel totally creative.. Then i go back to sleep and have my second sleep for a couple hours . That one is a deep sleep.. I was like wth is going on?? Im trying to figure out my soul crushing chronic fatigue that has accompanied my fibromyalgia.. Im always researching and trying to figure out ways to alleviate.. Adp was another route i was looking at as well.
Thanks! For your awesome info... :)
Same for me. I feel like I’m general our circadian rhythms aren’t meant for the modern day or job…
Love that you are totally “see what works for your body” about most things in this video. You seem to treat calories differently though. Not everyone can handle 1800 calories a day even in optimal circumstances. I suggest listening to the podcast Maintenance Phase and their calorie episode as they have done a lot of research and some of their content aligns with yours and some of it does not.
man, i just love dr k man....he keepsdropping gems on us everytime 🔥
It doesn't matter how much sleep I get, I can execute everything perfectly, wake up in the morning, and be tired all day, then when it's time to sleep I'm not tired any more. When or how much I sleep doesn't make a difference, I'm just always alert at night and sleepy in the day.
Same
Me too! I’ll be nodding out at work but once I get home I’m energized and cannot fall asleep when it’s time to.
Omg! Where have you been all my life ! ?
This is sooo helpful! Thank you for all your work!!
I used to say to my friends all the time when they asked how I was "I'm tired" and it became a joke of "when was the last time you weren't tired?" Or somebody would ask me how I was and somebody else in the group would reply "Oh I know I know! Tired!"
Now I'm realizing I wasn't actually tired like sleepy tired, I was just tired of existing.....
Sleep Apnea is severe. I got diagnosed a year ago and it's life-changing. I went from constantly groggy in the morning, to sleeping all day and just tired in general to wake up refreshed and with energy in my mornings and afternoons.
No matter what I do I'm always exhausted. I've tried all the tips. Think I've got insomnia because it takes me hours to fall asleep
Thank you for this video! It was extremely informative and helpful.
I just started getting treated for sleep apnea this year. It was bad, I was having like 120 episodes an HOUR. The mask is hard to get accustomed to but since getting treatment, my headaches and acid reflux issues went away completely.
But unfortunately I still have circadian issues. Even if I'm responsible and go to bed, I'll stay awake for hours before I actually fall asleep.
why would you get headaches? do you ever get them during the day or just when sleeping?
@@Davidgopaint from not being able to breath and the constant adreniline rushes from sleep apnea most likley
Have you ever awakened in paralysis and not been physically able to take a breath, would that be something that would occur with apnea?
I cannot believe some people have to live with this kind of burden, only because I seemingly cannot run out of energy, though i will feel physically tired if I skip the gym for a few days. I wish all of you luck and a prosperous healthy and energetic life❤
Lucky! Would kill to be you. Go out and live for the rest if us 😂😂
I lift weights, hard, five days a week, do endurance cardio twice, eat high protein, high fiber, low added sugar, and hydrate well. It took years to figure out, but my physical energy levels are better than they’ve ever been. Grad school still makes me feel tired, though. It’s the weirdest thing.
Thank you for this awsome content. I originally though this was exclusively for gamers (which I am not), but the advise here is great for everyone. I am also introducing my kids to all your content. Really well-informed and thoughtful. Your content is also easy to digest. You and Andrew Huberman are superheroes.
This is absolutely jam packed with great information. Thank you so much!
This talk should be taught in schools! Amazing thank you!
Best Man on Earth ! probs from Vienna !
Amazing, just amazing video. 💙💙
I thank God for this channel, honestly thank you Dr.K.
Incredible video! You are an amazing teacher
thank you sir you're saving lives!!
so much great information! my plan for 2024 is to figure out how to get more energy and this video gave me many ideas to research and try out.
Circadian rhythm disorder really messed me up during school. My body's internal clock had its optimal sleep hour set to 4am, then shifted even further during my last year of high school. I had to miss so much school because I would go days with only 2 hours of sleep per night maximum. I wish there were more resources available to help me during that time in my life. Nobody took me seriously and told me I was just lazy.
The quality of your videos, especially this one is nothing short of exceptional. I am so glad i can learn so much and finally trust somebody. Thank you for everything, i am deeply thankful for your work.
This guy needs to design a class called how to maximize your happiness and it needs to be taught in every public school.
Nobel Prize worthy for sure.
YES. @dr. k !!! Please make this happen for all the young kids
U are pretty good at pointing out the exact problems u run i too when going to a doctor with vague problems. Very enlightening stuff. Thx
4:50 well that surprised me out of my tiredness
Adenosine to ATP
Feel more energy without having more energy
Blocking energy signals
Suppressing fatigue
So smart. To not be tired eat modestly and sleep well. However you need to be optimistic and desire to take interest in your tasks. There's always something to gain in overcoming obstacles. Knowledge, discipline... etc. 💪
Interesting about gluten. I too felt better energy and moodwise avoiding gluten. I also shed 30 lbs in 4 weeks without exercise when I went gluten-free as a trial. But I was always hungry and miserable because of it.
Jumpscare warning at 4:50
that scared the shit outta me wth dr k
yeah tf was that
@@NotMrWhy it was santa 🎅, must've came early.
Lmao, the fact that we are all so anxious and jumpy 🤌😂
It's my current job making me so tired/exhausted. Nearly all of my colleagues including me, are overworked.
Awesome timing! When there's winter I'm exhausted and cannot get up easily in the morning.
I supplement vitamin D3, yet it seems to no avail 😬
My university timetable doesn't help, either. I'll watch this video as soon as my toxicology lecture ends in ~3 hours 😭
Edit: I've listed to the video. I think I'll come back to IF and low carbohydrate diet - it's helped me last year. However it was pretty difficult to keep the carbs low in the long run 😬
Have you ever heard of seasonal affective disorder? It may be worth your while to read about that. I have the same problem
I noticed that the last 1-2 months that the day has gotten much smaller, I have trouble waking up even though I sleep 7/8 hours a day and lazy, tired or lethargic almost every day. During the summer it was the opposite, I got the same amount of sleep and did pretty much the same activities but felt fine.
@@shadowfox933 Yeah, I've heard about this. But I doubt it's that.