Why do i doze off easily

Some sleep disorders like narcolepsy and chronic insomnia can run in families, but even if you have a family connection, that does not mean you have to suffer with daytime sleepiness. There are many treatments that can help, from antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications to pain relievers that can ease underlying issues affecting the quality of sleep. The first step in understanding why you are experiencing daytime sleepiness is to see a sleep specialist who can pinpoint potential causes of a disorder; the specialist may order blood work and daytime or nighttime sleep testing.

If you feel like you are too sleepy during the day, and it is impacting your quality of life, consider making an appointment and discussing your options for better sleep. Take the Sleep Apnea Risk Assessment. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Inova Home Subscribe by Email.

Harvey, A. Treating insomnia improves mood state, sleep, and functioning in bipolar disorder: a pilot randomized controlled trial. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 83 3 , — MedlinePlus [Internet].

Medical Encyclopedia [Internet]. Atlanta GA : A. Updated June 2, Retrieved June 23, Hvolby A. Associations of sleep disturbance with ADHD: implications for treatment. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, 7 1 , 1— Devnani, P. Autism and sleep disorders. Journal of pediatric neurosciences, 10 4 , — Autism Spectrum Disorder. Learn more about Physical Health and Sleep. By Danielle Pacheco October 8, By Danielle Pacheco October 1, By Jay Summer October 1, By Jay Summer September 30, By Danielle Pacheco September 17, By Danielle Pacheco September 10, By Tom Ryan July 29, Cataplexy By Rob Newsom August 28, Load More Articles.

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These include peer-reviewed journals, government reports, academic and medical associations, and interviews with credentialed medical experts and practitioners. All scientific data and information must be backed up by at least one reputable source. Each guide and article includes a comprehensive bibliography with full citations and links to the original sources Some guides and articles feature links to other relevant Sleep Foundation pages.

These internal links are intended to improve ease of navigation across the site, and are never used as original sources for scientific data or information. A member of our medical expert team provides a final review of the content and sources cited for every guide, article, and product review concerning medical- and health-related topics. Different aspects of your lifestyle can have a big impact on your EDS and energy levels.

Expect your healthcare provider to ask about:. Food is where most of your energy comes from. You may also be consuming things that have a direct negative effect on how tired or fatigued you are. Diet-related causes of excessive sleepiness include:.

The most common cause of feeling too sleepy or drowsy during the daytime might be the most obvious: You're simply not getting enough sleep, and improving your sleep habits may help.

Poor sleep habits include:. Any one of these things may leave you too sleepy the next day. Making better choices about your pre-sleep routines and sleep environment may help improve your sleep duration and quality. If adopting better habits doesn't improve your sleep quality, talk to your healthcare provider about what could be making you tired. Being sedentary —not getting much physical activity—makes you more likely to have restless, poor-quality sleep that's interrupted by snoring and pauses in breathing, according to research.

Several reasons have been proposed for this, including:. Research also suggests that getting more physical activity can help you improve your sleep quality and feel less tired and sluggish.

Exercising too much or overexerting yourself in other ways can leave your body too depleted to recover overnight, leaving you feeling tired, unmotivated, and possibly even dealing with insomnia.

Other symptoms that can go along with overexertion include:. Cutting back on exercise or giving yourself a week or two off to rest and recover may eliminate your EDS and sleep problems. Psychological stress can have a big impact on how much and how well you sleep, and, compounding the problem, lack of sleep can make you feel more stressed. According to a survey by the American Psychological Association:. Research published in found that getting a good night's sleep helped people maintain positive emotions in the face of a stressful event and allowed them to get more joy from positive experiences.

Lowering your stress levels or learning how to better manage your stress may help you reduce your daytime sleepiness. If you're unable to do this on your own, bring it up with your healthcare provider. You may benefit from talking to a therapist.

Sleepiness, fatigue, and feeling weak are among the most common symptoms of many medical conditions. Common causes of excessive daytime sleepiness include:. Some of these illnesses drain your body's resources, while others may impair the cellular processes of energy creation. Some may impair your sleep, either directly or as a consequence of their symptoms—or even treatments. In anemia , you have low levels of red blood cells, which are responsible for carrying oxygen to all of the organs in your body.

Common symptoms include:. The most common type of anemia comes from iron deficiency, but there are many other causes. It may be caused by an inadequate diet, pregnancy, blood loss, some inherited blood disorders, or chronic illnesses that impact red blood cell creation such as lupus or advanced kidney disease. Your healthcare provider can diagnose most forms of anemia through blood tests.

Let them know if you're on a restrictive diet, pregnant, or have a family history of anemia or conditions that may cause it. Treatments include nutritional supplements, dietary changes, or in more serious cases, intravenous iron infusion or red blood cell transfusion. In autoimmune diseases , your immune system mistakenly identifies normal parts of your body as dangerous pathogens viruses, bacteria, or fungi and launches an attack against them, causing tissue damage and chronic inflammation.

Common autoimmune diseases include:. Multiple aspects of autoimmunity and inflammation are believed to contribute to fatigue, including problems with oxygen and nutrient supply, metabolism, and central nervous system impairments. Specific diseases may also contribute to sleepiness because of what systems they disrupt. Researchers also suspect that dysregulation of chemicals involved in inflammation, called cytokines , may contribute to fatigue.

Cytokines play a role in regulating sleep, mood, and cognitive processes. If your healthcare provider suspects you have an autoimmune disease, expect to receive blood tests and possibly imaging studies as well. Treatment for most autoimmune diseases includes immunosuppressant medications and other drugs to manage symptoms.

More than 80 types of autoimmune diseases have been identified. The cause of autoimmunity isn't yet understood and these illnesses can be managed but not cured. Extreme fatigue that isn't relieved by rest is often an early sign of cancer. Many factors can contribute to the fatigue and weakness of cancer, including:. Cancer treatments can also cause fatigue, including:. Your medical team should be able to help you combat fatigue, so be sure to bring it up.

It's characterized by worsened fatigue and other symptoms in response to even small amounts of exertion called post-exertional malaise. It can lead to significant impairment and disruption of your life. Some subgroups of people with this disease may have developed it in response to infection, a physical response to chronic stress, or autoimmunity. Even then, this condition is difficult to diagnose, so expect a long process.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD causes wheezing, shortness of breath, and excess mucus in the airways, all of which make it hard to breathe. The disease gets worse over time and is especially common in current or past smokers. The assumption has long been that difficulty breathing led to fatigue, but some research indicates it's more complicated than that and calls for more investigation into other possible causes. Once those are understood, it should become easier to manage COPD-related fatigue.

For now, the primary focus is on breathing exercises and establishing healthy habits. Depression , also called clinical depression or major depressive disorder, is more than just feeling sad: It's a mood disorder that makes you have ongoing feelings of sadness and loss of interest in activities. Beyond that, it causes physical symptoms, including EDS and fatigue. In some people, depression-related fatigue may be due to insomnia or other sleep disturbances.

Some researchers have even suggested that fatigue, insomnia, and concentration problems should be considered warning signs of depression. If you believe you may be depressed, it's important to talk to your healthcare provider and get proper treatment.

Fatigue is extremely common in people with diabetes , enough so that in some researchers made a case for a newly defined condition called "diabetes fatigue syndrome. Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain condition involving a dysregulated central nervous system that amplifies negative sensations hyperalgesia and turns harmless sensations into pain allodynia. Fatigue and EDS are also major symptoms of fibromyalgia. The suspected causes of fatigue in fibromyalgia include:.

If you have fatigue that's new and constant, it may be an early warning sign of heart failure or, less often, coronary artery disease. These conditions limit the amount of oxygen-rich blood that gets to your muscles or to the heart itself. To keep the heart and brain functioning, your body sends less blood to less important areas, such as your limbs. That leaves them with oxygen deprivation, saps your energy, and leaves you feeling fatigued and weak.

Other symptoms of heart failure, which involves a weak heart muscle, include:. Treatments for heart failure typically include medications such beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, diuretics, implanted devices such as a defibrillator, valve replacement, or heart transplant surgery.

Coronary artery disease involves plaques in your arteries. Common symptoms are the same as those for heart failure but accompanied by chest pain or discomfort.

Common treatments include statin and beta-blocker drugs, angioplasty, and sometimes coronary artery bypass surgery. In case of a heart attack , it's important to get emergency medical help right away. You should call if you or someone else has a sudden onset of any of these symptoms:.

Fatigue frequently accompanies infectious illnesses such as:. Your fatigue may be due to an illness like this if you also have:. Typically fatigue from infections clears up with the illness, which, depending on the source and severity, may be treated by antibiotics, antiviral medications, symptom management, or simply time and rest.

In some cases, though, fatigue lingers well after the illness itself is gone. More than half of people who've been hospitalized with COVID still have fatigue several weeks after being discharged.

The Epstein-Barr virus EBV , which causes mono, is known to linger or reactivate later and cause fatigue, among other symptoms. Treatment for post-viral fatigue depends on the virus involved, the full range of symptoms, and what damage may have been left behind by the original illness.

Common treatments are anti-viral medications and immunotherapy. The transition to menopause , starting with perimenopause and continuing into the early post-menopausal stage, is associated with fatigue along with:. The fatigue of menopause may be related to sleep disruptions caused by hot flashes and night sweats.

Other causes could be related to hormonal fluctuations, aging, and stresses associated with that time of life. Some research points to a complex relationship between menopausal fatigue and stress. While menopause isn't a disease that needs to be treated, you do have options for managing symptoms and making yourself more comfortable, including:.

When you're pregnant, a lot of extra demands are placed on your body, and that can lead to fatigue. It's most common and typically most severe in the first and third trimesters, but some people are exhausted throughout their pregnancies. Causes of pregnancy-related fatigue include:. Some research indicates that resistance-training exercise may help alleviate pregnancy fatigue.

Other ways to cope with it include:. If your fatigue suddenly increases at any point during your pregnancy, it could be a sign that something is wrong, such as depression, iron-deficiency anemia, or gestational diabetes. Call your healthcare provider right away if your fatigue is accompanied by:.

An imbalance of your thyroid hormones can cause EDS, and that's true whether your levels are high hyperthyroidism or low hypothyroidism. Your thyroid gland, which sits at the front of your neck, produces several hormones that regulate your metabolism and have a major effect on your health.

In hyperthyroidism , all the processes in your body are sped up. This causes anxiety, a racing heart, shaking hands, unintended weight loss, and sleep problems. It can also lead to excessive sweating, which can disrupt your sleep.

These sleep issues can leave you tired during the day. Early in hyperthyroidism, you may have a lot of energy.

It's not sustainable, though, and as the disease goes on, your body can become depleted and leave you fatigued. Treatments for hyperthyroidism include:. Surgery and iodine treatments typically drop your thyroid hormone levels to low levels, meaning you'll then need to take synthetic hormones to maintain a healthy level.

In hypothyroidism , all the body's processes are slowed down, and that slowdown itself causes fatigue. Other symptoms include:. Hypothyroidism is treated with synthetic thyroid hormones. Two autoimmune diseases can strike the thyroid gland: Graves' disease , which is a type of hyperthyroidism, and Hashimoto's disease , which is a type of hypothyroidism.

The autoimmune and inflammatory aspects of these conditions can cause additional fatigue. Excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue are the primary symptoms of sleep disorders, which include:.

If your healthcare provider suspects you have a sleep disorder, they may ask you to keep a log of how long and how well you sleep or send you for a sleep study polysomnography. Many sleep disorders can be successfully treated once they're identified. Various circadian rhythm disorders can leave you feeling too sleepy during the day. The circadian rhythm is your body's natural clock and it helps coordinate your activities based on when it's light and dark in your environment.

If your internal timing is misaligned, you may find yourself with excessive daytime sleepiness. Six common circadian rhythm disorders are:. Effective treatments for circadian rhythm disorders include light therapy, melatonin, sedatives or stimulant medications, and behavioral changes that improve your sleep habits.

Probably the best-known sleep disorder, insomnia can make it hard for you to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get quality sleep.

Just about everyone has an occasional bout of insomnia, but for some, it's a chronic problem that leaves them with EDS and fatigue. Insomnia can be caused by a combination of genetics; environment; working at odd hours or keeping an unusual sleep schedule; use of stimulants caffeine, nicotine , depressants alcohol , or illegal drugs; being sedentary; high stress levels; and getting too much light exposure such as from screens close to bedtime.

Treatments for insomnia include:. Although quite rare, Kleine-Levin syndrome is a condition that may affect young adults, especially men, and can cause recurrent episodes of excessive sleepiness. These episodes can last for days, weeks, or even months at a time, and the tiredness can be incapacitating.