I feel tired

One study found that at any time in the UK 1 in 5 people feel very tired. That’s a lot of people!

Some causes of tiredness can be:  

• Diet: If you aren’t eating enough food, or the food you’re eating isn’t rich in nutrients this can make you feel tired. If you eat a lot of sugar this can cause your blood sugar to rise and then fall- leaving you feeling exhausted.
• Clocks changing: You might find it difficult when the mornings and evenings get darker. This is a common reason for people feeling tired throughout the winter.
• Not getting enough sleep: You may find it hard to sleep at night. Keep clicking- there’s more information on this later!
• Medical reasons: If you are feeling tired all the time and can’t find a reason for this, you may want to book an appointment with your doctor. There are a number of medical conditions that can cause tiredness.

Aaaah, lovely, peaceful sleep! All you want is to sleep through the night and get up feeling wide awake, right!?

For so many of us, that just doesn’t happen. Scroll down to learn a bit more about how you can get better sleep.

All of this information has been drawn together with the help of young people.

These pages aim to help you to:

• Understand more about the different things that affect sleep,
• Learn what is needed for a good night’s sleep
•  Understand how this can be achieved.

Good question! There are lots of things that can make it more difficult to fall asleep. Some of these things could be:

• Your bedroom: Is your room messy? Too noisy or bright? Too hot or cold? Is your bed uncomfortable? All these things can make it much harder to drift off to sleep.
• Your activity levels: Are you running marathons before bed? Juggling fire? Jumping out of aeroplanes? No, but seriously…. what you do before bed can really make a difference to whether you can switch off. 
• Your routine: Do you go to bed a different time depending on whether it’s a school night or the weekend? Do you spend hours scrolling on your phone while you’re in bed? It may be difficult to resist some of these things, but they are almost definitely impacting your sleep.

Who's to say what’s normal, what does that even mean?! But really, it’s very common to wake up during the night. Often, we don’t even notice this, and it is part of what is called our sleep cycle.

Lot’s of people also struggle with falling asleep and staying asleep, but this doesn’t mean you have to put up with it. Especially if it’s affecting your day-to-day life.

Scroll down to read Harry’s story.

I feel like I have always had trouble sleeping. At first, I thought it was just the way I am and that there’s no way of changing it; but when I started to look at how I was going to sleep I realised there were things I could change.

When my sleep was at it’s worst I would snap at other people. I was so tired, all the time. Every morning when my alarm went off, I felt like a zombie. I would argue with my mum every morning about getting up and I felt like everyone was against me.

I really wanted to go to the doctor and get some sleeping tablets, but my mum sat down with me and we talked.

We went through everything that we both do leading up to bed and put them in columns of whether they would help me fall asleep or not. I started to see that playing on my Xbox and drinking energy drinks until late at night was really not helping.

It was really hard to change at first but I started small and worked my way up to no energy drinks or screen after a certain time.

My sleep is so much better now and me and mum argue so much less.

-Harry, 14 

Scroll down for our self-prescription below to work out how you can be like Harry and get a good night’s sleep!