Why Chronic Fatigue is a Big Deal

Do you feel moody or irritable around your family, children, and loved ones? Do you have trouble performing at school at work? Have you lost your drive to spend time with friends? Have you been struggling with erectile dysfunction (for men) and/or reduced sex drive? Do small tasks feel like a big deal? If these sound familiar, you might be struggling with chronic fatigue.

Each of the above issues can be caused by chronic fatigue - and though it looks rather bleak and obvious put in those terms, it's a lot hard to identify these issues in real life. Especially if you are getting 8 hours of sleep, you might not identify that sleep is the underlying cause. There are a number of sleep conditions where your clock might tell you that you received 8 hours of sleep, but your body is telling a different story.

In this article we will focus on common sleep conditions that give the illusion that you are receiving a full night's rest when in actuality you aren't, which may help you start to evaluate causes of your fatigue.

Sleep Disorders That Cause Fatigue

One of the more common reasons you are tired all the time, even after 8 hours of sleep, is that you have a sleep disorder. Sleep disorders are conditions that prevent you from getting quality sleep. Here are a few sleep disorders that would give you the illusion of sleeping throughout the night, but actually don’t provide quality sleep.

Sleep Apnea Causing Chronic Fatigue

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder and medical condition that causes you to repeatedly stop breathing constantly throughout the night, anywhere for 40 to over 100 times per night.

When you stop breathing, you momentarily wake up to begin breathing again (though you won’t remember waking). Therefore, you might sleep from 9pm to 7am and still feel like you barely slept – because you really didn’t sleep! It causes severe sleep deprivation because you are constantly being wakened, thereby preventing any restful sleep from happening.

Here are common symptoms:

• Bed partner hears you repeatedly stop breathing throughout night
• Loud, chronic snoring
• Wake up exhausted in the morning
• Wake up with headaches
• Waking up choking/gasping
• Mood disruptions, such as constant irritability, brain fog, etc.

Parasomnias Causing Chronic Fatigue

Parasomnias are disruptive sleep disorders that interfere with your circadian rhythm, and may impact sleep quality without your awareness of it. You might compare this to, say, insomnia where you are acutely aware of your lack of sleep

Common parasomnias include:

• Restless leg syndrome
• Sleepwalking
• Night terrors
• Chronic nightmares

Other Sleep-Related Causes of Chronic Fatigue

Sleep deprivation despite an adequate number of hours of sleep isn’t always the product of a sleeping disorder. Your sleep quality might also be impacted by:

• Not having an ideal sleeping environment: quiet, dark, peaceful, and comfortable room
• Adjust to doing shift work
• Stress/anxiety from work, marriage/divorce, moving, etc.
• Working hours that do not align with your natural circadian rhythm
• Too much “screen time” with laptops/TV/cell phones before bed, as the blue light can delay the onset of restorative stages of sleep

Any of the above can cause you to get less quality sleep even though you are getting the right amount of sleep time.

If you live in Alaska and are dealing with chronic fatigue, it may be a sleep problem. Please take this free online sleep test to get in touch with our sleep health professionals: