Somewhere around twenty-five, something shifts. The energy you used to take for granted just stops showing up. No matter how much you invest in better sleep or longer holidays, it never quite comes back the way it was.
All that’s left, really, is another cup of coffee and a quick prayer. If only we could go back and tell our toddler selves to truly enjoy those naps.
And if that doesn’t sound like you at all, if you genuinely have energy to spare, then consider yourself one of the lucky ones. Because the data suggests that’s a pretty rare thing.
One in every five adults worldwide experiences general fatigue lasting up to six months, with no underlying medical condition to explain it. A 2019 National Sleep Foundation survey found that 44% of American adults felt sleepy two to four days a week.
A 2022 YouGov poll found that one in eight UK adults were tired all the time, with another quarter exhausted for most of it.
“It’s a very, very common complaint,” says Rosalind Adam, a family physician who has practised in Aberdeen, Scotland for over a decade, speaking to the BBC.
The UK’s National Health Service even has its own acronym for it: TATT, Tired All The Time.
As easy as it is to laugh off, chronic tiredness is something worth paying attention to. There are often real reasons behind it, according to Healthline.
The most obvious one is poor sleep quality. During sleep, your body carries out processes that are genuinely critical, including releasing growth hormones and repairing cells.
When that gets disrupted, everything suffers, which is why a truly good night’s sleep can feel almost transformative.
Tiredness can also be your body’s way of flagging a nutritional gap. Deficiencies in iron, various B vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin C, magnesium, and folate have all been linked to fatigue.
A healthcare professional can help figure out whether something specific is off and what to do about it.
Interestingly, sometimes having too much of something causes the same problem. Caffeine is a good example.
It feels like it gives you energy in the moment, but relying on it too heavily can damage sleep quality over time, which only deepens the tiredness it was supposed to fix.
