Feeling sleepy during the day when you haven’t had enough sleep is one thing. But it’s even more frustrating — and worrying — when you feel sleepy no matter how much sleep you get.
Below, we’ll dive into the reasons you might be feeling sleepy, despite feeling like you get plenty of sleep. These include not knowing your sleep need, having sleep debt, and being out of sync with your circadian rhythm — which the RISE app can help you fix. We’ll also cover the sleep disorders and medical conditions that could be to blame.
“If you’re feeling tired no matter how much sleep you get, you may need even more sleep than you’re currently getting. Try heading to bed a little earlier than usual or making an afternoon nap part of your routine,” says Dr. Chester Wu, who is double board certified in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine, and provides sleep medicine services, medication management, and psychotherapy to adults at his private sleep medicine and psychiatry practice.
Your sleep need is the amount of sleep your body needs each night. It’s determined by genetics, just like height and eye color.
If you don’t know your sleep need, you may be sleep deprived and not even know it.
Let’s say you shoot for eight hours of sleep because that’s the most recommended amount. But if you really need nine hours, you’ll still feel sleepy, despite feeling like you’re getting a full night’s rest.
And while your sleep need is set from early adulthood, there are times when you need more sleep than usual. These include:
Your sleep need may be more than you think: We looked at the sleep needs of 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and older. The median sleep need was eight hours, but 48% of users needed eight hours or more. Some even needed a whopping 11 hours 30 minutes of sleep!
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One small sleep extension study looked at adults aged 20 to 26 and found the mean sleep need was eight hours 25 minutes. But sleep needs ranged from seven hours 17 minutes to nine hours 16 minutes.
The fix: Use the RISE app to find out your sleep need. RISE uses proprietary sleep-science-based models and a year’s worth of your phone use behavior to calculate your sleep need in hours and minutes.
This way, you know how much sleep time you need and whether you’re really getting enough shut-eye.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to view their sleep need.
Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you owe your body. If you haven’t been meeting your sleep need recently, you’ll have built up sleep debt and be feeling low on energy.
But it’s not just last night’s sleep you need to think about. We measure sleep debt over your last 14 nights.
That means you may have gotten enough sleep last night, but if you’ve been missing out on sleep over the last two weeks, you could still feel tired the next day.
You might spend a few nights sleeping for nine hours, for example, but if you’ve got high sleep debt, this may not be enough to catch up on sleep and boost your energy levels.
And if you don’t track your sleep with a device, you may think you’re meeting your sleep need, but you could be coming in short. A 2021 study found the overall agreement between self-reported sleep and sleep measured by a device was only 57%. (Sleep trackers aren’t perfect, either. Some may overly inflate your sleep duration as they mistake time spent watching TV or reading in bed for sleep time.)
One more thing to be aware of? We often forget about sleep efficiency, which takes into account the amount of time it takes to fall asleep and the times we wake up during the night. You might need eight hours of sleep. But spending eight hours in bed isn’t enough time to get you there.
Expert tip: Don’t worry too much about the quality of your sleep. While an interesting metric, experts still don’t have a set definition for sleep quality. Instead, focus on sleep debt and keeping it as low as possible. This will make the biggest difference to your energy levels.
The fix: RISE can work out how much sleep debt you’ve got. We recommend keeping this below five hours to feel the most energy each day.
Had a lack of sleep recently? You can lower your sleep debt by:
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to view their sleep debt.
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Your circadian rhythm is your body’s internal clock. It runs on a roughly 24-hour cycle and plays a part in when you naturally feel sleepy and alert.
If you’re out of sync with it, you may feel tired, even if you’ve been meeting your sleep need overall.
For example, research shows those with a regular sleep pattern feel less sleepiness than those who get the same amount of sleep at irregular times.
You might be out of sync with your circadian rhythm if:
The fix: RISE can predict your circadian rhythm each day and tell you when your body wants to wake up and go to sleep. You can then sync up your schedule with these times and aim to keep a regular sleep pattern.
You can also reset your circadian rhythm and shift your sleep cycle earlier or later if these times don’t match your lifestyle.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to see their circadian rhythm on the Energy screen.
Hypersomnia is a sleep disorder that causes you to sleep for long periods of time at night and still feel sleepy during the day. It affects about 4% to 6% of the population.
The common symptoms of hypersomnia include:
The common causes of hypersomnia include:
You may also suffer from idiopathic hypersomnia. This is when there's no known cause for your sleepiness.
The fix: Talk to your doctor or a sleep specialist if you think you’ve got hypersomnia. Treatment options include medication and lifestyle changes, like avoiding caffeine and keeping a regular sleep schedule.
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder going. You might not think you suffer from insomnia if you’re sleeping a lot, but hear us out.
There are different types of insomnia:
If you’ve got insomnia, you might spend 10 hours in bed, for example, but only get six hours of sleep. You might find yourself not able to sleep, even though you’re tired. And if you don’t meet your sleep need, you’ll feel sleepy, no matter how long you spend in bed.
The fix: Talk to a doctor or a sleep specialist. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is a common first-line treatment.
And, counterintuitively, sleep restriction is a treatment option, which involves getting less sleep in the short term to help you feel sleepier at night in the long run. Sleep restriction should only be done with the help of a CBT-I therapist or app.
Obstructive sleep apnea is another sleep disorder that could be causing you to feel tired, despite feeling like you get plenty of sleep. Research suggests about 90% of those with sleep apnea could be undiagnosed.
Sleep apnea is when your breathing is temporarily cut off during the night. Your body wakes itself up to kickstart your breathing. This can happen 30 times or more an hour, and you may not even realize you’re waking up so often.
You might spend plenty of time in bed, but still be seriously sleep deprived from all these sleep apnea episodes.
Symptoms of sleep apnea include:
The fix: Speak to a doctor or sleep specialist if you think you have sleep apnea. Treatments include weight loss, if needed, and sleeping with a continuous positive airways pressure (CPAP) machine, which provides continuous air pressure to keep your airways open.
We’ve covered how to get rid of sleep apnea here.
Heads-up: Other sleep disorders can also be to blame such as restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, or excessive daytime sleepiness, and circadian rhythm sleep disorders like delayed sleep-wake phase disorder.
Mental health issues could be behind your fatigue.
Anxiety can keep you up and wake you up in the night. In fact, RISE users say stress and anxiety are the biggest barriers stopping them from getting a good night’s sleep.
Depression also interferes with sleep and can leave you feeling tired and uninterested in your usual daily activities.
Beyond getting enough sleep, anxiety and depression can make it harder to do energy-boosting activities like exercising or socializing. The result? You may feel low on energy, even after hours of sleep.
The fix: Speak to your doctor if you think you’ve got anxiety or depression. They may prescribe medication or therapy to help.
Lifestyle changes may also help. For example, breathing exercises have been shown to reduce anxiety and stress, and improve your sleep.
Here are three to try:
RISE can walk you through breathing exercises like diaphragmatic breathing within the app.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to go right to their relaxation audio guide homepage and get started.
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Medical conditions could be making you feel tired, even when you get enough sleep. And certain health conditions can make it hard to get the sleep you need in the first place.
These include:
The fix: Talk to your doctor to get tested for an underlying health condition. They’ll be able to prescribe the best treatment option for you.
Pregnancy is a common cause of fatigue.
One reason for that is because it’s hard to get enough sleep when you’re expecting. Hormones wreak havoc with your body temperature and mood, symptoms like leg cramps and nausea keep you up, and it gets more and more difficult to find a comfortable position the further along in your pregnancy you are.
But even if you do meet your sleep need, you may still feel tired when pregnant. Your body’s working hard growing a new human and carrying around extra weight, and you may be feeling anxious about impending motherhood or maternity leave.
The fix: Try taking afternoon naps to make up for any lost sleep at night. Check RISE for when your afternoon dip in energy will be each day. This is the ideal time to take a nap as it’s far away enough from bedtime that it shouldn’t make it harder to fall asleep at night.
We’ve covered more advice on how to get energy when pregnant here.
Heads-up: Beyond pregnancy, women and those assigned female at birth are more likely to have sleep problems in general, and therefore feel tired despite feeling like they spent a long time in bed.
You might get insomnia before your period or struggle to sleep during menopause, for example. We’ve covered more reasons for female fatigue here.
Sleep hygiene is the set of behaviors you can do to get a good night’s sleep.
If you’ve got poor sleep hygiene, you may find it hard to drift off and find yourself waking up in the middle of the night. It’ll be even harder to meet your sleep need and, even if you do, the sleep you get may be broken and not as restorative as it could be.
The fix: Improve your sleep hygiene.
That includes:
RISE can guide you through 20+ sleep hygiene habits each day at the time that makes them the most effective for you.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to set up their 20+ in-app habit notifications.
If you’re feeling sleepy all the time, the first thing to do is to check your sleep need and sleep debt. You may need more sleep each night than you think, and you may have some sleep debt to pay back.
Next, check to see if you’re living in sync with your circadian rhythm. If not, this could be draining your energy, even when you’re getting enough sleep overall.
Still feeling sleepy? It’s time to talk to a healthcare professional. A sleep disorder, like sleep apnea or hypersomnia, or a medical condition, like depression or anemia, could be to blame.
The RISE app can help you get more energy. RISE can work out your sleep need, how much sleep debt you have, and predict your circadian rhythm each day to help you stay in sync.
RISE can also tell you when to do 20+ sleep hygiene habits each day to make getting a good night’s sleep even easier.
It works fast, too: 80% of RISE users feel more energy within five days.
You might be always sleepy no matter how much sleep you get because you’re still not getting enough sleep, you’ve got sleep debt from previous short nights of sleep, you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm, you’re pregnant, you’ve got anxiety or depression, or you’ve got a sleep disorder or an underlying medical condition.
You may be sleepy no matter how much sleep you get when pregnant because you’re still not sleeping enough, you’ve got sleep debt from previous short nights of sleep, you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm, or you have sleep problems from pregnancy. Fatigue is also a common pregnancy symptom.
You may be still sleepy throughout the day even though you sleep enough because you actually need more sleep than you think. You may also have high sleep debt from previous short nights of sleep or be out of sync with your circadian rhythm. A sleep disorder, mental health issues, or medical condition can also be to blame.
If you’re always tired no matter what, you may need more sleep than you think you need. You may also have high sleep debt from previous short nights of sleep or be out of sync with your circadian rhythm. A sleep disorder, mental health issues, or medical condition can also be to blame.
Deficiencies that cause tiredness and fatigue include iron, vitamin B12, and vitamin D deficiencies. Eat a balanced diet, get sunlight, and seek medical advice to get blood tests for vitamin deficiencies and suggested supplements if needed.
The most important things to do if you feel sleepy all day are to pay down your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm. Do this by sleeping for longer at night, taking naps, and keeping a regular sleep schedule. Exercising, eating a healthy diet, and reducing stress levels can also help to boost your energy levels.
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