The Surprising Reason Why You May Feel Tired All the Time
Relying on coffee and energy drinks is a symptom you should not ignore
Do you struggle to get out of bed in the morning, slapping your alarm’s snooze button repeatedly?
Are you not truly awake until your first, or even second, cup of coffee?
Do you reach for caffeinated sodas or energy drinks to stay alert in the afternoon?
You may be experiencing what is known as social jet lag.
It sounds glamorous and exciting. You’re tired on Monday morning because you filled your weekend with exotic locales. But the reality is far darker.
Trying to “catch up” on sleep over the weekends, or staying up late to party, is killing you.
Social jet lag has been implicated in obesity, heart disease, and mental illness. You dramatically increase your chances of a heart attack or stroke.
How to tell if you have social jet lag
When you fly across time zones, you experience jet lag. Your body is out of sync with the sunrise and sunset of your destination. This can make you groggy, fatigued, irritable, and grumpy.
Social jet lag is when the same thing happens as a result of social pressures such as work or school. Your body’s natural circadian rhythms of when to wake up and when to sleep don’t match your schedule.
If your social obligations are in tune with your circadian rhythms, you have no trouble waking up. You sleep the same amount on average every night, whether it’s a week day or weekend.
If you are one of the 80% of people who need an alarm clock to wake up, you may have a problem. Do you also sleep an average of 2 hours longer on weekends than you do during the week? Then you’re suffering from social jet lag.
In my case, I’d write in the evenings after I got home from work. In the golden window from 10pm — 2am, my writing would just flow. I’d be on fire. Around 2am, it would end, and I’d be hit with a wave of exhaustion. I’d crawl into bed, ready to stagger out of bed with my alarm to do it again the next day.
I’d try to get to bed before midnight. But that would mean stopping writing just when I was really hitting my stride.
I couldn’t do it. The last thing you’re thinking about when you’re in flow is looking at the clock. I’d have every good intention of getting to bed early. But night after night, it just wouldn’t happen.
Then, over the weekends, I’d sleep late, and stay up later. I was hoping to make up for the sleep I hadn’t gotten during the week.
I had social jet lag.
This can have grave consequences for your health and mental well-being.
Health impacts of social jet lag
According to WebMD, the health consequences of social jet lag grow in proportion to the lag. If you shift your sleep by an hour on the weekends, you’re not doing nearly as much damage as if you shift by 4 hours.
Their data indicates that every hour of sleep schedule shifting corresponds to:
- 11% greater chance of heart disease
- 28% greater chance of having “fair” or “poor” health instead of “excellent”
Other physical consequences of social jet lag include obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
I can certainly attest to that. A few years after I started working and keeping these wild hours, my biology seemed to go crazy. My blood pressure and cholesterol levels shot up, I had such severe edema that I couldn’t bend my toes, and I gained 30 pounds.
I was informed that I had metabolic syndrome, the precursor to diabetes. It eventually did become full diabetes. Fortunately, it’s possible to reverse diabetes through diet and lifestyle. But it takes extreme commitment and constant vigilance to avoid slipping back. It’s a lot easier to never get it.
Mental consequences of social jet lag can include depression, anxiety, ADHD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
I have a friend who comes from a family genetically prone to bipolar disorder. He has to be especially conscious of his schedule. If he keeps late hours on the weekend, even with normal hours during the week, he can touch off an episode.
Productivity impacts of social jet lag
Your health isn’t the only thing that suffers from social jet lag. In one study, college students who were natural “night owls” who took early classes suffered academically. This impact to their grades was greater than that of early birds who took late classes.
This also correlates to workers who make mistakes on the job due to sleep loss.
In my case, I’d stagger into the office just before 9am, caffeinated beverage in one hand and a cafeteria breakfast in the other. Low-priority tasks like reading my email filled the time while I waited to wake up. I’d be fine during the middle of the day (10am — 2pm). But come 3pm, it was nonstop bottles of Coca-Cola or vending machine caffeine to try and stay awake.
Minimizing the effects of social jet lag
It’s easy to say that you should just adjust your sleep schedule to match your social schedule. If your job requires you to start at 8am, go to bed by 11pm so you can get 8 hours of sleep before your alarm rings at 7am.
The problem is, if you’re naturally a night owl, you can go to bed, but you may not be able to get to sleep. Then, worrying about your inability to get to sleep may make it even harder to fall asleep.
There are three things you can do to help get your social and circadian rhythms in sync.
Adjust your start times
Adjust the times for work and school as much as possible to match your natural rhythms. This is what I was able to do, by taking advantage of our company’s flex-time schedule. While the early birds got in at 7am, I didn’t have to report to work until 9am. Now that I’m a freelancer, I can start at 10am, and be ready to dive right in to work.
Find out if your work offers flex-time scheduling, to allow you to start earlier or later. Even if it’s not an official program, you may be able to arrange something with your management. For example, if you’re willing to stay late, that may allow them to avoid having to pay someone overtime. If your company is international, they may need someone who can match other time zones.
If you’re a night owl who is still in school, sign up for the latest sections of classes that you can. If you’re an early bird, sign up for the earliest sections of classes that you can. If you can’t move all your classes, move the hardest ones to your preferred times. You want to be at your most alert and focused during those classes.
If you’re working or schooling from home, you have more freedom for how to structure your day. Put the high-intensity activities that need you to be at your best at your best time of day. Put the low-intensity activities at the times of day when you’re not at your best.
Help yourself sleep
If you get to bed but can’t fall asleep, you’ll make the social jet lag worse. Similarly, if your sleep is restless, you won’t do well the next day.
Make sure that you’re sleeping in complete darkness. Avoid electronics for an hour before bed, and keep all screens out of the bedroom. Use blackout curtains or a sleep mask to keep it dark.
I found that reading at night before bed is an excellent way to get a screen break before sleep. It’s also something I look forward to doing and enjoy, so I’m more willing to start my bedtime ritual earlier.
I combine it with a far-infrared sauna, so I read for half an hour while improving my blood flow. Saunas before bed have also been shown to produce deeper, more restful sleep.
Set the bedroom temperature to be slightly cooler than your daytime temperature. If you can’t control the thermostat (for example, you live with others on a different schedule), use a fan to stay cool.
Take melatonin to trigger the body that this is the time for sleep. If you can sleep in complete darkness, your body will produce melatonin naturally. 99% of people in the US and Europe experience significant light pollution at night. If that’s the case for you, and you can’t sleep in complete darkness, supplement your melatonin.
Stay consistent
Staying up late once in a while is not as much of a problem as shifting your hours every weekend. If you want to go out late at night on the weekend, go out Saturday night instead of Friday.
That way, you have a normal bedtime on Friday, with a slightly later wake-up time on Saturday. A slightly later bedtime on Saturday is followed by a slightly later wake-up time on Sunday. Then, Sunday night, you go to bed at the normal time again.
You only shifted both bedtime and wake-up time on Saturday. Friday and Sunday had one normal time and one later time.
This is the same idea as when people prepare for a long trip, and want to counteract the jet lag. They gradually adjust their sleep schedule to match the schedule where they’re going.
If you do the same thing for your weekends, you won’t throw your body’s clock off as much.
Try and keep the amount you sleep every night the same, instead of losing sleep throughout the week. You can’t make up for all the sleep you miss on the weekend.
It’s not easy. I would notice that I’d gradually push my bedtime a little bit later every night, until I was noticeably dragging in the morning. I’d rebound to good sleep habits for a few days. Then it would start creeping up again.
I’ll never be like my early bird brother, who goes to bed at 8:30pm and wakes up every day at 4:30am. I have, more than once, gone to bed after he woke up.
If you’re aware of your habits, though, you can catch yourself faster. Instead of waiting until you stay up to 4am to catch yourself, you can catch yourself staying up to 1am.
Studies show that the healthiest people average 7.7 hours of deep sleep a night. If you aren’t able to sleep for at least 7 hours every night, give yourself an hour-long power nap during the day.
Conclusion
Shifting your schedule from weekday hours to weekend hours can cause social jet lag. In the short term, this can lead to fatigue, grogginess, and irritability. In the long term, this can lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, strokes, and mental illness.
Signs that you are suffering from social jet lag include:
- an inability to wake without an alarm clock
- sleeping more on the weekends
- having a different bedtime on the weekends
For every hour that you shift your sleep schedule, your chance of heart disease rises 11%. Your chance of decreased general health rises by 28%.
To combat social jet lag, try to stay consistent between weeknights and week ends. Ensure you have good sleep conditions. And do what you can to move your social obligations to match your natural sleep schedule.
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