A lot of people feel "tired", and blame it on getting not enough sleep, or other external factors. Basically, the fact that they're tired is always "out of control." What they don't know is that there's a reason for feeling "tired", and that there's a simple method to change "tired" to "energized" in a heartbeat....
Most of us feel tired during one of the four: 1) After waking up in the morning. 2) After intense physical activity, or long hours of work. 3) After sitting in one place for a long period of time. 4) During the evening, or in the late evening hours.
What do all four of those have in common? There's one very common process that happens in our bodies in all four cases. During all of these we all experience very similar"symptoms" of tiredness. These include yawning, rubbing our eyes, feeling sllooowww, and having the urge to just get into bed and sleep.
Why Do We Get These "symptoms?" Our bodies have a natural temperature rhythm. Our body temperature rises when we are awake, and promotes feelings of alertness. Our body temperature also falls when we're sleeping, and promotes feelings of drowsiness, and a desire to sleep.
The natural DROP of body temperature in our bodies is a CUE for our body to produce feelings of tiredness, drowsiness, and the strong urge to sleep. I call this the "natural sleep response". When we're exercising, or putting excessive physical demand on our body, our body temperature RISES rapidly, however when you END the physical activity, there is a RAPID body temperature DROP until your body temperature regulates sometime after. It's during this DROP that most of us think there's no other way out but to sleep, and we usually jump into bed and do just that.
The feeling of the body temperature drop after long hours of work is usually mistaken by us as a deep need for sleep. In reality, we don't need to sleep, we just need to "cool down". Allow me to give you a personal example:
As a kid I used to work at a FULL SERVE gas station for 8-9 hours in a row. This meant I had to be on my feet running around pumping gas for 8-9 hours with one 10 minute break. It was hell! Even when I had the early morning shift I would come home and feel TOTALLY DRAINED and TIRED, I usually fell asleep and slept till the evening.
However, as I began learning the inner science of our sleep system and the inner sleep clock, I tried a little experiment one day. Instead of going to sleep I came home and played fetch with my dog out in the yard for about 45 minutes instead. To my surprise, after just a few minutes of a little light activity (throwing a plastic chewed up Frisbee across the backyard), the feeling of tiredness faded and I was able to stay awake and alert WAY into the early morning hours.
How did this work?
I simply allowed my body temperature some time to return back to the normal pattern it proceeds. I gave it time to "come down." When it returned back to normal, I didn't feel tired and the intense pressure to sleep faded. This same body temperature drop happens after you sit in one place for a long time. Listen, you could take a person who is robust, athletic, and naturally energetic, but if you put them in front of a TV for 3 hours, THEY WILL GET TIRED! This is simply because our body temperature drops when we're NOT MOVING.
That's why the biggest antidote to feeling tired is exercise and movement, NOT SLEEP.
During the morning our body temperature is low too, which creates feelings of drowsiness and tiredness, however, most of us chose to mask this feeling by consuming large amounts of caffeine. The other main temperature drops happen in the afternoon, and in the mid-evening.
In the Powerful Sleep system I describe the EXACT methods to gain a full understanding of your body temperature rhythm, so you can create a quick RISE of body temperature in the morning, and delay the body temperature drop in the evening. This allows you to stay awake and ALERT longer, have more energy and MORE TIME (time is a precious commodity!)
Kacper Postawski is an innovative sleep science researcher and the creator of the