Dealing with Sleepiness

Becoming sleepy during the day at inopportune times is pretty common. Sometimes, adults experience this problem because they simply aren’t scheduling enough time for sleep, and other times, they are actually waking up frequently at night, sometimes without even realizing it. What, then, is a person to do about the problem of getting sleepy during the day? Here are a few potential solutions.

The first thing to do is to make sure that you’re at least scheduling enough time for sleep. You should plan on getting between seven and nine hours of sleep at night. Get any less than seven, and you’re simply going to feel sleepy.

Another option is to purchase a sound machine for your bedroom. Sleep is a very complex state for the brain, and sometimes you can be drawn out of the deepest sleep by noises without even knowing it. The sound waves that are released by a sleep noise machine will mask noises that are present in your home or bedroom, helping you to stay in deeper sleep for longer.

You can also help this problem by taking very short naps during the day. It is, in fact, rather natural for people to lag a little bit in the afternoon. You can sometimes feel much better if you take just a fifteen to twenty minute nap, which doesn’t even have to involve going into deep sleep to be quite effective at helping you feel better for the rest of the day. A noise machine might also be helpful in this situation, since your home or office is likely to be loud in the middle of the day.

All of these solutions can be helpful, but if you can’t beat daytime sleepiness with more sleep, a white noise machine, and naps during the day, you might want to see your doctor to discuss whether you might have one of a number of different sleep disorders.