Why you’re so tired

year after year more of us are quietly asking the internet why am I so tired searching for answers to something we all feel but don't really understand every morning we're waking up feeling a little bit more worn out than we were the day before our afternoon slumps are a little slumpy so much so that companies make fun of us for this what's going on it's a 300 p. m. slum selling us meat or cheese or coffee or human gray jet fuel to somehow cure our afternoon energy deficit now listen this isn't a video where I'm going to tell you to just get more sleep or to stop looking at your phone before bed which all of those things you should do but I want to approach this question a little differently I want to look at the bigger reasons why we're all so tired a lot of those reasons have to do with what's happening right now during the day like right now while I'm filming this things are happening in my brain and your brain that will make us more tired later on today and tomorrow it will affect how long and how well you sleep and whether or not you feel refreshed in the morning [Music] in order to understand why you're so tired I'm going to take you back in time to 300,000 years ago meet Johnny caveman Johnny caveman kind of has a similar body to ours today he's a human his body's a little different his hips and his head are shaped a little differently he's got this whiter flatter nose he's got this big strong brow but up where it counts his brain is very similar to our brain today and yet how he uses his brain is very different similar brains totally different worlds to show this let me show you Johnny caveman's morning routine as Johnny caveman begins his day let's keep an eye on this part of his brain this is the prefrontal cortex when you make decisions this part of your brain is doing most of the work this morning Johnny caveman has a few decisions to make he has to decide where to get his water today should he go out and hunt with his group or should he spend time picking berries he just found some mushrooms are these mushrooms safe should he eat them Johnny caveman will likely spend a big chunk of his day just sitting here around this campsite eating and chatting with his band of other humans he might go out and gather sticks to build a campfire later I mean look at his brain there's some decisions being made here but it isn't pinging very much there's not a ton of action up here in the prefrontal cortex his day is routine with not a ton of choices fairly simple decisions okay but let's transport forward in time now I wonder what would happen if we put this same Johnny caveman in the 20th century same brain same body different [Music] world Yan the sun is still waking Johnny caveman up and now he's got a few decisions to make he decides to shave before he goes to work what's for breakfast apples again I think I'll have a peach now off to work the world's gone through the Industrial Revolution so he spends his day at a factory where he's repeating tasks over and over he's definitely making more decisions than Johnny caveman was but the prefrontal cortex isn't pinging a ton it's not a lot of action up here okay how does Johnny caveman do in 2024 did I get enough sleep last night where's my phone is my kids concert today or tomorrow oh I need new socks these don't match what should I eat for lunch later should I cancel with my coor worker did I have a burrito yesterday I need to remember to send the receipts to the insurance company I need to file that expense report when am I going to change this fish how much gas is I get oil change this be upgrading to a different it's 8:30 in the morning and I've already made a ton of decisions way more than Johnny caveman or the Johnny from the 20th century these decisions are complex they are abstract they are high stakes my prefrontal cortex is going bananas one estimate I read said that modern humans make 35,000 decisions every day we make more than 200 decisions about food alone okay okay I get it Modern Life is full of a lot of decisions but like I'm not running from Tigers anymore like I don't have to like scavenge and hunt for my food shouldn't I be less tired I'm using my brain instead of my body and I'm doing way less physical work I mean we've got washing machines and dishwashers and automatic head massagers and at home spas and damn it we even have lazy boys shouldn't I feel more rested because of all of this okay and here's where we come to the answer to the question which is we got to look at that prefrontal cortex again and see what's actually going on when you make all of these decisions it's a part of a war that is happening between you and the modern world this war is being fought on two different battlefields daytime and nighttime man fighter of the night man champion the so we're in this daytime Battlefield and you're making a bunch of decisions we've talked about that let's see what's happening here in the brain when you're making decisions there's an electronic signal like a pulse that is traveling between regions of the brain along these wires called neurons you've got like almost 100 billion of these things and they all are forming this giant Network tons of connections and they all send signals to each other that is what decisions and actions are but in order to send these signals between the different parts of the brain you need a very important chemical called glutamate glutamate makes all of this happen it's a neurotransmitter it helps everything talk to each other but look after you make the decision the glutamate kind of sticks around and as you make more and more decisions glutamate starts to build up and it starts to clog the system which new research suggests makes decisions harder because the whole system is is clogged which makes you feel fatigued make a bunch of decisions you feel tired even if you didn't lift a finger it's like as if your brain were a big city all of these roads are the neurons and synapses that you use to make decisions it's all functioning nicely everyone can flow but the more decisions you make the more trash you produce and the trash starts to pile up trash collectors will eventually move this trash out but if you're producing a ton of trash it starts to pile up and it eventually starts to block the streets making it much harder for the cars to move along meaning for your brain activity to do what it's supposed to do for you to make decisions this is what it looks like when you're really tired it's 11:30 a.

m. here at my desk and I've made so many decisions I haven't done any strenuous work but I'm drowning in glutamate and feeling tired by the way this is like brand new research from the Paris brain Institute and it is still being worked out how this works or exactly what it looks like you can check my sources to fact check everything I say in this video but look at this paper specifically it's pretty interesting so I'm going to drop this down on my list of why we're so tired I'll be making this list and the solutions on what we can do about it a lot of cultures have a solve for this it's called bif phasic sleep which is just a cool sounding name for a nap in the afternoon people usually around like the Mediterranean take naps from the hours of like 2 to 5 they rest they reset research found that people who take cestas have increased brain functioning and are 37% less likely to die of heart disease but here in the United States we pledge to not sleep on the job we will never take naps like those failing socialist countries in the Mediterranean no the hustle never stops here in America sorry I recently watched Top Gun I'm just feeling really patriotic right now that's right I am dangerous so our brains which are the same as Johnny caveman's brains aren't totally set up to make all of these decision without feeling very tired I mean it kind of makes sense we've got these caveman brains living in 2024 this is called evolutionary mismatch our brains haven't caught up with our lifestyle with our world and all of the decisions that we are required to make to just be normal modern humans so what do we do about this well you can take siestas which is like not something I can do in my life I'm just not set up for it here sorry guys but that would be a way to clear out some glutamate and reset but the biggest takeaway for me is just limit how many decisions I have to make every day which is not easy but there definitely are ways to do it I've started choosing the outfits that I'm going to wear for the week on Sunday so that in the morning when I wake up I'm just like oh the outfit's already chosen or you could go full Steve Jobs Mark Zuckerberg style and just wear one thing so that you can have a closet that looks like this which meal planning that's another one on a Sunday day we've started like writing down every meal we're going to have during the week and that makes life way easier when you're at the end of a day of work and you're feeling tired a big theme in today's video is information how much information Our Brands are met with these days and even as a journalist it's my job and I get stressed out by the amount of information out there one of the tools we use to sift through all of this is actually the sponsor of today's video ground news is a website and an app that takes news stories from all around the world and Aggregates them into one place and then gives you a ton of information about that story and its sources instead of an algorithm you are in control with ground news this tool allows you to see what political bias exists in the different articles how reliable each source is who owns these different Publications a whole other level of transparency that allows you to feel confident in the news you're reading one of my favorite Parts about ground news is it helps you keep an eye on your own reading habits it gives you this dashboard where it shows show you some insights like the top sources that you rely on and how reliable they are and my favorite of these insights the blind spot feed when you're navigating so much information it's hard to remember that sometimes you are in a very different news bubble than everyone else the blind spot feed helps you see this by giving you articles that you wouldn't naturally click on or be exposed to helping you fill in your perspective challenge your biases I value this kind of thing so much as a critical thinker and as someone who is worried about Echo Chambers and biased in today's news landscape so if you are tired of letting social media companies and Sensational headlines decide what you click ground news might be for you it's a great way to sharpen your critical thinking skills and to stay informed while doing it if you want to try this out you can get a big discount if you click the link in my description it's ground. news/ Johny Harris you can also use this QR code on screen if that's more convenient this will allow you to get 40% off the Vantage plan which is all of these tools I've talked about today so thank you ground news for sponsoring today's video with that let's dive back in to why we are so tired there's one more chemical we have to talk about for this daytime battle and it's called adenosine it is this very clever evolutionary feature of our brain that's basically like a signal to our brains that tells us when it's time to rest as you go throughout your day thinking and doing things this adenosine builds up and it kind of signals to your brain that you're tired it signals that you should feel sleepy and hopefully makes you go to sleep but being industrious humans focused on progress we found a substance that will block the buildup of a denzine it's called caffeine making caffeine the most popular drug in the world it blocks adenosine this natural signal of you should be tired in sleep and allows us to keep operating as if the adenosine doesn't exist but guess what the caffeine doesn't last forever it eventually wears out and all of this adenosine that had built up comes flooding into your brain like a megaphone phone saying hey you're really tired and we're finally able to tell you this is called the afternoon crash my solution to this is like the greatest thing in the world and it's called a coffee nap when you nap your body gets rid of the adenosine it's like the adenosine clearing hour and if you drink caffeine then you get this like multiplier effect where all the adenosine is gone and the caffeine just comes in it doesn't have to block any adenosine and it's just ready to like hype you up drink a quick coffee lay down for just 15 minutes it's amazing coffee naps add it to the list the other option is to drink your coffee a little bit like later than you would like don't drink it right as you wake up drink it between the hours of 9 and 11: a.

m. so that it lasts until you're done with work and then you can have your coffee crash okay so that is our daytime battle glutamate builds up because we make so many decisions a Denis builds up because we don't let it clear out and we block the signals because of caffeine and our modern world doesn't like us naturally clearing these things out so we feel really tired now let's get to the nighttime battle everyone says we should get 7 or8 hours of sleep but when you go to bed and when I go to bed is probably different back in the Johnny caveman days groups of humans couldn't leave their Camp unattended at night so we evolved to have different sleep times so that some of us could stay awake and guard the camp and others could sleep and then we could switch off today what that looks like is that I go to bed at 10:30 and I wake up at 6:30 you may be a night owl and you want to go to bed at 1:00 in the morning or you may want to go to bed at 9:00 a. m.

these are called chronotypes and there are roughly four of them everyone has a slightly different interpretation of what it means but the fact is we're not all the same when it comes to when we go to bed and yet we all live in a society that wants us to be the same our standard workday 9 to5 was constructed for like the average person but you may not be that person you have a job that requires you to be there at 9:00 a. m. and you're a night owl who wants to sleep until 10:30 too bad capitalism says no researchers say that our chronotype is in our gen like this is like we are naturally coated to have an optimal time where when we are sleeping and that may not work with your life evolutionary mismatch once again so I'm going to write chronotypes down on my list what's the solution here find out what your chronotype is you probably already know what it is take this test online I'll give you a QR code here you can scan this take a test maybe aligning your lifestyle with your chronotype could help you get sleep during the time when your sleep is most optimal which will help make you feel less tired okay finally in a video that you clicked on about why you're so tired finally we're talking about sleep sleep definitely matters and I think there's actually a lot of great videos and literature books whatever on sleep and how to optimize sleep our brains catalog all these memories all the sensory input and memories from the day get cataloged our muscles and our circulatory system they all get to relax and take a break which is super vital and as we talked about earlier we clear out a lot of like the byproducts from living life the the glutamate the adenosine all of the kind of toxins and byproducts that we accumulate from a day this is all super important but not all sleep is created equal and what we do in the hours leading up to bed can make a big difference so let's see what this looks like using an example as we're following along let's track my chemical levels I get home around 8:00 p.

m. I whip up some of my famous macaroni and cheese before sitting down to my desk because I've got a little more work to do now my chronotype is the lion which means I kind of want to go to bed like at 10:00 I'm getting kind of tired so I pour myself a cup of coffee to fight off all the adenine that has been building up in my brain okay I finish up my work it's 2 hours past when I normally go to bed but I need some time to wind down here I am making more decisions on Netflix and look even though it's nighttime outside this giant TV screen is emitting light my brain thinks this is the sun it thinks it's daytime so it blocks the release of melatonin melatonin is chemical that we need to shift our brain from wakefulness to sleep finally after some Netflix I feel like I've wound down and I'm going to go to bed it's 2: a. m.

I turn off the TV and I get a little bit of melatonin but not nearly enough to feel tired I've got a ton of adenosine in my brain but it's not registering I should be feeling tired but all of this adenosine is blocked by the caffeine I have had earlier one more look at my phone to set my alarm got to check Instagram really quick eventually the caffeine wears off the adenosine comes flooding in and I fall right asleep but it's now 3:00 a. m.