It’s normal to feel groggy when you first wake up and a little sleepy in the afternoon. But if you’re feeling tired all day long, something might be up.
Below, we’ve rounded up 30 reasons you want to sleep all the time and how the RISE app can help you fix the two biggest culprits: sleep debt and being out of sync with your body clock.
Here’s why you might be low on energy and craving your bed all day.
Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you owe your body. You build up sleep debt when you don’t meet your sleep need, which is the genetically determined amount of sleep you need each night.
A lack of sleep can be caused by something out of your control, like a sleep disorder, health problem, or newborn baby. But it may also be something you can change — like if you stay up late with Netflix, share a bed with a snoring partner, or sleep with your pet (a 2023 study found owning a dog was linked to having trouble sleeping).
Beyond this, many of us don’t know how much sleep we need, so never really know if we’re getting enough sleep.
To fix that, RISE works out how much sleep you need using a year’s worth of your phone use data and proprietary sleep-science-based models.
You may need more sleep than you think. When we looked at how much sleep 1.95 million RISE users need, it ranged from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes. Almost half of them needed eight hours or more sleep a night.
RISE also works out whether you’re carrying any sleep debt. We recommend you keep this below five hours to feel the most energy.
We measure your sleep debt over the past 14 nights. That means even if you got enough sleep last night (or even more than usual), you could still want to sleep if you’ve got lingering sleep debt from the past 13 nights.
Got more than five hours of sleep debt? This is most likely why you want to sleep all the time.
You can learn how much sleep debt you have here.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click view their sleep need here and view their sleep debt here.
Getting enough shut-eye but still want to sleep all day? We covered why you’re sleepy no matter how much sleep you’re getting here.
Your circadian rhythm is your roughly 24-hour internal clock that helps to control your sleep-wake cycle.
You can get out of sync with your circadian rhythm if you:
Being out of sync with your circadian rhythm can leave you wanting to sleep at odd times and feeling low on energy all day. You may have trouble falling asleep at bedtime — which can add to your sleep debt.
RISE can predict the timing of your circadian rhythm to help you get in sync.
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Heads-up: Your circadian rhythm dictates when your energy levels fluctuate throughout the day. You’ll naturally feel sleepy when you first wake up, during your afternoon slump, and in the run-up to bedtime. These dips in energy will feel worse if you’ve got a lot of sleep debt.
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How you feel about your sleep can affect your energy levels.
A 2022 sleep study found more light sleep and less time awake at night are linked to better sleep satisfaction. And research from 2021 suggests how people feel about their sleep has a bigger impact on daytime fatigue than how long they slept.
If you feel like you didn’t get a good night’s rest — perhaps because you were tossing and turning or it took a while to drift off — you may feel like you want to sleep all day, even if you actually did get enough sleep that night.
To make matters more complicated, the more effort you put into sleep, the harder it can be to fall asleep. This can lead to sleep debt, which can leave you feeling tired all day.
You can learn more about restless sleep and how to fix it here.
Many of us are dehydrated and research shows even mild dehydration can make you feel tired.
According to the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, men should drink about 15.5 cups a day and women should drink about 11.5 cups of water a day.
If you eat an unhealthy diet full of sugar and simple carbs, like white bread and processed breakfast cereals, your glucose levels (blood sugar) can spike and crash throughout the day.
Nutritional deficiencies can also cause fatigue. You may feel tired if you’ve got a vitamin B12 or iron deficiency.
What you eat can also cause digestive issues, like acid reflux or bloating, that can make it harder to get a good night’s sleep.
You may also feel sleepy after eating if you have a high-calorie or high-carb meal.
And if you eat too close to bedtime, you may find it harder to drift off and find yourself awake more during the night.
You can learn more about when to stop eating before bed here.
Expert tip: Aim to be done with dinner two to three hours before bed. RISE can tell you exactly when to finish eating for the day.
A sedentary lifestyle can lead to fatigue, weight gain, and sleep problems. On the flip side, exercise can help you lower stress levels, lose weight, get an energy boost when you need it (hello, afternoon slump), and get more sleep at night.
A 2023 systematic review found that regular exercise can improve your sleep quality and reduce how long it takes you to fall asleep.
Physical activity has also been shown to help with sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea and lead to less fatigue.
Exercise is great for your sleep, but if you squeeze in a vigorous workout before bed, it may have the opposite effect you’re looking for.
Intense exercise within an hour of bedtime can make it harder to fall asleep. We’ve covered the best time to work out here.
If you’re exercising too much — think training hard for a marathon or skipping rest days — you may find yourself wanting to sleep all day.
Research shows you may need more sleep than usual when you’re recovering from intense exercise. And working out too much can also lead to injury, which can lead to you needing more sleep to recover. A 2023 study found muscle injury caused participants to sleep for longer.
Caffeine is a stimulant. It’s a great pick-me-up in the morning, but if you have caffeine too close to bedtime (as close as 12 hours before bed), you can cut into your sleep time and cause you to rack up sleep debt.
A 2023 study found caffeine can:
Caffeine can also dehydrate you, and if you add sugar or syrup, or drink sugary energy drinks, you can experience a sugar crash, too.
We’ve covered more on why caffeine makes you tired here.
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Alcohol can make you feel drowsy, but it can also disrupt your sleep.
Research from 2019 found alcohol can:
You can learn more about alcohol and sleep problems here.
Expert tip: Avoid alcohol three to four hours before bed to reduce the chances of it messing with your sleep and making you feel tired the next day. RISE can tell you an exact time to avoid alcohol each day.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can set up their avoid late alcohol reminder here.
Hypersomnia is a sleep disorder that causes you to sleep for long periods of time.
Symptoms of hypersomnia include:
Hypersomnia can be caused by:
Some people have what’s known as idiopathic hypersomnia, which is when there’s no known cause for the disorder. Both hypersomnia and idiopathic hypersomnia can severely affect your daily life.
A 2023 study found more than half of the participants studied with idiopathic hypersomnia reported moderate-to-severe cognitive complaints and depressive symptoms.
You can learn more about hypersomnia here.
With insomnia, you’ll struggle to meet your sleep need at night, leading to a build-up of sleep debt.
There are four types of insomnia:
As well as sleep problems, symptoms include memory problems, feeling tired, irritability, and trouble concentrating.
Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that causes you to feel sleepy all day and fall asleep randomly.
Symptoms of narcolepsy include:
Obstructive sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that causes your airways to close during the night, cutting off your breathing. Your body wakes you up to kickstart your breathing, and this can happen 5 times or more an hour.
Symptoms include:
You can learn more about how to know if you’ve got sleep apnea here.
As the name suggests, restless leg syndrome (RLS) is a sleep disorder that causes your legs to feel restless. You’ll mainly get this at night or when sitting or lying down.
Symptoms of RLS include:
A 2023 meta-analysis found RLS is more common among women (as many sleep disorders are) and older adults.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a condition that causes extreme fatigue.
Symptoms include:
It’s not clear what causes chronic fatigue syndrome, but genetics, infections, and past trauma may be to blame.
If the air quality is poor in your home or area, this can make it harder to fall and stay asleep and get the sleep you need.
It can also affect your breathing during the day and night. A 2020 review highlighted that being exposed to pollutants could increase sleep-disordered breathing, such as snoring and sleep apnea.
If you live in an area affected by wildfires or wildfire smoke, this can make you tired, too.
You can learn more about air quality and sleep here.
Aside from physiological medical conditions, being sleepy all the time may be traced to mental health problems like depression.
Depression can cause a low mood, increased fatigue, and trouble sleeping — all of which can cause you to want to stay in bed all day.
Symptoms of depression also include losing interest in your usual activities and feeling withdrawn. This can add to sleep problems and low energy, particularly if you start skipping exercise or socializing.
Antidepressants come with tiredness as a side effect and can worsen or cause sleep disorders like restless leg syndrome, REM sleep behavior disorder, and sleep apnea.
If you’re stressed, you probably have trouble falling and staying asleep. RISE users say stress and anxiety are the biggest barriers stopping them from getting a good night’s sleep.
Mental exhaustion and burnout can also leave you feeling drained. A 2022 study suggests mentally demanding work can trigger changes in your brain metabolism, which can lead to mental fatigue.
Whether you’ve got an anxiety disorder — like generalized anxiety disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder — or you have anxious thoughts day to day, this can make you want to sleep.
Anxiety makes it harder to fall asleep and meet your sleep need at night. And sleep loss can make anxiety worse, creating a vicious circle.
We’ve covered how to sleep with anxiety here.
If you’re on a weight loss journey, you might be cutting your calories and exercising more than usual. This can leave you low on energy during the day.
Tiredness is a side effect of weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.
If you’ve gained weight recently, this may be the reason you want to sleep all the time.
Obesity is a risk factor for:
It’s a vicious circle, too, as sleep problems can lead to weight gain.
You can learn more about the weight and sleep connection here.
Getting older can leave you feeling more tired.
Getting enough sleep becomes harder to do as we age. You may have more health conditions or sleep disorders, be on more sleep-disrupting medication, have joint or lower back pain, experience increased urination at night, and be going through menopause.
Our circadian rhythm also “flattens” as we get older, meaning the biological cues to go to sleep and wake up aren’t as strong. Your sleep schedule may get thrown off, making it harder to meet your sleep need.
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) usually strikes in fall and winter — and it’s more than just feeling sad that summer’s over.
Common symptoms include:
It’s not clear what causes SAD, but one reason may be the lack of sunlight, which can disrupt your circadian rhythm and sleep patterns.
You may have trouble sleeping before or on your period or during different points in your menstrual cycle.
Fluctuating hormones can cause changes in your mood, body temperature, and sleep. And PMS symptoms like cramps and bloating can keep you up, too.
You can learn more about period insomnia here.
Pregnancy is a common cause of fatigue.
It’s easy to build up sleep debt and get out of sync with your circadian rhythm when pregnant. It becomes harder to find a comfortable sleep position in the later stages of pregnancy. You may also experience leg cramps at night, nausea, heartburn, anxiety, anemia, and your baby kicking you in the ribs at 3 a.m.
Unfortunately, the sleep problems don’t stop when the baby arrives. You’ll, of course, have a newborn to look after during the night, but you may also experience postpartum depression, a rollercoaster of hormone changes, and pain and trouble sleeping after birth or a c-section.
You can learn more about how to get energy when pregnant here.
Menopause can cause sleep problems such as:
And during menopause, you may experience mood swings, weight gain, and changes in body temperature that can mess with your sleep and energy levels.
We’ve covered more on whether menopause can make you tired here.
There are many medical conditions that can make you feel like you want to sleep all the time. They can either cause fatigue as a symptom or cause sleep problems, which leave you low on energy.
These include:
You may also need more sleep than usual when you’re ill with something like the common cold, COVID, or flu. And 2023 research shows high sleep debt impairs your immune system, making it more likely to get ill.
Speak to your healthcare provider to rule out any underlying causes.
Some medications can cause drowsiness as a side effect. They can also cause sleep problems, leaving you tired the next day.
Medications to look out for include:
If you're sniffling and sneezing with allergies all day, you may want to do nothing but sleep.
Allergy symptoms like a stuffy nose, sore throat, itchy eyes, and breathlessness can make it harder to sleep.
Allergies can also cause snoring and mouth breathing, which can tank your energy levels. And allergy meds often come with drowsiness as a side effect.
Plus, all this sleep loss can make you more likely to develop allergies. A 2022 study found people who got six hours of sleep or less a night had 1.27 times higher odds of developing allergic sensitization (when your body becomes sensitive to an allergen) compared to those who got seven to eight hours of sleep.
We’ve covered more on how allergies can make you tired here.
Sleep hygiene is the name for the daily behaviors you can do to get better sleep. If you’ve got poor sleep hygiene, you’ll probably take longer to fall asleep, wake up more often during the night, and find it harder to meet your sleep need.
All this leads to sleep debt, which can make you want to sleep all day long.
Poor sleep hygiene includes:
Here’s what to do to stop wanting to sleep all the time:
It can feel like a lot to remember, but RISE can guide you through 20+ good sleep habits each day to make it easier to get the sleep you need at night.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can set up their 20+ in-app habit notifications here.
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Most of the time, you’ll want to sleep all of the time because you’re not getting enough sleep at night or because you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm.
Lower your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm to see if that helps you feel more awake.
Wanting to sleep all the time can also be a sign of a sleep disorder, medical condition, or mental health issue. Speak to your healthcare provider to rule out these potential causes. They can run blood tests and suggest supplements, medications, or treatment options to help.
If you can’t think of anything but crawling back into bed all day, the most likely culprits are high sleep debt and being out of sync with your circadian rhythm. Many other factors feed into these two reasons — like drinking caffeine too late in the day or feeling stressed.
RISE can help you feel more awake by working out how much sleep you need, how much sleep debt you have, and predicting your circadian rhythm to help you stay in sync.
RISE can also guide you through 20+ sleep hygiene habits each day to make it easier to get enough sleep at night.
It can sometimes feel impossible to get more energy, but a few changes can help. We’ve found 80% of RISE users feel more energy within five days of using the app.
You probably want to sleep all of the time because you’ve got a lot of sleep debt or you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm. Other reasons for wanting to sleep all the time include poor diet, lack of exercise, stress, medical conditions, medications, and sleep disorders.
You may feel sleepy all of the time even when you get enough sleep because you need more sleep than you think, you’re getting less sleep than you think, you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm, or you have a medical condition or sleep disorder.
You may want to sleep all of the time in winter because you’ve got high sleep debt, you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm, you’ve got seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or you get less sunlight, which can mess up your body clock and make it harder to sleep.
You may want to sleep all of the time on your period because you build up sleep debt or get out of sync with your body clock. Your hormones can cause sleep problems and anxiety, and cramps may make it harder to fall asleep.
Most of the time, you want to sleep all of the time because you’ve got a lot of sleep debt or you’re out of sync with your circadian rhythm. These things can be fixed to give you more energy. But wanting to sleep all of the time can also be caused by a medical condition or sleep disorder, so it may be worth speaking to a healthcare provider to rule these out.
Stop wanting to sleep all of the time by paying down your sleep debt and getting in sync with your circadian rhythm. You can do this by taking short afternoon naps, heading to bed a little earlier, sleeping in a little later, and keeping as regular a sleep schedule as possible.
RISE makes it easy to improve your sleep and daily energy to reach your potential
RISE makes it easy to improve your sleep and daily energy to reach your potential
