What Is Somnolence And Why Do You Feel Sleepy?

We’re all aware of our post-lunch crashes. They feel almost inevitable sometimes. You’re looking at your laptop, but you find your mind drifting and your eyes closing almost automatically. Imagine how it would be if you kept experiencing this feeling almost all your day. How difficult it would make for you to go about your day-to-day tasks. This persistent pull towards sleep has a name, and it’s something that several people have to experience, it’s known as somnolence. 

It’s like this state or habit of being sleepy, and you can be anywhere on a scale of general drowsiness to daytime sleepiness, which is too severe. Of course, it’s completely normal to feel tired. Part of being human is feeling tired and needing food energy from time to time. The problem arises when you are feeling too sleepy a lot of time and for long periods of time too. 

Medical professionals state that if you are feeling this sleepy or drowsy, then it might be that you aren’t getting enough hours of sleep at night, maybe your body clock is being a little wonky, or you might have a sleep disorder. Before your brain tried blaring horns in your head, please remember that excessive sleepiness doesn’t automatically mean a sleep disorder. Follow along on the blog and know for yourself.

What Is Somnolence?

It’s this state of being extremely sleepy or having a strong tendency to sleep during situations in your life where you have to be present and awake. It comes from the Latin word for sleep, somnus, which means sleep.

In your day-to-day life, it might look like being unusually drowsy, heavy-eyed, mentally slowed down, or constantly ready for a nap (I mean, when are we not ready for a nap?). However, somnolence is more than just needing naps.

There is a difference between being tired and being somnolent. Fatigue is mental or physical exhaustion, low energy, and that flat feeling. Somnolence comes with an actual pull toward sleep, plus trouble paying attention. Someone can be fatigued and still lie awake for hours at night. A somnolent person usually can’t keep their eyes open. Usually. There’s overlap, though. Plenty of people get both at once, which makes it hard to tell what’s going on.

Medical professionals tend to see it as a symptom rather than a condition by itself. Something is causing it. Sometimes that something is obvious, like a bad night. Sometimes it isn’t, and might be an underlying condition that needs to be checked.

Everybody gets sleepy before bed, obviously. That’s normal, that’s the body doing its job. It gets weird when the sleepiness shows up at 11 a.m. in the middle of an email or at a red light. Then it’s not really normal anymore.

Somnolence symptoms

You might want to keep an eye out for these symptoms. They can surely appear as just fatigue or tiredness at first, but it’s a slippery slope of denying, which can lead to grave consequences. 

You may experience stuff like yawning nonstop, losing focus halfway down a page, slower reactions, and a foggy, not-fully-here sensation. You may be forgetting things that you should be remembering. Needing coffee, then more coffee, then a third cup around 2 p.m. just to function. You may find yourself nodding off even during important things like being in a meeting, being in a car, or working at your desk. 

Some people wake up after a full night and feel like they slept two hours. That one’s a clue of the condition, actually. Hours in bed and quality of sleep are not the same thing. Your mood might take a hit too, and you may feel irritable, flat, and a bit short-tempered. We can’t guarantee that this will always be the case, but if you do see yourself experiencing such drastic mood swings, then it might be a sign. 

Causes of Somnolence

Being somnolent is often treated as a symptom that can be seen due to a myriad of reasons. 

First of all, you could definitely be experiencing extreme daytime drowsiness due to a lack of sleep. Stuff like late nights, early alarms, a new baby, a bad mattress, or a phone glowing at 1 a.m. can all make it difficult for individuals to get a proper amount of sleep. Five hours a night for a week adds up, and even if you feel like your body seems to have adjusted, it didn’t, really. Sleep deprivation builds like a debt, and the interest is brutal.

Then there’s your body clock. The circadian rhythm is the internal 24-hour timer that tells the brain when to be alert and when to wind down. Shift workers mess it up all the time. So do people flying across time zones and experiencing jet lags, or people who stay up until 3 a.m. during weekends and end up messing up their internal clocks. When that timer is off, sleepiness lands at all the wrong hours.

Food also plays a part. That heavy post-lunch dip and the food coma are legitimate experiences for many. Big carb-heavy meals seem to make it worse, though it’s not the whole story, since the early afternoon slump happens after light lunches too.

Medications are another thing people overlook. The medications could be anything like some allergy tablets, certain sleep aids, certain antidepressants, anti-seizure drugs, and opioid painkillers. Drowsiness is printed right there as a common side effect on plenty of labels. Anyone who started something new and experienced excessive daytime sleepiness around the same time should mention it to their physician or pharmacist. Feeling sleepy during the day is not a call to stop taking said medications, but a sign that you should speak to a professional.

And then there’s the medical stuff. Sleep apnea is a big one, in which an individual’s breathing pauses through the night and the brain never gets proper rest. There are also sleep disorders like narcolepsy, insomnia, and restless legs that can cause persistent sleepiness in individuals. Stuff like thyroid troubles, anemia, low vitamin B12, depression, and diabetes can also have an effect. The list keeps going, which is why guessing rarely works.

Somnolence vs. Sleep Inertia

Lastly, some people tend to get confused between the effects of both the situations. While, yes, the aftermath of both may look pretty similar, sleep inertia is more so a sluggish feeling that people experience after waking up, and the other is more of a symptom that can appear due to several reasons. 

Being somnolent is typically feeling excessively sleepy even after you have slept for a good amount of hours and then proceeding to doze off. Sleep inertia is more like a groggy feeling that people experience just after they have woken up. Your brain is awake, but your system is just taking some time to properly boot up, so to say. 

And being sluggish or groggy once in a while is fine, we all have those days. But constantly experiencing trouble waking up, being very confused in the morning, or needing to sleep too much all the time may all be signs that you need to speak to a professional. Several hypersomnia sleep disorders may just look like sleep inertia at first.

Final Thoughts

It’s not just your body being “lazy” or your brain wanting another cup of coffee that makes you feel slowed down and sleepy. At times, it’s just a normal reaction to staying up late. At other times, it’s a sign that you need to pay more attention to your health, sleep quality, routine, or medications. The first thing that can help you figure out why you’re tired is to keep track of when it happens, how often it happens, and whether you feel rested after sleeping.

You’re not alone in this journey, there are several techniques, treatments, and medications that can help you get back on your feet.