Why Insomnia Can Leave You Tired, Groggy And Unfocused?

When we generally walk into a grocery store, we prepare our list early on even before we have entered. Maybe you’ve written it in your notes app, or maybe you just need a couple items, and you have been rehearsing it to yourself on your way to the store. But sometimes, after 10-15 minutes of entering the store, you find yourself roaming the aisles aimlessly trying to remember what it was that you went there for. 

See, this is a pretty common experience, so don’t automatically start pointing fingers just yet. The issue is that this experience could be one of many things that could be happening. Experiences where you have been too tired, groggy, or unfocused. Honestly, we all have those days, and it’s fine to experience this extent of exhaustion here and there. The issue arises when this becomes a common occurrence and starts affecting your daily life. That is when you should be looking deeper into it. 

This is why insomnia can be so frustrating and detrimental to your daytime functioning. The problem might begin when you hit the pillow, but it might not go away until the next day. Sometimes not getting enough sleep can make you feel tired, groggy, and mentally foggy. It can also make it hard to focus when you need your brain to be fully on.

What Happens When You Have Insomnia

Sleep isn’t just a downtime for our bodies. The brain uses those hours to sort through the day, clear out some of the clutter, and get ready for tomorrow. Cut it short, and the job doesn’t finish. Insomnia is also more than just having a bad night here or there. Individuals may experience a general inability to fall asleep or stay asleep. They may also be waking up earlier than they wish to or not being able to get a restful sleep. 

All of these several sleeping problems can produce severe daytime fatigue effects like difficulty concentrating, daytime sleepiness, waking up tired, feeling groggy after sleep, or issues with energy levels.

Unfortunately, these experiences of difficulty falling asleep or trouble sleeping are also quite common. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has given an estimate that around 10-15% of adults may experience these sleep disturbances, which may affect their concentration throughout.

Poor Sleep Can Make You Feel Groggy

As mentioned, sleeping is not simply a time when your body becomes inactive and you get vulnerable to predators. While you are snoozing, your brain is moving through the different sleep stages and trying to support the mechanisms you have for processing memories, regulating emotions, learning, and restoring your physical state. 

Having a poor sleep quality because of repeated interruptions or pauses that come with insomnia can make it quite difficult for individuals to feel rested and be at the top of their game. This is why insomnia leaves most people feeling as if they didn’t get enough rest despite the individual getting enough sleep. 

If you have been feeling tired after poor sleep, despite it being eight hours long too, then that’s a sign that something is going seriously awry while you have been catching the zzzs. 

How Are Insomnia and Brain Fog Related?

Brain fog isn’t a diagnosis. It’s just what sluggish thinking feels like. Words take longer to show up, names slip, or an email gets read three times and still doesn’t land. 

Attention takes the first hit. The prefrontal cortex, which handles focus and decisions, is pretty touchy about missed rest. Memory suffers too, since sleep helps lock in whatever got learned that day. This is why difficulty concentrating is one of the most common effects of insomnia. You may be reading a page but not registering a word of what is written.

Some studies compare the reaction times of an insomniac with someone who’s had a few drinks, and they all state more or less the same thing. Individuals experiencing the daytime effects of insomnia are as sluggish as someone who has had alcohol. 

Why You May Be Exhausted But Struggle to Sleep

This is one of the most common complaints that people with insomnia have. Their thoughts are constantly circling around the fact that they may feel exhausted but still cannot sleep. I mean truly, how can you be exhausted all day but still struggle to sleep? 

That’s mainly because how sleepy you feel may not always perfectly synchronize with your ability to sleep. Stuff like stress, worrying about when you will sleep, irregular sleep schedules, using screens late at night, caffeine, or shift work can all contribute to the issue of having difficulties sleeping.  

What can happen due to this is that over time, the individual can develop a frustrating cycle that they cannot even get out of. The previous night you didn’t sleep, and because of that you feel exhausted the next day. Throughout the day, you may keep worrying if that will happen again, and these worries plague you until you hit the bed. Now, you are entering the zone with an already anxious and tired mind rather than an open and stress-free one. 

These worries and mental arousal can make it more difficult for individuals to relax, which is why they may still have troubles sleeping even if they are exhausted out of their minds. 

Insomnia Is Not Equal to Daytime Fatigue

The insomnia symptoms may at first look like you are just experiencing the one-off daytime exhaustion that so many of us have. Individuals who are not familiar with the condition may end up mixing the two up, but they’re different. 

Daytime fatigue is more like running on low energy, and it might not even lead to sleep. Daytime sleepiness is the actual pull toward dozing, head nodding in the afternoon slump, and eyes shutting at a red light. Some people with sleep deprivation feel wrecked but can’t nap at all. Wired and tired together, which is a horrible combo. 

The usual symptoms are simple enough. Lying awake, difficulty staying asleep, waking far too early, and feeling unrefreshed. Then the daytime pile-on, which is irritability, fog, and that heavy-lidded feeling after lunch.

Final Thoughts

When humans are sleeping, they are essentially making themselves more vulnerable to predators. If you look at it evolutionarily, sleep actually puts us at a lot of risk since we cannot actively protect ourselves. Despite all that, we, as most mammals, need sleep and need to get good quality sleep as well. Sleep deprivation has proven to have far-reaching effects on an individual’s mental and physical health. 

Sure, the most explicit effects will be the ones that involve sleepiness during the day, but there are long-term health repercussions of poor sleep quality and sleep deprivation. One of the most dangerous is Alziehmer’s. This is not to make any of our readers paranoid. It’s just a cautionary warning, especially for people who already have a genetic vulnerability to these conditions.