5 reasons why you feel sleepy after dinner and how to fix it

Often sleepy after lunch at work? Of course, this inter­feres with full-fledged work and well-being wors­ens. What are the caus­es of sleepi­ness? And is there any way to fix this sit­u­a­tion?

Too little or too much sleep

The first rea­son is a lack or excess of sleep. If you are con­stant­ly not get­ting enough sleep, you should not be sur­prised. Late sleep, ear­ly rise, poor sleep — all this affects health and does not allow the body to ful­ly relax. There­fore, it is pos­si­ble to main­tain cheer­ful­ness only until din­ner, and then fatigue sets in again and begins to fall asleep.

Inter­est­ing­ly, too much sleep can also make you sleepy after din­ner. The thing is that the habit of sleep­ing for a long time leads to a vio­la­tion of the dai­ly rou­tine.

Overwork at work and at home

If there are a lot of things to do and wor­ries, both at work and at home, the body does not have enough rest. Nat­u­ral­ly, over time, over­work sets in, the body can not cope with such a busy sched­ule. Espe­cial­ly if there has not been a vaca­tion and a good rest for a long time.

And often it is after lunch at work, when you can relax for a cou­ple of min­utes, that there is a desire to doze off. Indeed, in the morn­ing there is still strength and vig­or, by the evening fatigue already appears, but drowsi­ness usu­al­ly does not both­er.

Improper nutrition

The third rea­son is mal­nu­tri­tion. You may be miss­ing cer­tain vit­a­mins or min­er­als. Then fatigue, apa­thy, drowsi­ness may dis­turb, vig­or, ener­gy and strength may not be enough.

Or maybe heavy food is to blame. If every day you have a very tight lunch and not light (soup, fish, veg­eta­bles), but fat­ty meat dish­es, after that you will def­i­nite­ly want to fall asleep faster.

Psychological reasons

Sleep helps to relax and for­get about prob­lems. There­fore, some­times there is a kind of “escape” from prob­lems and oblig­a­tions.

Per­haps the work does not like and caus­es irri­ta­tion. Then a short day­time sleep helps to get rid of the accu­mu­lat­ed neg­a­tiv­i­ty. Or maybe they are wor­ried about prob­lems in the fam­i­ly, a quar­rel with a friend, or some­thing else.

That is, the fourth rea­son for sleepi­ness at work after lunch is psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­sons.

lack of oxygen

And the fifth com­mon cause is oxy­gen defi­cien­cy. A small room, rare ven­ti­la­tion, con­stant work of com­put­ers, a large num­ber of peo­ple — all this leads to every minute yawn­ing and drowsi­ness.

The lack of oxy­gen inter­feres with work process­es and the nor­mal func­tion­ing of the brain. There­fore, often in this case there is an irre­sistible desire to fall asleep at least for a few min­utes.

How to deal with the problem: change habits

How to over­come sleepi­ness at work? You have to change your habits.

First of all, you need to estab­lish a sleep pat­tern. If you’re used to stay­ing up late, you need to change that. It is best to go to bed at 22–23 hours, no lat­er than. Before going to bed, you should take a walk for 15–20 min­utes, get some fresh air. You can take a warm bath or drink a cup of mint tea to relax. If you are used to wak­ing up late, you will also have to adjust your reg­i­men. You should not sleep until 12 o’clock in the after­noon, it is bet­ter to wake up at 8 or 9 o’clock in the morn­ing, then the body will get used to this regime and will be vig­or­ous dur­ing work­ing hours.

In addi­tion, you will have to recon­sid­er nutri­tion. Eat for lunch, eat fried meat or pota­toes, three hot dogs, or fat­ty meat soup, then you can’t have a bun in addi­tion. Nutri­tion should be bal­anced and com­plete, and por­tions should be small. Then the feel­ing of light­ness will remain after din­ner, heav­i­ness in the stom­ach and drowsi­ness will not both­er.
What is the best choice for lunch? Veg­etable soup, var­i­ous sal­ads, fish, seafood, chick­en or turkey dish­es. And do not eat every­thing with sweets or cook­ies. It is enough to eat fruit or drink com­pote (fruit drink).

If over­work is the cul­prit, you just need to rest. Go on vaca­tion, post­pone part of the work for the next week, entrust more to your fam­i­ly. The point is to let your body rest. If work­ing to exhaus­tion has already become a habit, you need to fight it. Find a hob­by, meet friends more often, com­mu­ni­cate more with loved ones. We must under­stand that work should not occu­py the main place in life.

Work brings only neg­a­tive emo­tions? You have to try to find what you like. Spend­ing a lot of time in an unloved work­place is harm­ful. It caus­es dis­com­fort, keeps in sus­pense. There­fore, the body tries to get away from neg­a­tiv­i­ty with the help of sleep. Of course, you should not abrupt­ly quit your usu­al job, but it’s worth try­ing to find a new place. If it is inter­est­ing to work, then there will be no trace of drowsi­ness.

What else will help to cope with the desire to sleep after din­ner at work? Here are some tips:

• drink a cup of strong green tea or cof­fee — it will invig­o­rate, ener­gize. But this does not mean that you need to devel­op the habit of drink­ing these drinks in liters. It’s unhealthy;
• drink a cup of water with lemon juice — it helps to acti­vate;
• Aro­mas of essen­tial oils will help inter­rupt sleep. It is bet­ter to choose berg­amot, man­darin, mint. But this is pos­si­ble only if col­leagues do not mind, or you are alone in the office;
• go to the open win­dow and get some fresh air, or even bet­ter, go for a walk for at least ten min­utes — this will invig­o­rate you per­fect­ly;
• dis­tract from rou­tine work — talk with col­leagues, dis­cuss some­thing inter­est­ing. This acti­vates the work of the brain;
• do some exer­cis­es — any phys­i­cal activ­i­ty will speed up blood cir­cu­la­tion and help you for­get about sleep. If it is not pos­si­ble to do exer­cis­es, you should at least stretch, walk;
• lis­ten to active music — ten min­utes will be enough to cheer up. Unless, of course, col­leagues also love music;
• wash­ing with cold water is sim­ple and effec­tive;
• rub the ear­lobes, rub the palms — for a while it will invig­o­rate.

So, if you often suf­fer from drowsi­ness after lunch at work, you should try dif­fer­ent ways and find what real­ly helps. And you also need to intro­duce good habits into your life (get enough sleep, eat right and rest), then the prob­lem may not arise at all.