It is important to see your doctor if you are unduly tired as a full health assessment together with targeted blood tests can quickly rule out conditions such as anaemia, iron deficiency, thyroid disease and the early stages of more severe diseases such as kidney and liver disease. On top of this an assessment of your general wellbeing, lifestyle health and preventative health care needs can also be made.

A very important and increasingly common cause of tiredness is obstructive sleep apnoea. This can be recognised by snoring at night together with periods of struggling to breath that partially rouse the person. This leads to an interrupted sleep where prolonged periods of deep sleep are not possible. In turn, during the day, the person can feel excessively tired and sleepy, sometimes inappropriately so.

This is not a condition to be ignored as, apart from a nagging sense of tiredness every day, it increases the risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and can cause accidents through people falling asleep while driving or operating machinery. For many people it may have been there so long and developed so slowly that they accept their current tired state as normal.

Others are often the first to recognise it, particularly those who share your bedroom. Ask them if you snore and do they sometimes think your stop breathing. Then ask yourself do you feel tired during the day and do you tend to fall asleep in situations that are a bit unusual at times.

Further information can be found on the following link: http://www.sleephealthfoundation.org.au/fact-sheets-a-z/191-obstructive-sleep-aponea.html

Be sure to check in with your doctor if daytime tiredness or sleepiness is a problem or if your partner recognises you in the description above.