• Question: when we are tired, why do we get angry quicker, get headaches and feel cold & hungry?

    Asked by eirlys to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 11 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      Hi Eirlys! If you don’t have much energy that makes you feel tired – so you get frustrated with things that usually aren’t a problem when you’re energetic, you preserve energy and move less, which makes you feel colder, and your blood sugar is likely to be low, making you grumpy and hungry. You may find that if you eat something, you feel better again, and energetic, and not tired any more. In which case you were just hungry, and not actually tired! But it’s all linked! Do you get grumpy when you’re tired?

    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      Well that’s definitely what happens to me when I’m tired!
      I completely agree with Sarah that if you are low on energy, this will make you tired, angry, hungry & cold – I certainly get very grumpy if I miss my lunch.
      If you are tired because you haven’t had enough sleep then there could be another reason why you feel like like that: when you don’t sleep enough your amygdala (which is the part of the brain that controls emotions) becomes overactive. This causes your prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain which control logic and decision-making) to switch off, making you more erratic and emotional. Your brain also starts to rely on more on a region called the locus coeruleus, which releases a stress hormone called noradrenaline which can cause your blood vessels to constrict and may give you a headache.
      I hope this answers everything! My advice would be to get enough sleep and don’t skip meals if you feel like this.

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 12 Jun 2012:

      Hi Eirlys,
      I think its the body not coping with low energy supplies which can be made better by eating and drinking or having a sleep and rest. I know at bed time I get really cold (I end up snuggling under a fluffy blanket most evenings), and put it down to my body running out of the energy needed to keep warm – but I don’t know if that is physiologically a reasonable assumption. As for getting grumpy when tired – that’s me too and I put that down to needing the energy thats needed to keep your patients.

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