When Lack Of Sleep Is Not The Cause Of Fatigue

In this episode, I'm going to talk about fatigue and particularly the fatigue throughout the day. We know if you don't sleep well you're going to be tired the next day. That's pretty simple. Getting the right amount and good quality of sleep is important. The second component is nutrition. Nutrition can have an impact on your energy throughout the day. Making sure you have a healthy input of nutrition can greatly affect the amount of energy you have to stay active. How you use your energy can speed up your fatigue throughout the day. If you do an intense workout you will be more fatigued, limiting your activities and affecting your sleep. 

In the case where you feel you have optimized the three components that cause fatigue but still have trouble, it can be that your vestibular system isn't functioning very well. What is the vestibular system? The vestibular system is our inner ear and sits deep inside at the end of the ear canal. It's in charge of helping us recognize where we are in space and helps us keep our balance. It has three canals: horizontal canals, anterior, and posterior canals that help us with all types of movements in different directions. It helps us measure our up and down movements, so we can go in an elevator. It helps us with front and back movements, which lets us drive a car or sit on a train. That's the vestibular system.  If you had vertigo before or struggled with something similar, it is usually the vestibular system that is not functioning well enough.

Now, imagine you have some issues with one canal maybe not firing well enough, then other parts have to take over. This can happen throughout the day. As you go through your day and do a bunch of activities, such as driving to work, going to meetings, and working out, it can overwhelm the system because it's just not functioning well enough for the demand. The brain receives a signal from the vestibular system that it is overwhelmed and will say: "Okay, we're done. We can't handle it anymore. We need to stop." It will actually tire you out because even standing here, your vestibular system has to balance you from not falling. It's constantly working and if the data that's coming in isn't good enough, then it's overloaded and it's much harder to figure out how to keep you upright. If your vestibular system functions really well and you have it very well activated, it uses less energy to actually keep you upright. 

There a few easy ways to recognize if you have a might need to work on your vestibular system:

• if you are the kind of person who goes on roller coasters and then feels really tired the next day
• if you get car sick very easily 
• if you have anxiety
• if you're lacking or want more spinal stability

Yes, the vestibular system is actually impacting a lot of different things and I just named a few here.

How does this work? How do we train the vestibular system? Well, the one key thing is to perform certain movements. If I, for example, keep my eyes straight and I move my head, I'm activating the horizontal canal. Oftentimes, I see people with not a good stimulus, maybe not being able to turn their head. They might be going down instead of going horizontal. That's just one example. There are lots of things. If I'm just standing and spinning around, I actually stimulate my left vestibular canal.