Tired brain reduces productivity, affects health

An exhausted manPhysical or mental fatigue is a typical result of mental stress, boredom, disease and lack of sleep. Experts caution that people with mental fatigue should not engage in physically demanding tasks after long period of alertness or vigilance, because they could end up physically tired and with “brain fog,” reports Sade Oguntola.

Fatigue, also called exhaustion, is weariness caused by exertion. It can affects describe a range of afflictions, varying from a general state of tiredness, to a specific work-induced burning sensation within one’s muscles. It can be both physical and mental.

Many people complain of physical fatigue when they are unable to continue to function at the level of their normal abilities. Though, it is ever-present in everyday life, nevertheless, physical tiredness or lack of strength usually becomes particularly noticeable during heavy exercise.

In addition to physical, fatigue also includes mental tiredness, which can manifest itself as decreased wakefulness or just as a general decrease of attention, not necessarily including sleeplessness. It may also be described as more or less decreased level of consciousness, thus making people experiencing it to be in danger when performing tasks that require full concentration, such as driving a vehicle.

Many individuals remember feeling tired when down with a minor illness like the common cold, as one part of the response of the immune system to fight an infection. But, a long-lasting fatigue, for six months or more, may be a symptom of a large number of different diseases or conditions, such as lack of blood, anxiety, diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

Have you being experiencing fatigue of late due to work, mental stress, active recreation, depression, boredom, disease or lack of sleep? Do you persist at the work despite the exhaustion you are experiencing? Taking a break is better to ensure that one does not become both physically and mentally fatigued at the end of it all.

This is particularly important considering the findings of a United Kingdom study that showed that when people do physically demanding tasks after long period of alertness or vigilance, they end up physically tired and with “brain fog,”

The authors, publishing their findings in the March issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, found that when participants performed a mentally fatiguing task prior to a difficult exercise test, they reached exhaustion more quickly than when they did the same exercise when mentally rested. Mental fatigue plays a role in motivation and effort.

Tired brains, no doubt, make more mistakes. In a sense, this affects the brain’s default network. Scientists describe the default network as the parts of the brain that deactivate when a person is doing a specific mental task, such as having a conversation, reading or memorizing a list of words, or solving a math problem. The network is active, though, when people are ruminating, daydreaming, recalling the past or when the mind wanders.

Scientists equally suggested that exhaustion, from long hours on the job, might weaken individual’s mental abilities and put them at risk for developing dementia, an aging problem.

The researchers assessed a group of people who worked for more than 55 hours. They evaluated their cognitive functions, how well they were able to reason and do their job and found decline in their cognitive abilities. They had problems with memories, problems with functioning appropriately and problems with reading and comprehension.

Certainly, this is understandable, when the consequences of working hard are considered— you don’t sleep well, you probably don’t exercise or eat well.

In addition, working hard even when you are exhausted may be an admirable characteristic, but it is a virtue that could be harmful to your heart. Psychologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), explained that fatigued individuals’ blood system and heart are forced to work harder when they attempt to complete tasks, such as those encountered on the job or at school.

Dr. Victor Lasebikan, a psychiatrist at New World Specialist hospital, College Crescent, Ibadan, Oyo State, described the brain as the organ that controlled others in the body, which when overworked can be come fatigued.

According to him, “when you are mentally fatigued, you are overworked. Since the brain is the organ that controls all other activities in the body, there is bound to be a reduction in their outputs .So, you are bound to be tired. You are bound not to be able to tolerate a lot of tasking things and to some extent, you may be irritable because of your inability to cope with any task that you are given.”

Explaining the link between mental fatigue and reduced physical endurance, Dr. Lasebikan declared that when there was a reduction in the level of brain’s ability to cope, such things as lowered physical endurance can happen.

“Take the case of someone that has depression, mind you, this is not equivalent to mental fatigue, such as a low mood, low energy and loss of interest in many pleasurable activities. Quite a high number of them have a reduction in their think faculty and motor retardation. It is the same case in people with mental fatigue, to some extent.

Dr. Abiodun Adeoye, a cardiologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, declared that working while fatigued either physically or mentally was counterproductive considering that it was like flogging your body to work at all costs. “This is a case of putting further stress on the body. When you are working something that needs to rest and you overwork it, there would be overuse effect; there would be wear and tear effect under more stress.

“In any stressful condition, it would affect the blood pressure because the heart would be forced to race more,” he declared.

When fatigued individuals perceive a task as achievable and worth doing, they increase their effort to make up for their diminished capability due to fatigue. As a result, blood pressure tends to rise and remain elevated until the task is completed or individuals stop trying because they think success is impossible or too difficult to be justified.

The argument that fatigue is of little concern from a health standpoint because people will tend to withdraw effort once they become fatigued does not hold when considered from the view point that people may not have the luxury of withdrawing or perhaps, the wisdom to do so.

The brain needs the appropriate rest. It can’t be working 24 hours a day. Like the computer, it can’t continue to take in all the stimuli without rest. So again, when people work a long time and they don’t rest or they don’t have enough sleep, they don’t have enough exercise, they don’t eat well, all those things influence how the brain functions.

What are the signs that one’s brain is overworked? People whose brains are overworked find it hard remembering things and have problems concentrating and getting involved in multiple tasks.

Overcoming this would require finding the right balance between work and doing the things that are right in terms of a healthy lifestyle, such as having enough rest, exercises and eating right. In the office environment, taking a lunch break or a nap, relaxation to allow the brain to rest and be more alert or concentrate better, is helpful. A walk in a park a day can help keep mental fatigue at bay.