Fatigue can affect both personal and professional relationships, and increase health risks. Chronic fatigue can be caused by medical conditions, while acute fatigue is temporary. Mental fatigue can also occur, affecting creativity and productivity. Relaxation techniques can help combat fatigue. Safety risks include falling asleep while driving or at work. Shift workers are particularly prone to fatigue.
Fatigue can affect many different areas of a sufferer’s life. The effects of fatigue typically spread both at home and at work, which can affect the quality of personal and professional relationships. Chronic fatigue is also thought to greatly multiply safety and health risks.
When the body is excessively tired and a person feels exhausted most of the time, the immune system can suffer, which can increase the risk of disease. These effects of fatigue can lead to digestive upset, high blood pressure and heart disease. The two types of fatigue are chronic and acute. Chronic fatigue is ongoing and can be caused by a medical condition like depression or a disease like cancer. Acute or sudden fatigue is temporary and can be caused by overworking or not sleeping for a night or two.
While fatigue is often seen in physical effects, such as lack of energy, it can also be mental. Mental fatigue is common in people who work with information, especially with stressful deadlines or a high-pressure environment. Project managers, writers, accountants, students and many others can suffer the effects of fatigue by feeling mentally overwhelmed. These effects can include a blockage of the ability to create new ideas. For example, writer’s block may be the result of mental exhaustion. Relaxation can help combat the effects of physical and mental fatigue.
Sometimes just getting away from projects, like taking a break or going for a walk, can reduce mental fatigue. Breathing deeply or doing simple stretches can also help ease the physical effects of fatigue, such as body aches and headaches. The effects of physical and mental fatigue can affect relationships. People who are chronically tired tend to be irritable or inappropriately silly: these effects could especially cause annoyance in the workplace. Family life can also be affected by fatigue if parents feel too tired to give their children time for quality activities such as games and bike rides.
Safety risks from feeling sleepy and tired include falling asleep at work or while driving. These “micro sleeps” in which tired people close their eyes and fall asleep almost instantly due to fatigue can be extremely dangerous. Shift workers are often thought to be particularly prone to the effects of fatigue because they usually have to sleep at different times due to working different shifts. It is often difficult to adjust to changing sleep times and the result is often feeling tired during the day resulting in micro-sleeps. Many accidents can be caused by people experiencing the effects of fatigue because the ability to make smart decisions and prevent accidents is often impaired.
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