The Tiredness Trap Week 4: What Your Body Has Been Trying to Tell You
Before I understood myself, I had constant headaches.
Not the occasional kind. A persistent, heavy weight that felt like a stone being pulled towards the ground. I was stumbling forwards, being dragged down by something I couldn’t name. Like a lump of concrete too heavy for my body to hold up.
I didn’t understand it at the time. I just kept going.
That is what this week is about. Not the dramatic collapse, but the slower, quieter signals that come first. The ones most men learn to override, dismiss, or push through until the body finds a more dramatic way to make itself heard.
The Signals Most Men Miss
Here is a list of things I used to experience and either ignore or explain away.
Constant joint aches. Diarrhoea. Headaches that wouldn’t shift. Tinnitus. Waking up tired after what should have been enough sleep. That 3pm crash. A general disinterest in things that used to matter.
In the clinic, men describe chest pain, abdominal discomfort, muscle cramps. The kind of symptoms that get investigated, come back clear, and leave everyone confused.
These are not random. They are a pattern. The body speaking in the only language available to it when everything else has been ignored.
What Is Actually Happening Underneath
In the early stages of chronic stress, cortisol does something useful. You feel energised, productive, focused. You get a lot done. For men who are already wired for high output, this phase can feel like finally running at full capacity.
Then the system starts to desensitise.
Sleep gets disrupted by stress hormones that should have settled hours ago. Concentration drops. Small mistakes creep in. The capacity for the next day is lower than the day before, and slightly lower again the day after that.
The destination, if nothing changes, is utter exhaustion. No motivation. No energy for things that used to feel easy. Life starts to feel flat and pointless. Not a personality change. A physiological cascade that has been building for months or years.
Related: Why Am I So Tired? The Science Behind Male Fatigue
What Alcohol Is Actually Doing to Your Sleep
You may know REM as a band. Michael Stipe picked the name at random from a dictionary and officially denied it had anything to do with sleep. But REM sleep is the most restorative stage your brain goes through each night. It’s where memories consolidate, the nervous system repairs, and the brain processes the day.
Alcohol destroys it. Even at low levels.
Ethanol has a half-life of roughly two hours. A drink before bed occupies your system for the first two hours of sleep, disrupting the architecture before you’ve even reached the restorative stages. Several beers in the evening means no good quality sleep from around 2:30am onwards.
Men who drink moderately and sleep what looks like a full night are often not actually sleeping. They are unconscious. There is a difference.
I wrote about this in detail here: Adventures in Caffeine Part 1: The Hidden Trap in Your Morning Cup
What the Blood Tests Miss
Here is the conversation I have regularly.
A man comes in convinced that something must show up on a test. The results come back broadly normal. He goes home reassured but still exhausted. The numbers said one thing. His body says another.
Blood tests are valuable. They are not the whole picture.
What I’ve found is that it isn’t always about whether results fall within range. It’s about whether they are optimal for that individual. Ferritin levels above 100 correlate with better energy in many people, not just levels that clear the clinical threshold. Vitamin D near 80 to 100 seems to make a meaningful difference compared to levels sitting at 20 or 30. These aren’t dramatic deficiencies. They are gaps between adequate and functional.
The test that most GPs, including me in standard practice, don’t routinely run is testosterone.
Steve
A man I’ll call Steve came to see me. 48 years old. Ran his own business. By any external measure, successful and looking after himself. But he’d run out of steam in a way he couldn’t explain. Nothing specific had changed. He was just done.
His GP had suggested antidepressants. Steve didn’t think that was the right answer and declined.
His testosterone came back at 10. Within the NHS normal range. Nothing to treat, according to the standard criteria.
Except that for a man his age with his symptoms, 10 is not a functional level. The British Society for Sexual Medicine guidelines suggest that 12 is a more meaningful threshold when symptoms are present. The number looks fine on paper. The man in front of me did not look fine.
We started treatment. Two months later Steve came back. His energy had returned. His mood had lifted. The colour had come back into life. He said he felt like himself again, and that he hadn’t realised how much of himself he’d lost until he got it back.
That response was unusually quick. For most men it takes longer. But the principle holds.
When men describe low testosterone, they rarely say they feel tired. What they say is: I don’t know who I am. Life feels without colour. Things that used to matter don’t seem to mean anything. That is not depression. That is a physiological deficit with a specific cause and a specific solution.
Related: Testosterone and Men’s Mental Health: What Nobody Tells You
What to Actually Do
A few practical things worth starting this week.
Sleep: the 3-2-1 rule in the hours before bed. No food within three hours, no large amounts of water within two hours, no screens within one hour. A dark, cool room. No phone. Morning daylight within thirty minutes of waking to regulate cortisol and support your circadian rhythm.
Caffeine: cut it off at midday. The half-life of caffeine is five to six hours. A 3pm coffee is still active at 9pm.
Alcohol: even two or three drinks on a weekday evening is likely costing you more sleep quality than you realise. Not because of the quantity, but because of the timing and the mechanism.
Bloods: if your last set of tests didn’t include testosterone, properly assessed ferritin, and vitamin D aimed at optimal rather than just adequate levels, it is worth asking for that conversation.
More on the caffeine piece here: Three Weeks Caffeine-Free: Sleep, Stress and Insights
The Tiredness Trap Case Studies
I’m opening a small number of Tiredness Trap Case Study sessions.
Eight places. Three hours with me, one to one. We take a deep look at your tiredness, what’s actually driving it, and solve the biggest blocker for you right now.
Each session is worth £625. If you’re not entirely satisfied with the outcome, I’ll give you free access to The Purpose Project, worth £80.
This offer closes on Friday 23rd May. Email ed@mensmindgp.com with the subject line “Tired” and I’ll come straight back to you.
Change One Thing
This week, track your energy across one full day.
Morning. Midday. 3pm. Evening. Just notice where the crashes are and what came before them. What did you eat? What had you been doing? How much had you slept the night before?
Don’t try to change anything yet. The data is the starting point.
Leave a comment below and tell me when your worst crash point is.
Related Reading
- Why Am I So Tired? The Science Behind Male Fatigue
- Three Weeks Caffeine-Free: Sleep, Stress and Insights
- Adventures in Caffeine Part 1: The Hidden Trap in Your Morning Cup
- Testosterone and Men’s Mental Health: What Nobody Tells You
References
Leproult, R. & Van Cauter, E. Effect of 1 week of sleep restriction on testosterone levels in young healthy men. JAMA, 2011, 305(21), 2173-2174.
Walker, M. Why We Sleep. Penguin, 2017.
Sapolsky, R.M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Holt Paperbacks, 2004.
WFSBP/ASLM Lifestyle Medicine Guidelines for Major Depressive Disorder, 2022.
British Society for Sexual Medicine Guidelines on Testosterone Deficiency, 2022.