Experts Discover Surprising Daily Activity That Makes You ‘Tired All The Time’

Have you ever found yourself exhausted despite not working hard physically?

Whether it’s thinking about what to eat, what to wear, or remembering to charge your phone, from the moment we wake up, modern life is full of decisions.

While these simple choices may not seem like strenuous tasks, studies suggest they could be overloading our brains and tiring us out all the time.

In fact, at the end of a day full of seemingly minor cognitive tasks, it may be even harder for us to make rational decisions, and experts say the build-up of a specific brain chemical may be to blame.

Here, MailOnline reveals why decision fatigue really is wearing us all down.

While simple choices may not seem like a difficult task, they could be overloading our brains and tiring us all the time.

Researchers have found that after a decision is made, this chemical glutamate just sticks around, builds up, and clogs up the brain.

When we make a decision, the brain sends an electrical signal between brain regions along wire-like structures called neurons.

But to send these messages it needs a brain chemical called glutamate, a neurotransmitter.

Researchers have found that after a decision is made, this chemical glutamate sticks around, essentially building up and clogging up the brain, and the effect gets worse and worse after more and more decisions.

The discovery, by experts at the Paris Brain Institute in France, came after they measured the levels of these brain chemicals in the organ and the effect they had on performing difficult tasks.

They focused on a part of the brain called the lateral prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that tackles difficult tasks and makes decisions.

The 2022 study saw 40 people perform memory tasks for six hours while lying in an MRI scanner.

One of the tasks involved viewing sequences of numbers appearing on a screen and judging whether the current number was the same as the previous number. An easier task was given to 14 people, while a more difficult one was given to 26.

Glutamate along with eight different brain chemicals were measured at various points during the cognitive exercises.

But interestingly, at the end of the challenges, both groups had the same levels of glutamate in the lateral prefrontal cortex compared to the start of the experiment.

This suggests that it is the amount of tasks that causes this mental backlog, not their difficulty.

The researchers found that those who participated in the more difficult tasks had higher levels of glutamate in the lateral prefrontal cortex compared to the start of the experiment.

But the researchers observed that people doing the more difficult tasks showed other signs of fatigue, such as dilated pupils in their eyes, which was not the case in the group doing the easier task.

The study also looked at how this mental fatigue affects the way people make decisions.

Between the memory tasks, the researchers gave participants other exercises, such as one in which people chose between getting a smaller amount of money immediately or a larger amount later.

When people who did the more difficult memory tasks became more tired, they began to accept a small reward that they would get immediately, but this was not always the case for the other group.

This suggested that they were choosing the option that required the least amount of decision making.

Experts at the Paris Brain Institute in France noted that sleep could help rebalance glutamate levels in the brain, but stressed that more research is needed.

Other studies have also shown that decision fatigue actually affects our ability to think clearly.

Experts at the Paris Brain Institute in France noted in the study that sleep could help rebalance glutamate levels in the brain, but further research is needed.

A 2016 study, published in Chronobiology International, revealed that people make more rational decisions earlier in the day.

Participants were asked to play a game where they had to accept or reject different financial offers proposed by a virtual participant. They completed this game at both 9am and 5pm.

The researchers observed more cautious decision-making in the morning, while at night participants spent less time responding to high-uncertainty offers.

Another 2021 study, published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, surveyed more than 1,000 participants about impulse buying and also found that people were more likely to make impulsive decisions later in the day.

Both suggest that we make bad decisions later in the day once our brains are tired.

But there are suggestions that a short break can help recharge the brain.

According to a 2021 study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, which analyzed the decisions made by Major League Baseball umpires, it found that they have a depleting attention “budget.”

But after short breaks during a match they were able to replenish these attention budgets.

The study authors said this could be replicated in other work settings and suggested that taking short breaks during the workday could help people in “cognitively demanding jobs”.