Fatigue is a natural body response if you worked hard splitting wood for the winter, tilling acres of garden, running a marathon, or other positive lifestyle activities. After a good rest, you probably feel even better from the hard work or hard play that made you feel tired. However, if you feel tired for no easily explained reason or you always are feeling tired, we all know its not likely something we would consider a positive. In fact, there are many factors behind feeling tired like this which aren’t positive at all; they may even be health risks. Lots of people think about ‘iron poor blood’ because we heard that line in old television commercials. If you said that line to your doctor they might check your blood for various causes of anemia. But beyond that, there are many other problems which can make you feel tired. You should consider having your health care professional check you out if you are persistently tired for unexplained reasons. They might consider many other things from allergic rhinitis to infection to work shift disorder to narcolepsy to sleep apnea. One fellow described his tired feels like this -- "I began to understand why I felt run down and tired every day while working and why I had regularly had a hard time driving for 30 minutes to and from work without feeling like dosing off. I justified it to myself while driving home after work by supposing that I worked very hard during the day but I couldn’t justify why it was happening in the morning until my wife provided me proof of why NEITHER of us was sleeping well. I learned that it takes 70 - 90 minutes to initially reach the 2nd stage of deep sleep also known as stage 4 sleep. Not reaching stage 4 sleep which is followed by REM sleep is the cause of poor sleep quality." Whatever the reason for a person’s continued sleep interruptions the result is a general mental and physical decline. Besides simply being bleary-eyed, short-term recall and concentration ability is diminished. A lack of drive and ambition eventually results as does a heightened risk for a variety of major illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body and is an important factor in many killing health problems.