Why are we all so tired?

Why are we all so tired?

More and more people are suffering 'burnout' - but is this the fault of modern life or is physical, mental and spiritual exhaustion a far older condition? BBC Future investigates.

A few years ago, Anna Katharina Schaffner became the latest victim of the exhaustion 'epidemic'.

It began with a kind of mental and physical inertia - as she put it, a "sense of heaviness" in all that she did.

Even the most mundane tasks would sap her of all her energy, and concentrating on her work became increasingly difficult.

Yet when she tried to relax, she would find herself obsessively checking her emails at all hours, as if relief for her ennui would suddenly ping into her inbox.

Alongside the weariness came feelings of emotional despondency: "I was disenchanted, disillusioned and hopeless."

These feelings will be familiar to countless others, from Pope Benedict XVI to Mariah Carey, who have been diagnosed with exhaustion.

If the media are to be believed, it is a purely modern ailment; almost every time Schaffner turned on the TV, she would see a debate on the trials we face in our 24/7 culture.

"All the commentators represented our age as the most terrible one out there - that it's the absolute apocalypse for our energy reserves," she says.

But can that really be true? Or are periods of lethargy and detachment as inevitable a part of human life as head colds and broken limbs?

A literary critic and medical historian at the University of Kent in the UK, Schaffner decided to investigate further.

The result is her new book Exhaustion: A History, a fascinating study of the ways in which doctors and philosophers have understood the limits of the human mind, body - and energy.

There is no doubt that exhaustion is a pressing concern today, with some particularly startling figures emerging from emotionally draining sectors such as healthcare.

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