SerpApi.Org
It’s normal to feel tired or burned out occasionally. Whether working on a looming deadline, battling a week of disturbed sleep or simply burning the candle at both ends, modern life is often exhausting. For many, these periods of depleted energy levels, while disruptive, are fairly easy to resolve with a few nights of solid shut-eye. Yet in recent years, practitioners say they’re seeing a growing number of young women reporting a new kind of underlying fatigue.
As opposed to burnout, which has recently dominated the exhaustion conversation among women, prolonged fatigue is an enduring, low-grade exhaustion that doesn’t resolve with rest and isn’t always directly linked to workload.
“We are seeing a significant increase in young women presenting with persistent fatigue,” says Dr. Tony Banerjee, global chief medical officer at NADclinic. “What’s striking is that many of these women are high-functioning, career-driven individuals who appear ‘well’ externally, but are struggling with chronic low energy, brain fog, poor sleep quality, and reduced resilience.”
What does fatigue look like?
Fatigue is different from ordinary tiredness. “It is a persistent reduction in physical, mental, or emotional energy that is disproportionate to activity levels and not fully relieved by rest,” explains Dr. Ahmed El Muntasar, who says he’s also seeing a significant increase in female patients presenting with prolonged exhaustion.
Cognitively, fatigue can manifest as brain fog or reduced concentration; physically, women often report low stamina or a sense of heaviness. Emotionally, it may feel like diminished motivation. Fatigue interferes with daily functioning and can linger for weeks, even months. It often shows no identifiable triggers or clear link to a specific root cause. This can make it even harder to recognize and treat, which means the problem persists.
“The body is remarkably adaptive, but it has limits,” says psychotherapist Nino Sopromadze. “Think of it like a rubber band: it can stretch impressively wide without breaking. The problem is not the stretch itself, but the duration. When tension is held for too long, the elasticity weakens. Sometimes it snaps, but other times it loses its capacity to return to baseline. This exhaustion is information that the band has been stretched beyond sustainability.”
The elastic-band analogy is helpful for placing fatigue within the context of how we regulate our bodies and minds. According to experts, a lack of ‘regulation’ and capacity for recovery is at the heart of the problem. “Fatigue often signals disregulation in the nervous system, metabolism, hormones, or inflammatory pathways,” says Lanserhof Sylt’s chief cardiologist Dr. Jan Stritzke. “Modern life has intensified both the psychological and biological load. Digital overstimulation, hybrid work and disrupted circadian rhythms all intersect.”
What causes fatigue in young women?
According to a burnout report from Mental Health UK, 50 percent of women aged 18 to 24 and 47 percent of women aged 25 to 34 reported experiencing extreme or high levels of pressure and stress ‘always’ or ‘often’.
“Despite someone’s early twenties often being seen as a time of having fun and making memories with friends, our survey found that six in 10 of these women reported that feeling isolated had driven stress,” says Deidre Bowen, director of UK programs at Mental Health UK. Half reported that working overtime or taking on a second job due to the rising cost of living had caused this stress, the highest of any age group, while 40 percent of women aged 25 to 34 reported fears around job security or redundancy.
Dr. Stritzke explains that chronic stress, which is constant and persistent over an extended period of time, alters autonomic balance; this is the dynamic, healthy equilibrium of our nervous system, which is made up of our brain, spinal cord, and nerves that carry messages between the brain and body. When the body remains subtly in fight-or-flight mode, sleep quality deteriorates and inflammation rises, which affects the immune system, meaning that deep recovery is harder to achieve.
“Fatigue is not a weakness of character—it is a measurable loss of biological regulation,” says Dr. Stritzke. “If recovery is not structured, depletion becomes chronic. The modern woman does not need more resilience; she needs biological recalibration.”
The rise in pressure among young women has contributed to the wider culture of disregulated routines that affect the body’s ability to recalibrate. “There are two sides to every coin,” says Sopromadze. “Hybrid work can offer autonomy, less commuting, and greater flexibility, yet that same flexibility can quickly dissolve boundaries. By bringing work home, the nervous system no longer receives a clear signal that work is over. Being constantly plugged in maintains a background sense of activation, keeping the nervous system in mild hyperarousal.”
How to combat fatigue in 2026
Luckily, there are some simple ways to regulate your nervous system. Dr. Samantha Wild, a women’s health clinical lead at Bupa, emphasizes the importance of practicing good sleep hygiene: she recommends dimming lights at least two hours before bed, aiming for seven to nine hours of sleep per night, with a regular wind-down, and establishing a bedtime routine that you stick to even on the weekends.
The culture of disregulated routines and irregular working patterns also has heavy implications for diet and well-being, as our bodies cannot absorb as much nutrition if we’re skipping meals or eating on the go.
“How, what, and when we eat has an enormous influence on energy,” says Rhian Stephenson, registered nutritionist and founder of health-supplement brand Artah. “Irregular eating and skipping meals can disrupt blood sugar, appetite hormones, and circadian rhythm, all of which can increase fatigue, energy fluctuations, and cravings throughout the day.”
Stephenson explains that the mounting pressures young women face often result in them falling short of protein and fiber goals and being undernourished, all of which can contribute to fatigue if persistent. “It’s about cultivating consistency with the fundamentals over time,” she explains. This means no longer skipping breakfast in lieu of caffeine in order to better regulate blood sugar, cortisol, energy, and metabolism. Reducing decision fatigue by choosing a handful of go-to meals you can rotate on repeat can also help, ensuring at least 1 oz of fiber and 0.55 g of protein per pound of weight every day, or adding a supplement if necessary.
Although these habits may sound simple and even familiar, the real challenge lies in maintaining them consistently within the rhythm of everyday life. It’s this daily repetition that often proves difficult and, increasingly, it’s a routine that many young women are compromising on. “Regulation isn’t about dramatic interventions but consistency of these practices,” says Sopromadze.
“We are at risk of normalizing a level of exhaustion that could have serious consequences,” warns Bowen. Fatigue is also associated with increased cardiovascular risk, metabolic dysfunction, anxiety, and depressive disorders, impaired immune function, and a significant reduction in quality of life over time.
“If persistent tiredness is affecting your daily life, or there’s no clear reason for it, speak to a health professional,” says Wild. “Getting help early can make a big difference to how you feel.” From there, a medical professional can assess sleep quality rather than just duration, menstrual and hormonal history, mental health, nutritional status, and metabolic or endocrine health. Dr. El Muntasar explains that tests are an important part of this assessment, including full blood count, ferritin, thyroid function, vitamin B-12, vitamin D, and HbA1c.
If all this is making you feel, well, tired, then it will be a relief to learn that there is some good news: there has been progress made toward addressing both the circumstances that trigger fatigue—with companies being clearer about work boundaries, improved research around women’s hormones, recognition of cognitive and emotional labor, and increased research into female-specific health concerns—and our individual habits and patterns, including normalizing regular sleep-eat-move routines.
As Dr. Stritzke points out, the future of preventive medicine is not about performance—it’s about regulation. The solution is not pushing harder—it’s making time for rest and restoring balance.
