Question of the Day

This is a very interesting question. When I first heard this, I thought ... doesn't it just mean someone is tired? But after some research, I found that it is actually a common problem! Unfortunately, there is no consensus around why it happens.
The first thing to note is that yawning excessively can be a side affect of some other condition, and therefore it should be brought to your doctor's attention so they can do a thorough checkup and make sure it's not a sign of something serious.

When you yawn, your heart rate increases as does your blood pressure. Some believe this may help create energy and prepare the body for strenuous activity. You may be surprised to find, for example, that many Olympic athletes yawn excessively prior to their event.

Dogs tend to yawn in response to stress. It is a signal to other animals that they are anxious and need a break, and some believe it is used to help calm other dogs in the vicinity. For this reason, some theorize a human yawn is a response to stress as well and could be a sign of possible over training.

The most well known reason for humans to yawn is because we are tired. Excessive yawning may be linked to lack of sleep, and it could simply be a signal that you need to take a break to recover from your workouts as well as focus on increasing the amount of sleep and rest you receive.

Because yawning can be linked to other conditions such as medications (antidepressants may be a trigger for excessive yawn) or heart complications, you should definitely see a doctor and eliminate any serious causes before chalking it up to just lack of sleep or excessive training.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License, unless otherwise noted at the footer of the article. Article boilerplates, terms, conditions, and licenses supercede this license when present. Any republication of any form must attribute Jeremy Likness as the author and copyright holder. Any republication on the web must be accompanied by a live, direct, clickable, and visible link to www.LoseFatNotFaith.com. Redirects whereby the actual link does not point directly to the losefatnotfaith.com domain are expressly prohibited with the exception of affiliate links generated through the Lose Fat, Not Faith Affiliate Program; improper links will result in termination of rights to republish this content.