Exercise, Exhaustion & The Hangover Effect: Can Working Out Make You Sick?
Exercise is practically a religion in modern culture. We’re told it helps us sleep better, lose weight, reduce anxiety, and lower our risk of countless diseases. So like millions of others, I’ve stayed active—triathlons, marathons, spin classes, yoga, and for the past three years, high-intensity workouts at Orange Theory. But somewhere in my early 30s, I started noticing something disturbing: exercise seemed to come at a cost.
It didn’t matter when I worked out or what kind of exercise I did. After pushing myself hard, I’d go to bed wired, sleep terribly, and wake up the next day feeling bone-crushingly tired, almost hungover. Not just sore or dehydrated, but a little sick. My mood would tank, my focus would scatter, and I’d struggle to work productively. I asked doctors about it. They brushed it off or offered generic advice: drink more water, work out in the morning, check your electrolytes. But none of their suggestions worked, and I knew something deeper was happening in my body.
So I decided to investigate. Why would something as universally praised as exercise leave me feeling worse instead of better? Was I doing something wrong? Was my body uniquely vulnerable? Or was there a mechanism at play that nobody had explained to me?
In this episode, I talk with three exercise and fitness experts—Brad A. Roy, Ph.D., FACSM, FACHE, FMFA, Kelly Malmin, PT, DPT, Cert DN, Cert SMT, FMS, SFMA, FCS, and April Terry, MS, LAT, ATC—to solve this mystery. What we uncovered reveals that post-exercise fatigue is far more complex than most people realize, and that the standard advice we’re given about recovery might be missing crucial pieces of the puzzle.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Why some people feel energized after exercise while others feel destroyed
• The phenomenon of post-exercise exhaustion that feels like a hangover
• What happens in your body when you push too hard during a workout
• Why drinking more water and working out in the morning doesn’t always solve the problem
• The difference between normal fatigue and something more serious happening in your body
• How to recognize when exercise is helping versus when it’s harming
• Practical strategies for recovery that actually address the root causes
• What my personal quest to understand this taught me about listening to my body
🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://www.podpage.com/curiously/can-exercise-make-you-sick/
💡 About the guests:
Brad A. Roy: https://www.logan.org/a-legacy-of-wellness-brad-roy-retires-after-nearly-three-decades-at-logan-health-medical-fitness-center/
Kelly Malmin: https://www.logan.org/?s=April+Terry%2C+MS%2C+LAT%2C+ATC
💡 About Curiously: https://www.podpage.com/curiously/