Mental Health, Sleep, Burnout and Magnesium
The Blueprint for Burnout
I will cut to the chase, if you have the following or a similar life schedule:
4:50 to 5:50am: ☀️ Wakeup and drive spouse to work.
5:50am to 7:00am: 🍴Prepare breakfast/lunch, self/daughter out the house.
7:00am to 8:00am: 🚗Drive to school / work.
8:00am to ~ 4:00pm: 🏢Work.
4:00pm to 4:40–5:00pm:🚦Traffic jam to get home.
5:00pm to 6:00–7:00pm: 🍴Prep and/or eat dinner, relax a little.
7:00pm to 9:00pm: 🏡🏪🧹Other household duties and/or food shopping.
9:00 to 10:00pm: 😒📺📖Waste time, or read, or TV, etc.
10:00pm: 🚿🪥🚾😴Try and sleep.
You will eventually burnout!
Here is what is wrong with this schedule:
1) No or little time devoted to exercise. 💪
2) Too much driving, not exercise conducive. 🚗
3) Late TV or phone, computer etc. is bad for healthy. 📺
4) BIGGEST problem: Insufficient sleep. 😴
When the Body Says ‘Stop’
One of the possible outcomes of poor mental health and limited sleep will be an overactive sympathetic nervous system, i.e. the activation of the fight-or-flight mechanism.
Aside from the limited sleep, my own journey to burnout coincided in the same year as buying a house 🏡, and my work having a little more pressure 😤than usual with some projects. Work also had an extra push over the edge by not allowing us to take holidays in the summer time, and I desperately needed a holiday…. I was so pissed!!! 😡
The first warning signs started years before. I am an overthinker, so when there are problems in my relationship or in my work, I over think it. I also have limited friends in Ireland upon which I can use as a vent to spill out my frustrations, so keeping in your emotions leads to a slippery mental health decline, which I had been on for some time.
Eventually, poor mental health and chronic exhaustion triggered an overactive sympathetic nervous system — essentially locking my body into a permanent fight-or-flight mechanism.
Before the full burnout hit, the physical symptoms arrived with a vengeance:
- My blood pressure spiked dangerously into a zone my home monitor flagged as Type II Hypertension.
- I experienced a brutal week of “pickaxe” headaches that required an urgent visit to my doctor.
- My body began to experience constant tremors — an internal shaking that felt exactly like shivering from intense cold, without actually being cold.
I was clearly sick and desperately needed help. At the time, I only sought medical intervention to get blood pressure lowering medication. In hindsight, I should have advocated for myself more, followed up with my physician beyond a single visit, and sought psychological support to heal the root cause.
The Turning Point: Getting Selfish for Survival
This was 2024 and 2025. In 2026 the tremors are still active, they are my baseline that tells me my health, but they are not so bad, and some days I almost feel like I don’t have them (that’s a different baseline, they are still there!). So, I have managed to slowly improve my health without medication, and my blood pressure is kind of reasonably OK.
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Here are the core mindset and lifestyle shifts that made it possible:
- Detach from work stress
I stopped letting myjob dictate my inner peace, I didn’t let it stress me. I do good work, but I won’t let it bury me with deadlines etc. I admit I am lucky that I can get away with that, appreciate that isn’t an option for many people. - Healing the home environment
At the start of 2026, we had a raw conversation where we admitted that if things didn’t change, we were heading toward a separation. We agreed that we both needed to make a drastic shift. It was important we both became selfish in our own repair.
By prioritizing our individual mental well-being, we unexpectedly began healing our togetherness. I started listening more and engaging intentionally, which dramatically lowered the stress levels inside our home. - Re-establishing Daily Practices
Meditation. I use the Calm app, and give myself 10 mins before sleep to help relax my mind by not focusing on my thoughts, but focusing on just myself, my breathing. The danger is (as is at present) that it is easy to stop this meditation, but honestly, it really does help.
Nutrition. I was never a bad eater, but I did eat too much carbs and sugars, so moving away from that, I can feel a difference.
Exercise. For this I use Freeletics app. If you have Revolut banking, upgrade to plus account and get the app access for free, it is worth it. So, Freeletics gives options of what type of exercises to do and lets you set the how often. I do 3 days a week, in the mornings (lunches prepared in evenings to offset some time), and currently concentrating on core exercises and not so much cardio (which I DO need to start).
My Protocol: Sleep, Structure, and Supplements
In 2025 I got interested into supplements, initially born out of an ignorant attempt to self-treat chronic stomach and digestive issues I had endured for years. In retrospect, my terrible stress levels and diet were the actual root causes of those gut issues. Today, I maintain an active, personalized supplement regimen that has been foundational to my recovery.
The use of magnesium supplements has been heavily studied for its wide-ranging systemic benefits. While the data is easily accessible via a quick web search, the reality is that the modern diet is chronically deficient in this essential mineral. Magnesium is a critical nutrient for general metabolic health, but it is absolutely vital for brain health. Specifically, introducing magnesium bisglycinate and magnesium threonate — which effectively crosses the blood-brain barrier — delivers profound benefits for nervous system relaxation and sleep quality.
Protecting the Sleep Bank
By far, the most critical element of my recovery has been sleep 😴. Sleep cannot be underestimated. When you are young, your body can temporarily tolerate erratic sleep patterns, though the hidden damage still accumulates. When you enter your early 50s, as I have, years of early alarms combined with late bedtimes catch up to you. You are permanently short-changing your “sleep bank.”
In my case, this chronic deficit directly degraded my mental health, which in turn poisoned everything else — my relationship mood, my motivation to eat well, and my energy to exercise.
An often overlooked aspect of sleep hygiene isn’t just hitting a minimum of seven hours, but keeping a strict, identical sleep schedule every single day — even on weekends. I now make it a priority to head to bed between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM (admittedly, this month has been a challenge with the World Cup matches on — Come on England! ⚽).
Historically, I hated early mornings because I never slept early enough to offset them. Now that my body clock has fully adjusted, I regularly wake up naturally without an alarm between 5:00 AM and 6:00 AM on my days off.
If you see your own life mirrored in that grueling 4:50 AM schedule and are suffering through a similar decline, don’t wait for your body to force a shutdown. Reclaim your sleep bank, keep your sleep times consistent, and look into a high-quality magnesium supplement. Protecting your health isn’t selfish; it is the only way to survive.
