Wired But Tired: Meet Your Inner Pac-Man
Wired but tired isn’t random. It’s a gene running the cleanup crew a little slowly. Meet COMT, the Pac-Man of your nervous system, and find out which speed you’re running.
You know the night.
Dinner’s done, the kids are down, you finally sit on the couch, and your body just stops. Your brain didn’t get the memo, though. It’s three days deep into replaying something your coworker said on Tuesday, complete with the comeback you didn’t think of until now, obviously, when it’s useless.
That’s wired but tired. It’s rarely one single thing, sleep, stress, how your whole day actually went, all of it factors in. But there’s one gene doing more of this work than most people realize, and once you see how it operates, a lot of your nights start clicking into place. Picture it as Pac-Man.
What you can actually do today:
Move your last coffee earlier than you think you need to
Give yourself ten real screen-free minutes before bed, not scrolling with the lights off
If tonight’s workout leaves you wired instead of worn out, that’s worth noticing, not judging
Eat a handful of pumpkin seeds or some spinach today. Small, but it matters, and I’ll explain why below
You don’t need a DNA test to try any of these. Here’s what’s actually happening in your body.
Your Inner Pac-Man
When something stressful, exciting, or scary happens, your brain floods your system with chemicals to deal with it: dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline (also called epinephrine). Scientists lump these three together as catecholamines. You can just call them your handle-it-now chemicals.
They’re good at their job. The problem is what happens after. Your body doesn’t just flip a switch back to calm the second the stressful thing ends. Someone has to go clean up the chemicals left behind, or you stay alert and wired well past the point where you actually needed to be.
That cleanup crew is a gene called COMT, short for catechol-O-methyltransferase (say that three times fast). It has a real job, not a scary nickname: it moves through your brain gobbling up leftover dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline once you’re done needing them. Exactly like Pac-Man clearing a board.
Not every Pac-Man runs at the same speed
Here’s where it gets personal. Everyone’s got a working copy of this gene. What differs is how fast it runs, and that comes down to a tiny difference buried in your DNA.
One study on fibromyalgia patients put the fast version at about 40 percent quicker than the slow one. Another, in children, found the gap stretched to three or four times faster. One board wiped clean in under a minute. Another still scattered with dots twenty minutes later.
If your Pac-Man runs slow, you’ve probably lived this: the meeting ended an hour ago, but your body is still somewhere back in it, quietly working through the leftover chemicals while you’re trying to fall asleep. Same gene, same job, just a longer shift. The fast version mostly skips this. Recovery from stress happens quickly, which can read as unbothered, though it comes at a small cost: things that should feel exciting can land flatter than they should, since the good chemicals clear out as fast as the stressful ones.
Neither speed is a malfunction. It’s a dial your body was built with. Knowing your setting doesn’t diagnose you with anything; it just explains why “more caffeine” or “just push through it” works for your sister and does nothing for you.
Why your coffee and your best friend’s coffee are not the same cup
Caffeine doesn’t touch COMT directly, but it’s a great way to watch it in action. Caffeine blocks adenosine, the chemical that makes you sleepy, which lets your handle-it-now chemicals run louder than they should. If your Pac-Man is already slow and carrying a backlog, that coffee isn’t beginning fresh. It’s pouring gas on coals that never fully went out.
A study of over a thousand adults found that among people drinking more than 200mg of caffeine a day, roughly two cups, those with the slow version of the gene were almost three times as likely to report a racing heart afterward. If an afternoon latte has ever left your heart beating fast while your coworker drains a third cup and goes right back to spreadsheets, that’s likely why. Never a willpower problem.
Where this gets murkier: COMT’s link to anxiety as an actual diagnosis. A study of over 5,500 adults found no consistent connection between COMT and anxiety at the population level. So a slow Pac-Man doesn’t make you an anxious person. It means your body takes its time coming down off a stimulant. That’s it, that’s the whole claim, and I’m not going to stretch it further than the research actually goes.
What keeps your Pac-Man running
Your Pac-Man isn’t powered by willpower; it’s powered by what’s actually available in your body. I call this your Irrigation System with clients, the same idea that comes up when we talk about methylation: small canals running through you, carrying nutrients where they need to go. When that supply runs low, especially on B vitamins, your Pac-Man can slow down even when its genetics say it shouldn’t.
Magnesium works differently, and it’s the one piece here that isn’t optional. Your Pac-Man is built around a magnesium core. The enzyme needs it to catalyze its reaction at all. No magnesium, no clearing, regardless of which genetic version you were handed. One study on this enzyme’s magnesium dependency found that low dietary magnesium measurably slowed it down.
This is exactly the kind of finding wellness content loves to oversell, so let us hold the line here. Solid biochemistry: COMT genuinely needs good irrigation and enough magnesium to run properly. Not proven: that popping a supplement will noticeably speed up your particular Pac-Man. Eating leafy greens, pumpkin seeds, eggs, legumes, and lean protein is a reasonable, low-risk move either way. If you actually suspect a deficiency, that’s bloodwork with your doctor, not a guess from a blog post.
Where this fits
COMT is one gene inside a bigger panel I use called DNA Mind, which looks at how your whole system handles focus, mood, and stress together, not one gene by itself. Genetics doesn’t hand you the whole story. It hands you a sharper question. If wired but tired has been your normal for longer than you can remember, that question is worth asking.
In best health,
Leah
Curious what your own genes have to say? Book a free 30-minute consult and let's talk about where to start.
