Chronic Pain and Sleep

For people who suffer chronic pain, it is often difficult to know which came first, the pain or the sleep disturbance. It is somewhat of a double edged sword as pain makes sleep more difficult and lack of sleep exacerbates pain

Chronic pain and poor sleep are intricately linked. People with a common form of chronic pain known as fibromyalgia, often experience an alteration in the patterns of restorative, slow wave sleep, which is the deepest stage of sleep. People that are deprived of this slow wave sleep, demonstrate decreased tolerance for pain and increased levels of discomfort and fatigue.

It is a well-known fact that we are simply not sleeping enough, and our quality of sleep is not as good as it once was. In the old days, when it got dark we may have stayed up with a candle for a while but we would go to bed much earlier than we do nowadays.

Often, it is increased screen time that keeps us awake. Increased screen time is bad for multiple reasons. Simply put, if you have a television in your bedroom, you are more likely stay up late watching it when you should be going to sleep. The same is true for the use of computers or smart phones at night. What’s not commonly known however is the fact that the blue light emitted by computers, TVs and cell phones will make you feel more groggy in the morning and prevent you from getting a good nights sleep. In short, blue light is bad for your sleep. It disrupts the body’s internal clock and circadian rhythm’s.

In short, if you are suffering from chronic pain, tried to add more good nights of sleep to your life. Start by going to bed 30 minutes earlier and stopping all exposure to screentime two hours before bed. Sweet dreams