# Sleep ##### Untangling Pain  --- ## tl;dr **Sleep and pain connection** - Sleep has a huge impact on pain - Sleep deprivation increases pain sensitivity and risk of pain conditions - Better sleep can reduce pain and risk of developing pain - Recovery sleep (naps, lie-ins) can reverse pain sensitivity **Bi-directional relationship** - Poor sleep increases pain; pain makes it hard to sleep - Sometimes you need to ease pain first to sleep better - Massage and self-massage can help **Sleep hygiene tips** - Found at least one helpful tweak for everyone I’ve worked with - Early nights - Remove screens from the bedroom - Daytime naps if night sleep is tough - Earplugs and eye masks - Loads of ways to improve sleep hygiene **Psychological + physiological links** - Poor sleep ↔ anxiety and depression - Stress affects sleep - Lack of sleep increases inflammation - Disrupts neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine - Increases pain perception **Gender differences** - Women feel more pain from poor sleep - Men often feel less - It sucks, but it’s a real difference **Personal practice** - Sleep is non-negotiable for me - I have early nights (I also sleep with eye mask, earplugs, mouthtape) - I feel like shit without sleep - Poor sleep = neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, migraines - You’ve got to find what helps you sleep better --- ## Transcript Sleep has a huge impact on pain, and this is what the research shows time and time again. Research has found that sleep deprivation increases pain sensitivity. Not only does it make pain worse when we have it in the first place but sleep deprivation actually increases the risk of developing pain conditions in the first place. Basically, when we sleep better, this can actually reduce the risk of developing pain conditions. As well as, obviously, improving things when we do have pain. But the research has also found that recovery sleep basically, that extra sleep, such as having naps or having a lie in, that recovery sleep after an illness or a surgery or, even with pain can reverse heightened pain sensitivity. So we feel less pain by having more and better sleep. it makes sense. Seeing as we tend to sleep much more when we have injuries or we are ill, sleep is that important. I need you to know that the relationship between sleep and pain is actually bi directional. This means that poor sleep can increase pain, but obviously when we're in pain many of us actually struggle to sleep. So yes, we want to improve our sleep where we can, but sometimes we actually need to help with the pain in the first place, in order to help us sleep. So actually, sometimes, and that, again, this is what I've found over the years, sometimes actually having a massage can help with that, or this is where self massage works really well, so it's trying to link all these together. That said, pretty much every person I have ever worked with, when it comes to their sleep, I've always found at least one way, one little tweak or change that they can implement to help improve their sleep. Whether that's getting early nights, which is very much the case taking. Taking screens out of their room, so getting rid of the phones, getting rid of the iPads. Do not take them into your bedroom, they are not good for sleep hygiene. Maybe taking naps in the day if they struggle at night, they might be able to take a couple of naps in the day. That has helped massively for a few clients or maybe using earplugs, especially if partner snores, or eye masks to help them sleep. There's loads of different ways that we can help with sleep hygiene and with getting more and better sleep and this is a really good place to start. Another way that sleeping and pain influence each other is through both psychological and physiological factors. Firstly, the psychological factors that could influence it is things like moods and emotions. Basically, poor sleep can lead to anxiety and depression. And, obviously, when we're anxious or depressed, this can cause problems with our sleep. So again, everything's interlinked. Secondly, the stress response, so sleep deprivation can increase stress levels. And again, feeling stressed, this can cause issues with going to sleep in the first place. So again, everything's connected. As for the physiological factors, lack of sleep can increase the inflammatory response. And then when you have chronic pain conditions, which are often associated with systemic inflammation, this can then interfere with sleep quality. The other thing is that sleep deprivation can actually disrupt the balance of neurotransmitters involved in involved in pain modulation. So things like serotonin and dopamine, so potentially increasing sort of pain perception. Now I've been saying that when our sleep is poor, this worsens pain, but actually this has only been found to be the case in women and not in men. So women with sleep problems often feel more pain, whereas men with sleep problems often feel less pain. And this sucks, right? It really does suck. And you'll find this a lot with research and especially in, with pain. Not a lot we can do about it. There are gender differences. Massive gender differences. And it does suck. The point of this slide is that sleep is so frickin important. And this is even more so when we have pain. So sleep hygiene needs to be a non negotiable. Personally, sleep is one of the things on my list that I do not ignore. Everybody that knows me knows that I have early nights all the time. Sleep is just so important to me because when I don't sleep, I'm not in a good place. Granted, it's not what I want to do a lot of the time, sometimes, especially on a weekend. I want to stay up late with my husband, I want to watch a film and just You know, spend time with him. But I know that if I neglect my sleep, I will feel like shit if I do, and I can pretty much guarantee that if I have a few days of poor sleep, then I will definitely experience neck and shoulder pain as well as headaches or migraines in the following days. sleep is that important and this is why you need to figure out what you can do to actually help with sleep a little bit more. --- Next lesson → [[Untangling Pain – Module 2 Lesson 05|next lesson]] %% - [[Sleep has a huge impact on pain]] - [[Recovery Sleep and Reversing Pain Sensitivity]] - [[The relationship between sleep and pain is actually bi-directional]] - [[Practical Sleep Improvements]] - [[sleeping and pain influence each other through both psychological and physiological factors]] - [[lack of sleep can increase the inflammatory response]] - [[Poor sleep worsens pain - but this has only been found to be the case in women and not in men]] - [[Personal Experience with Sleep and pain]]