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 A general decline in both the quantity and quality of hours slept
led to a two- to three-fold increase in pain problems over time,
researchers found.
“Sleep and pain problems are two of the biggest health problems in
today’s society,” said lead study author Esther Afolalu of the
University of Warwick in Coventry.
Pain is known to interfere with sleep, she told Reuters Health by
email. But the new study shows “that the impact of sleep on pain is
often bigger than (the impact of) pain on sleep,” she said.
Sleep disturbances, she added, contribute to problems in the ability
to process and cope with pain.
Afolalu and colleagues reviewed 16 studies involving more than
60,000 adults from 10 countries. The studies looked at how well
people were sleeping at the start, and then evaluated the effects of
long-term sleep changes on pain, immune function and physical
health. Half the participants were tracked for at least four and a
half years.
Overall, sleep reductions led to impaired responses to bacteria,
viruses and other foreign substances, more inflammation, higher
levels of the stress hormone cortisol and other biomarkers related
to pain, fatigue and poor health. Newly developed insomnia doubled
the risk of a chronic pain disorder and hip fracture problems, the
study authors wrote in the journal Sleep Medicine.
Deterioration in sleep was also associated with worse self-reported
physical functioning.
At the same time, researchers didn’t find links between increased
sleep and less pain or arthritis, although they did find that
improvement in sleep was associated with better physical
functioning.
One limitation of the analysis is that the studies relied on
participants to recall their own sleep patterns. Also, the studies
didn’t all use the same tools to measure sleep quality and quantity.
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Future studies should look at sleep patterns for different groups of
people and how that affects health, Afolalu said. Her team is now
analyzing data from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey to
understand sleep, insomnia and health for people with arthritis.
Additional studies should also investigate how sleep deficiency
leads to chronic pain disorders, said Dr. Monika Haack, who studies
sleep, pain and inflammation at Harvard Medical School’s Human Sleep
and Inflammatory Systems Lab in Boston.
Haack, who wasn’t involved with the new research, said in an email,
“It is also important to identify whether there is a specific sleep
pattern that is most dangerous for pain. For example, does sleep
disruption (with frequent, intermittent awakening throughout the
night) have a higher impact than a short but consolidated sleep?”
Haack and colleagues recently reported in the journal Pain that
restricting sleep on weekdays and catching up on the weekends led to
more pain. Furthermore, people who caught up on weekends had a
tougher time dealing with pain than those who slept eight hours
every night.
“In those already suffering from chronic pain, it is of critical
importance to incorporate sleep improvement strategies,” Haack said.
“And to have sleep specialists as part of the pain management team.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2xcwb8b Sleep Medicine, online August 18,
2017.
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