Fragmented Sleeps Leads to Pain Sensitivity

[chazz]

In an article in today's New York Times entitled "The Elderly Always Sleep Worse, and Other Myths of Aging"

(link requires free registration)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/healt ... ei=5087%0A

one of the major conclusions, which applied to both young and old was that:

"Fragmented sleep, he [Dr. Smith] found, led to severe impairments the next day in pain pathways. The subjects felt pain more easily, were less able to inhibit pain, and even developed spontaneous pain, like mild backaches and headaches.

Timothy Roehrs, director of the sleep disorders research center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, also found that healthy young people became exquisitely sensitive to pain after a night of fragmented sleep.

And getting more sleep, Dr. Roehrs found, had the opposite effect. His subjects were young healthy people who said they were chronically sleepy, just not getting enough time to sleep at night. Dr. Roehrs had them stay in bed 10 hours a night. The extra sleep, he said, reduced their sensitivity to pain to the same degree as a tablet of codeine."

I suspect that this applies to many of us. My apnea was diagnosed clinically by an excellent rheumatologist based on my descriptions of severe muscle aches (which disappeared after I went on CPAP therapy).

Chazz

[sharon1965]

i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia (which truly just translates to 'tissue and muscle pain' and isn't so much a diagnosis as a syndrome) 13 years ago...it's just one of my sleep disorders...i'm hoping that being on cpap may bring some restorative sleep which is what's missing when you have fms...so i will personally attest to these findings being true

[RosemaryB]

Wow, Chazz, that's really interesting. I've been staying up too late recently. A good reminder to get to bed on time.