Living with Chronic Pain can Lead to Sleep Disorders

Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: February 5th, 2009. Topic: Member Blogs.

Over the years one problem common to most of my patients with chronic pain is they have problems sleeping. For some it is minor but for others it becomes debilitating. According to the National Sleep Foundation 2/3 of chronic pain sufferers experience sleep problems. Only about 15 percent of all people have sleep problems. Compounding the problem of disturbed sleep in people who hurt is the fact that some chronic pain medications also tend to disrupt sleeping patterns.

In a recent study, it was found that approximately two-thirds of patients with chronic back pain suffered from sleep disorders. Research has demonstrated that disrupted sleep will, in turn, exacerbate the chronic back pain problem. Thus, a vicious cycle develops in which the back pain disrupts one’s sleep, and difficulty sleeping makes the pain worse, which in turn makes sleeping more difficult, etc.

One of my former patients, Mark, had only been sleeping 2-3 hours per day for several months when he came to my practice. This sleep depravation was causing major problems with his thinking and emotional management as well as negatively impacting his pain management. For him it was a depressing cycle—he hurt so he couldn’t sleep; when he couldn’t sleep he hurt more; when he hurt more he couldn’t sleep.

The consequences of sleep deprivation include physical effects, mental impairment, and mental health complications. Inadequate rest impairs our ability to think, to handle stress, to cope with pain, to maintain a healthy immune system, and to moderate our emotions. Total sleep deprivation is fatal: lab rats denied the chance to rest die within two to three weeks.

Other people who take medications for pain and sleep may end up going to the other end of the sleep disorder spectrum. Take Mary, she was so heavily medicated her family became concerned. She would sleep 18-20 hours per day and still always be groggy. I turned out she was way over-medicated. The New York Times reports that about 42 million prescriptions for sleep medication were issued in 2005. Aside from being over prescribed, sleep medications these days can have strange side effects such as sleep-driving!

For Mary and Mark the solution was getting them on a biopsychosocial treatment plan that included more effective medication management. This turned out to be their solution and both experienced significant quality of life improvements.

To learn more about using a biopsychosocial approach for chronic pain management please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain or living with chronic pain yourself and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing the pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to listen to this interview.

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