What does the research say about arthritis and sleep?Ī 2012 study of sleep quality in people with chronic pain, including those with osteoarthritis, found that the amount of pain people were in before they went to bed had little effect on sleep quality.
Poor sleep can also make you more sensitive to the perception of arthritis pain – in other words, disturbed sleep is not directly making you achy rather it is affecting how you perceive the arthritis pain. Researchers believe lack of sleep can trigger inflammatory pathways that worsen arthritis pain. We know that even in people without arthritis or any chronic pain, disrupted sleep leads to increased pain sensitivity and increased markers of inflammation in the blood. That’s because pain that varies is unpredictable and thus more difficult for the body to adjust to. And because the pain of arthritis can vary from day to day, it is more likely to cause sleep problems than pain that remains constant. About one-third of people who have pain while trying to sleep have arthritis pain, according to a National Sleep Foundation Gallup Poll. While there are numerous painful conditions that can disrupt sleep, including headaches, back pain, fibromyalgia, nerve pain and arthritis, people with arthritis are particularly vulnerable to poor sleep. Though you’re not likely to be aware of these microarousals when they happen or remember them the next day, you will probably wake feeling like you didn’t sleep much if at all. That’s because milder pain can cause “microarousals” – periods of time when you are shifted back into light sleep. While sudden severe pain can wake you from a deep sleep, even milder pain can negatively impact sleep quality. If you don’t get enough deep and REM sleep, you are likely to feel tired in the morning. Pain can also interfere with the sleep cycle, even if you’re not aware of it. During a normal night’s sleep, we cycle from light sleep to deep sleep to REM (rapid eye movement) sleep up to five times. It’s not always the case that people who are in pain simply cannot fall asleep. Many people assume that people who are in pain don’t sleep well because the pain keeps them up at night, but the relationship between pain and sleep is actually much more complex. There is strong data suggesting that poor sleep makes pain worse, and this becomes a vicious cycle as the pain then further disrupts sleep. Between 50 and 90 percent of people with chronic pain report that they don’t sleep well, which can lead to daytime fatigue, depression, and negative effects on work and family life. People with chronic pain are used to losing sleep.
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