Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.
Sketchy sleep increases pain sensitivity
Fresh science! Sketchy sleep increases pain sensitivity.
A major driver of chronic pain is sensitization, basically turning up the “volume” on all pain. The phenomenon is well-known, but how it works is still a mystery, and its relationship with sleep has barely been studied. A 2016 experiment looked carefully at 133 patients with knee arthritis, comparing those who slept well versus those who did not. They found, with a high degree of certainty, that:
sleep fragmentation may strongly affect the pain and CS relationship; consequently, these results underscore the importance of considering and treating sleep in patients with chronic pain.”
