How sleep is the best painkiller.

How sleep is the best painkiller.
Have you ever suffered from some sort of pain then gone to sleep and woke up with the pain as a memory? New research has found an explanation for all of this.
The research found that sleep deprivation increases the sensitivity of pain as it numbs the pain killing response. The effects of not getting enough sleep are endless from reduced memory, losing the ability to learn as well as cognitive impairment.

Research
Walker and Krause used 24 healthy, young participants and applied heat to their legs and scanned their brains examining the process of pain. The first time they completed this after participants had had a good night sleep and established the pain threshold, then again with no sleep. The researchers found that the brain's somatosensory cortex, a region associated with pain sensitivity, was hyperactive when the participants hadn't slept enough. This confirmed the hypothesis that sleep deprivation would interfere with pain-processing neural circuits. The two conditions receive the same injury but the brain assesses the pain differently without sufficient sleep.

To replicate their findings, the researchers also conducted a survey of over 230 adults who were registered in Amazon's Mechanical Turk online marketplace. The participants reported their sleep patterns and pain sensitivity levels over several days. The scientists found that the smallest changes in the participants' sleep patterns correlated with changes in pain sensitivity. "The results clearly show that even very subtle changes in nightly sleep — reductions that many of us think little of in terms of consequences — have a clear impact on your next-day pain burden," Krause says.

Yet, a hospital where people are in the most pain is where people receive some of the worst night’s sleep. Does this mean we need to rethink the way in which we design a person's night in hospital so we don't have to wake them up every 2 hours for their observations or to have monitors beeping all night. Surely this would get people out of hospital quicker, beds cleared and maybe the NHS wouldn’t be under so much pressure.

Natasha Lynch

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/sleep-and-tiredness/why-lack-of-sleep-is-bad-for-your-health/
https://www.mayoclinic.org/understanding-pain/art-20208632
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324316.php

Comments

  1. shubam Verma13 May 2019 at 17:18

    Thanks for one’s Good posting! I enjoyed reading it, I want to encourage you to definitely continue your great writing, have a nice evening! keeping this website

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    ReplyDelete
  2. Karen Shelby24 June 2019 at 20:55

    This was a really good read Natasha! I find it interesting how our body can affected so greatly by the amount of sleep we get. Guess I should think about that before I have anymore kids!

    ReplyDelete

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