When Aches & Pain Disrupt Sleep

Aches and pains give everyone a sleepless night now and then. It doesn't take much -- a pulled muscle from an overenthusiastic workout or an afternoon spent helping a friend move furniture. Next thing you know, you're lying in bed at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling above your bed, aching, and praying for unconsciousness.

While most aches fade pretty quickly, painful and sleepless nights are the norm for people living with chronic pain. "Between 50%-90% of people with chronic pain say that they don't sleep well," says Gilles Lavigne, DDS, MSc, FRCD, an expert on the connection between sleep and pain and a professor of dentistry, physiology and psychiatry at the University of Montreal. "They wake up feeling like they never went to bed."

Not getting enough sleep can have a poisonous effect on your whole life, says Penney Cowan, executive director of the American Chronic Pain Association. It makes you feel rundown and depressed. Your job and family life can suffer. If your sleeplessness is keeping up your spouse too, that can cause even more problems. And that's not all.

"There's very good data that suggests that disturbed sleep can worsen your pain," says Thomas Roth, PhD, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. It's a vicious cycle: pain prevents you from sleeping, and not sleeping makes the pain worse.

The good news is that there's a lot that you can do -- on your own, and with your doctor -- to break the cycle. With changes to your lifestyle and possibly medication, you can finally get the good night's sleep you crave.