Cancer and Sleep Problems

What's the role of sleep in healing from my cancer treatments?

During the night there are lots of different chemical reactions that take place that really help people with healing. But with cancer treatment, first of all in the hospital people sleep terribly, you're interrupted all the time, it's noisy, people are drawing blood and taking your blood pressure and all kinds of things, and there's no way to sleep well in the hospital, it's just practically impossible. So by the time you get home from the hospital, already you've set up this pattern of not sleeping well. And also you're probably dealing with pain, you may be dealing with hot flashes, anxiety and worry is huge for all of us who've been through cancer, so all of these things contribute to really lousy sleep. So what I tell people is you need to focus on your sleep, and you need to sleep well through the night. It helps you to heal. No one feels good and no one heals well if they don't sleep, and sleep well.