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A new study has linked sleep deprivation to pain sensitivity. Scientists at the University of Berkeley have published their research that addresses some of the issues related to sleep loss and chronic pain.
The researchers completed their study by identifying neuronal glitches in the sleep deprived brain that can intensify and prolong the agony caused by illness and injury.
A survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation in 2015 found that two out of three patients with chronic pain suffered from recurrent sleep disorders.
"If lack of sleep intensifies our sensitivity to pain, as this study shows, sleep needs to be placed much closer to the patient care center, especially in hospital departments," said lead author from the study, Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Berkeley. .
Brains deprived of sleep struggle to cope with pain
The researchers found that the neural mechanism that captures pain signals, evaluates them and releases natural pain relief is disrupted in the man who operates with insufficient sleep.
Matthew Walker and UC Berkeley Ph.D. Student Adam Krause examined the brains of two dozen healthy young adults while applying an uncomfortable heat source to the legs. Sleep deprived adults responded more intensely to the sensation of pain.
Adults not only have an increased sensation of pain, but they also have a lower activity in the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain's reward circuit that increases dopamine levels to relieve pain.
"Sleep loss amplifies not only the pain-sensitive areas of the brain, but also blocks the natural pain centers," Walker said.
Brains deprived of sleep also operated slowly in the insula. This part of the brain evaluates the pain signals and puts them in touch to help the body prepare for the sensation.
Small sleep disturbances can affect sensitivity to pain
"It's an essential neural system that evaluates and categorizes the pain signals and allows the body's natural painkillers to come to the rescue," said Krause, lead author of the study and PhD student in the laboratory of the Walker Center for the Science of Human Sleep, Berkeley.
To further test the link between sleep and pain in more common scenarios of everyday life, researchers interviewed over 250 adults of all ages who were asked to report on their sleep hours at night, as well as their daily pain levels of a few days.
The results showed that even minor disturbances in sleep and waking patterns were correlated with changes in pain sensitivity.
"The results clearly show that even very subtle changes in nighttime sleep – cuts that many of us think little in terms of consequences – clearly impact your pain burden the next day," Krause said. .
The researchers hope that their discoveries will be an instigator of changes in the design and operation of hospitals. "The benefit to remember here is that sleep is a natural pain reliever that can help manage and reduce pain," said Walker, author of the bestseller Why We Sleep.
Yet, paradoxically, the worst place to sleep is where people suffer the most, it's the noisy area of the hospital. "
The hope that uninterrupted sleep is a priority for patients. Many patients in the hospital are woken up at night for checks or noise due to the day-to-day operation of large institutions.
But the authors of the studies say that the priority given to sleep will help patients recover better faster.
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