Prolotherapy and Sleep
March 29, 2011 by Dr. Marc Darrow, M.D.
Filed under Prolotherapy Treatment Information
If you are not healing, sleeping may have something to do with it.
In treating patients with chronic pain, one of the very first things we do is take a history from the patient of their sleep patterns.
Sometimes a good night’s sleep will get rid of a person’s pain. You ask people with chronic pain “How do you sleep?” and they say, “I don’t sleep.” If you can either teach them how to sleep; teach good sleep hygiene, or maybe use a non-addictive sleep medication or a sleep supplement (because there are a lot of supplements that relax the body and allow people to sleep like magnesium, thorium, and hops) then that will allow them to manage their sleep. There is just a whole array of things to use for sleep and a person is going to feel better. You have strength from the sleep, and neurotransmitters and hormones are replaced in sleep. We feel better.
Sleep is broken up into five different stages, Stages I and II are the “light” sleep phases, Stage III and IV are the deep sleep cycles. Dreaming occurs during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep.
Sleep is an important component in healing. It is during level IV sleep that our body re-energizes and most importantly that the immune system is stimulated. Without deep Stage IV sleep, healing becomes more difficult.
See video on Sleep and Detox
Insomnia and Back Pain
Researchers writing in the Journal of Sleep Research say their “study aimed to provide an estimate of the prevalence of ‘clinical insomnia’ in patients attending a specialist pain clinic and identify factors associated with it.”
“(Questionairre) Scores suggestive of clinical insomnia were noted in 53% of chronic pain patients, when compared with only 3% in pain-free controls. Significant positive correlations with insomnia severity were detected for all six variables of interest (pain intensity, sensory pain ratings, affective pain ratings, general anxiety, general depression and health anxiety).”
Tang NK, Wright KJ, Salkovskis PM. Prevalence and correlates of clinical insomnia co-occurring with chronic back pain. J Sleep Res. 2007 Mar;16(1):85-95.
