The Surprising Secret to being more Active

Anyone with chronic pain is aware of the one great treatment that pain itself keeps us from – physical activity.  Whether hampered by a simple inability to move, or intense pain when we do, exercise is the magic pill that we should all take, that’s often too hard to swallow.

But researchers in the UK have discovered a surprising secret – a way to increase physical activity by – well, in a sense, doing nothing at all.

It’s everyone’s dream, right?  Improve your health by doing nothing?

All right, as you’ve guessed it’s not quite that simple.  But researchers basically found that having a good sleep helped patients with chronic pain be more active the following afternoon.

Now here’s the interesting thing.  It didn’t seem to matter if the person woke up depressed or happy.  Or if that person had a morning with a lot of pain, or a relatively pain-free morning.  Or even how “efficient” their sleep was.  It seems that if patients feel that they had a good sleep, they will be more likely to be active the following afternoon.

The researchers commented that a previous study also indicated that a good sleep meant less pain in the morning (although the level of pain in the morning in this study made no difference to activity).

We’ve long known that sleep cycles are key when it comes to chronic pain, whether it be cluster headache, migraine, or tension-type headache.  This study is yet another reminder that we need to focus on sleep.

Not only making sure we get to bed and do our best to get quality sleep, but that health professionals need to ask about sleep, test for sleep disorders when appropriate, and find solutions that may help lower the level of pain in patients with all sorts of disorders.

Sleep is a major key to finding good treatment.

Lead author Dr Nicole Tang says:

Engaging in physical activity is a key treatment process in pain management.  Very often, clinicians would prescribe exercise classes, physiotherapy, walking and cycling programmes as part of the treatment, but who would like to engage in these activities when they feel like a zombie?

…

The finding challenges the conventional target of treatment being primarily focused on changing what patients do during the day.  Sleep has a naturally recuperative power that is often overlooked in pain management.  A greater treatment emphasis on sleep may help patients improve their daytime functioning and hence their quality of life.

Read more here:  Sleep may stop chronic pain sufferers from becoming ‘zombies’