Sleep deprivation and pain

Here’s my latest article on McKnight’s Long-Term Care News:

Sleep deprivation and pain

Despite the fact that my search for column inspiration took place at 3 a.m., I chose the topic of sleep deprivation because residents regularly tell me about their own sleep disturbances. They also discuss their pain.

Though their aches often keep them up at night, a January 2019 article in the New York Times, “Why It Hurts to Lose Sleep,” suggests that there’s a more complicated relationship between sleep and pain.

Author Benedict Carey described research finding “that a single night of sleep deprivation reduced a person’s pain threshold by more than 15 percent.” In addition, “small deviations in the average amount of sleep from one day to another predicted the level of overall pain felt the next day.” Staying up all night — which has been known to happen in the long-term care setting — increased pain sensitivity by 15% to 30%.

This interaction between sleep and physical discomfort is particularly relevant to those of us working in eldercare. Increased use of pain medications not only raises pharmacy costs, but can lead to a host of other problems, including constipation, daytime drowsiness, increased fall risk, the possibility of addiction, medication interactions, breathing problems and more. Each of these complications can, in turn, lead to further difficulties.

Perhaps the silver lining in these significant complications will be that more attention is paid to sleep disturbances in long-term care.

I suspect that the shift-based nature of nursing care makes it easier to discount this issue. If an elder with disrupted sleep were at home keeping their caregivers awake, it would be a major problem for the family. In the nursing home, the nighttime care providers are already up, the daytime workers arrive to work rested and the administrative staff members aren’t around to directly observe the effects of unsettled sleep. It’s the residents who must contend with the mid-night disruptions of their peers.

One loud, agitated resident can awaken most of his or her neighbors. If, as this research suggests, all of those people feel discomfort more intently the next day, this could increase their requests for pain medications. Their fatigue might reduce their progress in rehab and increase their likelihood of irritability. This outbreak of insomnia, pain and aggravation should be attended to as much as scabies or lice.

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Sleep deprivation and pain