Poor sleep can lead to chronic pain—and women are in higher risk

Approximately one in five people on Earth lives with chronic pain. And the vast majority—up to two-thirds—are women. New research from Aalborg University sheds light on a possible cause: sleep.

A new study shows that disturbed sleep increases the body’s sensitivity to pain, and that women react more strongly than men. According to the researchers, this opens up a new and often overlooked approach to both the understanding and treatment of chronic pain.

“For many years, we’ve relied on stronger and more targeted medicine. But perhaps the solution is far simpler. It seems that sleep plays a greater role in pain than we previously understood, especially in women,” says Kristian Kjær-Staal Petersen, associate professor and pain researcher at Aalborg University.

The paper is published in the European Journal of Pain.

Three nights, three awakenings—and clear results

The study included 59 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 45. For three nights, the participants were woken up three times each night and asked to complete small tasks before they could go back to sleep. Both before and after the experiment, the researchers measured the nervous system’s response to pain, and the results were unmistakable: Even short-term disturbances in sleep affected both body and mind.

The study is the first of its kind to experimentally show a direct correlation between sleep disturbance, pain sensitivity and gender. But according to the researchers, it adds to a larger pattern that has already been seen in studies with hundreds of patients:

“When we see the same pattern in different studies, it strengthens the validity of our findings. All the results indicate that quality of sleep is central to many vital functions in the body, such as the immune system, psychological factors and our lifestyle in general,” says Kjær-Staal Petersen.

Treatment of chronic pain is lagging—sleep can be a way forward

Today, the treatment of chronic pain is often limited to three main tracks: exercise therapy, medicine, and surgery. These treatments work on many patients, but there are still too many patients who do not receive satisfactory treatment.

“Exercise can provide a pain reduction of 20–25%, but for many people, this is far from enough. The most common medicine will reduce pain by 25% and stronger medicines are associated with side effects, and although surgery helps many people, in some cases it can worsen the situation,” explains Kjær-Staal Petersen.

Therefore, sleep, somewhat surprisingly, has come into focus as a possible key to relief. From the treatment of depression and anxiety, we know that sleep needs to be in place before anything else works. And depression, anxiety and pain have a close biological and clinical connection.

For this reason, the research group in Aalborg will further examine how sleep treatments can benefit pain patients—especially those who have not benefited from classical methods.

“Sleep therapy is hardly the answer for everyone. But it seems to be able to make a real difference—especially in the complex cases where we otherwise lack good treatment options,” says Kjær-Staal Petersen.